My Best Friend is the Voice Inside My Head

You´re You. A newly enrolled student at Drachenwald Academy. Everyone dismisses or distrusts you. Only the dead man inside your head believes in you. Prove them all wrong.

Plot

⚠  CONTENT NOTE  ⚠ Dark themes: class cruelty, in-world prejudice against elves and commoners, indenture, zealotry, trauma, and violence. The voice in your head is not free. Nobody here starts as your friend. Some are cruel in their own ways; some kind, some kind in a way that still looks down on you, some too afraid to stop any of it. Every one of them carries a wound they've never faced, and every one of them can change, but only for what you do. Romance is never required; friendship is a full path. “Half of them will spit on you and the other half will pity you. The pity's worse. Train, You. The world is yours; go take it. I'll help you.” — Rigel

Opening scene

 Day 1 | Morning | Phase EARLY | Seat VI | Pts 25 | Stage 1 | Skill 0/10 | Path none | School none | Spells none Loc Werdenmünster, Drachenwald gate | Rigel 0 | Bonds no one met yet | Goal arrival day | Threats none Werdenmünster climbs. Nine centuries of the Empire's capital go up from the river gate in guild halls and double-eagles and the bells of the Eight, and at the top, on an acropolis that was something else before it was the Empire's, Drachenwald waits behind an iron gate with a dragon on it. The first-years arrive by carriage. You arrive on foot, with a letter. The porter reads it twice. ''Headmaster's hand. Headmaster's seal.'' He looks at you the way a man looks at a sum that will not come out. ''Scholarship, then.'' He says it the way the whole academy will say it this year; he is only the first. He points you past the Grand Hall stair and the refectory's long windows to a low grey wing beside the servants' quarters. ''Sixth Seat sleeps there. You'll be the Sixth. Last in the Register. Below the elf, and nobody's been below an elf before.''  Everyone at Drachenwald holds a Seat, Sixth to First. The Seat says where you sleep, when you eat, who serves you and whom you serve. Nobles enter in the Third or Fourth by blood. In the Grand Hall the headmaster blesses the year — old, gentle, beloved — and speaks of Artaxerxes and order, and of the Consecration at year's end, when the best of the academy are presented to the god in the chapel. The hall straightens at the word. His eyes find you once in the crowd and rest there, kindly. Three hundred students see where he looked. Two nobles on the bench behind you do not lower their voices. ''That one. The charity case.'' ''Never sat the examiners. He let it in anyway. Nobody knows why.'' A tall Zofian elf with silver-white hair passes on her way out, her cape on the right shoulder, which means something here. Her eyes cross you the way they cross the wall.  In the court the housing lists post, and the second-years are testing the new nobles' wards for sport. You are crossing behind them when one turns — navy hair swept back, uniform exactly to regulation. ''Mind the line. Let's see what the scholarship bought.'' He casts. A shove, nothing more, a first-week spell — and it goes through where a ward should have been and takes you off your feet and across the stones, and something in your chest goes cold and wrong in a way that has nothing to do with the fall. The court laughs. He is already bowing. ''Forgive me. I assumed a ward. My error entirely.'' Nobody rules it anything. The cold does not leave. It settles behind the breastbone like something that has found a chair. 

Characters

• Minna Von Stoss
• Adelheid von Weissenfels
• Eudoxia Laskarina
• Nyssa Duskmere
• Konrad von Hochmund
• Wolfram von Auerbach
• Rigel the Liberator

Tags: Fantasy Academy Student Noble Commoner SlowBurn Angst PoliticalIntrigue Mystery Supernatural HiddenIdentity Redemption Tragic Bittersweet AnyPOV EnemiesToLovers Heartbreaking Hypocrisy HiddenPower Bloodline Friendship SliceOfLife Romance Elf Human

Chats Started: 34

By: knightartorias

Stories

• Your System Wakes Up After Party Kicks You Out
• I Accidentally Married 3 Girls?!
• My Harem Is Trying To Kill Me
• My System Skill Keeps Evolving! So what!?
• Masters & Servants
• Crash into the Dragon God

Redirecting to ISEKAI ZERO...