Asher led me through the city toward the eastern quarter, where the Noble Academy stood. This was the farthest I had ever traveled into the capital. Until now, my world had been confined to the southern end, the orphanage, and the Wild Warden guildhouse just inside the southern gate.

  The capital was shaped like a great circle, divided into four quadrants that ringed the central castle. Each quadrant bore its own character. The southern quarter was the poorest, where land was cheap and guilds had staked their claims long ago. Asher’s guild, the Wild Wardens, had purchased a broad swath there, building a stronghold that served both as home and bastion. Many guilds had done the same, raising halls close to the southern gates where the city’s lifeblood flowed in and out.

  The eastern and western quarters were the domains of nobility, carved up by powerful houses whose banners hung above their estates like silent challenges. The north belonged to the accomplished: mages of renown, retired adventurers who had survived long enough to earn their wealth, and the scholars and artisans tied to the academies.

  At the heart of it all stood the king’s castle, rising from the center like a crown. Around it spread a common ring, a place open to all, where merchants filled the streets and craftspeople plied their trade. It was the city’s beating heart of commerce and life.

  The design was intentional. The outer quarters formed a protective wall around the center, powerful classes shielding the common folk who lived and worked there. The king had planned it this way, or so the histories claimed, to keep the strong always between danger and the weak.

  Over time, the southern quarter had grown poorer still, but it had also become the most fiercely guarded. Guild banners crowded its streets, their halls standing as bulwarks against threats both outside and within. It was a place of struggle, but also of opportunity. For many born in poverty, the path forward was simple. Either join a guild, or be swallowed by the streets.

  That had been my plan until Sirius set a new path before me.

  With Asher’s guild badge and my academy papers, we were granted passage into the eastern quarter. The air seemed to change as soon as we crossed the border. The streets widened, lined with polished stone. Noble estates rose on either side, banners fluttering above their gates, each announcing the lineage within. And in the distance, rising above the noble houses, I saw the academy. Its outer walls loomed high, white stone crowned with spires and chapel peaks that cut against the sky.

  My tremor sense pulsed wildly with the strangeness of it all. Back in the southern quarter, every alley and stone had become familiar, memorized into a living map. Here, everything was new, every echo foreign. Carriages rumbled by, voices carried accents I did not know, and the hum of enchantments weaved through the stone itself. For a moment it was too much, but years of practice steadied me. I narrowed my focus, sharpened my thoughts, and pressed on.

  The walk was longer than I expected. On second thought, it might have been hours. Aurelith, the capital of Velmine, stretched nearly twenty miles across. To cross from the far edge of the southern quarter to the academy gates was no small feat. We stopped once for food, but even so, the sun was already tilting toward the horizon by the time we arrived.

  At last, the gates stood before us. Just inside, three lines stretched across the courtyard, each marked by banners. First-year students. Second-year students. Third-year students. Their chatter filled the air, excitement and nerves mingling into one restless hum. Off to the side, a smaller line waited under a darker banner. Graduate students, continuing into specialized studies that would shape their futures.

  I drew a slow breath. This was it. The Noble Academy. My new beginning.

  As I studied the lines, something unexpected caught my eye. Scattered among the students were creatures — small to medium in size — standing close to their partners as if they belonged there.

  For a moment, it unsettled me. Then recognition dawned. I had seen some of them before, though only in the pages of bestiaries and the margins of old tomes I had read. Winged felines, scaled lizards with ember eyes, a fox with two tails, flicking back and forth. Bound creatures. Companions linked to their students, chosen and trained to grow with them.

  The sight hit me harder than I expected. This was the first time I had even considered the idea of a companion for myself. What would it be like to fight and live alongside such a creature, to share strength and trust?

  The thought lingered, tempting. I shook my head quickly and forced it aside. I could not afford to drift into dreams here. Not now. I needed to focus. Every eye would already mark me as different. If I was going to survive among nobles, I had to stay sharp, alert, ready.

  I set my jaw. This was not the time for distractions.

  We waited in the first-year line with everyone else. Most of the nobles clearly knew each other already. With my sharpened senses, I caught the subtle things: smiles that did not reach the eyes, barbed whispers, a glare held just a little too long, the cutting edge of rivalry. Conflict simmered just beneath the polished surface. Strangely, that made me feel a little better. Maybe they would be too busy tearing into each other to worry about me.

  When we finally reached the front of the line, the administrator asked for my papers. She looked them over, frowning slightly as she shuffled through the pages. It took longer than it should have, and soon she beckoned someone over. A few minutes later, an elderly man and woman approached.

  The elderly woman wore an immaculate sapphire dress that moved like flowing water, swirling with every step as though it carried a current of its own. Her eyes were a piercing glacier blue, sharp and cold yet steady, and her stark white hair was braided with precision down her back. Her very presence felt like a river — calm on the surface, but capable of becoming a raging torrent without warning.

  The man beside her was her opposite and complement. He wore a deep forest-green robe that seemed carved from the mountains themselves. There was a tangible weight to it, as though the fabric refused to bend to breeze or motion, holding its shape with quiet defiance. His eyes were a dark, earthen green, steady and rooted, framed by a face that was strong yet not unkind. He had long gray hair that melded into an unkempt beard. He carried himself like stone shaped by centuries, immovable but not without warmth.

  They spoke quietly with the administrator, then turned their eyes on me.

  The woman stepped forward. “Bryn. I understand your circumstances are a bit unique, and we were given a warning about your arrival. I am Aurelia, and this is my husband, Stovall. We share the responsibilities of headmasters here. We would like to speak with you in private, if you are willing.”

  I glanced at Asher. He gave me a smile and a thumbs-up before casually stepping aside.

  “Traitor,” I muttered under my breath.

  “What was that?” Aurelia tilted her head, straining to hear.

  “Yes, Headmasters. I am willing,” I said quickly, though every instinct screamed at me to run.

  Stovall gestured for me to follow, and I did, feeling the burn of dozens of stares drilling into my back. So much for staying unnoticed.

  They led me through the gates and into a nearby building. A spiral staircase wound upward, then a hallway lined with doors, until we reached a small private chamber set aside for quiet meetings.

  I nearly forgot to breathe as we walked. The walls were alive with masterwork carvings, intricate runes etched into stone. Paintings of kings, mages, and ancient battlefields lined the halls. Some of the images shifted when I looked too long, as if they carried the echo of living memory. Every step forward was a wonder. And this was an outer hall.

  “Ahem.” Stovall cleared his throat, pulling me back from the trance.

  I blinked and found them already seated. Aurelia watched me with a small, knowing smile, as though she had seen that same wide-eyed look on countless students before.

  “Well, son, take a seat.” Stovall gestured to the chair across from them.

  It was intricately carved, lined with golden embellishments, the seat a deep red plush worn by time but still in fine condition. I sat gingerly, half afraid I might break it. Outside of my bracers, this was likely the most expensive thing I had ever touched.

  Even as I lowered myself into the chair, I let my tremor sense sweep over the room. I watched the two of them without my eyes, gauging for some hint of intent. To my surprise, I found nothing. No tension. No hurried expression. They sat in perfect stillness, as though they had all the time in the world.

  Aurelia spoke first. “We would not normally have allowed you into our academy.” Her voice was calm.

  “But this year is different,” she continued. “This year will mark a rippling change through the Velmine Empire, and far beyond its reach.”

  I gave her a puzzled look, but she pressed on.

  “In Velmine, no one besides us,” she gestured toward Stovall, “the king, his dukes, the higher noble families and the prominent guildmasters, know what I am about to share. Tomorrow it will be announced at the opening ceremony. That announcement is also the only reason you were admitted here, no matter what the prince thought he could arrange—”

  “The prince!” I blurted out, unable to stop myself. “What prince?”

  She paused, eyes sliding toward her husband. Stovall leaned forward, voice level. “Did you not know? Sirius is the second son of King Strider.”

  My stomach dropped. My skin went cold, paling like my left arm. A thousand connections flared at once in my head. How had I been so blind?

  He had knowledge that far surpassed what was normal. He was incredibly well-versed in the other kingdoms and races, with a wealth of information about shards, aether, and everything in between. Thorn wasn't just a regular guard — it was clear now. I buried my face in my hands, leaning forward.

  “No…” I managed to squeak, barely finding my voice.

  Aurelia pressed her lips together. “Oh my. Then let us pretend you did not hear it from us. I cannot say why he kept that from you, though I suspect it was his father’s counsel. You never know what people might attempt if they realize the worth of a royal friendship — and what they could gain from it.”

  Her gaze flicked to my bracers, and one eyebrow arched.

  “No!” I shot to my feet, the words bursting out before I could stop them. “Never! I would never use him like that! Sirius is the closest thing I have to a brother. To family, outside of Asher!”

  The words shook in my chest like a raw wound.

  Then the air itself grew heavy. Pressure slammed into me, crushing me down. My knees buckled, and I was forced back into the seat as though I were no more than a grain of sand in a storm.

  Stovall sat calmly, one hand outstretched. With a faint motion of his fingers, the weight vanished, leaving me gasping, small, and shaken.

  “Bryn,” Aurelia said, her voice steady but sharp. “Whatever the reason it was hidden from you, that truth can wait for another time. What matters now is this: regardless of the prince’s efforts, the only reason you were admitted this year is because we are opening our gates in a way we never have before. For the first time in history, we will allow students of other races to study here. And not only that — many of their people will come as professors as well.”

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  A question surged to my lips, but a single piercing look from her silenced me before the words could escape.

  She continued. “This has been achieved through the combined will of the king, ourselves, and the guildmasters. The guilds hold halls across our empire, and the largest among them maintain branches in every nation of note. They already welcome countless members of other races into their ranks. Now we seek to build upon that foundation. Our hope is that Velmine will become an epicenter where the peoples of every land may gather, and that this academy will rise as the heart of that vision. A place where the brightest children from across the continent can come to learn together. There are also other dangers stirring across Thaylros, and we want our future generations to be prepared for them.”

  “This has taken years of effort to accomplish and prepare. Long before you or the prince ever drew breath, the foundations were being laid. It is only a coincidence of timing that this happens to be the year you sought entrance into our academy.”

  I was beginning to fidget and nearly spoke up…

  Her gaze sharpened, weighing me as she continued. “What we are about to begin will reshape Velmine. The academies of old were built to serve our nobles and, by extension, the crown. Now, with the guilds stretching their reach across borders, with other nations pushing at our edges, the king and the guildmasters agreed: we can no longer train in isolation. If Velmine is to remain strong, if it is to lead, this academy must become more than a place of noble inheritance. It must become the center of learning for all peoples.”

  Stovall leaned forward, his voice a low rumble. “That means elves, dwarves, halflings, and others will walk these halls as students. It means professors who do not bear our banners will stand at the lecterns. It means the old ways of secrecy, of hoarding knowledge within noble houses, will be challenged here. There will be friction. There will be conflict. And there will be opportunity.”

  Aurelia’s eyes returned to me. “That is why your admission, though irregular, was allowed. You are not a noble. You are not of the old lines. You stand apart. In that sense, you represent exactly the kind of change we are opening the doors to. Whether you rise or fall will depend on your own choices, but you will be part of this turning. A tournament, among other things, will change the way academies have functioned in the past.”

  Stovall’s voice carried steady authority. “We wanted you to understand that it was not the prince’s favor that secured your place here. It was your shard integration. What sets you apart will draw less notice now that the academy opens its doors to other races and magics. In the noise of change, your uniqueness will stand out less.”

  Aurelia leaned forward, her eyes never leaving mine. “Asher’s reports to the guild, and Thorn’s observations during his years with you, agree on one point. You carry the potential to become one of the most powerful individuals of your generation. That kind of potential cannot be ignored. We intend to help shape it, to fan the flame rather than let it burn uncontrolled. In time, you may be a keystone in maintaining the balance of power, not only for this academy, but for the Velmine Empire itself.”

  Her words hit me like a hammer to the chest. Me, one of the most powerful of my generation? The claim sounded absurd. I was an orphan who had grown up chopping vegetables and scrubbing pots, sneaking pages of books when I could, and training with whatever scraps Thorn would spare me. Yes, I had my shard. Yes, I had my scars. But powerful? That felt like a word that belonged to kings and generals, not to a boy from the southern quarter.

  And yet, a part of me stirred at the thought. Was this what all my pain, my training, and my strange gifts had been pushing me toward? Could I really be something more than a broken orphan? The pressure rose in my chest again, but this time it was not fear. It was the excitement of something more.

  I forced myself to breathe slowly, steadying my racing thoughts. If they believed this of me, then everything I did here would be under watch, but not how I originally thought. Every success, every mistake, would matter. It seemed they wanted to personally oversee my growth, and I was not sure how to feel about that.

  Asher pushing me toward the noble academy was beginning to feel much more directly than I initially thought.

  And whether I wanted it or not, there was no going back now.

  Stovall leaned forward, folding his hands. “Understand this, Bryn. None of this was hidden from those with power in Velmine. From the moment Asher sent word to his guildmaster that a child had survived what should have killed him, eyes were placed upon you. When it was confirmed that you had not died or were twisted into some inhuman form, reports began to circulate to the guild leaders, the king, and to us.”

  Aurelia’s tone softened slightly. “What feels like a sudden revelation to you has been known at the highest levels for years. We chose to watch from a distance, waiting to see whether you would collapse or rise. That you and Sirius became friends was never orchestrated. It was, however, a welcome accident. It made everything… simpler.”

  I sat frozen, trying to grasp the scale of what they were saying. All those years, I thought myself hidden and alone, training in the yard of a weathered orphanage, when in truth the most powerful in the empire already knew my name.

  Aurelia reached into the folds of her robe and drew out a flat, black tablet veined with faint silver lines that pulsed like slow heartbeats. She placed it gently on the table between us.

  “This,” she said, “will give you a clearer picture of what your current progression has been and what you may become. It will measure the integration level you have had with the shard, and it will guide your studies here. Every student is given an assessment.” She paused. “By law, no one may look upon the results unless the bearer grants permission or you are sworn to a specific noble house. What the tablet reveals belongs to you alone. You will be the only one to see the truth of your condition.”

  The tablet glimmered faintly in the dim light, and I felt my pulse quicken

  “You will need to prick your finger on the small spike at the edge of the pad,” Aurelia said, her voice calm and educational. “Then press your thumb into the reader and then write your name. That will trigger the assessment and generate your readout.”

  As she spoke, she handed me a folded slip of parchment. “This shows a standard readout, so you can compare what you see to the results of others. Every student here has gone through this process before. You, however, are the only one who has never seen your own overview.”

  Her eyes lingered on me, steady and encouraging. Then she gave a slight nod, wordlessly urging me to begin.

  I glanced at the parchment she handed me and unfolded it with care. My eyes traced over the neatly inked symbols and lines, an outline of what a “normal” student’s readout should look like. Strength, agility, aether affinity—all arranged in measured columns.

  Questions immediately sprang to mind. How were these values determined? What exactly did they measure? And why did they feel so precise, so absolute, when people always seemed more complicated than numbers on a page?

  But I held my tongue. The answers could wait. First, I needed to see my own.

  Taking a deep breath, I pressed the tip of my finger against the tiny spike. A sharp sting, a bead of blood, and then the skin sealed itself almost at once. I barely had time to place my thumb firmly against the tablet’s reader.

  It pulsed faintly beneath my skin, warm, alive. A prompt appeared for a name. My chest tightened. I had no last name to give, so I typed simply: Bryn.

  At once, the surface shimmered. The sleek black stone rippled with starlit colors, runes spinning into being across its face. They shifted and rearranged like constellations in motion, the blue glow washing the screen in script too fluid to belong to mortal hands.

  And then the words began to settle, forming lines, categories, numbers.

  I leaned closer, heart hammering, only to feel confusion rise. The results did not align with my expectations. If anything, they opened more questions than they answered.

  Aurelia and Stovall exchanged a glance, then their eyes returned to me. Whatever was on my face must have been plain enough.

  “If the results seem… off,” Aurelia said gently, “that is not unexpected.”

  Stovall folded his hands. “This tablet was crafted for young humans who follow the planned, generational path of growth. It was never designed to account for someone altered by a shard integration at such a young age. Typical safe integrations are between one and twenty-five percent. Your assimilation may place you outside the patterns it was built to measure.”

  Aurelia inclined her head slightly. “Other races use different forms of assessment. Tools and skills built to read changes that lie beyond the common line of human growth. It may be that one of those methods will give us a clearer picture of you.”

  Stovall’s gaze deepened. “With the new professors arriving this year, we may be able to explore that further. Until then, take these results as fragments of truth rather than the whole. They are a window, not the entire view.”

  I stared at the tablet until the runes blurred together. Ninety-eight percent assimilation? Attributes marked with symbols that made no sense, affinities spilling into places I had never even touched. My name day was even wrong. I was still fifteen. Nothing about it lined up with the neat, simple chart Aurelia had handed me.

  “I…” My throat felt dry. “I don’t understand. None of this makes sense. I am not even sure what half of it means.”

  The words tumbled out before I could stop them. My hand clenched around the slip of parchment, crumpling it without meaning to. I felt like the ground had been shifted under me, like the world I thought I knew had just tilted.

  “I thought I was just… like everybody else,” I forced out. “What does this mean?”

  I wanted to demand answers, to press them until they gave me something solid, but the look in Aurelia’s eyes and the calm in Stovall’s voice pressed me back into silence.

  So I swallowed the rising panic and forced myself to nod. “If this is only part of the picture, then I will wait. I will learn. I have to.”

  I drew in a slow breath, letting it steady me. “But if I am going to be tested, if I am going to be pushed, I want to know the truth. Whatever this means… I will face it. Just tell me where to begin.”

  Aurelia’s expression softened, though her eyes still held that sharp, measuring light. “Good. That is the answer we needed to hear. Not understanding is no shame, Bryn. Refusing to face the unknown would be. You are not the first to sit in that chair with questions larger than yourself, and you will not be the last.”

  Stovall leaned back, unfolding his hands. “Where to begin? You start the same as every student here. In study. In discipline. In control. The tablet does not define you. It only points to possibilities. Whether those possibilities destroy you or forge you will depend on what you do next.”

  Aurelia’s voice followed his, quiet but firm. “Your shard has set you apart, yes, but it has not chosen your future. You will choose that with every lesson, every sparring match, every failure, and every moment you rise again. That is the path of all great power: it is proven in the small steps before it is revealed in the great ones.”

  Stovall’s eyes locked with mine, steady as stone. “So we will watch, as we watch all. But understand this — you are not here because of Sirius, or Asher, or chance. You are here because you survived what should have killed you. The question now is whether you will learn to master what you carry, or whether it will one day master you.”

  Aurelia gave a slight nod, her gaze weighing me one last time. “There is one large test for everyone before classes begin, but consider this your first lesson.”