Rowan Mercer knew something was off the moment he stepped through the gates.
The grounds were quiet, almost aggressively so. Not peaceful. Controlled. The kind of silence that came from discipline rather than isolation. The men moving through the courtyards wore simple uniforms and spoke in low voices, but Rowan could feel the weight behind them. A restrained presence. Focused. Alert.
These weren't monks.
They weren't soldiers either.
Rowan slowed his pace, letting his senses stretch. Several of the residents carried a dense internal pressure, tightly folded inward, like coiled wire under skin. It wasn't spellwork, and it didn't behave like the structured magical signatures he'd grown used to in London. But in terms of raw intensity, it wasn't far off from a trained adult wizard holding back their power.
So his instinct had been right.
This place wasn't historical. It was operational.
"Mr. Mercer?"
Rowan turned.
A young man in his early twenties approached him with an easy stride, posture straight but not stiff. He wore the same understated uniform as the others, his expression open, observant, and quietly confident. The kind of confidence that came from knowing exactly where one stood in a hierarchy.
"Yes," Rowan said. "That's me."
The man pulled out his phone and tilted the screen forward. A clear photo of Rowan filled the display.
"Name's Marcus Hale," he said, slipping the phone away. "Vivian Bellamy called earlier today. She was supposed to show you around herself, but something came up. My supervisor asked me to take over."
That explained the efficiency.
Rowan nodded. "I appreciate it."
"No problem," Marcus said. "You're cleared to see most of the grounds. If you've got questions, ask. I'll tell you what I can."
They started walking.
Marcus proved to be an excellent guide. He knew the site's public history inside and out, from the architecture to the institutional changes it had undergone over the decades. The courtyards layered over older foundations. Training halls disguised as cultural spaces. Libraries that smelled of paper and polish rather than incense or ritual.
Everything had a benign explanation.
And every explanation stopped just short of the truth.
Marcus never once mentioned the real reason people trained here. Never acknowledged the latent force humming beneath the surface. The omission was deliberate, precise, and practiced.
Rowan let it pass.
When the tour wound down, Rowan bought two bottles of water and gestured toward a quieter stretch of the grounds, away from visitors and cameras.
"You seem very familiar with the place," Rowan said, handing one bottle over. "You've been here a while?"
Marcus took a drink and nodded. "Since I was a kid. Fifteen years, give or take."
"Then you must be highly trained."
Marcus laughed. Not nervously. Genuinely.
"If you're expecting secret techniques or cinematic nonsense, you're going to be disappointed," he said. "Most of what we teach openly is physical conditioning, mental discipline, and theory. Nothing supernatural."
Rowan noted how cleanly the answer slid into place.
"I see," Rowan said.
Internally, Marcus had already categorized him. Well-connected. Civilian. Someone whose family donations bought courtesy and access, but not truth. Anything beyond surface-level instruction was off the table.
Rowan decided to stop pretending.
"I didn't spend most of my life overseas without learning a few things," he said quietly. "I'm not here as a tourist. I'm here because I don't understand how people like us operate here."
Marcus stopped walking.
"People like us?" he repeated carefully.
Rowan didn't answer with words.
He lifted two fingers and made a subtle pulling motion.
The water bottle slipped out of Marcus's hand and crossed the space between them, landing neatly in Rowan's palm.
For a moment, the world narrowed.
Marcus stared. Then he exhaled.
"You could've just said that," he muttered.
Rowan passed the bottle back. "I wanted to be sure."
The tension drained from Marcus's shoulders.
"You have no idea how much easier that makes things," he said. "Talking to ordinary people is exhausting. Every sentence has to be filtered. Every action restrained. One mistake and you've got oversight committees crawling up your spine."
"And with people like us?"
Marcus shrugged. "As long as civilians don't get hurt, it's our problem."
They sat.
Once the barrier was gone, Marcus spoke freely. He wasn't an old traditionalist. The modern world had shaped him. Information flowed too fast now for rigid secrecy to survive intact.
By the end of the conversation, Rowan had a clear framework.
The enhanced world here wasn't unified. It was fractured into three broad forces.
First were the legacy groups. Long-standing organizations with discipline, structure, and institutional memory. Some traced their roots back centuries. Others had evolved into modern institutes. They didn't always agree, but they recognized each other as legitimate players.
Second was the fringe.
A single ideological movement with no central authority. No loyalty. No restraint. Anyone could claim the label. Most were self-taught, expelled, or deliberately unaligned. Their philosophy prioritized absolute personal freedom, and the result was chaos. There was an unspoken rule among the established groups: if you encountered one of them, you were cleared to act.
The third force wasn't a faction at all.
It was the state.
Regulatory bodies. Special divisions. Quiet agreements and silent threats. They didn't interfere unless things spilled into public view, but when they did, no one ignored them.
Listening to it all, Rowan felt an unexpected sense of clarity.
This wasn't a closed system.
It was a crowded one.
And crowded systems always had gaps.