One Year Ago...

'Three hundred and seventy-five days ago, I was thrown into The Dark Forest, with nothing but a dagger with hidden secrets.'

Chase let out a quiet sigh.

'Now, I'm sitting behind a desk, in one of the most prestigious schools on the continent.' 

He looked outside of the glass window to his left.

As he was lost in thought- the door of the loud classroom opened, and a shorter man with a long beard, and fluffy brown hair walked in. 

The man only seemed to be in his early thirties, yet his face had gruff features, that made him look years older. 

The man whistled, as he slowly made his way over to his desk, causing the class to quiet down. 

"Big class." 

He mumbled, before taking a seat.

Chase leaned his chin on his arm, resting against the desk. 

The man cleared his voice, and spoke sternly.

"My name is Professor Luke of House Ignis. This class, is Social Society, but you hopefully already knew that."

Professor Luke declared, with a calm expression. 

"In this class, I will mainly lecture, and talk about things like politics, as well as occasional etiquettes, but I will also dive into other languages as well toward the end of the year."

He said, as he pointed a wooden stick at the chalk board behind him. 

"On the board, there is a list of royal houses, and a couple of noble ones as well. If you would please write these down on whatever you are going to use to take notes." 

A boy with bright blue hair, with his uniform sleeves cut off at the shoulders- raised his hand. 

"There's nothing on the board."

He stated, with a tone of arrogance. 

This caused a couple of the students sitting around him to laugh at the remark. 

Professor Luke looked at him with a somber expression, as he turned to look at the board. 

Sure enough, there was nothing on the board.

"Who erased it!"

He yelled.

Several students snickered at the angered teacher. 

'This is gonna be a long year.'

Chase thought, exhaling quietly. 

Suddenly, he felt someone poke his shoulder, drawing his attention. 

A boy with dark skin, and block locks, was looking at him curiously. 

He had bright blue eyes, and appeared to be much younger then anyone else he had seen in the academy so far. 

"Do you have a pencil I could borrow?"

Chase sighed, and handed the boy the pencil that he was going to use.

"You don't have to give me yours if you dont have any spares."

He said awkwardly. 

Chase put his head back on the desk, and ignored him. 

He wasn't going to write anything anyway, even if he did take notes, he wasn't going to use them.

"Nah, it's fine." 

He mumbled back.

Upon looking at the boy from the corner of his eyes, he noticed a familiar emblem as his houses crest. 

The mark of a golden lightning bolt, was embedded on the collar of his uniform. 

Chase quickly looked back to his left, and began to admire the mountain peaks in the distance.

"Are you okay? You look upset, It's really not a big deal I can just ask somebody else."

The boy told him quietly, with a panicked expression on his young face. 

"What? No, just keep the damn pencil I dont care about that."

Chase said, trying to keep his voice down.

Not that it was a big deal if he was loud, in the front of the classroom, professor Luke had gotten into a bickering match with the blue-haired boy. 

"Oh, alright." 

The young boy with dark skin turned back toward the front of the class, as he began to scribble things down on his paper.

Chase hid his face with his arms as he put his head down on his desk. 

'This boy was from the same house as Kade...'

He bit down on his tongue, until the taste of blood filled his mouth. 

'I know he didn't make it, but still if anyone could have survived The Dark Forest, it was him, not me.'

Chase knew he should have died in the forest, he was weak, frail, and clumsy. Even after he made it out alive, he was still weak and frail, just a little taller and a little stronger. 

However, unlike him, Kade was always gifted, and should have been attending grade school in the capitol, not some poor school in the middle of nowhere. 

He was a prodigy, and Chase was always jealous of him, but now he felt numb, as if none of that mattered in the end, he was just lucky, and his best friend was not.'

"Alright, now that you've hopefully written down what's on the board, I'll begin to go over class formalities."

...

The rest of the class was pretty straight forward. The professor had everyone state their names. He never asked anyone to give their houses, yet everyone did anyway almost like they were trying to prove they were better then the other students.

Chase thought this was stupid, and it filled him with a strange anger, one he hadn't felt since his father had told him to leave the town of Willowmere without him.

He ended up just saying his name and nothing else, which drew unwanted looks from a lot of the other students; however, the teacher decided to quickly move on, in an attempt to change the topic.

That didn't stop a lot of students from giving him death glares and disgusted looks throughout the remainder of the class.

After he left the class, and was walking through the hallway, he remembered his next class was alchemy.

'Why did that old head even give me alchemy, I told him I wanted to have a blacksmithing class.'

He sighed, as he made his way through the busy halls, in what he could only hope was the direction of the alchemy room.