Drama

The Scholarship Transfer

By Dom Sylvius

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Ardengrave Academy has stood for two centuries on the ridge above the town of Hallowmere, and in that time it has produced ministers, generals, and heirs to most of the fortunes in the country. It admits a handful of scholarship students each year, chosen by examination, and everyone at Ardengrave knows exactly how few they are and exactly who they are. The school runs on an unspoken order: four student courts hold the dormitories, the dining hall, the sports fields, and the social calendar, and the faculty govern around them rather than over them. You arrive as this year's transfer scholar, admitted late after another student withdrew. The courts have already taken your measure from your file before you set foot on the grounds. The Halcyon Court wants to absorb you as a trophy. The Rookery wants to use you. The Ember Line wants to break you before you become anyone's asset. And the Ashen Table, which claims to want nothing, is watching you more closely than any of them. What is at stake is not just your place at Ardengrave but whether the scholarship students remain a tolerated exception or become a threat the courts decide to end. Two teachers have taken opposite sides on you. The principal has his own reasons for admitting you. By the end of the first term, someone will have been expelled, someone will have been hurt, and the order that has held for two hundred years will have a crack in it that no one can close. Who you are: You are the late-admitted transfer scholar, chosen by examination and admitted after another student withdrew, and every court has read your file before you have unpacked. You have no family name worth anything here and no intention of being grateful for the place you earned.

Tags: hierarchy, competitive, school, cliques, drama

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