By the time the bells tolled for the first instructional session, the entire academy was whispering about her.
Aurora heard it in the corridors — in the way conversation dipped when she passed, in how students tilted their heads toward each other like conspirators. She caught fragments:
"Unmarked."
"The mirror cracked?"
"She shouldn't even be real."
The hallways twisted through the castle like veins. She walked behind Willow, who moved with easy grace, unbothered by the stares. Aurora, meanwhile, felt like a wound left out in the open.
"Do you want to talk about it?" Willow asked without turning.
Aurora hesitated. "About the mirror?"
"About how you broke it."
"I didn't—"
"I know," Willow said gently. "But that won't stop them from saying you did."
They arrived at a circular hall with tiers of black marble seating and a platform ringed in sigils that pulsed faintly — a training room.
At the center stood an instructor dressed in deep indigo robes, trimmed with silver. Her eyes were a muted gold, her mouth a hard line.
"Initiates will line the ring," she said. "You will each be tested for basic sigil resonance."
Aurora joined the dozen other students already forming a semicircle around the ring. She noticed the house sigils pinned to their collars — fire, mirror, blood, root.
She had nothing.
Atlas stood on the opposite side of the ring, arms crossed, expression unreadable. When their eyes met, he didn't look away.
Aurora wasn't sure if that comforted her or made her want to run.
Each student was called forward, one by one.
They placed their hands on a floating crystal and channeled energy into a sigil projected above it. The sigil responded — glowing in a color matched to their house. Flame for firebound. Silver for mirrorborn. Blue-black for those tied to night magic.
Then it was Aurora's turn.
She stepped forward.
The instructor's eyes narrowed. "State your house."
"I don't have one," Aurora replied.
Murmurs spread like smoke.
The instructor gestured. "Place your hand on the crystal."
Aurora obeyed
The crystal flickered. The projected sigil appeared overhead.
And then — it changed.
Instead of the standard symbols the others had summoned, Aurora's sigil began twisting midair. Runes bled out of its center. The shape turned — alive, burning white-hot, then black.
The entire ring flared with light.
Students recoiled.
The crystal cracked.
Aurora yanked her hand away as heat lashed her palm.
Gasps echoed through the chamber.
The instructor didn't speak. She walked forward slowly, inspecting the shattered crystal, her face unreadable.
"This is… not possible," she said at last.
Aurora tried to steady her breath. "What does it mean?"
No answer.
The instructor turned to the watching students.
"This lesson is over."
Later, in the courtyard beneath the floating garden arches, Aurora sat alone at the edge of a star-fed fountain. The water glowed faintly violet, rippling with patterns that didn't match any wind.
She touched her palm — it was warm, like it still remembered the magic.
The sigil she'd summoned had felt like it came from somewhere deeper than blood or thought. It had burned its way up.
Across the square, a group of students watched her. Among them, she recognized a name she'd heard in murmurs already:
Lyra D'Venn.
She stood perfectly straight, her silver-blonde hair pinned back in a cascade of spirals, her eyes ice-pale. She looked like royalty. Her uniform was customized — high collar, black lace cuffs, polished obsidian buttons — and her house sigil was double-marked.
Lyra walked toward her, flanked by two others.
"Unmarked," she said smoothly. "I was wondering when you'd start breaking things."
Aurora stood slowly. "I didn't break the crystal. It cracked on its own.
"Yes," Lyra said with a small, elegant smile. "Because it wasn't made to measure… whatever you are."
Aurora didn't move. "And what am I?"
Lyra stepped closer.
"A problem."
"You're going to make enemies fast," Ethan said later that evening, lounging in the doorway of her room, his arms crossed lazily. "Especially if you keep setting things on fire."
Aurora was too tired to argue. "It didn't catch fire."
"Mm. Cracked the sigil crystal. Shattered the instructor's expectations. That's close enough."
She eyed him. "Are you here to bother me or actually say something useful?"
He shrugged. "Both."
Ethan entered without waiting for an invitation, flopping onto the windowsill, legs draped dramatically.
He stared at her for a moment, head tilted.
"You're different."
"Thanks."
"No," he said seriously. "I mean… I've tried using my magic on everyone here. It's like breathing. Like playing chords on people's hearts. But with you… I try, and it's like striking silence."
Aurora's stomach twisted. "You're using your power on me?"
"Not on. Around." He tapped his temple. "Just to listen. You don't echo. At all."
She turned away. "Maybe that means I'm broken."
"Or," he said, voice softer, "maybe it means you're not meant to be played."
She looked back at him.
And for a second, something cracked between them — not magic, but something quiet and vulnerable.
Then Ethan smiled again, too wide, too easy.
"You've got Atlas watching you like a hawk and Lyra sharpening knives. I figured I'd offer a third option: someone who's just curious."
"You're always this forward?" she asked.
"Only when I'm interested."
She rolled her eyes.
But she didn't tell him to leave.
That night, Aurora stood before the mirror again.
It rippled faintly as she approached. She reached out and touched it — and this time, the surface opened.
It didn't reflect her. It showed her hands, reaching toward a book wrapped in chains.
Her mouth, speaking words in a language her waking self didn't know.
A name burned across a wall: Aestrael.
She woke up on the floor.
The mirror stood silent.
But something deep inside her had shifted.
And the fire in her veins refused to cool.