The classroom door closed with a thud that echoed through the exhausted students. The duels were over, and the air still reeked of sweat and adrenaline. Brando dragged himself to his usual spot at the back, feeling every muscle protest from the effort of his fight with Davide Ripa.

  The gazes of the other students followed him as he walked. They were no longer filled with contempt as before, but with something else. Amazement? Respect? It was hard to tell. Whispers spread through the classroom like an icy wind.

  "He really hit Ripa..."

  "It couldn't have been just a lucky shot..."

  "I think it was definitely just a lucky shot..."

  Brando ignored them, focusing instead on the others who had returned from their duels. Alessandro Vercelli was nursing his left arm, still numb after his clash with Marco Ruocco. The Ruocco scion had won using a particularly refined ice technique, creating crystal chains that had immobilized his opponent.

  But the most impressive duel had been Giordano's. The Volpe bastard had faced Lorenzo Romano, one of the strongest students in the class. The fight had lasted less than a minute. Giordano had proven why he was an Omega, creating a storm of ice crystals so dense that Lorenzo had no escape. A crushing victory that had silenced even his most vocal detractors.

  The door opened again and Lieutenant Esposito entered the classroom, bringing silence once more.

  "The results are clear," he said with a cutting voice. "Those I name now will have the privilege of leaving the Great Dome."

  The students held their breath. Brando felt Rusty trembling slightly under the desk.

  "Davide Ripa."

  The giant nodded imperceptibly, as if his name was as inevitable as tomorrow's dawn.

  "Giordano Volpe."

  "About time," Giordano smiled from his seat. "I was starting to get bored in here."

  "Bianca Ruggeri."

  The girl didn't move or even react. Her green eyes were fixed on some undefined point beyond the window, as if the matter didn't concern her in the slightest.

  "Marco Ruocco."

  The boy straightened in his chair with a satisfied smirk.

  "Giorgio Gallo. Antonio Lombardi. Mira Ferrara."

  The three exchanged pleased glances. All three had demonstrated exceptional control of ice during their duels.

  Esposito paused. His jaw clenched as if he were about to bite something particularly bitter.

  "And finally..." The birthmark on his cheek pulsed faster. "Brando Casadei."

  The silence in the classroom suddenly became denser. Some students turned to look at Brando with incredulous expressions. Others stared at Esposito as if expecting it to be a bad joke.

  "But he's a Zeta!" someone protested from the front row.

  "Silence!" Esposito's voice cut through the air like a blade. "Decisions were made based on performance in the duels. Not on rank."

  Giordano turned to Brando with a triumphant smile. Rusty, beside him, wagged his tail with all three eyes glowing with joy. But the others continued to look at him with a mixture of disbelief and annoyance. A Zeta rank earning the privilege of leaving the Dome, stealing a spot from those of pure blood? It was as if someone had subverted the natural order of things.

  Esposito approached the desk and pressed a button on his KryoWatch. A holographic projector materialized in the air, illuminating the classroom with a bluish light. The first images of the outside world appeared before them: desolate landscapes, ice expanses stretching to the horizon, and something moving in the shadow of the frozen ruins.

  "Now," Esposito said, "look carefully at what you're about to see. Because out there, one mistake means certain death."

  Buildings were no longer structures but ruins covered in ice that formed towers cutting the sky like claws. Streets and buildings had disappeared, replaced by seemingly endless sheets of ice. Moreover, snow storms swirled over crystalline dunes, and rusty wrecks of cars and containers protruded from the ice.

  "Out there, there are no more people," Esposito murmured. "Only survivors. And the Glacials."

  In the distance, something enormous moved among the crystalline formations. Its mass made the ground tremble, sending vibrations that seemed to scream louder than sounds.

  The hologram shook when Esposito activated the zoom. The image moved rapidly across the icy expanse, stopping on something that made everyone present hold their breath.

  Rusty emitted a low, almost metallic sound. His third eye stared fixedly at the image, as if he had recognized something familiar in that desolation.

  The zoomed image showed a bear standing among the ice formations, five times larger than a normal bear, with a mass that would easily exceed ten tons.

  "This," Esposito said as the hologram slowly rotated around the creature, "is a level four Glacial. Observe the mutations carefully."

  The bear's fur was gone, replaced by exposed muscle tissue, bright red and pulsing. The skin moved as if housing something pressing to get out, but it was the tongue that captured the students' attention. At least four meters long, completely muscular and covered with razor-sharp spines. It would pierce a human body as if it were nothing.

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  "Glacials are classified on a scale from one to ten," Esposito continued. The birthmark on his cheek pulsed as he spoke. "This classification isn't arbitrary. It's based on three factors: size, strength, and survival ability. The higher the grade, the more complex the mutation."

  The hologram changed, showing a series of images in rapid succession. Dogs with chitinous shells covered in multiple mandibles, cats with tails transformed into tentacle-like structures covered in eyes, upright wolves with striped skin and sucker mouths on their foreheads.

  "A level one Glacial can be faced by a Bearer of Violet Stage. Level two requires a Blue Stage. Level three, Azure." Esposito made a significant pause. "This bear is level four. It takes a Bearer of Green Stage to even think about facing it."

  "But we're all Violet!" Marco Ruocco protested. "What should we do if we encounter that thing?"

  "Die," Esposito replied tersely. "Unless you're fast enough to run away."

  "Excuse me, Lieutenant," said Giorgio Gallo. "Last week my older brother faced a level three Glacial. He was Azure Stage, theoretically evenly matched with that thing. Yet he confessed to me it was one of the toughest battles of his life."

  "And your brother was lucky, Gallo," Esposito said with a bitter smile. "He scraped by. The scale I've shown you is the minimum necessary to survive, not to win easily. A Glacial of your same level will always challenge you. They're war machines, they don't fear and don't tire. Your brother is here to tell us about it, but other Azure Stage Bearers have faced level three Glacials and never returned."

  The students exchanged nervous glances. If an Azure Stage Bearer had risked his life against a Glacial of his own level, they who were only Violet had no hope even against a level one.

  "The classification is precise," Esposito resumed. "It's not an approximate estimate. Seventy years of observations and combat have allowed us to define exactly the correlation between a Glacial's level and the Stage needed to face it. A Bearer of a lower Stage against a Glacial of a higher level means certain death."

  The hologram showed the bear in motion. The beast moved with unnatural grace for its bulk, and each step made the icy ground tremble.

  "Level five requires a Yellow Stage. Level six, Orange. Level seven, Red." Esposito's eyes scanned the class. "And beyond? Levels eight, nine, and ten are theoretical. Maybe level eight has been sighted once or twice in history. For levels nine and ten, we can only speculate about their existence."

  Rusty was visibly trembling now, his third eye pulsing with a feverish light. Brando stroked him trying to calm him down, but he could feel the tense muscles under the fur.

  "Why am I showing you this?" Esposito gestured and the image of the bear froze mid-air. "Because out there, there are no ranks. There are no houses. There are no privileges. There is only the cold mathematics of survival. A Glacial won't stop to check your lineage before attacking."

  The image changed again, showing the bear grabbing prey with its monstrous tongue. Blood sprayed everywhere, ejected with such violence that shreds of flesh hung like dirty rags.

  "Memorize this scale. I'll repeat it one last time: Level one, Violet. Level two, Blue. Level three, Azure. Level four, Green. Level five, Yellow. Level six, Orange. Level seven, Red." His voice grew harder. "And if you encounter something that seems stronger than level seven, there's only one thing to do: run. Run as fast as you can."

  Simply put, a Cold Soldier could not in any way face a Glacial higher than level seven, at least not alone. This determined the absolute superiority of Glacials when compared to humans. After all, it was no coincidence they had managed to take the world, reducing humanity to a few bastions of hope.

  Bianca, from her seat, smiled imperceptibly. Her green eyes glowed with a strange light as she observed the image of the mutated bear. As if she knew something about the higher levels that others didn't.

  "Lieutenant," Giordano called, raising his hand with his usual grin. "If it's so dangerous out there, what exactly should we do? You're not sending us to hunt Glacials, are you?"

  The birthmark on Esposito's cheek pulsed stronger. "No, Volpe. Your mission is much simpler." He headed to the desk and pulled out a black box from the drawer. It was a cube, thirty centimeters on each side, with a green light weakly pulsing on one side. "These are the thermal sensors that protect the Polis. We have hundreds placed within a kilometer radius of the Dome."

  He placed the sensor on the desk and pulled out another, identical but with a red light that was off. "When the light turns red, the sensor needs to be replaced. It's routine work that we have novices do to get them comfortable with the outside world."

  He turned to the class. The birthmark on his cheek was pulsing regularly now. "I'll divide you into two teams. Each team will check ten sensors and replace the malfunctioning ones. You shouldn't go more than five hundred meters from the Dome."

  He pulled out a pocket holographic map. "Team one: Brando Casadei, Marco Ruocco, Giorgio Gallo, and Mira Ferrara. You'll handle the east sector." He pointed to an area on the map that glowed blue. "Team two: Bianca Ruggeri, Davide Ripa, Giordano Volpe, and Antonio Lombardi. West sector." A red area flashed next to the blue one.

  He headed to a metal cabinet in the corner of the classroom. "Each team will receive: four replacement sensors, an emergency communicator, a first aid kit. Your KryoWatches have already been set for the mission."

  Marco Ruocco rose abruptly, his chair scraping against the floor. "I object to this division, Lieutenant." His voice was controlled, but the tension was evident in the way he clenched his fists. "As a Beta of the Ruoccos, I cannot accept being placed in the same team as a Zeta."

  A murmur of approval spread among the students. Giorgio Gallo nodded vigorously from his seat.

  "Sit down, Ruocco." The birthmark on Esposito's cheek pulsed once.

  "No, Lieutenant. This is a matter of principle." Marco straightened, assuming the impeccable posture typical of his house. "The Eight Houses have standards to maintain. We cannot allow our families' reputation to be compromised by... certain associations."

  "Certain associations?" Giordano leaned forward with a grin. "Be careful how you speak, Ruocco. You might find a bastard Omega in your next group."

  "At least you have Volpe blood in your veins," Marco Ruocco continued. "He," he pointed at Brando with a contemptuous gesture, "doesn't even have an emblem on his chest."

  Brando remained seated, motionless. His face was a mask of indifference, but his fingers slowly drummed on the desk.

  "If I may," Mira Ferrara intervened. Her voice was calm, almost bored. "I don't see the problem. It's a maintenance mission, not an official ceremony."

  Marco turned to her with an icy look. "A Ferrara defending a Zeta? Your father would be disappointed."

  "My father knows that results matter more than appearances," Mira replied, holding his gaze. "And if I'm not mistaken, this Zeta held his own against Ripa in the duel."

  "By pure luck!" Giorgio Gallo burst out, also rising abruptly. "You can't compare a lucky shot to generations of pure blood!"

  Antonio Lombardi, who had remained silent until that moment, cleared his throat. "Perhaps we could simply reorganize the teams. Put Casadei with Volpe, since they seem to get along."

  "Great idea," Marco Ruocco said with a calculating smile. "Let's put all the... anomalous elements together. So they don't risk contaminating the rest of the class."

  "Anomalous elements?" Giordano rose slowly, his usual smile replaced by something sharper. "You know what's anomalous, Ruocco? Your stupidity. I thought Betas were smarter."

  The temperature in the classroom seemed to drop suddenly. Marco Ruocco took a step forward. "Watch how you speak, bastard. Your Omega rank won't protect you forever."

  "No?" Giordano spread his arms in a theatrical gesture. "And what should protect me? My 'impure' blood? Or maybe the fact that I'm stronger than you despite being a bastard?"

  "SILENCE!"

  Esposito's voice cut through the air like a whip. The birthmark on his cheek was pulsing frantically.

  "You're behaving like kindergartners," he growled. "Out there, this bullshit doesn't exist. There are only two types of Bearers: the living and the dead."