Dylan looked between Liam and Asher for another moment, his tired eyes narrowing slightly as if his half-dead brain was trying to decide whether this was something he should witness or something that might end with him being caught between two people who could turn the corridor into rubble if the wrong words were said.

In the end, exhaustion won over curiosity. He lifted both hands a little higher and gave a weak, crooked grin, though even that looked like it cost him some effort.

"Yeah, I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that," he said, stepping backward toward his own room. "Whatever intense rival conversation you two are about to have, please don’t do it in a way that wakes me up. I have suffered enough. If I hear explosions before morning, I’m reporting both of you to whoever looks most annoyed."

Neither Liam nor Asher responded to that immediately, and Dylan seemed to take the silence as permission to escape. He gave Liam a small nod, then glanced at Asher with a look that carried more awareness than his usual joking expression suggested.

For all his foolishness and teasing, Dylan was not stupid. He could feel the tension between them. He could tell Asher was not asking for a casual talk, and he could tell Liam had already understood that.

Still, Dylan chose not to interfere.

He turned away and dragged himself down the corridor toward his room, muttering something under his breath about baths, beds, and how the academy owed them all compensation for emotional damages.

Once Dylan disappeared into his room and the door closed behind him, the corridor grew quieter. Then after a moment, Liam turned as if to continue walking.

"Not now."

Asher’s jaw tightened. "Not now?"

Liam did not look back immediately. "I’m tired."

"So is everyone else."

"Then go sleep."

The flatness in Liam’s voice made Asher’s fingers curl harder at his sides. He had expected irritation from Liam, maybe indifference, maybe that same calm arrogance that always made it feel as if nothing could reach him.

But hearing him dismiss the conversation so easily after everything they had just seen made something hot twist deeper inside Asher’s chest. It was not only anger at Liam. That would have been easier. It was anger at himself, at the ranking, at the roar he had fled from, at the academy’s praise that now felt like a polished insult, and at the fact that Liam seemed ready to walk away from all of it as if none of it mattered.

"Of course," Asher said, his voice low. "You erase a Berserker, drop two ranks, make the entire ranking system look like a joke, and still act like everyone else is wasting your time."

That made Liam stop.

For a moment, he remained facing away from Asher, his shoulders still and his head slightly lowered as though he was deciding whether the conversation was worth the effort it would take to answer.

Then he turned just enough to look at Asher from the corner of his eye. "If this is about the ranking, go talk to the instructors."

"It’s not about the damn ranking."

The words came out sharper than Asher intended, and they echoed faintly through the corridor before fading into the quiet. Liam turned fully this time, his red eyes resting on Asher without surprise.

That only irritated Asher more. Even now, Liam looked like he had already measured the shape of the conversation and found it inconvenient rather than difficult.

Asher stepped closer, though not enough to turn the moment into a threat.

"I thought I would enjoy it," he said, and the honesty of the words seemed to bother him the instant they left his mouth. "When Lucia said you were third, I thought I would finally feel like I had passed you. I thought that number would mean something."

Liam said nothing.

Asher’s expression hardened. "Then they showed everything."

The corridor remained quiet around them. Somewhere farther down the corridor, a door opened and closed, but neither of them looked toward the sound.

"I saw the swamp. The Gravecoils. The wound in your leg. The Berserker." Asher’s voice grew tighter with each word, his frustration pressing through the control he was still trying to maintain. "I saw what you did to it."

Liam’s gaze did not shift.

Asher laughed once, but there was no humor in it. "I heard that roar in Nalim."

That finally drew a slight change in Liam’s eyes.

Asher noticed it and continued. "I heard it from far away. I felt the pressure from where I was standing. I knew whatever made it was dangerous, so I left. Kaelen even praised me for that. He called it judgment."

"Well, it was," Liam said.

Asher’s face tightened. "And yet you went toward it."

Liam did not deny it.

That silence made Asher angrier than a denial would have. "So tell me, Liam. What exactly am I supposed to feel about being ranked above you?"

Liam held his gaze for a moment, then answered with the same blunt indifference that always made people think he cared less than he actually did.

"Nothing. It’s a number."

Asher’s eyes flared. "Easy for you to say when you make the number meaningless."

Liam’s expression sharpened slightly, not with anger at Asher, but with the irritation that had already been sitting inside him since the hall. He had spent the entire meal listening to everyone talk around his feat as if victory alone mattered.

He had heard Regulus say exactly what he had already known. He had seen Thion’s eyes waiting for him from the stage. He had felt the weight of the questions he had created with his own hands.

Now Asher stood before him, demanding meaning from a rank Liam had never wanted in the first place.

"I made it meaningless because I was stupid," Liam said.

Asher froze.

For the first time since asking to talk, he looked genuinely caught off guard.

Liam continued, his voice still calm, but colder now because the words were aimed at himself as much as at Asher.

"I went after something I didn’t need to fight. I won, passed out, and had to be carried back like a weakling. "

Asher stared at him, the anger in his expression faltering because he had expected resistance, not agreement. He had expected Liam to dismiss the criticism, to stand above it the way he stood above most things, but Liam’s face showed no defensiveness. If anything, he looked more annoyed at himself than at Asher.

"You still killed it," Asher said.

"And almost failed because of it."

"That’s not the same thing."

"For this assessment, it basically was."

Asher looked away for a moment, his teeth pressing together as he tried to force his thoughts into something that did not sound like resentment. The problem was that both of them were right.

Liam had done something no student before him had done, but he had also nearly lost the assessment because of the state it left him in. Asher had done the smart thing by retreating from the roar, but that wisdom felt hollow after seeing Liam face the source of it and survive.

One choice had been correct. The other had been extraordinary. Asher hated that he could not decide which one mattered more.

"Do you even understand how annoying that is?" Asher asked, his voice lower now. "I trained. I pushed myself. I didn’t slack off. I didn’t waste the assessment. I fought, I survived, I improved, and somehow standing above you still feels like being behind."

Liam watched him quietly.

Asher’s fists clenched again. "Are you that far ahead of me?"

Liam was silent for a few seconds before answering. "In some ways, yes."

Asher’s expression tightened.

"In others, no," Liam continued. "You handled your assessment better than I handled mine."

Asher looked back at him sharply. "That’s supposed to make me feel better?"

"No."

"Then why say it?"

"Because it’s the truth."

The answer was so plainly Liam that Asher almost laughed again, but the sound never came. Instead, he looked down at his own hands, where his nails had left small marks in his palms. He hated the answer because it did not comfort him, but he also hated that it did not feel like a lie.

Liam was stronger than him in ways Asher could not ignore. More destructive. More dangerous. More willing to cross lines most students would not even approach. But Asher had survived Nalim cleanly enough to earn second place. He had made the right decision when the roar came. He had not needed someone to drag him back from the edge of death.

And somehow, that still was not enough.

Liam seemed to read part of that from his silence. "If you want to surpass me, stop chasing the rank."

Asher’s eyes lifted.

"Ranks can move because someone else made a mistake," Liam said. "That doesn’t mean you caught them."

The words struck hard enough to make Asher’s shoulders tense.

Liam turned slightly, as if the conversation was already nearing its end. "You know that. That’s why you’re angry."

For a moment, Asher said nothing. The corridor’s quiet pressed around them again, and the exhaustion from Nalim seemed to settle back into his body all at once. He hated how easily Liam had said it. He hated that Liam had understood the shape of his anger so quickly. Most of all, he hated that there was no clean way to deny it.

"I’m not taking a rank I didn’t earn," Asher said at last.

Liam looked at him. "You earned it."

Asher’s eyes narrowed.

"You just didn’t earn what you wanted it to mean," Liam added.

That made Asher go still again.

The words were not cruel, but they cut deeper than cruelty would have. Liam was right. Asher had earned rank two within the assessment. His performance, survival choices, and combat record had earned that placement.

But the meaning Asher wanted from it, proof that he had truly surpassed Liam, had not come with the rank. The academy had given him a number. It had not given him victory over the person he was actually chasing.

Asher exhaled slowly through his nose, his anger still there but less wild than before. "Next time, I’ll make it mean something."

Liam held his gaze for a moment, then gave the smallest nod. "Then make sure you’re chasing the right thing."

Asher said nothing to that.

Liam turned and began walking again, clearly finished with the conversation even if Asher was not. He moved with the same quiet, steady pace as always, though the stiffness in his body revealed that the assessment had left more behind than he wanted others to see.

Asher remained in the corridor, watching him go, his fists no longer clenched but his jaw still tight. The conversation had not given him comfort. It had not given him the satisfaction he wanted. But it had given shape to the frustration burning inside him, and in some ways.

Liam had dropped to third.

Asher had risen above him.

And still, the gap between them felt real enough to touch.

Asher looked down the corridor after him, his expression hardening with a quieter kind of resolve. He was still angry, but the anger had become cleaner now, sharper, less scattered.

The next time he stood above Liam, he would not let it be because of a technicality, recklessness, or some flaw in the assessment’s judgment. He would make it something neither of them could dismiss.

Farther down the hall, Liam continued toward his room, his face calm again but his thoughts far from settled. One problem had been solved by Sheila’s return to rank one. Another had just followed him into the corridor wearing Asher Hawthorne’s face. And beyond that, waiting somewhere ahead of him, was Headmaster Thion and the explanation Liam still had no desire to give.