Masked Sovereign: Lord of Fallen Aether

Chapter 1: Transmigration

"Listen carefully, everyone." freēwebnovel.com

When Professor Caden Varrin spoke, scattered conversations across the auditorium died on their own.

Three hundred students sat in rows from front to back, and not a single one of them felt like talking anymore.

"I’m Caden Varrin, Professor at Nexus Academy. Today you’ll undergo your awakening and find out whether you carry the potential to become a Mage or a Knight. I trust you’ve all prepared. Because the higher rank you place according to your age, the higher the academy you’ll be placed in."

He left it at that.

Aries Aerwyn sat somewhere in the middle rows with his head buried in both hands, quietly losing his mind.

’I’m so screwed.’

He had transmigrated.

One moment he was sprawled on his bed at two in the morning, dead tired from his hotel part-time shift, phone balanced on his chest, reading a fantasy webnovel he’d been following for weeks.

He remembered his eyes getting heavy. He remembered thinking he’d rest them for just a minute.

Then he woke up here. From eighteen to thirteen years old. Different body. Different name — Aries Aerwyn, and absolutely no preparation for the awakening ceremony that was apparently happening right now with no option to reschedule.

Humanity had been at war with a species called Dravetians for over a thousand years.

A brutal, grinding conflict that had never truly ended, only paused in places because of Vanguards — humans who had pushed past ordinary limits and developed abilities strong enough to keep the rest of humanity alive.

Generation after generation these people had bled to buy everyone else more time. So humanity did what made sense.

They trained their children young, tested them early, and hoped desperately that each new generation produced enough warriors to hold the line.

That was what this ceremony was.

The stronger the Arcane a student developed, the higher they ranked as either Mage or Knight — and that rank decided whether they ended up in an average institution or one of the top academies.

The top academy was Nexus, and placement there wasn’t something that happened easily.

The requirements were absolute top and the standards high enough that most students spent years preparing just for a chance.

And Aries had woken up inside it with zero arcane training, zero preparation, and a body that technically wasn’t his.

Up at the railing above, parents stood watching from the elevated gallery.

Aries spotted Drelan and Althea both leaning forward, both gesturing encouragingly the second he glanced up.

Right beside them stood a girl with her arms folded tight and an expression as if she had already decided she would kill him if he didn’t place higher.

Mirielle. His sister, apparently.

’Great. I just got here and there’s already pressure on my head, plus some brat trying to kill me with her eyes.’

Names started being called.

The first boy walked up to the platform, placed both hands on the sphere the professor held out, and after a brief pause the thing lit up gold.

"A-Class Mage!"

Applause swept through the auditorium. Relief flooded the boy’s face; he looked like he might actually cry.

More students followed. C-Class Knights. B-Class Mages. One early A+ Rank that made half the auditorium gasp.

Aries watched all of it carefully. He was already forming a rough guess about where he was going to land.

"Next — Taren Aerwyn."

The seat beside him scraped back hard. Taren stood, and on his way past shoved Aries’s knee with his foot.

Not hard enough to be called a kick outright, but deliberate enough that there was no mistaking the intent behind it.

"Move."

’What does this brat think of himself?’ Aries moved.

Taren was his cousin on paper. In practice, Taren was the family’s golden standard — higher branch, better standing, the kind of person who had grown up with every door already propped open for him.

They had spent years in proximity to each other. That was the full extent of what Aries would call their relationship.

He walked to the platform like he was collecting an award he’d already been told he’d won.

He placed his hand on the sphere.

The light came fast and hard, far brighter than anything before it, blooming across the entire surface in an instant until the platform glowed like a lamp had been switched on behind it.

"An S-Rank Mage!" Professor Varrin actually smiled this time.

"Congratulations, Taren Aerwyn. Nexus Academy will welcome you without question. Push yourself and one day you may stand among the Vanguard."

The auditorium responded the way a crowd does when something genuinely impressive happens.

"Finally! the first ever S rank!"

" That’s what I’d expect from Aerwyn family, way to go!"

Taren absorbed every second of it. He turned slowly, let the applause trail him, walked back toward his seat.

When he passed Aries on the steps he didn’t stop, just turned his head slightly.

"Try not to embarrass the family name."

’I swear to God I’m going to mog this gu—’

"Next — Aries Aerwyn."

Aries stood before his brain had time to argue.

Above him, Drelan pumped his fist. Althea pressed her hands together. Mirielle’s expression didn’t shift at all.

He walked down toward the platform, and somewhere in the middle of the steps it occurred to him ’what did the real Aries even do to prepare for this?’

Whatever it was, he hoped something had stuck somewhere in this body, something the sphere could recognize where his own understanding had nothing to offer.

He stopped in front of it.

The sphere had settled back to a dim glow after Taren’s result. Aries looked at his reflection in the surface for a second — crimson hair, pale eyes, a face that still didn’t feel like his own.

’A Mage. A Knight. Anything but something with highest rank.’

He was still reaching for it, hands inches from the surface, when Professor Varrin pulled it back.

"You." His eyes narrowed. "Did you even awaken your Arcane? I couldn’t sense even a trace of mana flow from you."

"Uhh..." Aries opened his mouth and found nothing useful behind it. He didn’t even know what an Arcane was.

The professor didn’t wait.

"First failure of the decade."

The words landed before Aries had processed what was happening.

’What?!’

Professor Varrin was already looking past him toward the next name on his list.

In the gallery, Drelan had gone completely still.

Althea had grabbed his arm with both hands, her face trying very hard to hold itself together and not quite managing it.

The auditorium split into noise all at once.

"Who even fails the awakening?"

"Isn’t he from the same house as that S-Rank?"

"First in a decade..."

"Professor—" Aries kept his voice as level as he could.

"I never even made contact with the sphere. You can’t count that as a result. Just give me one moment to actually—"

"There’s no mistake, Aries." Professor Varrin didn’t look up from his list. "Step down."

Aries hesitated, then stepped down.

He walked back through the rows while whispers followed him from both sides, found his seat, and sat.

He fixed his eyes somewhere forward and kept them there while the ceremony continued without him, the professor already calling the next name.

Nearby, Talon watched him with a smug, sideways look. ’Not even awakened?’ he thought.

’And here I was thinking he’d at least scrape by with a low rank, but he completely failed. Ha! What a piece of trash.’

He had expected something. Embarrassing, whatever — but something.

The idea of complete failure had never felt like a real possibility until thirty seconds ago when it became one.

The next student stepped up to the platform.

The auditorium’s attention shifted forward again.

Nobody was watching the sphere, which was why nobody caught it.

Moments earlier, when Aries’s hand had been inches from the surface, a faint pulse of red light had risen. The glow lasted less than a second before fading completely, leaving no trace behind.