The Academy's inner halls felt like the inside of something alive.
They were wide enough for three bodies shoulder to shoulder, but curved just enough that you could never quite see what waited past the next bend. The stone underfoot had that faint give that meant layered reinforcement arrays. The air hummed with low maintained mana, like the whole place was quietly braced.
Every part of this building said: we control what comes in, we control what goes out.
Students flowed around them in dressed packs. Some stared openly at Rem. Some whispered behind gloved fingers. Some cut glances to Evelyn, curious in that sharp noble way, the way bored predators notice a new animal in the pen.
One girl, pale hair pinned with little silver clips, let her eyes glide down Rem's open collar, across his chest, to the dagger at his back, then up to Evelyn with a too-slow smile that said, So. Yours.
Evelyn did not react. Not with her face.
Her shoulders went just a fraction tighter.
Rem leaned slightly toward her without thinking. "Why are they looking at me like that."
"Because you don't belong," she answered softly, without moving her mouth, eyes straight ahead. "Because they don't know whether they should fear you, mock you, or recruit you. Because you're walking next to me. Keep your head level and don't show your teeth."
"I'm not a dog," he muttered.
"Then stop acting like you want to bite someone," she muttered back.
That almost got a real smile out of him.
They reached Assessment B-3.
From the outside it looked like any other reinforced training room: door of heavy wood banded with mana-gold, a sigil lock at shoulder height, and a warning etching along the frame that said Authorized Personnel Only in crisp Academy script. Ardan touched the sigil, muttered something under his breath, and the lock unsealed with a quiet chime.
Inside, B-3 was round and built for breaking things.
The floor was layered stone, rune-scribed in pale circles like ripples from a dropped pebble. Training dummies stood stacked against the far wall: human silhouettes in padded leather, and next to them heavier shapes reinforced with iron at the joints. A rack of weighted poles leaned in one corner. In the center of the room, on a low pillar, sat a polished stone orb threaded with delicate, glowing glyphs.
There was a smear of old impact on the far wall where someone had been flung hard enough to crack plaster and then healed before they bled out.
Ardan tossed his sash onto a chair and rolled his shoulders like a man settling into something comfortable.
"Alright," he said. "Here is how this works. We run you through three sets. Physical output, reflex response, channel read. No dueling yet. No mana from anyone but me unless I say so. Sponsor stays in the circle with you as witness and sign-off. Proctrice Miriel will read the numbers and assign your entry band."
Evelyn folded her arms. "The circle wasn't in procedure when I entered final year."
"Correct," Ardan said easily. "The circle is new. Congratulations, we're evolving."
"Or getting paranoid," Evelyn said under her breath.
Ardan ignored that.
"First set," he said, clapping his hands. "Physical. Big guy, you're going to hit the reinforced dummy as hard as you can. Full power. Try not to break your own bones. The rune plate will read impact force. Easy."
Rem nodded. "Easy."
Evelyn stepped a little closer to him and lowered her voice. "Do not go stupid."
He blinked. "What."
"Do not try to show off," she said, still looking at Ardan like she had just casually asked what time it was. Her voice barely moved. Her eyes did not flick to him. "You are not here to prove anything to these people. You are here to get in. Hit like a person, not like a monster."
Rem had a small, involuntary flinch at that word.
Monster.
She saw it. Her jaw tightened. She corrected immediately.
"Not like in the dungeon," she said, and he could hear the way her throat worked on that. "Not... like that."
He swallowed. He didn't remember "like that," not really. Just pain and pressure and a heat that didn't belong to human muscle. But he remembered her face in the hospital, pale and stubborn, so if she was telling him chill, he would chill.
"For you then, Nerd," he muttered.
Her eyelid twitched. "Do not call me that in front of staff," she hissed.
"Yes, Liaison," he said innocently.
Her lips pressed into a line.
Ardan dragged the heaviest dummy out into the center of the rune circle. The thing looked like something you brace a gate with. Iron joints, layered hide, runes etched along the spine. He slapped the plate embedded in its chest and it glowed faintly blue.
"On my count," Ardan said. "Three. Two. One. Go."
Rem stepped in.
He let his weight drop through his heels, let it coil into his legs, let it ride up through his hips the way Livesey drilled into him over and over. Not spine first, idiot. Ground first. Drive through. He inhaled, grit his teeth, and let it out with the punch.
His fist hit.
The impact cracked like a cannon report.
The dummy skidded back three whole feet and slammed into the rack behind it hard enough to make the poles rattle and ring like struck bells. A hairline fracture spidered out from the rune plate across the reinforced hide.
Ardan blinked.
"Well," the instructor said after a beat. "Alright then."
Rem shook out his wrist. It stung all the way to the elbow. He bit down on the urge to hiss because Evelyn was watching and he refused to look like a whiner in front of her.
Evelyn had gone very, very still. Her face remained calm, polite, vaguely bored. Her eyes, though, had sharpened in a way that made Rem think of steel being honed on stone. She had seen him hit before, in the raid. She had also seen what happened after, in the dungeon, and she was measuring. Comparing. Asking herself a question he couldn't read.
"Is that good," Rem asked.
Ardan barked a laugh. "That's disgusting," he said, delighted. "That's very, very good. That is not D-rank good. That is I'm going to have to redo how I write the physical rubric good. Hit like that again in a duel and you'll put some rich idiot to sleep before he can finish saying his last name."
Rem felt heat crawl up his neck again. He shrugged like it was nothing. "Guess I'm built nice."
"Don't get cocky," Evelyn murmured without looking at him.
Ardan dragged the dummy back into place and glanced at the rune plate. "Force reading... gods. We'll log that. Proctrice is going to make a face."
"Second set," Ardan said, grabbing three short chalked batons. "Reflex."
He didn't warn Rem, just moved.
Ardan's body blurred. He wasn't joking about being an instructor for final-year combat. He was fast. He snapped in low, baton cutting for Rem's ribs, then high at his ear, then midline at his gut. No aura, no flashy spellwork. Just clean violence.
Rem didn't think. His body moved.
He slid his weight, twisted, blocked with his forearm, dropped his center under the second strike, snapped a palm out to catch Ardan's wrist on the third pass and redirect it wide. It wasn't pretty, not technical in a noble-school way. It was instinct. Alley instinct. Dock instinct. Fight-or-crack instinct.
Ardan hopped back, grinning big now. "Good," he said. "Better than I expected. You read intent, not motion. I like you. You're going to make the spoiled ones cry."
Rem let out a breath. His heart was going a little too fast for something that should've been warm-up. The room felt tighter for a second, like the air had gained weight on his skin.
That pressure again.
That deep, ugly pull in his ribs. That thing-he-didn't-remember, waking up under his sternum and stretching.
His vision tunneled for a fraction of a second. It wasn't like getting dizzy. It was like something under his skin leaned forward.
Evelyn saw it the instant it touched him.
Before Ardan could say anything, her gloved hand was already on Rem's forearm. Not squeezing. Just there. Contact. Anchor.
"Easy," she said softly. "You're not in danger. Nobody here is trying to kill you."
On the surface, to anyone watching, it sounded like irritated handler talk. Lazy. Dismissive. You're overreacting, calm down.
Underneath, Rem heard something else. He heard the memory of her voice in the dungeon when things had gone black. He heard the tiny quiver she would never let anyone else notice.
He blinked hard. Inhaled. Exhaled. The pressure slid back where it belonged.
He hadn't even realized he'd bared his teeth.
Ardan raised an eyebrow. "We're fine," he said, mostly to Evelyn. "Relax. I'm not about to take his head off."
"I'm aware," Evelyn said coolly, hand still on Rem's arm. Her voice had already smoothed back into her perfect, bored delivery. "He is simply very... reactive. And I am under instruction from the Duke to make sure you don't break him before he attends his first class. You can fight him properly after he's registered."
It was spoken like a spoiled noble's demand. Ardan heard it that way and rolled his eyes at her like yeah, yeah, your House, I get it.
Rem heard the translation: I am using my father's name to make them back off so nothing else wakes up in you while they're still cataloguing you.
"You're bossy," Rem muttered.
"You're loud," Evelyn muttered back.
Ardan clapped once. "Third set. Channel read. Hands on the orb."
He nodded at the polished stone sphere set on the pillar. It hummed faintly, glyphs spiraling in fine silver lines across its surface. "This will record your aura flow and baseline mana signature. The chapel healers like to cry if we let anyone into final-year combat without logging that. Saves everyone time when someone breaks a rib in dueling practice and we have to patch them before dinner."
Evelyn went quiet.
Very quiet.
Rem caught the shift. Her shoulders, which had been tensely confident a heartbeat ago, went still in a different way. Braced. Afraid.
"What's wrong," he said under his breath.
"Nothing," she said too fast.
He watched her face. She refused to meet his eyes.
"Hands," Ardan said, waving Rem forward.
Rem walked up to the pillar and pressed both palms against the orb.
For a second nothing happened.
The glyphs pulsed under his hands, once, like something sniffing. Then a thin line of light started to trace along the etchings, curling and looping. Miriel would have called it clean data. Ardan would have called it a baseline.
Then the light stuttered.
The glyphs blinked, surged, then guttered out completely with a faint crackle.
The room made a tiny, involuntary noise. Even Evelyn, who had been holding herself like a statue, flinched and leaned in half a fraction before catching herself.
Ardan stepped closer. "Huh," he said.
He rapped the orb with his knuckles. The glyphs flickered reluctantly back to life. He glanced down at the base, where numbers were supposed to spell out neat abbreviations: Mana Capacity, Channel Stability, Aura Output.
All three windows read the same thing.
0
0
0
Ardan let out a low whistle. "That's new."
Rem looked between them. "Zero what."
"Zero everything," Ardan said, and there was no insult in it. He sounded fascinated, not disgusted. "Mana read is dead. Aura read is dead. Channel read is dead. We calibrate this thing on Academy babies in their first year and they don't print triple zero. You, my friend, just made the machine think you're a table."
Rem frowned. "That bad."
"It's not bad," Ardan said, scratching his jaw. "It's weird. I like weird. Weird makes the nobles panic. Miriel is going to chew her own tongue. Excellent."
He glanced at Evelyn. "Your House really found a nice toy this time."
Evelyn's face did not move.
Inside her eyes, panic. Real panic.
Because she had seen him in the dungeon when that pressure had woken for real. She had felt, for a few heartbeats, something so dark and enormous pouring off of him that her instincts, trained since childhood to read killing intent, had screamed Run. Now a calibrated Academy reader was saying he had nothing. No mana. No aura. No measurable channel.
To everyone else, that just meant "lowborn kid with no spark who compensates with muscles."
To Evelyn it meant something much worse.
It meant whatever had woken in him down there was not aura, not normal mana, not anything the Academy knew how to find. It meant if they looked deeper and found it, they would not try to train it. They would try to contain it. Or erase it.
Her throat felt tight.
She forced her shoulders loose again and let out a bored sigh like this was all nothing.
"I told you he was inefficient," she said to Ardan, perfect noble drawl. "He swings like a siege weapon and has the magical subtlety of a dented bucket."
Ardan laughed.
Rem shot her a look. "Excuse me."
"You heard me," she said sweetly without looking at him. "Muscle first, brain very, very far behind."
Rem clicked his tongue. "Nerd."
Her head snapped toward him and she dropped her voice so only he could hear. "Do not call me that here."
"You are a nerd," he said, equally quiet. "You talk like a book with legs."
"And you talk like a dockyard," she hissed.
Ardan cleared his throat. "Are we done flirting, children, or should I give you the room."
Evelyn went red. Not dramatically. Just a fast flash along the cheekbones before she killed it with pure will.
"We are done," she said, perfectly cold.
Rem didn't blush. Rem just smirked because it annoyed her when he smirked.
Ardan rubbed the back of his neck. "Alright. Here's where we land. Physical output is obscene, so I'm logging you at high C-tier baseline for combat drills even though your Association badge says D. Reflex is cleaner than expected. Channel reads zero, which is going to make the chapel healers gossip all lunchtime, so Miriel will schedule you for a mandatory evaluation. You are cleared to enter final-year combat track under provisional sponsor oversight."
Rem blinked. "That means I'm in."
"That means you're in," Ardan said.
Rem felt it hit him in the sternum like a hand.
In.
Not porter. Not luggage. Not background. In.
The pressure in his chest did not flare this time. It went quiet. It coiled in on itself, like even that strange thing inside him was listening.
Ardan pointed at Evelyn with his chin. "Sponsor stays glued to you for the next two days. You don't duel anyone unless I'm physically in the room, because if you accidentally break a Council brat in half I am the one who has to write fifty pages of apology letters and I hate writing apology letters. You attend orientation sessions with Verran. You attend chapel scan for aura verification. You do not break anything important. You do not punch anyone unless they are actively trying to stab you or insult the Duke's health. Nod if you heard all that."
Rem nodded.
Evelyn nodded, too, stiff and formal.
"Good," Ardan said. "Dismissed. Go let Miriel file you into the machine."
He turned away, muttering happily to himself about how he was going to terrify the rich boys with the phrase "high C-tier baseline" and how nobody was allowed to complain to him about this year's intake ever again.
The door clicked shut behind him.
For a second, the room was just Evelyn and Rem and the faint hum of tired runes.
Evelyn didn't speak right away.
She stared at the orb like it had personally insulted her.
Rem watched her. He could read people. He'd survived this long by reading people. And right now every neat, perfect line in her posture was covering a shake.
"What did I do wrong," he said finally, quiet.
Her head snapped toward him. "Nothing," she said, too fast.
He frowned. "Then why are you mad."
"I'm not mad," she said, defensive, which in Evelyn language meant: I am absolutely mad and I don't like that I'm mad.
He tilted his head. "You're making that face. The face where you want to yell at me for breathing wrong."
She inhaled slow through her nose. "Rem. Listen to me very carefully. From here on, you cannot go all out. Not in a hallway, not in training, not in front of instructors unless I'm there. Especially not if there are priests watching."
"Priests," he repeated.
"Chapel healers," she corrected immediately. "Academy support staff. People who write polite reports that end up on Council tables. Same thing."
He blinked. "Why."
Her mouth moved. For a second he thought she was going to tell him. Tell him about the Effigy. Tell him about the crater. Tell him about how his body had moved like something not human and how she had wanted to run from him and toward him at the same time.
She didn't.
Instead she swallowed hard and looked him dead in the eye.
"Because if they decide you're valuable, they will own you," she said softly. "And if they decide you're dangerous, they will take you apart. I am not letting them do either."
Something low and hot rolled through him at that. Protective anger. Gratitude. Confusion. He wasn't used to someone talking like that about him. People usually talked about him like a tool or like a problem. She had just spoken about him like he was something to defend.
He covered that feeling the only way he knew.
"You care," he said, smug on purpose.
She looked personally offended. "No. I am protecting House Verran's investment."
He grinned. "So you care."
She clicked her tongue. "You're unbelievably annoying."
"You like that," he said.
Her cheeks warmed again before she could kill it.
"I am going to personally drown you in the ornamental pond," she whispered.
"That's murder, Liaison," he said.
"It's self defense," she whispered back.
They stood there too long, both pretending they hadn't just said anything honest.
Finally she straightened, rebuilt the perfect face, tugged her gloves like they weren't already perfect. "Come on," she said. "You're not cleared to wander alone. I have to show you where you can and cannot exist without getting tackled by a prefect."
"I exist everywhere," he muttered.
"Not here you don't," she said.
They stepped out together into the Academy hall.
Students were still watching. Whispers followed like fabric dragging over stone.
There was a new weight in those whispers now.
Before, it had been Who is he.
Now, it was Why is she walking with him.
Rem walked with his collar open, his jacket loose, and his blade heavy across his back like a quiet promise. Evelyn walked half a step ahead, chin high, posture perfect, every movement calculated to say I am in control of this situation, and you will not question me about it.
One of them belonged here by blood.
One of them didn't belong anywhere yet.
Neither of them trusted this place.
Both of them were inside it now.