Those at the Bottom

On Monday morning, no one needed to remind us of the rankings. ​It hovered between us, invisible but omnipresent, in every glance exchanged in the mess hall, in every slightly-too-long silence during theoretical classes. Eighteen to two. That number had embedded itself somewhere deep inside each of us, and no one in Class B needed to say it out loud to know it occupied every mind. ​What changed wasn't the words. It was the rhythm. ​I now woke up an hour before the official bell, in the still-thick darkness of the dorms, to run alone around the inner compound before even the instructors were up. My muscles protested every morning with the same intensity, but I kept going, because stopping meant accepting a gap that I still refused to consider permanent. ​I wasn't the only one. ​On Tuesday, leaving the dorm at dawn, I found Rafe already awake, sitting on the edge of his bed, tying his shoelaces with a determination almost comical for such a simple task. ​"Coming for a run?" I asked. ​He looked up, still half asleep, but nodded without hesitation. ​"Yeah. Two terms, Rashford. I don't have time to sleep." ​We ran together that morning, mostly in silence, each lost in our own calculations for survival. ​It was in the training room, a little later that week, that I truly crossed paths with Doran for the first time. ​I recognized him immediately—the boy with the short hair Vann had cited as an example during the rankings, the one whose group had achieved the relative feat of eliminating two village-rank dragons. He was working alone in a corner of the room, striking a training dummy with an almost mechanical regularity, without the slightest flourish. ​I set up a few meters away from him for my own exercises, and he was the one who broke the silence first, without even stopping his strikes. ​"Rashford, right? Group five." ​"Yeah." ​"You guys lasted two full hours without killing a single one." He paused, wiping the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. "That's not nothing." ​I looked at him, surprised. There was neither contempt nor pity in his voice—just an observation, almost a professional respect. ​"You guys killed two," I replied. ​"Yeah. And it cost us two fractures and a concussion." He shrugged, resuming his training. "Two dragons for that, it's not exactly a good trade." ​I stepped a little closer, intrigued despite myself. ​"How did you do it?" ​Doran finally stopped, turning to face me. He wasn't particularly imposing, nor impressive at first glance—just a boy with tired eyes and hands covered in old calluses, the kind you don't develop in a few weeks of training. ​"I grew up in the salt mines, before all this." He tapped his own arm. "This body, it already knew pain before I even awakened anything. Mental energy, it just amplified what was already there." ​Like me and the Ruins. ​"We don't have the same foundations as Class A," he continued, without any apparent bitterness, just a cold lucidity. "Naoz and Anna, word is they come from families that already had mental energy even before birth. We're starting from zero." ​"Doesn't that discourage you?" ​He let out a short, dry laugh, almost entirely devoid of joy. ​"If I let myself get discouraged, I'd already be dead in the mines." He resumed his stance facing the dummy. "We don't have the luxury of innate talent. So we compensate with something else." ​He didn't specify what. He didn't need to. I already knew—it was written in every repeated motion, every methodical strike, every morning he, too, had to get up before everyone else. ​I stayed a moment longer to observe him, before returning to my own exercises, something new settling inside me. Not admiration, exactly. More like recognition—the kind you feel when crossing paths with someone fighting the same battle as you, with the same limited weapons. ​Maybe we aren't alone, at the bottom of the ladder. ​On Thursday, Vann gathered us in the training room with an unusual solemnity, even for him. ​"Up until now," he began without preamble, "I've taught you to search for your mental energy. Some of you have found it. Others, no. Today, we move forward, whether you've awakened it or not." ​He clasped his hands behind his back, his voice taking on that neutral, precise tone we already associated with his theoretical classes. ​"Mental energy makes up your soul. It is what keeps you alive, beyond your simple physical body. A being drained of all its mental energy dies—instantly, without exception." ​A shiver ran through the room. I thought back to the simulation, to that heat that had left me after the fight, leaving behind an exhausting emptiness. What if I had given everything? What if I had kept nothing? ​"It is fueled by a constant emotion." Vann swept his gaze across the room. "It doesn't matter which one. Rage, fear, determination, grief. What matters is the consistency, not the nature of the emotion itself." ​He moved toward the back wall, where short blades similar to the ones we'd been given during the simulation were lined up. ​"Once awakened, mental energy has two main uses, for most of you. The first, you already know: body reinforcement. Speed, strength, endurance, reflexes." ​He took a blade from the wall, holding it in front of him. ​"The second use is weapon infusion. An ordinary weapon, infused with mental energy, becomes capable of piercing a dragon's skin—something no earthly metal can do alone." ​A murmur of interest rippled through the class. ​"For those who possess a sufficient amount of mental energy," Vann continued, "there is a more advanced use: materialization. Creating a weapon entirely from your own energy, without a pre-existing physical base." ​He set the blade down and looked at us one by one, almost as if evaluating who might be capable of reaching that level one day. ​"Two conditions are required to materialize a weapon. First, you must have a clear and precise image of this weapon in your mind—not a vague idea, an exact image, down to the smallest detail. Second, the weapon can never exceed your own size." ​Like Joe's blade. That image instantly came back to me—that blade of pure energy that had materialized in his hand during the duel, as naturally as an extension of his own body. ​"Today," Vann concluded, "we will practice infusion. Materialization will come later, for those capable of it." ​The exercise was both simpler and more frustrating than I had imagined. ​We were handed short blades, identical to those from the simulation. Around me, some students were already managing to make the metal glow slightly with a bluish tint—Doran, unsurprisingly, succeeded almost immediately, his blade vibrating with a steady, constant glow. ​Rafe, next to me, grimaced in concentration, his eyes closed, with little result. ​As for me, I closed my eyes and searched for that same heat I had found during the simulation—that muffled determination rather than raw rage. It wasn't immediate. My first attempts produced nothing, just a cold, inert blade between my fingers. ​No rage. No panic. Just... the will to keep going. ​I thought of Doran, of his calloused hands, of his quiet determination. I thought of Rafe, of his family who had bet everything on him. I thought of that fear, for two whole hours, facing the holographic dragon that could have, in a real world, killed us all. ​The heat came, more easily this time. More familiar. ​The blade quivered in my hand, a timid blue glow running along the metal—fainter than Doran's, but real. ​"That's it," Rafe murmured beside me, his eyes wide open, staring at my blade with a hint of envy mixed with admiration. "How do you do that?" ​"I don't think about rage," I answered, keeping my concentration. "I think about... keeping going." ​He frowned, visibly trying to translate this vague instruction into something usable. I let him search for his own method, keeping an eye on my blade which flickered, disappeared, then returned, like a flame that refused to completely die. ​It wasn't much. A faint, unstable glow, far from the consistency that Doran maintained without apparent effort. ​But it was progress. Mine. ​That evening, in the mess hall, I noticed a subtle change in Class B's common area. ​The students no longer stayed grouped in small, isolated islands, each gnawing on their own frustration in silence. Toma was comparing his infusion techniques with Ilya. Sana, still a bit pale since the simulation, listened intently to Doran explaining a breathing method he had developed alone, in the mines, long before the Academy. ​Rafe sat next to me, his blade still at his belt, still inert for him but which he refused to let go of, like a talisman he would eventually understand. ​"Eighteen to two," he said, echoing the words from the past week. But this time, his voice no longer held the same resignation. "We're going to close that gap." ​I looked around the table—these tired, determined faces, all marked by the same acute awareness of their own delay. ​"Yeah," I replied. "We're going to close that gap." ​It wasn't a certainty. Just an intention, fragile and stubborn, carried by people who had never had the luxury of waiting for things to get easy.