Chapter 1
Being completely unbalanced makes you a liability. But pair two broken mages together? That creates an unstoppable force.
In Arcania, your Overall Rating is everything. With a bone-dry mana pool, I was publicly humiliated by my Instructor and banished to the academy's deadliest ruined tower.
Everyone expected me to die there. Even my fiancé threw our engagement ring in my face before the entire school.
What they didn't know was that inside that rat-infested prison, I'd meet Kael—the guy ranked second-to-last.
He possessed an ocean of raw magic, but couldn't channel a single drop without a violent, explosive backfire.
Smash our pathetic stat sheets together, though, and you forge the most terrifying magical entity on the continent.
"Ready to tear through the rankings and take the top spot?" I asked.
He grinned. "My pleasure."
"Lyra. Overall Rating: F. Mana Capacity: 0. Elemental Affinity: 0. Rank: Dead last."
Instructor Vane's amplified voice boomed across Wintergarde’s central hall. The disdain in his tone was suffocating; he didn't even bother looking at me.
Raucous laughter ripped through the crowd. Hundreds of eyes locked onto me like I was worthless garbage.
"Zeroes across the board again? How is she even here?"
"Who cares if her Mental Control is maxed out? She can't even spark a flame at her fingertips. A complete Null-vein!"
"Just drop out already. You're dragging down Class One's curve."
I stood motionless before the dead-dark testing crystal.
It was true—I couldn't cast a thing. I held the continent's most intricate spell-matrices in my mind, backed by mental control sharp enough to track a speck of dust.
But mana? Nothing. Not a single drop.
Vane stepped down from the dais, his ornate robes sweeping the polished stone. He stopped inches from me, staring down his narrow nose with pure disgust.
"Wintergarde doesn't harbor dead weight, Lyra," he said, tone razor-sharp. "Your very existence insults arcane truth. Effective immediately, you are stripped of your Class One status. Report to the Howling Tower."
Gasps snuffed out the laughter. The Howling Tower sat on the academy's absolute fringe, rotting from chaotic shadow energy.
Sending a magicless Null-vein there was a death sentence.
"That violates regulations," I said, meeting his gaze. My voice was dead level. "Even F-ranks are entitled to standard housing."
"Rules?" Vane scoffed. He jabbed a mana-coated fingernail hard into my forehead, leaving a stinging red welt. "Here, my word is law. You can't even conjure a basic Illumination spell. What right do you have to cite rules to me?"
He turned to the front row, locking eyes with a boy in an immaculate uniform. Draco—my fiancé, and today's undisputed number one.
"Draco? Anything to add?" Vane's venom dissolved into sickening sweetness.
Draco stepped forward, his lip curling in disgust. Without a word, he tore our mithril engagement ring from his finger and flung it at me.
Clink.
It ricocheted sharply off my cheekbone and skittered across the stone floor.
"You're an embarrassment, Lyra," Draco projected, ensuring the whole hall heard.
"I, Draco Starfall, future Grand Magus, will never wed a Null-vein. We're done. Do us a favor and die quietly in that tower before you shame our families any further."
I glanced at the ring on the floor, leaving it untouched.
Instead, I met Draco’s gaze: the man who once knelt to swear his eternal protection now stared at me like I carried the plague.
"Fine," I said flatly. Then I turned and headed for the doors.
No scenes. No tears. I walked away with measured steps, my posture so relaxed it bordered on lazy.
"Acting tough? Let's see how long she lasts!" Draco barked from behind me, clearly agitated I’d denied him the public breakdown he wanted.
Half an hour later, I shoved open the rotting doors to the Howling Tower.
The stench of rot and violent mana turbulence hit me like a physical wall.
It was exactly as abysmal as rumored—unstable shadow magic hung thick in the air, pricking my skin like static needles.
I brushed the dust from my robes and stepped into the gloom. I’d just decided the place belonged solely to the rats when a massive explosion rocked the far corner.
BOOM!
The shockwave shoved me back a step.
As the thick smoke cleared, a soot-covered teenager with hair blown into a frantic bird's nest coughed and pulled himself from a pile of rubble.
He patted the dirt from his robes and caught sight of me.
"Yo, fresh meat?" He flashed a blinding white grin through the grime. "Name's Kael. Old bastard Vane banish you too?"
I narrowed my eyes, sizing him up. Kael. I knew the name—Wintergarde's second-to-last student, sitting just one rank above me.
"Lyra," I replied.
"Oh, the infamous Null-vein!" His eyes lit up like he'd struck gold, utterly devoid of mockery. "Pleasure. I was just attempting a Basic Heal, and well... as you can see, it blew up in my face again."
I walked over, eyeing the massive, smoking crater at his feet.
A Basic Heal did this? The sheer volume of raw mana needed to cause that much structural damage was frankly absurd.
"What are your stats?" I asked abruptly.
Kael scratched his unruly hair, fished a crumpled parchment from his pocket, and handed it to me. "Here. It's a total trainwreck."
I scanned it.
Mana Capacity: SSS (Overflowing).
Elemental Affinity: S.
Mental Control: 0.
Overall Rating: E.
I stared at his parchment, a completely unhinged idea rapidly locking into place.
"You really have zero control?" I asked.
"None," Kael sighed, crossing his arms. "My magic’s a rabid dog off the leash. The second I channel it, it goes berserk. Vane called me a ticking time bomb and dumped me here."
I pulled my own zero-riddled transcript from my pocket and shoved it in his face.
"Read this."
Kael squinted at the paper. "Mana capacity zero? Mental Control... SSS? Holy shit, you're maxed out."
He looked up, his gaze locking with mine through the dusty air. In that split second, we registered the exact same thing: a desperate, thrilling spark of ambition.
One with zero mana and perfect control.
The other with limitless mana and zero control.
Alone, we were absolute failures. But slotted together like interlocking gears...
"Kael." My voice trembled slightly with pure adrenaline. "Ever heard of a Mana Symbiosis Link?"
"The forbidden dual-casting art?" Kael's eyes were terrifyingly bright now. "They say it requires perfect mental synchronization. One acts as the raw power source, the other builds the matrix..."
"Exactly," I cut in, stepping closer. "You provide the horsepower, I take the wheel. Ready to tear up the leaderboards?"
Kael stared at me in dead silence for a second, then burst into a bark of laughter. He slapped his dusty thigh, wiping a tear from his eye.
"Hell yes. I am so sick of those stuck-up bastards." He held out a soot-stained hand. "Let's raise some hell, partner."
I gripped it, a cold smirk claiming my lips.
Vane, Draco... you have absolutely no idea what kind of monsters you just locked in a cage together.
