The first bell came with grey light and cold air that smelled of stone.
Twenty first-years gathered in the central yard, boots damp with dew, chatter clipped by nerves. Damp leather and ink; a whisper of leaves in the ash branches above.
Near the front stood Marek, his new crest gleaming where soot had once been. He didn't look back, but Ren felt the weight of him all the same—the kind of silence that comes from something unresolved.
Three instructors waited beneath the ash: a narrow man in scholar's black with ink on his knuckles; a broad-shouldered woman in leather with a scar like a hyphen under one eye; and a soldier who looked as if he had never learned to smile—and didn't intend to start now.
The scholar spoke first. "Magister Enno Tarel," he said, voice like paper. "Theory."
He gestured left. "Captain Jorek Ansel. Discipline." The soldier's nod was a rule by itself.
"And Armsmistress Bryn Hale. Spirits."
Bryn's gaze moved over them, weighing, judging. "You'll hear the phrase Sword Spirit often," she said. "Don't let the name fool you. It won't always be a sword, and it won't always be yours to command. A Spirit is the part of you that agrees to be shaped. With time, it takes a form that fits your hands, your head, your heart. With training, it sharpens. Or it doesn't, if you don't."
She set a squat iron stand in the dirt and laid her palm on it. A pale outline rose from the base, trembling like heat—then settled into a long knife whose edge drank light.
"You don't summon a Spirit by wanting it," Bryn said. "You meet it halfway. Step up. One at a time."
They lined up. Boots scuffed the cold ground; someone swallowed hard.
A broad-backed boy went first; a hammer answered him, squat and joyful.
A girl with healer's hands drew a staff ringed in copper that hummed like bees.
Another boy blinked at the bow that gathered around him—taller than he was—and smiled as if he'd remembered something lost.
Lior Varin moved forward. The air around his hand steadied at once, as if relieved. A slender sword formed—a pale blade so clean the eye wanted to follow it. It didn't glow. It breathed, the way a held note does.
Magister Tarel murmured approval. Captain Ansel didn't.
Then the dark-haired boy from the upper courtyards—the one who'd looked toward smoke and lightning yesterday and said interesting—took his place. His tunic bore no crest. His eyes had the patient sharpness of a hawk that had learned to live among crows.
He pressed his palm to the stand. Heat pricked the air. To Ren's eyes the outline shattered and rejoined, metal flowing like water, then biting, then softening again. A spear took shape, then collapsed into chains that cinched themselves and slid into the long curve of a blade, which shortened, thickened, and decided to be an axe before second thoughts made it a staff bound in iron bands.
Bryn's mouth tilted. "Versatile," she said—not quite praise, not rebuke either.
The boy flexed his fingers. The weapon shifted with him, settling into a simple, serviceable sword—as if embarrassed to be noticed. Someone whispered a name: Kade. Another added, from Hollow Fen. Ren filed both away without knowing why.
When his own turn came, Ren's hands felt suddenly too big. He pressed his palm to the stand. Nothing answered. He tried to recall the hill, the quiet, the door opening—anything but the ring and the roar.
A flicker—blue, faint as breath on glass. It died. Purple licked the air and went out. White quivered, then dissolved.
"Steady," Bryn said, almost gentle. "You're not wrestling it. You're introducing yourself."
He exhaled. Let the fear stay where it was and not everywhere else. Another breath. Something loosened.
Weight gathered in his palm. A shape ran down his wrist into his fingers, hesitant and heavy. When the light bled away, he was holding a sword so plain it looked wrong in this place: short, blunt-edged, metal cloudy, as if poured in a hurry and left to cool without care.
A snort from somewhere behind. Then silence.
Bryn stepped closer, studying the nothing-special of it the way a mason studies a stone no one else would choose. "Every blade begins to dull," she said—not to comfort him. "Some stay that way. Some don't." She nodded toward his grip. "Learn your hands. Learn your breath. It'll listen if you do."
Ren swallowed. The sword was heavier than it looked and didn't fit his palm the way he wanted. But it was warm. His.
He lifted it. It didn't hum or shine. It simply existed—stubborn as a promise.
"Next," Captain Ansel barked.
The line moved. Spirits bloomed—bows, knives, a set of dark plates that crept up a boy's forearms like patient ivy before hardening into armor.
Lior's pale sword vanished when he released it and returned when he called, eager to serve.
Kade's weapon shifted when he rolled his wrist, the edge flowering into a hook before smoothing again—obedient as thought.
Ren stood with his not-quite-a-sword and tried not to feel eyes on his back. A faint tremor hummed under his skin—tiny sparks that faded before anyone noticed, leaving him wondering what had nearly escaped. He flexed his fingers once more, as if reassuring himself they still obeyed him.
When Bryn dismissed them, the yard exhaled as one. Students compared shapes they didn't have names for. The ash tree shook loose a scatter of last year's seeds. Above the roofs, the sky held itself clear and waiting.
Lior passed him, slowed, and stopped. "If you need a partner for drills," he said, tone as even as the blade that had liked his hand, "I'm usually on the east floor after the bell."
Ren blinked, surprised anyone had noticed him beyond the dull metal in his grip. "All right."
Lior nodded once, tidy as a salute, and moved on.
Kade glanced over next—eyes unreadable—then walked away, his weapon still shifting in small, satisfied ways, as if practicing futures.
Across the yard, Marek stood with his new Spirit—an elegant longsword wreathed in faint heat, edges shimmering red before fading to gold. Their eyes met for a breath. No words, just distance measured in heat and silence. Then Marek turned away.
Ren stared at the dull sword—less an embarrassment, more a beginning. The hilt was wrong. The balance was wrong. The edge was a rumor. But it was something he could hold. Something he could sharpen.
He slid the blade down, felt its awkward weight settle against his thigh, and let himself smile—barely.
Uncertainty sat in his chest like a stone. Excitement burned beside it like a coal. Between them, a narrow path opened that looked a lot like life.
He stepped onto it.
The second bell tolled them indoors.
Grey light clung to the lecture hall windows. The air smelled of paper dust and iron; mana-lamps drifted in slow orbits overhead, brightening as students filed in. The room rose in shallow tiers, desks curving around a floating slate that hovered three inches off the floor. Symbols shimmered across its surface—soft blue veins of light.
Ren paused at the door. Shelves sagged with manuals—Fundamentals of Meridian Theory, Bestiary of the Eastern March, Atlas of the Six Currents. Between them hung monster sketches and maps of old battle lines, portraits whose painted eyes seemed to follow him. It felt like a cathedral built for those who already knew how to pray.
Most of the twenty students clustered in groups. Ren caught brief glances—some curious, some dismissive—and slid into an empty desk near the back. The surface stirred at his touch; runes woke and adjusted its height to fit him.
"Eyes forward," said a dry voice.
Magister Enno Tarel stood at the center, tall and lean, black robes hemmed with faint violet light. Ink smudged his fingers. He held a crystal stylus like a conductor's baton.
"Welcome to Theory of Mana and Meridian Flow. If you're here for excitement, you're lost. If you're here to survive the year, pay attention."
His tone was mild; the silence it drew, absolute.
A flick of the stylus and the board flared to life: a human outline traced itself—heart at the center, threads radiating outward.
"Mana lives here," he said, tapping the heart. "We call it the core. It listens to thought the way the other heart listens to blood."
Lines brightened along the limbs. "These are the gates—roughly twenty major ones: five per limb, four through the torso, two in the neck and head. Open a gate and mana flows. Force it, and it breaks. A broken gate is a lost gate."
Quills whispered.
"Most of you can open a few gates at will," Tarel went on, pacing. "Some of you—" his gaze drifted toward the front row "—too many, too soon. Practice restraint before you start glowing."
A ripple of laughter.
The boy he meant—Aurel Thane, the noble with amber hair and lazy sparks dancing between his fingers—smirked.
"Thane," said Tarel without turning. "If the floor explodes, you're cleaning it."
The lightning died. Two seats away, Marek Varnen hid a grin behind his palm.
"Demonstration," Tarel said. "Varin. Front."
Lior Varin rose smoothly. White hair caught the lamplight as he approached the board.
"Channel to the index gate," Tarel instructed.
Lior exhaled. A thin thread of water coiled from his fingertip, steady and perfect, vanishing into mist.
The room murmured.
"Good," Tarel said. "Controlled. One point for keeping the front row dry. Sit."
Kade Rellan leaned forward, eyes bright.
"Rellan," Tarel said. "Since you look eager, try next."
Kade grinned, stood, and opened both palms. Heat trembled in the air. A coil of orange flame formed in one hand, a whisper of pale wind in the other.
"Fire, wind," he said. "They balance each other."
"Not in first-year bodies they don't," Tarel warned. "Stop there."
Kade's grin wavered. "It's fine, I—"
A droplet slid from Lior's desk and touched the flame with a soft sputter. The fire died instantly.
Laughter rippled. Kade blinked, then lifted his hands in mock surrender.
"You worry too much, Magister."
"And you think too little. Sit down before you prove my point."
When the noise settled, Tarel said, "Control isn't glamour. It's survival. Open a gate wrong in combat, and your own mana will tear you apart."
For the next half hour they traced meridian diagrams that glowed faintly under mana-sensitive ink. Tarel drifted between rows, muttering corrections.
"Don't force the flow—invite it."
"No, not your left foot. That's another gate entirely."
"If you're sweating already, stop before you faint."
Ren followed every word, his hand cramping from notes. When told to open the wrist gate, the room filled with quiet effort—soft glows at fingertips.
Lior shimmered steadily.
Sylvi Arlen—lean, focused, her dark-blonde braid looped tight—summoned a faint breeze that fluttered the pages on her desk. Her eyes flicked toward the door, restless, as if the walls were wasting her time.
Aurel's lightning popped again until Tarel's sigh extinguished it.
Kade's flame spun quick and neat, a dancer in his palm.
Ren pressed thumb to wrist and exhaled.
Nothing.
He tried again, slower—imagining the core as a door unlocking. For a heartbeat something moved, a pulse sliding down his arm. Warmth gathered beneath his skin—then retreated like a startled animal.
He tried once more. And again.
Each attempt ended the same: a flicker, then absence. His body remembered the path, but his mind couldn't reach it.
Tarel passed behind him, glanced once, and said nothing. The silence weighed more than correction.
When practice ended, the magister flicked his stylus. The board reshaped into two outlines—one human, one monstrous.
"Questions?"
A hand rose halfway down the rows. Dela Mor, freckles and brown curls. "Magister, my mother says demons used to walk among people. Is that true or just stories?"
A ripple of interest moved through the class.
Tarel tapped the sketch; the figure warped into something horned and winged.
"Records from earlier ages mention beings called demons. Descriptions differ—smoke for blood, voices that cracked stone, appetites without end. Modern scholars call them humans with unstable meridians or unknown natures—phenomena mistaken for monsters."
"So they're not real?" someone asked.
Tarel's smile was thin. "Reality belongs to whoever survives to write it down."
He erased the sketches. "For now, worry about yourselves. If any of you turn into demons mid-term, I'll revise the syllabus."
Laughter broke the tension.
"Assignment," he said. "Tonight, map your wrist gates. If you glow, redo it. If you faint, drink water first. Class dismissed."
Chairs scraped. Voices spilled back into the air.
Lior and Kade exchanged a brief nod. Sylvi slung her satchel and slipped out first. Aurel stretched, yawning lightning. Marek followed, eager for notice.
Ren stayed seated until the room emptied. One by one, the mana-lamps dimmed.
Tarel was erasing the last of the board when Ren stood.
"Magister?"
Without turning: "You're not fainted, so this must be about work."
"I—wanted to ask if there were books I could read. To catch up."
That earned him a glance—measured, not unkind. "You're behind?"
"Yes."
Tarel's sigh folded in on itself like parchment. "Most of today was preface. You should already know it."
"I don't," Ren said.
For a moment the magister studied him, weighing honesty against ignorance. Then he crossed to a shelf and pulled three slim volumes, their spines newer than most.
"Applied Mana Circulation I, Foundations of Gate Control, Introduction to Meridian Mapping.
Read them. Return them unburned."
Ren accepted the stack carefully. The covers were cool, faint runes shifting as he breathed on them.
"Thank you, Magister."
"Don't thank me. Prove you can use them."
Ren nodded, clutching the books to his chest.
As he left, the final lamp dimmed overhead. The corridor smelled of ink and faint ozone. He paused, watching the light fade from the pages in his arms, and tried to imagine what it would feel like when the gates finally opened—when thought and body met and something answered back.
For now, there was only silence between them—
but even silence, he thought, could be practiced until it learned to answer.