Headmaster Stanford S. Strickland leaned back in his leather chair, the heavy oak desk in front of him littered with admission papers, magical reports, and notes on this year's incoming class. His gaze remained fixed on one name, repeating it in his mind as if saying it aloud would summon the boy into his office. Liam Noah.
The name stirred unease. Strickland wasn't a man easily perturbed, but Liam's unexpected enrollment cracked his normally unshakable confidence. The Noah family's legacy was as ancient as it was dangerous, as it was one of the founding magical bloodlines in existence. But Liam, according to every test and report he had reviewed, was a disappointment—an F-Rank, the lowest of the low.
The boy had been discarded, abandoned in the wilderness by the very family who bore his name. In the magical world, parents often held onto hope, nurturing even the weakest children until their latent powers matured. But the Noahs hadn't waited—they had cut their losses early. Strickland could almost admire the ruthlessness.
Now, however, Liam was back, registered at The Founding Fathers Academy with a registered magical core of 6 MP, and that was a problem since he was now a high-level E-Rank. The headmaster had initially dismissed the issue, assuming the Noah family would quietly reclaim and suppress the boy once they became aware of his presence. After all, blood is thicker than water, isn't it?
He had underestimated both the boy and his situation.
Strickland's mistake became glaringly clear a month ago. The Noahs hadn't reclaimed Liam—they had abandoned him so thoroughly that even they didn't know where he was. Somehow, in the time since his abandonment, the boy had found a new family, a non-magical one, and vanished from the Noahs' reach.
For the headmaster, this was an embarrassment. He prided himself on his ability to anticipate, influence, and manipulate events. Every student who entered this academy would follow a carefully curated path, shaped by his schemes, to ensure they became useful assets to his views of society—or, at the very least, didn't become liabilities. Yet Liam Noah defied expectations. He had slipped through the cracks. Worse, he wasn't acting like a typical, broken F-Rank failure grateful for admission. He had vanished the moment Strickland put his plans in motion.
In Strickland's mind, Liam's foster parents were expendable—non-magicals who served a greater purpose through their deaths. His plan had been clear: use their deaths to push Liam into the Noah family's waiting arms. The trauma would bind him to his biological relatives, as tragedy often did. It was simple. Elegant.
However, when the assassins, agents of the Klan acting on his tacit commands, arrived and killed Liam's non-magical family. The agents he had within the council reported that the boy wasn't a terrified child cowering in the shadows, and that Liam had vanished.
For days, the headmaster had tried to track the boy's movements, but Liam remained elusive, like a shadow slipping between cracks in reality. No trace, no pattern. It was as if the boy had vanished entirely, leaving only echoes of his existence behind. Even Strickland's most subtle surveillance magic—magic that not even the most powerful families could detect—yielded nothing.
The headmaster clenched his fists, knuckles whitening with frustration. The last time one of his schemes failed was during the rise of the previous Dark Lord, and that was a mistake he had vowed never to repeat. Order and control were his domain. Chaos was the enemy.
Strickland exhaled slowly, forcing himself to regain composure. No plan was perfect, and a misstep today didn't mean defeat tomorrow. If Liam had managed to escape the Noahs' grasp, that meant one of two things:
The boy had help and he was more dangerous than anyone realized.
The headmaster tapped his fingers against the desk, thinking. It was clear that Liam had resources or knowledge beyond what was expected of an E-Rank student. That alone warranted close observation. Strickland needed to understand whether the boy was simply lucky—or if something far more sinister was brewing beneath the surface.
"If he's hiding something, I'll find it. And if not… Well, we'll give him something worth hiding."
Strickland rose from his chair and crossed the room to a tall bookshelf, his fingers brushing against the spines of ancient tomes. He pulled out a slim, black volume—a ledger filled with the names of students he had manipulated, expelled, or destroyed to maintain the academy's delicate balance of power. He flipped to a blank page, dipping his quill in ink. With deliberate care, he wrote:
Liam Noah.
Strickland's expression hardened as he gazed down at the boy's name. He would watch Liam closely, perhaps even plant seeds of conflict among the students around him. If the boy refused to follow the intended path, Strickland would ensure the other students pushed him there by force. After all, no one ever succeeded in this academy without playing by the headmaster's rules.
Liam might believe he could avoid his fate, but that was only because he hadn't yet realized the truth: every move made in this academy was part of Strickland's design.
The headmaster's schemes would wrap around Liam like an invisible net, tightening with each passing day until the boy had no choice but to fall in line.
"Yes..."
Strickland murmured to himself.
"You'll come to me eventually, Liam Noah. You'll have no other choice."
And if the boy somehow proved himself too stubborn, too resourceful to manipulate? Well, Strickland thought with a thin smile, there were always other ways to break a student. Permanent ones.
The headmaster returned to his chair, satisfied. The game was in motion, and he never lost. Never.
"Hahaha!!!"
----------
"UGHHHHHHHH!"
Deputy Headmaster Joshua Hoberman muttered in annoyance, dropping yet another pile of documents onto his already crowded desk. His office, merely a wall apart from Headmaster Strickland's, paled in comparison to the latter's opulent chambers.
The quill in his hand moved briskly over the parchment, leaving behind blotches of ink as he struggled to make the figures add up. This was the result of Headmaster Strickland delegating all the paperwork to him, freeing himself to focus on his schemes.
"That old bastard is scheming again."
Hoberman muttered to himself, throwing a glare at the wall between their offices. He could feel it—Strickland was up to something. He always was.
But today, there was an extra chill in the air, the kind of chill that only came when Strickland was moving his pieces on the board.
Hoberman pinched the bridge of his nose and leaned back in his chair, fighting the headache that had become a constant companion since his first day as deputy headmaster. He hadn't expected to be trapped. Not like this. He should have known better than to trust someone like Strickland.
The magical contract Strickland had tricked him into signing was a work of genius—twisted and airtight. It bound Hoberman to silence, forbidding him from speaking about the headmaster's corruption.
Worse still, the contract included a clause that siphoned a large percentage of the academy's funds toward Strickland's "projects." Projects Hoberman could never question without triggering the contract's penalties.
"Damn you, Strickland."
Hoberman muttered under his breath.
"How does a crusty goat like you get away with it?"
It was a bitter pill to swallow. Hoberman came from one of the ancient magical families, respected and revered for their lineage. He had 90 MP—almost a solid A-Rank. By all rights, with his skills, political connections, and status, he should have been the headmaster. But the academy's founders had handed the position to Strickland, a commoner—a man whose true power now came from the Ward Stone connected to the academy's grounds.
"Strickland only has that damn S-Rank because of the Academy's Ward Stone's connection, not because of his own power."
Hoberman sneered with a venomous tone, well aware of the truth. Without the Ward Stone, Strickland's personal mana core had become a mockery. Whatever he had done to feign an S-Rank had backfired, severely damaging his magical core. At this point, it was barely sufficient to qualify for a low C-Rank, perhaps a high D-Rank at best, but certainly not an S-Rank.
The Academy's Ward Stone had been linked with Strickland years ago, giving the headmaster access to a wellspring of power that was not his own. It elevated him to S-Rank, making him untouchable within the academy and the magical community at large. It was a sham. And Hoberman hated every second of it.
If Strickland lost his connection to the Ward Stone, his house of cards would collapse. But that was easier said than done—the Ward Stone's magic was woven into the academy itself. As long as Strickland sat in the headmaster's position, his link couldn't be removed, unless he was fired from his position.
Hoberman let out a long sigh, setting his quill down for a moment to stretch his fingers. His gaze drifted toward the student roster on the corner of his desk. One name stood out:
Liam Noah.
"So the Noah kid is coming here…"
Hoberman mused aloud, rubbing his chin.
"That'll rattle some cages."
The Noahs were a powerful family, but their abandonment of Liam had sent ripples through the magical community. A kid like that, discarded like trash, had every reason to hate the people who left him behind. Hoberman wasn't sure what Strickland planned to do with the boy, since the Noah's were followers of his, but he knew it wouldn't be good.
For all of Strickland's brilliance, he underestimated one thing: desperation. A discarded F-Rank failure, turned E-Rank with nothing to lose could be just as dangerous as any S-Rank. Hoberman had seen it before.
"He's going to push that kid too far."
Hoberman muttered, drumming his fingers on the desk.
"And when he does, it's all going to blow up in his face."
Hoberman's Gamble
An idea began to take shape in Hoberman's mind, slow and deliberate like the turning of gears in a great machine. If Strickland wanted to use Liam Noah as a pawn, perhaps it was time for Hoberman to play his own game.
"I can't report the old bastard's corruption."
He muttered.
"But… maybe I don't have to."
If Liam was angry enough, clever enough, and desperate enough, he might become a weapon all on his own—a wild card that Strickland wouldn't see coming. Hoberman didn't have to lift a finger. He just had to watch.
A slow, wicked smile spread across Hoberman's face as he returned to his paperwork. If the Noah boy survived whatever hell the headmaster had in store for him, the academy would never be the same.
And, perhaps, Strickland's reign as headmaster would finally come to an end.
"Good luck, Liam."
Hoberman whispered, chuckling softly.
"Give the old man hell."
With that, the deputy headmaster went back to his work, his mind already turning over the possibilities. If Strickland wanted a game, so be it. But two could play at that game. And for once, Hoberman didn't mind losing—so long as Strickland lost first.
What Strickland didn't know, however, was that Liam was already moving. The boy hadn't just vanished. He had found allies and begun weaving his own plans—plans that no one, not even the headmaster, had anticipated.
Because Liam Noah wasn't playing the same game as everyone else. And when he returned, it wouldn't be as a frightened child. It would be as something far more dangerous:
A wild card.
And in a game of control, wild cards don't play by the rules.