Valmont Series - Inheritance Code

Chapter 6.3 - Courtyard Convergence

The Legacy Courtyard was something Aiden had walked through on his first day without ever truly seeing it. At the time, everything in Avalon blurred — polished halls, whispered glances, too many crests and names he didn't recognize. He remembered stepping onto the stone, hearing someone say "this way," and then... nothing. Just movement.

But this morning, standing alone, he saw it clearly.

He had arrived first. Not by design. He just needed somewhere open — away from data walls, away from logic loops and silent questions. Somewhere that at least felt natural.

The courtyard breathed differently in the early morning. Cool air settled over the stone like a blessing. Artificial dew clung to the vine-trimmed edges of the pillars. There was a soundscape playing — so subtle you couldn't be sure it was real — birds, breeze, a distant rustle through leaves that didn't quite grow. Even the light was different now: pale gold, refracted through the sky dome like filtered hope.

It wasn't real nature.

But it was the closest Avalon allowed.

He inhaled anyway.

It wasn't just a courtyard — it was a cathedral of legacy in open air. The space unfolded in quiet symmetry: a wide, sunlit arena, framed by pale marble and glinting glass, with a ceiling so high and blue it looked like freedom — even though it was fabricated.

At the center rose the Legacy Tree — not a tree in any natural sense, but a sculpture of white-gold branches and obsidian rootlines, glowing faintly from within. Each branch bore names — etched, alive, updating. He saw the Founding Twelve cresting the top tiers, but below, hundreds more curled outward like a constellation of names.

Surrounding the tree was a stage-like elevation — the Astria Platform — quiet now, but built for spectacle. Its surface was smooth as onyx, shaped like a lens, waiting for someone worthy enough to stand at its center. Behind it, the Prestige Wall loomed — not a wall exactly, but a translucent arc, silently displaying Avalon's top-ranking students like a rotating constellation of faces and figures.

Everything here was beautiful. Serene. Designed to look effortless.

But Aiden knew better now.

Nothing in Avalon was effortless.

Not beauty.

Not power.

Not memory.

And definitely not legacy.

Despite SleepCore optimization — tailored light pulses, neural rhythm calibration, zero-drift bedding — Aiden hadn't slept.

His mind was running like a matrix in overclock — questions fractaling into more questions, looping endlessly with no resolution. Logic usually calmed him. Patterns. Systems. But this? This was noise. Infinite, recursive noise.

Avalon could observe. The key could remain silent. The system could keep calculating.

He refused to waste intellect on questions that offered no yield — no pattern, no pathway, no purpose.

Whatever secrets this island held, he would unearth them through strategy, not sleeplessness.

At precisely 06:03 Avalon time, Aiden took a seat beneath the Legacy Tree—on a hover-balanced bench sculpted from light-reactive alloy—and pulled up his interface to send a Prestige Link Request.

Celia Huang.

He watched the digital pulse flicker once, then vanish into system sync. No confirmation yet—but no rejection either.