ApexTHEfourth

The Hidden Ranker

 Synopsis:

Lucien Drex is a second-year nobody at Arcanum Academy — lazy, unranked, and always missing from class. He naps through spell theory, avoids duels like the plague, and somehow convinces everyone he’s too weak to matter.

But beneath the yawn and sarcasm lies something far more dangerous.

Lucien doesn’t fight with power. He wins with traps, mind games, and sigils nobody else understands — because he helped design the system in secret before anyone knew his name. And when his old identity starts to leak through the cracks of Arcanum’s elite society, so do the enemies who erased him once before.

Now, secret organizations like the Pale Sigil want him as a pawn. Rival prodigies try to expose him. And one girl — Seraphina Vale — might just remember the day he rewrote a forbidden flame sigil and disappeared from existence.

Too bad Lucien just wants a nap.

With sarcastic plans, manipulated professors, and terrifyingly accurate "accidents," Lucien slowly breaks the Academy’s ranking system from within — all while hiding the truth:

Hidden Ranker

There were many things Renn Yulden could handle — illusion failures, talking spiders, Lucien's breakfast explosions — but what he found in the library basement on a sleepy Tuesday morning was not one of them.

It started with a rumor. Something about a secret floor in the Archives. So naturally, Renn went looking for it — with snacks. Always with snacks.

The shelf, offended, slid sideways.

And behind it: a staircase. Old. Spiral. Smelled like burnt chalk and anxiety.

"Lucien's going to blame me for this," Renn muttered. Then took a bite of his pastry and stepped down.

"Let… go… of my leg, you stitched monster!" he grunted.

From the corner, Caelum Virell raised an eyebrow. "You're fighting your sheets again."

"You enchanted them to tuck themselves."

Caelum didn't respond. Instead, he dropped a sigil chip on Lucien's desk.

"Renn found something. A stairwell behind the 13th shelf in the library."

Lucien froze. "There is no 13th shelf."

Renn was still screaming. Not loudly — just politely. With grace.

"Hello? Someone? Anyone? Something? Preferably non-lethal?"

He had slipped halfway into a room that shouldn't exist.

It was wide, stone-carved, with glowing lines on the floor — sigils that twisted in spirals and loops, rearranging every few seconds.

> "...RELEASE PROTOCOL… LABYRINTH… RELEASE…"

Renn blinked. "I didn't release anything! I was eating!"

The sigils flared. Then a faint whisper:

He shrieked and dropped his pastry.

Meanwhile – Magical Theory Class

Lucien did not attend. But his chair did.

It was enchanted to nod, occasionally write notes, and yawn at appropriate intervals.

The professor never noticed. Mostly because she was busy avoiding eye contact with Ira Moress, who had folded her chair into a Möbius strip.

Seraphina, meanwhile, kept glancing at the empty desk behind her.

> He's never in class… but always ahead of us.

She clenched her jaw. Her pen snapped.

Lucien's enchanted chair politely handed her a spare.

Lucien stared at the sigil chip Caelum brought.

"It's not a trap," Caelum said. "It's a key."

Lucien tilted his head. "Same thing, depending on what you open."

Caelum: "The magic it's activating… it predates the Houses."

Lucien: "Then it's either forbidden, forgotten, or both. My favorite kind."

"I heard whispers," he said. "They knew my name. They called me 'Pathwalker.'"

Lucien blinked. "That's either a prophetic title or a very aggressive street nickname."

Caelum took a scan of Renn's boots. "You brought sigil dust back with you."

The scan glowed. Sigil pattern: OBSCURE: CLASSIFIED: VAULT-L-001

"I need access to the Headmistress's archive."

Lucien: "Only if I get caught. Which is why…"

"…you're going to distract her."

Meanwhile – Pale Sigil Inner Chamber

A masked agent placed their hand over a crystal slab. The images showed shifting walls, corrupted spell dust, and one line:

Voice from shadows: "Then they've already lost."

Somewhere below Arcanum Academy, a wall rippled.

A door with no hinges opened a crack.

And a thousand forgotten voices whispered:

Chapter 16: Echoes from Below