Trash Affinity? No-Genius

Genoveva Stuart POV:

"I don't want to go to the School of Myriad Races, Daddy!"

Bella's voice was honey-thick and cloying. She had wound herself around Father's arm, her white gown a smear of innocence against his black suit, her face tilted up in a mask of horror. Tears already glittered in her blue eyes. Above her brow hovered a faint ring of light-the Aasimar shimmer she had inherited from her mother, and never once let anyone forget.

"They're all savages there. And their dean-Griffin McBride-is a madman, everyone says so. The Silver Cloud Society is our home. Our future."

I watched from the far side of the mahogany desk. The air was thick with Father's cologne and cigar smoke.

Two admission letters lay on the wood. One bore the crest of the Silver Cloud Society, our family's own crest, embossed in gold. The other was heavy parchment, sealed with a gleaming emblem: four beasts entwined-a phoenix, a dragon, a falcon, a stag.

My rebirth had set me down in this exact moment. The day my fate was sealed.

Bella had been reborn too. I knew it from her first word-the same lines, the same tears, right on cue, a script she had already run. But her memory had been tidied. She remembered the version where she won, and kept only that one. The price, and the one who paid it, she had chosen to forget.

A phantom chill crawled up my spine. My magic draining away. My body discarded like a rag once they had wrung it dry. In that memory, Bella stood by and smiled.

This time, I had the cold for a shield.

"The Silver Cloud Society is on the rise," Bella went on. "Everyone who is anyone will be there."

Father was already swayed. He smoothed her golden hair, his face going soft. "Of course, my little princess. You'll stay. You'll become the brightest jewel the Society has ever worn."

Then his gaze slid to me.

The warmth froze. What replaced it was familiar-the old, chilled disgust I had known my whole life.

"Genoveva. You will go to the School of Myriad Races."

Not a request. A sentence handed down.

"Your Chaotic Affinity is a joke here. A disgrace to the family name." He flicked two fingers at the parchment. "Perhaps that motley crew of freaks out there can find some use for you. It's for the best-for you, and for the family."

Chaotic Affinity. The magic that refused to stay in its lane. It was never that they thought me weak. They thought me "untidy". Useless, they said. Unclean, they whispered. A stain on the family's name.

Old hurt clawed at my ribs. I forced it down.

"Okay, Father."

Something flickered across Bella's face. For one instant her mask slipped-she had braced for a fight, for tears, for begging. The same scene I had made of my last life.

Edmund blinked too, caught off guard. Then relief flooded him, and he shoved the parchment across the desk as if ridding himself of something foul.

My fingertips brushed the four-beast emblem. A faint pulse rose to meet my touch-a whisper that resonated with the chaotic power coiled inside me.

I closed my hand around the letter. Not an admission. My ticket off a sinking ship.

Bella recovered her poise and smiled, sweet as poisoned sweets. "Good luck, sister. I do hope you survive."

I didn't answer. I turned and walked out without looking back. Behind me, she was already wheedling Father for a new magical trinket.

The heavy door clicked shut, sealing one world off from the next.

I walked the long, cold corridor, past modern canvases on older walls. Everything in this house was expensive. Nothing was warm. A family portrait hung at the turn: Edmund, his late wife-Bella's mother-and a beaming little Bella. There was no space for me on that wall.

There never had been.

In my bare room, I opened the letter again. Ancient ink curled across the page: "On the eve of the first term, at King's Cross Station, seek the Phantom Platform."

A place that existed on no map a mortal could read.

I opened my laptop. The screen still glowed with my application page-Oxford, the dream I had fought for in another life. I dragged the files into the recycling bin, clicked Empty, and didn't hesitate.

Outside, London's night came down, neon flickering awake. From downstairs drifted Bella's little celebration: laughter, glass, music-a house already forgetting me.

I closed the window and held the letter to my chest, feeling its faint, living thrum.

Last time, I gave this family everything. And I died for it.

This time, I would live for myself.

They thought they were sending me to hell.

They had no idea they had just opened the gates of my heaven.

Genoveva Stuart POV:

I started packing the next morning.

My closet held a few faded things, hanging thin on their rails. Next door, Bella's wardrobe spilled designer labels past the door. I packed my few things without a second thought. They were all I had in this house.

Tucked at the back was an old wooden box. I pulled it out and lifted the lid.

Inside lay the treasures I had cherished in my past life.

A faded badge-a gift from my so-called brothers, for winning my first school duel in their name. A yellow slip of paper, soft with age, holding a rare word of praise from Father-for finding the herb that had purified his magic.

I used to believe these were proof of their love.

Now I saw them for what they were. Bait. Lures to keep me useful.

The memory of their betrayal ran through me like ice water.

I carried the box to the unlit fireplace. As a Chaotic Affinity wielder, I could coax a flame from the smallest spark of elemental energy-though I had never once dared use my talent in this house.

I raised a finger. A tiny, five-colored flame flickered to life above it, dancing, patient.

I dropped the box into the hearth. The fire leaped, took the wood and every "memory" inside it, and burned them to ash.

A weight I hadn't known I was carrying lifted off my shoulders.

I zipped my suitcase and went downstairs.

The grand foyer was empty. No goodbyes. As if a servant were leaving, and not a daughter.

I was at the front door, my hand on the handle, when Bella's voice cut the silence behind me.

She leaned against the staircase, draped in the shimmering new cloak Father had just given her. A peacock, showing her feathers.

Her eyes traveled over me and my pitiful suitcase. "Oh-you're really going? And here I thought you'd be on your knees, crying for Daddy to let you stay."

I said nothing. I only looked at her, my face a blank slate.

The silence grated on her.

"That muddled, impure Chaotic Affinity of yours," she said. "In a place like the School of Myriad Races, packed with elites? You'll be a laughingstock. A target. For everyone."

Her smile sharpened. "I can't wait to hear how they break you. You won't last a month before they throw you out. And when they do-" she tilted her head, "-you won't have a home to come back to."

She was hunting for a reaction. The same collapse she had engineered out of me a hundred times before.

But I just looked at her.

My gaze was cold and empty. Not angry. Not sad. Not even hateful. It was the look you give a stranger.

That indifference landed harder than any retort. Her smile faltered.

I held her eyes a moment longer, then turned to the door.

I pulled the heavy oak open. Sunlight poured in, briefly blinding.

Without looking back, I dragged my suitcase over the threshold and stepped out of the prison that had held me for two lifetimes.

Behind me, I could feel her stare-triumph and unease tangled together.

I walked the long private drive. The magical plants lining the path were wilted and dull, a fitting portrait of this family's future. The wrought-iron gates swung open, and I stepped onto the pavement of a London street.

A red double-decker rumbled past. Its ordinary noise made the mansion behind me feel like a fever dream.

I took a breath. The air tasted of exhaust fumes and freedom.

The line was drawn. Me, and Bella Stuart. Me, and the Silver Cloud Society. Me, and everything I used to be.

Genoveva Stuart POV:

I took a taxi to King's Cross Station.

The letter's instructions led me to a forgotten corner between platforms nine and ten, where a dust-coated mirror stood ignored by the crowds. Nobody looked at it. Nobody ever did.

I clutched my ticket-a quaint card printed with the emblem of the Starfall Express. As the clock struck midnight, the mirror's surface rippled like moonlight on water.

I touched the ticket to the glass.

My hand passed through a cold, liquid curtain.

I stepped in after it.

The world dissolved and reformed. The station's noise was gone, replaced by an ancient platform bathed in pale light: the Phantom Platform. A crimson steam train waited in silence, the school's four-beast crest gleaming on its engine.

I pulled out my phone to check the time.

The screen was black. No signal-not a single bar. I stared at it, then tucked it away and smiled despite myself. The world I was stepping into didn't run on any of the things I had grown up with.

The Starfall Express carried us through a night that felt days long. When it slowed, I followed the students out-and saw it.

The School of Myriad Races.

A castle of towering spires, cradled between mountains and a vast, dark lake, grander than anything I had ever seen. The students spilling from the train were every bit as strange as the stories promised: girls with fox ears and silver tails, boys whose eyes glowed faintly, a tall silver-haired girl whose pointed ears caught the lamplight, a youth with the sheen of scales at his throat.

My first morning in the world of the myriad races.

At the main gate, older students wearing prefect badges greeted the arrivals.

I handed my admission letter to the one in charge: a blond boy with Abyssal House's sea-dragon emblem on his chest. His eyes flicked to my name. Then to the notation beside it-Chaotic Affinity. Contempt crossed his face before he bothered to hide it.

He passed the letter to his companions. They snickered.

"Chaotic Affinity?" one said, loud enough for me to hear. "Has the Silver Cloud Society run out of decent blood? Sending us their trash?"

The blond prefect adopted the flat tone of a man doing an unpleasant duty. "Genoveva Stuart. Per Article Seven of the new-student statutes, any student with a special affinity or questionable background must pass the Gauntlet of Elements to prove their worthiness to enter the Keep of Myriad Races."

I knew there was no such statute. It was hazing.

The Gauntlet was a hundred-step stone staircase, every step charged with raw elemental energy-built to knock down, disorient, and bruise any ordinary first-year who dared attempt it.

Around me, whispers rippled-pity and morbid curiosity. The rumor was already spreading: the useless one was about to be humiliated.

I felt no anger. I offered no argument. I gave a slight bow, my voice calm.

"Of course, Prefect. Is there anything I should do to prepare?"

My easy answer seemed to stun them. The tears, the protests, the panic they were braced for-none of it came.

The blond prefect frowned, annoyed that his punch had landed on cotton.

Beside him, a red-haired boy in Blaze-Spirit House had been watching with amusement. Now he looked at me with a flicker of surprise.

Something else caught me. Red hair-and behind the amusement, something quieter, harder to read. When his eyes crossed the lamplight, I noticed they weren't quite round. The pupils were narrow, slit-like, and for half a heartbeat they held a faint, molten glow.

Dragon-kin. So the old races had begun sending their children here too.

The prefect jerked his chin at a winding stone path. "Prepare? No. Go. If you can walk the hundred steps before your magic runs dry, you pass."

I nodded and set my suitcase down beside the path.

I walked to the foot of the Gauntlet, and the whispers grew louder.

"Is she actually going to try? She'll be flattened."

"A Chaotic Affinity can't even master a single element. How is she supposed to pass?"

I ignored them and stood before the first step.

Just as I lifted my foot, the red-haired boy spoke. Low, but it carried.

"Hey. First-year."

I turned.

His expression was complicated-half pity, half curiosity. Then, almost reluctantly, he muttered, "Don't fight them. Try to feel them."

He turned away at once, as if he hadn't spoken at all.

The blond prefect shot him a dirty look but said nothing.

My heart gave a small, strange flutter.

"Don't fight. Feel."

I gave the boy a grateful glance, though he wasn't looking. Then I took a breath, and under everyone's eyes, I set my foot on the first step of the Gauntlet of Elements.