The Institute of Ingenio

Prologue

All around the world, at exactly 7:32 AM, long, black cars were traveling to exactly 2374 different houses. At 7:33, the vehicles had reached their destination. In unison, each of the front doors of each of the houses opened revealing a single child, dressed in a uniform that may as well have been taken straight from the 1940s. These children, ranging from the ages of 13 to 17, stepped towards their respective vehicle, their reflections showing on the tinted windows. The back doors then opened, showing the luxurious leather seats inside. Once the children were seated, the cars left. By 7:34, each of the 2734 cars had left, leaving a no trace except a trail of smoke

If someone somehow managed to view each of the of these cars simultaneously, one would notice that all of the events previously described all occurred at the exact same time, as if controlled by some otherworldly power (which, let the records show, was not exactly the case).

Somehow, no matter where the cars were located, they all arrived at the same spot, on the top of a mountain off the east coast of England, within the following 10 minutes. Once the cars had stopped, the children left their seats and said farewell to their rides, who were already zooming towards the imposing building that stood before them. From this distance, you could make out its long, stone walls. Carefully crafted marble sculptures emerged from the immense arches that stood at the end of these walls. Throughout the entirety of the building, you could see a large collection of beautiful and intricate stained glass, twinkling in the early-morning sun. The building panned out in a V-shape, with two wings spreading out diagonally from the main building, and its architecture resembled that of a 16th century gothic cathedral.

The group made its way to the grand entrance of the building. This consisted of two statues, one male and one female, on the left and right sides, respectively. These statues resembled each other greatly, almost as if the people they were based off were siblings. This hypothesis was further proved by the plaque placed at the foot of each sculpture, explaining that these works of art represented Dion and Trinity, the two animum siblings who created the establishment.

The plaque continued to depict the history of the building, saying that it was a school, called the institute of Ingenio, created with the intention of schooling children born with a genetic mutation called ingenio, meaning "genius" in Latin. This mutation caused the cerebrum, the part of the brain responsible for learning, to be hyperactive in a way, resulting in a hyperintelligent being and was only present once in every 7 Million people. As a general rule, this mutation only affected one person per family in a generation. There has only been one exception to that rule: the case of Dion and Trinity. Every single one of the children posted before the statues consisted of all of those affected by the ingenio mutation in their generation, all 2734 of them.

As the group passed through the entrance, they separated into two groups: the boys on the left and the girls on the right. This was because the institute believed that males and females, especially those with ingenio, needed a specialized teaching to have a complete education.

Not long after every student had penetrated into the institute through its magnificent front doors, a steady rainfall settled in, washing away the footprints they had left on the smooth stone walkway.