MTLNOVEL Chapter 19: Appraisal
The sun painted the sky in shades of gold and crimson as it cast its final rays over the sharp, jagged silhouette of the Cradle. Three deep bell tolls echoed through the stone fortress like the heartbeat of some ancient giant, marking the end of something important. It was the close of the year, the final day of a brutal twelve-month cycle that had chewed up, spit out, tested, broken, and rebuilt every child that passed through its iron gates.
One full year of hell and glory.
They had survived it all.
For the Initiate Class, Ares, Sylas, Lysandra, and Maelia, it meant the time had finally come to shed the embarrassing title of "fresh meat." What had started with flame burns that blistered their skin, lightning stings that made their hair stand on end, bruises that painted their bodies purple and yellow, and tears that fell like summer rain had slowly transformed into something harder. Muscle memory. Focu. And a new kind of confidence that sat in their chests.
Now they stood in a nervous line outside the tall, silent doors of the Appraisal Chamber, each one lost in their own thoughts. The wooden doors were carved with symbols that seemed to shift and dance in the flickering torchlight.
Each of them wore clean training robes marked by a single white stripe running down the left sleeve, the final symbol of their status as Initiates about to become something more.
Inside those doors, a panel of judges waited like vultures on a branch. Three figures would be observing: Matron Veltrissa, whose blood-red eyes could spot weakness from across a crowded room; Lord Drenar of the Fire Shrine, a man whose beard looked like it might catch fire at any moment; and Lady Syrrien, a combat scholar from the Discipline Wing whose reputation for being harder than winter stone preceded her like a cold wind.
But the real judge, the one that mattered most, would be something far older and more mysterious than any human.
The Eyes of Veyr.
A crystalline orb the size of a child's head, perfectly clear and beautiful, resting on top of a floating obsidian pedestal that hummed with ancient magic. The artifact had been forged by master craftsmen whose names were lost to time, and it glowed with a soft, steady light that pulsed in rhythm with the mana flowing through the building's very stones. This wasn't just some pretty decoration, it could read a person's magical rank, their hidden potential, and their elemental affinities in the span of a few heartbeats. The Eyes had never been wrong. Not once in three hundred years.
It was completely, utterly, terrifyingly accurate.
"Maelia le Eisenklinge," Veltrissa's voice rang out from inside the chamber, sharp and clear as a bell struck with steel.
Maelia took a deep breath that seemed to come from her toes, then stepped forward with her hands clasped behind her back to hide their trembling. The heavy doors groaned open like the mouth of some stone beast, and she disappeared into the torch-lit chamber beyond.
One by one, they would all be called. One by one, their futures would be decided.
The waiting was the worst part.
---
Twenty minutes later, Maelia emerged from the chamber looking like she'd been holding her breath the entire time. Her face was pale but determined, and she gave the others a shaky smile that didn't quite reach her eyes.
The results had been carved into a small wooden plaque that she clutched in her hands:
Maelia's Results:
Mana Rank: Intermediate (Low)
Potential: Capable
Elements: Wind, Earth
Not amazing, but solid. Respectable. The kind of results that would open doors without making anyone nervous about what she might do with the power.
She nodded to the others and stepped aside, her part in this drama finished.
---
"Lysandra le Eisenklinge."
Lysandra glided forward with the same perfect grace she brought to everything else, her spine straight as a sword blade, her face as calm as still water. She looked like she was walking into a tea party instead of a life-changing evaluation.
The door shut behind her with a soft thud that somehow sounded final.
Thirty minutes passed. When she emerged, there was the tiniest hint of satisfaction in her dark eyes, like a cat that had just caught a particularly clever mouse.
Lysandra's Results:
Mana Rank: Intermediate (Mid)
Potential: Exceptional
Elements: Water, Lightning
Exceptional. The word hung in the air like expensive perfume. That was the kind of rating that made instructors pay attention and opened doors to the really interesting lessons.
---
"Sylas de Eisenklinge."
Sylas moved like a shadow given form, slipping through the doorway so quietly you might have missed it if you blinked. But just before the doors closed, he cast one quick glance back at Ares, a look that might have been encouragement or warning or simple curiosity.
Then he was gone.
Twenty-five minutes later, he reappeared with his usual calm expression, though there was something flickering behind his pale eyes that hadn't been there before.
Sylas's Results:
Mana Rank: Intermediate (Low)
Potential: Capable
Elements: Wind, Fire
Good solid results. The kind that would serve him well without making anyone lose sleep over what he might become.
---
"Ares Eisenklinge."
When his name was called, everything inside him went perfectly, completely still. Not even his thoughts dared to move. His heart seemed to pause between beats, waiting for permission to continue.
This was it. The moment that would define everything that came after.
He stepped through the heavy doors into a chamber that felt older than the mountains themselves. Torches flickered in iron brackets along the walls, casting dancing shadows that seemed to whisper secrets in the corners. The air smelled of ancient stone and something else, something electric and alive that made the hair on his arms stand up.
The Eyes of Veyr floated in the center of the room like a captured star, pulsing gently with soft white light. It was beautiful and terrifying at the same time, like staring into the heart of a lightning storm.
Matron Veltrissa sat in her high-backed chair like a queen on her throne, flanked by Lord Drenar and Lady Syrrien. All three pairs of eyes were fixed on him with the intensity of hunters who had spotted their prey.
"Stand in the circle," Veltrissa commanded, her voice echoing off the stone walls.
Ares stepped into the carved circle at the room's center, feeling the ancient symbols beneath his feet tingle with dormant power. The moment his boots touched the inner ring, everything changed.
The Eye of Veyr brightened like someone had just fed it pure sunlight. Magic rippled outward from the orb in waves he could actually see, like rings spreading across the surface of a disturbed pond.
Then, suddenly, it froze.
The crystalline orb began to make a sound like no one in that room had ever heard before, a crackling, splintering noise like ice breaking under pressure, but louder, more violent. The sound filled the chamber and seemed to crawl under their skin.
Lady Syrrien's breath caught in her throat with a sharp gasp. Lord Drenar leaned forward so far he nearly fell out of his chair, his bushy eyebrows climbing toward his hairline. Even Veltrissa's mask of calm composure slipped for just a moment, revealing something that might have been surprise or fear or wonder.
The orb pulsed again, faster this time, harder, more desperate. The gentle white glow turned blazing hot, bright enough to make them all squint and look away. The crackling sound grew louder, more frantic, like the artifact was trying to scream.
Then, as suddenly as it had begun, everything stopped.
The chamber fell silent except for the soft hiss of torches and the rapid breathing of four very shaken people.
The obsidian pedestal beneath the Eye began to glow with burning letters that seemed to write themselves in the air:
Mana Rank: Intermediate (Low)
Potential: Immeasurable
Elements: Fire, Water, Earth, Wind, Ice, Lightning
The silence that followed was the kind that made your ears ring. It was so complete, so absolute, that Ares could hear his own heartbeat drumming against his ribs like a trapped bird trying to escape.
Even Ares had to blink and read the results twice. All elements? That wasn't just rare, that was impossible. Not in any of the stories he'd read, not in any of the legends whispered in dark corners. Even the greatest heroes of Eisenklinge history had mastered maybe three or four elements at most.
All of them? That was the stuff of myths and fairy tales.
Veltrissa rose from her chair slowly, like someone waking from a dream they weren't sure they wanted to leave. Her crimson eyes locked onto his face, searching for something he couldn't name.
"You're dismissed," she said, her voice barely above a whisper but somehow carrying the weight of mountains.
Ares hesitated, his mouth opening to ask one of the thousand questions buzzing in his head like angry bees. "That's... that's it?"
"Go." The single word hit him like a physical blow.
He left, his legs feeling strangely unsteady, like he was walking on the deck of a ship in rough seas.
Behind him, the moment the doors closed, Veltrissa summoned a scroll made of what looked like solid shadow. It pulsed with magical seals that hurt to look at directly—the kind of security that meant only one specific person in the entire world could open it.
"To the Patriarch," she said, her voice like stone grinding against stone. "Priority: Absolute."
She placed the scroll into a bronze tube that immediately burst into flames and vanished, transported by magic to somewhere far away where very important people would read it and make very important decisions.
Then she turned back to the Eyes of Veyr, which now flickered weakly like a candle that had burned too long and was finally dying.
"A second anomaly," she whispered to the empty air, her words barely audible. "After all these years... a second one."
---
Back outside in the corridor, Ares rejoined the others, who were clustered together like conspirators sharing state secrets. None of them asked him what had happened, they didn't need to. The shell-shocked expression on his face and the way he kept glancing back at the doors told them everything they needed to know.
Something big had just happened. Something that changed everything.
The whispers started almost immediately, spreading through the fortress like wildfire. Staff members murmuring about the Eye overheating for the first time in decades. Instructors stealing glances at him like he was made of unstable explosives that might go off at any moment. Even the older students were starting to notice, their conversations stopping mid-sentence when he walked by.
And in Ares' mind, cutting through all the noise and confusion and growing panic, only one thought pulsed over and over again like a drum beat:
What the hell am I?
The question followed him through the corridors, echoed in his footsteps, and promised to haunt his dreams for nights to come. Because whatever he was, whatever the Eyes had seen in him, it was something that had never walked the halls of the Cradle before.
And that, he was starting to realize, might not be a good thing at all.