The Author's Extra: My SSS Skill Turns Souls into Anything!

Augustus’s footsteps filled the corridor, each one landing with the specific weight of someone who hasn’t needed to hurry in a long time because things have always moved out of his way.

Seris stepped forward immediately.

"Your Highness, I was only speaking with him about the first and second examination rounds, congratulating him on today’s results—"

"Silence."

She stopped.

Augustus came to a halt in front of them. The lazy grin that lived on his face through every council meeting, every arena match, every conversation where someone said something that should have been offensive and he absorbed it with a yawn — none of that was here. What was here instead was cold and focused and considerably older than the person who usually wore his face.

His eyes were on Seris.

"Didn’t I tell you clearly what I could do? Back then?"

She didn’t answer. She lowered her eyes.

Alden watched.

He’d been about to say something and then he noticed her hand.

It was trembling. Barely visible, but her fingers were trembling at her side. Her shoulders were tight with tension—a stark contrast to the person who had stepped between Nicholas’s sword and Alden’s head without blinking.

’What.’

He looked at Augustus. Then back at her face.

’I knew something was going on, and she was hiding when he walked away in the corridor before the ceremony. That blank expression she wore watching him leave.’

’She’s afraid of him.’ The thought landed wrong. It felt off, like realizing he had completely misread the situation.

Augustus’s jaw tightened.

"Looks like you need to be reminded." His hand reached forward and closed around her wrist. "Come."

He turned.

"Excuse me, President."

He stopped.

Alden had moved without deciding to, stepping into Augustus’s path the way you step into a doorway to stop it closing.

"I don’t think it’s good manners to interrupt someone’s conversation and drag them away." He kept his voice completely level.

Augustus turned his head.

The look he gave Alden was different from any look he’d ever given him before. Not the mild interest from the arena. Not the easy humor from the council meetings. Something that had put the other things away.

"Alden." His voice had shed its warmth like a coat left at the door. "I have a good impression of you."

He stepped closer.

"Don’t make me change it." One more step. "Walk away respectfully while you can. Otherwise you’ll force me to do something neither of us will enjoy."

Alden’s lips moved into something that was almost a smile.

"Do something?"

He tilted his head slightly.

"Are you threatening me, Senior Augustus?"

"Alden." Seris’s hand found his forearm.

Her voice was quieter than he’d ever heard it. The difference between a person choosing their volume and a person being careful.

She shook her head once.

"Just go." Her fingers pressed lightly.

He glanced at her hand. Then at her face.

She was still composed. Still Seris. But the fear she was working to keep underneath the surface was visible to anyone who knew what they were looking at, and Alden had been looking at her for a while now.

He looked back at Augustus.

"We were having a conversation." He spread his hands slightly. "Seris is my senior. Am I not allowed to speak with my seniors? The academy has no rule requiring students to ask permission before talking to each other." He paused.

"I was speaking with Student Seris." His eyes met Augustus’s directly.

"Not your fiancée Seris."

The corridor went quiet.

Something shifted across Augustus’s face. It wasn’t anger, but something dark that had been lurking behind his grin, finally finding a crack to slip through.

His hand came up and landed on Alden’s shoulder.

"Listen, little bud."

Deceptively calm. The pressure in his fingers said the rest.

"Do you know who you’re talking to?"

Alden looked at the hand on his shoulder.

Then up at Augustus.

"Of course." He said it like it was obvious. "Prince Augustus Solaris. Heir to the throne...."

"And?"

His own hand came up. Fingers closed around Augustus’s wrist.

With a quick tug, he pulled the prince’s hand off his shoulder, and adjusted his coat.

"And by the way." The faint smile returned. "I don’t like people putting their hands on my shoulders. Royalty included."

He dusted the shoulder off with two fingers.

"Now, I was in the middle of a conversation. So, if you don’t mind."

Augustus stared at him.

When he spoke, it came out low.

"What exactly do you think you are?"

Alden took a step forward.

They were almost the same height. Almost the same distance from each other as two people are when a conversation stops being a conversation.

"That’s what I should be asking you."

His voice stayed even but the edge underneath it was real.

"What are you doing, treating another student like she belongs to you?" He held Augustus’s gaze. "This is an academy. Everyone here is a student. So stop pulling people around like they’re your property." The smile was gone.

"If you want to act like that, do it after you graduate."

Seris said nothing.

She watched the two of them with her hands at her sides and her expression doing the thing it did when she was deciding whether to intervene and had not yet decided.

Augustus was quiet for a long moment. Then the corner of his mouth lifted.

A crack of thunder came from nowhere.

BOOM.

Lightning erupted from him yellow electricity shooting down his arm and racing across the floor. The tiles under his foot shattered outward in a ring. Cracks ran several meters in every direction across the corridor stone.

Alden’s coat snapped backward from the pressure.

Down the corridor, students who hadn’t been paying attention were paying attention now.

"Was that President Augustus?!"

"Are they fighting?!"

Alden looked at the cracked floor. Then back at Augustus.

"That was unnecessary."

"Shut up." The lazy prince was gone completely.

What was standing in the corridor now had lightning running across its arms and eyes that had stopped pretending to be bored.

"You’ve started thinking too highly of yourself." He stepped forward, electricity crawling across every surface of him.

"Because you climbed one scoreboard in one day, you think you’ve become someone important."

He lifted one finger. "Let me fix that."

Lightning gathered at the fingertip. He pointed it at Alden’s chest.

"I’m challenging you to a one-on-one fight."

The corridor had gone completely silent.

Every student who had gathered in the last thirty seconds was holding very still.

"With conditions."

Augustus’s smile came back. "If I win—"

The lightning around him pulsed once.

"You stay away. From me. From Seris. You don’t approach her, you don’t interfere, you don’t make yourself a problem in my sight again." His eyes sharpened. "Done. Finished. Over."

He lowered his hand.

"But if you win."

The smile held.

"I shut my mouth."

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