As Aron walked, he scraped a fingernail across his palm, watching black dust gather beneath the nail, permanent as the wrinkles in his skin. The industrial district exhaled behind them, a lung of thick coal smoke that they had grown used to, illuminated by the bright moon that would accompany them. Aron's breath came harder now, not from the smoke but from the climb itself, each switchback climbing through a city of privilege.

  Garett walked three paces ahead, shoulders squared beneath canvas that had been washed too many times. Fabric strained across his back, muscles shifting beneath the weave with the mechanical rhythm of someone who had hauled rubble for most his life. He paused at the first terrace, granite steps cutting across the slope, brass plaques bolted to retaining walls announcing merchant holdings. Under the moonlight, he could barely read them.

  Aron caught up. The silver scar tissue across his left palm itched, a colony of ants marching beneath the skin. Higher altitude meant denser mana saturation, the ambient energy pressing against his scar like a physical weight. He pressed the heel of his hand against his thigh, grinding the sensation away until it settled again, becoming used to the new mana levels.

  Garett unwound the rag from his right hand. His blisters had recovered remarkably since yesterday's miscalculation, much faster than normal, though the skin was still shiny and tight. He tore a fresh rag strip with his teeth, winding the canvas tight enough to almost cut circulation.

  "Huh, I guess those flasks do more than just replenish your channels." Garett said, his voice low. He tucked the remaining rag back into his pocket.

  Above them, wheels clicked against stone. An enclosed carriage descended the opposite lane, lacquered wood gleaming, curtains drawn against the soot. Surely returning from some lavish party that had gone deep into the night. But it was a different life than they had ever known, there weren’t many carriages in the industrial district, only carts to haul stone. They stepped aside as the carriage sped past.

  Garett watched the vehicle until it rounded the bend. His jaw tightened, the muscle jumping beneath the skin. He pulled his canvas coat closer for warmth, no longer in the insulating of the industrial vents.

  Meanwhile, Aron found himself studying the architecture as they continued; observing merchant terraces giving way to clerk residences. Here whitewashed stone replaced granite, which had replaced the fire prone wood where they lived. He admired the mortar lines' precision, as if a perfect blueprints brought to life.

  As the first signs of daylight began to seep into the sky, he traced a nearby flying buttress with his eyes, calculating the compression ratios, the load distribution across the arch. Forty-five degrees optimal for this span. Masons had built it at forty-three, compensating with thicker keystones. Elegant. Wasteful, but elegant.

  His scar flared. They had entered the Academy Approach. Though they knew they were close, given the number of carriages they were having to dodge as morning went on.

  The marble began here, veined with crystallized mana that glimmered more pronounced under the morning light, as it gave a steady pulse. Aron, oddly, found it somewhat comforting. Garett, on the other hand, stopped for a moment to become more acclimated, swaying slightly. His damaged channels were receiving the saturation differently, not as tingle but as deep tissue ache, a protest against the pressure.

  “Come on, it’s already morning.” Aron said, continuing his march, patting Garett on the back as he passed.

  Thirty-foot walls rose ahead, breathing. Aron realized now that was the only word for it. The marble expanded and contracted in fractional millimeters, inhaling ambient mana during the contraction phase, exhaling purified residue. Aron took a moment to press his scarred palm against the surface. The silver tissue blanched white, singing, but with the stone, not against it.

  Now hours into morning, they spotted a registrar ahead, waiting at the gate, robed in dark blue, ledger open. Red ink smudged along the bottom of his hand. But they did not see any other applicants, or even their carriages.

  “You’re late.”

  Garett's eyes grew wide, “We got here as quickly as we could!”

  The registrar huffed, "Names."

  Aron stepped forward. "Aron Knapper."

  The registrar wrote. The nib scratched, leaving crimson letters that bled slightly into the paper fiber. He turned the book. "Mark."

  Aron dipped his thumb into a pool of melted wax on the table, then quickly pressed it beside his name. A personal seal for those without a proper one, the wax retained the whorls of his fingerprint, his inescapable identity.

  "Conscript classification," the registrar said. He did not look up. "Surrender all flasks. Zero reserves permitted for examination entrants."

  Aron reached behind him and unlashed the three crystal flasks from his back. He pulled them out, one by one. The liquid within glowed its steady sky blue. Then placed them into the velvet-lined lockbox.

  A look of surprise washed across the registrar's face, it was a formality, he did not believe a conscript would have such things. He snapped the lid shut, the sound of the latch carrying no echo.

  "Garett Lok," the registrar said, moving on.

  Garett stepped up. He produced nothing. Standing there with his wrapped burns hidden beneath crossed arms. The registrar marked the ledger in red regardless, “Conscript classification. Mark.” as Garett proceeded to follow the same wax seal stamping.

  "Enter," the registrar said. "The examination begins shortly."

  They both hurried forward through the gate. The marble walls pressed close, channeling them toward a vaulted entrance that yawned like a geometric throat. Garett walked beside him, his boots heavy on the stone, each step deliberate and anxious. Aron felt the weight of surrendered resources heavy in his empty pockets, and he could feel the temperature rise as the hall swallowed them whole.

  As they approached the Testing Hall, the low rumbles of 300 anxious nobles grew into a constant uncomfortable pressure. Aron stopped at the threshold, his shoulder brushing the jamb, beholding the sea of applicants. Each one trained with the best tutors their families could buy, the elites of the elite, vying for admission into an academy that would solidify their families fortunes for another generation.

  Garett halted beside him, canvas coat scraping the doorframe, overwhelmed by the reality they found themselves in. He kept his arms crossed, posture rigid so as to not reveal his apprehension.

  “There’s…. more than I thought there would be.”, muttered Garett.

  Aron just nodded, any hope he had once held draining from him for a second time since he last slept.

  Sleep deprivation had turned the edges of Aron's vision grainy. He blinked, scanning the room, his eyes finding themselves on the central column rising from the hall's heart. A hairline fissure ran its length, from capital to base, barely visible as a shadow line. It wasn’t a structural danger, he knew so much from first sight. But his scar blazed. Silver tissue across his palm pulsed with an unstable rhythm, unlike anything he had felt before. He dug the heel of his hand into his thigh, grinding the sensation away till it calmed itself again.

  Garett nudged him forward with an elbow. Aron brought himself back to the room, and stumbled forward into the crowd. Working their way forward, eventually they found a space against the western wall, within view of two casting circles. Around them, silk and velvet brushed against marble, ornately decorated fabrics trailing across the floor as noble applicants adjusted their positions. Nearby a girl in green satin wept silently into a handkerchief; while, elsewhere, a boy muttered formulas to his shoes.

  Proctors in dark red robes moved between the circles, holding leather bound journals and brass mana meters hanging from straps at their hips. Then each took a seat near one of the casting circles.

  A hush spread through the room, and the proctors across the hall began shouting the names of the hopeful to step forward to be judged.

  The exam had begun.

  “William Malborne” came a shout from one of the nearby Proctors.

  “Here” replied a voice from the crowd. A seventeen years old boy, tall and handsome with an athletic build, made his way forward. He wore sky blue robes marking him as a re-examination candidate from the prior year. William Malborne stepped into the nearest casting circle. His hands trembled, fingers curling and uncurling as if working out cramps.

  Aron stared intensely, studying every move. For he knew nobles were encouraged to practice magic from a very young age and this would be his first time to see it displayed so close. Even observing magic was forbidden for the lower classes.

  William raised his arms and began to speak the parameters aloud, voice cracking on the numbers. “Ice, a wall shape modification 1.2 ratio, density 0.3, size 50”

  Aron thought he had heard wrong, size 50?! A lump formed in his throat.

  The structure began to form glittering in the center of the circle, massive and translucent, with a large amount of air trapped within the lattice.

  “Upward, force 2” William continued

  The grand structure rose, buoyed by the new variable.

  Aron pulled his slate tablet from beneath his coat. Graphite scraped across the surface. A density of 0.3 meant structural weakness; the same barrier strength could achieve integrity at half the mana cost with more compression. But it was impressive. He scribbled the waste calculation: 138.6 mana expended. Over three times the mana Aron could hope to cast.

  The wall rose higher, wobbling. William's face drained color. He had forgotten to account for the sustained force cost. The spell sequence continued funding: shape held, duration running at 10 seconds, but the mana pool emptied. At 8 seconds, the reservoir dried.

  The ice wall stopped rising. It hung, dominating the room, then toppled forward towards the crowd. Nobles watching gasped and pushed back into the crowd, and a shattering noise soon filled the cathedral as it broke against the marble; sending shards spraying across the floor. A jagged piece spun past Aron's boot, stopping inches from the brass circle's edge.

  William stood swaying within the circle. His pupils dilated, swallowing the iris, his vision fading to black and white. The Hollow took him, hands shaking violently now, sweat soaking his sky blue collar. He stumbled forward, knees buckling, and caught himself on the marble with raw palms.

  The proctor spoke, dryly, “That’s enough, return to your seat.”

  Above, in the gallery overlooking the floor, a man in silver threaded robes turned his hand inward, hiding a signet ring within his cuff. Lord Malborne.

  Garett leaned over to Aron whispering, “Not bad, I guess…”

  Aron didn’t respond, he just kept watching as William dragged himself upright and began to stumble back into the crowd, breathing in gasps. His gaze found Aron's slate, the visible numbers, the efficiency ratios scratched in graphite. For a moment, the trembling stopped. Then he lurched forward, out of the circle, toward the recovery benches; his mind still fixed on the calculation he couldn't unsee as he uncorked a flask handed to him by a servant and drank.

  The proctor's voice cut through the humidity of three hundred bodies.

  Aron's stepped forward awkwardly “Here” he shouted, his voice unsteady.

  Whispers from the crowd nearby followed immediately, silk sleeves rustling as heads turned toward the old canvas coat and worn boots. Followed by laughter pitched high and sharp trailed him across the floor as the crowd pressed back to give him space as if poverty were contagious.

  "A quarry rat in the circle?"

  "Check his boots for coal dust."

  Graphite dust ground between Aron's fingers as he entered the circle. His eyelid twitched, a muscle jumping every few seconds. Over twenty-four hours without sleep had narrowed his vision to a tunnel; the gallery above blurred into a wash of color. He blinked three times in rapid succession, focusing on the oak examination table positioned twenty feet ahead.

  The examiner seated before him wore dark red robes. A mana meter sat upon the table, and he held his leather bound journal open and ready. He did not look up.

  "Cast when ready."

  Aron lowered his arm, palm opened downward, realizing there was nowhere else to aim. The scar tissue across his left hand blazed silver, channel pathways dilating. If this was his only spell today, he knew what he had to do. He spoke the parameters. "Dagger. Element stone. Density 10.0. Size 0.1. Duration 0.5 second. Force 3, directed downward."

  No flash. No spectacle of glittering ice. Mana left him in a controlled hemorrhage, units draining with the precision of a released breath. Stone crystallized beneath his palm, matter condensing into a finger sized spike. It launched.

  The needle punched down with a sudden crack, as the projectile buried itself deeply into the floor. A few pieces of marble flung upward from the force, but nothing spectacular. It would have been easy to miss if not watching it directly.

  The laughter from the crowd erupted again.

  But across the proctor's face washed only a momentary expression of interest. The proctor's pen stopped scratching. He raised the mana meter, brass dials spinning. "10.78 units expended. Six hundred forty percent efficiency of standard offensive curriculum."

  "What other configurations can you demonstrate?" the proctor asked.

  "It’s my only spell."

  The proctor returned to his journal. "Return to your place."

  Aron stepped backward, out of the circle. His shoulder blades met the crowd. A voice drifted from the gallery above, clear and bored.

  "Pebble magic."

  For the third time, laughter spread from the crowd again. Aron looked up. A girl leaned against the gallery rail from the hall's second tier, long black hair falling over practical leather training gear. Sky-blue eyes tracked him with sharp calculation, a leather folio clutched in one hand. She made a notation with a silver stylus, then turned away.

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  "Garett Lok." The proctor summoned.

  “Here.”

  Garett moved before Aron could reach him. He entered the circle and the whispers rose again, louder now, carrying a harsher disdain.

  "Another rat?!"

  "He’s wrapped like a leper!"

  Garett stood in the center, arms crossed, hiding his hands. His jaw tightened, the muscle jumping beneath the skin. The proctor noted the posture with a glance but said nothing.

  "Cast when ready."

  Garett uncrossed his arms then tore the rags loose with his teeth, spitting the fabric onto the marble. His palms revealed pink shiny skin where his blisters had now already almost fully healed thanks to the night before. He raised his hands, fingers splayed, and positioned them closer together than William had dared.

  "Fire sphere," he said. His voice scraped lower than the noble tones. "Size 10.0. Distance 0.1 meters. Density 0.8. Duration 0.2 seconds. Explosive 5. Force 4."

  Aron jerked his head up from his notes, “Garett, wait!”

  But it was too late, the spell began to sequence. Soon a watermelon sized compressed ball of raging fire began to form in front of Garett's outstretched hands, as he winced and held it as far from himself as he could. Then an instant later, it erupted from his hands outward, almost simultaneously triggering its explosion.

  The hall was filled with an overwhelming flash of light, and Aron could feel the heat wave wash across his face even from his distance.

  The recoil traveled back up Garett's arms, amplified by the proximity. Channel corrosion burned through uninsulated pathways. His freshly healed palms split anew as skin patches sheared away. Moments later blood began to well, dripping onto the marble in thick drops that spattered the hem of his canvas coat.

  Garett did not sway. He stood rigid, arms extended, shaking.

  The proctor lowered his meter. "Reckless. You will destroy your body quickly with such magic." He clicked his calculation gear, raising an inquisitive eyebrow and mumbling to himself before writing in his journal and continuing. "You may sit."

  Garett gathered the rags from the floor. He wound them tighter around his palms, pulling the knots with his teeth, cinching until the fabric bit into lacerated skin. Blood darkened the canvas immediately. He walked back to Aron, each step leaving faint red smears on the stone.

  But the crowd didn’t laugh, or whisper. Just an uneasy silence filled the moment.

  Behind them, the proctor continued, calling the next name. A boy in yellow silks stepped into the circle, hands steady, smiling. Garett leaned against the wall, clenching his jaw against the pain.

  “Let’s hope it was enough.” Aron said to him, joining him against the wall.

  Garett nervously nodded, acknowledging they had both done what they could….

  Aron sat watching as applicants kept entering, one by one, into examination circles and displaying their personal proficiencies. Garett stood beside him with arms crossed tight enough to staunch the bleeding. Nobles maintained a three-pace radius around them, silk and velvet shifting to avoid the smell.

  This was more magic displayed than they had ever witnessed. Grand and impressive displays, it was noble magic. The kind only possible for those with a lifetime of training and developed mana reserves.

  Garett’s jaw worked, teeth grinding. Every few seconds, blood fell from his wrapped palms onto the stone.

  A slight hum began in Aron’s palm.

  Above, air compressed into a one meter shimmering disk, descending from the secondary tier. A girl stood upon it, black silk robes pooling around her ankles, crimson lining visible at the cuffs where the updraft whipped the fabric. Over the silk, leather armor plates dyed deep red creaked as she adjusted her stance, silver buckles catching the lamplight. Long black hair lashed across her face as sky-blue eyes calculated the distance to the floor.

  Aron quickly estimated, roughly half a mana per second to avoid walking.

  She stepped off before the disk touched down, releasing a soft puff from the disk as the air decompressed. From her right hand hung a leather folio; while her left rose to brush hair from her face.

  Nearby Aron heard a gentle clink as something small and golden fell upon the stone, catching the corner of his eye.

  Sarah Hywell’s hand remained raised, frozen mid-gesture. She looked at her empty finger, then down at the floor. Her head turned left, scanning the hem of a blue wool gown, then right, past a pair of polished leather boots. The ring had vanished into the mosaic of marble and noble footwear, indistinguishable from the brass inlays and buckle reflections. Three hundred bodies shifted and stepped, any one of them capable of kicking her ring into a crack, pocketing it, crushing it underheel.

  Her throat clicked, dry. Head snapping back and forth over the crowd, as she tried to calculate where it must have fallen and bounced to. Drawing a perimeter in her mind. She resisted the urge to fall to her knees to search, like a dog. But without that band, House surveillance would register nothing, mark her as vanished, potentially compromised. The trembling started in her ankles and traveled upward, knees locking rigid.

  Aron crouched and reached out, his commoner fingers closing around the piece of warm metal he had followed, feeling the thrum of tracking enchantment pulse against his palm.

  Standing, he extended his hand. The gold sat heavy in his palm, dense and faceted with runes.

  “You dropped this.”

  She lunged out and snatched the ring from his hands. Her breath caught audibly.

  “Don’t you dare touch that!”

  Her eyes narrowed, focusing past the quarry dust on his coat and ragged hair. Then she glanced at Garett, noting the blood darkening the rags, before returning to further assess Aron.

  “150 mana” he said, voice scraping raw from twenty-four hours without sleep. Grainy edges narrowed his vision to a tunnel; he blinked three times rapidly to clear her face. “At half a mana per second. 150 mana to hover for five minutes. The efficiency ratio is catastrophic.”

  Sarah stood up straight, taken aback by his statement, her trembling ceasing.

  She tilted her head, black hair falling across one eye. “Who told you that?” The words came sharp. Then she paused. “Wait. You computed that without a meter?” She rolled the ring mindlessly in her palm. “How provincial. But I suppose everyone has lucky guesses occasionally.”

  She took a quarter turn, her leather folio snapping open beneath her other hand, revealing a silver stylus which she used to hastily scribble something onto her parchment.

  “You should have kept it.” Garett whispered, having watched the exchange.

  “Yea, maybe. But we don’t need any more trouble.” Aron softly replied, “besides, it looked important.”

  The crowd parted. The sounds of the crowd whispering and shuffling came first, then fingers shot out from the crowd and closed around Sarah’s wrist.

  Lord Hywell stood towering over her, his cloak a deep red, similar in style to the proctors, but ornately decorated with silver threading throughout. She turned, looking up at him in surprise…. but his eyes looked only at her empty finger.

  “Stop embarrassing the House.” He snatched the ring from her hand and forced it back onto her finger, the band catching on her knuckle before sliding home. “I saw you speaking to these laborers. Our house does not associate with those of their class.”

  He pulled her toward the eastern archway. Sarah stumbled, her leather boots skidding on the marble where Garett’s blood had fallen, leaving a dark streak across the pale stone. At the threshold, she looked back over her shoulder. Her eyes finding Aron’s, followed by her soundless lips moving. One, five, five. Before her and her father had vanished into the darkness of the corridor.

  The gong struck three times, as it had every hour since dusk, signaling another wave of noble applicants to withdraw to the dining hall to eat and rest. Now the brass circles stood empty, the proctors’ journals closed, the gallery abandoned.

  A single voice cut the silence. “Conscript batch. Dismissed to the dining hall.”

  Aron peeled himself from the wall. Beside him, Garett straightened, exhausted from lack of sleep. No other figures stirred from the benches. They were the conscripts; two applicants among three hundred, the only ones marked in red ink, the only ones who didn’t belong.

  Garett’s boots scuffed the floor as they moved toward the eastern archway marked with red chalk. His arms remained crossed, canvas stiff with dried blood. Aron walked with one hand trailing the wall, fingertips dragging in appreciation of the perfect stonework and effort that had been burnt to create it.

  The red markers continued down the main stairwell toward the dining halls. But in their exhaustion they turned toward a narrower servants’ passage and continued. Walking down stone steps worn concave by boot traffic long forgotten. Garett followed, saying nothing, too tired to notice or care. The air cooled as they descended below ground level, though stuffy, it was still refreshing and appreciated.

  Shelves appeared from the darkness, rising into shadow between pillars. The temperature dropped further, breath pluming white. Garett stopped, how long had they been walking?

  “This is not the dining hall” Garett said, as he started to notice the cold.

  Aron pressed his scar against the wall. No resonance met his touch, no hum of ambient mana. The stone here drank energy rather than radiating it. “Oh, I guess not.” he said, looking around “The kitchen alone would keep it a lot warmer than this….”

  They wandered forward, the frost underfoot increasing, till the hallway opened into a grand room lined with countless rows of books. Aron could only imagine the wealth of mage knowledge they contained. Not just of magic, but of everything, the world!

  Ahead they saw a small flicker of light coming from one of the aisles. They approached and turned down the aisle in curiosity..

  There, beneath a crystal lamp flickering with unstable output, they found a figure knelt on the frost-covered stone, small, hair white as the frost surrounding them, wrapped in dirty grey wool on the verge of going stiff with cold. Aron couldn’t quite tell her age, she looked young, but maybe because of her size.

  Beside her knee, a brass caliper spanned a precise diameter on the floor, a perfect circle of dark stone surrounded by ice. She held the instrument in one hand, the other resting on a leather satchel filled with geometric diagrams.

  “You are standing in it,” she said, not looking up. Her voice rasped, barely audible over the crystal lamp’s hum. “Step back. One foot. Exactly.”

  Garett looked down. The frost ended in a sharp line. He stepped back, boots crunching on ice crystals.

  The girl raised her head. Pale skin, blue veins visible at her temples and crawling up her neck, eyes too large for her face. A leather strap on her belt held a brass inhaler that clinked against the stone when she moved. She looked at Garett’s hand, at the blood stiffening the canvas, calculating.

  “Explosive contact,” she said. She closed the calipers with a snap. “The burns will be ulcerated by morning. Medical exemption students receive monthly allotments. I have extra.”

  She reached into her satchel, producing a small tin. The lid unscrewed with a soft scraping sound. Inside, black paste swirled with blue flecks, crystallized mana mixed with herbs. It wasn’t an objectionable smell.

  Garett did not reach for it. “For me? Why? We’re not nobles…”

  “Because you will lose manual function in six weeks without treatment.” She extended the tin. Her fingers trembled. “And because I require two observers for null-zone cartography. Proctors refuse to enter the lower stacks after midnight.”

  Aron took the tin. The metal was warm from her pocket.

  The girl leaned back, reaching for the inhaler at her waist. The brass tube was tarnished, the crystal window showing liquid at half capacity. She twisted the valve, pressed the mouthpiece to her lips, and inhaled. She held the breath, cheeks puffing, then exhaled slowly, vapor curling from her nostrils. Her hand shook as she strapped the device back, avoiding their eyes.

  “What’s that for?” Garett asked.

  “Channel necrosis. Congenital.” She wiped her mouth with the wool sleeve. “Pathways never formed correctly.” She tapped the inhaler. “But could be worse.”

  Aron looked at the calipers, at the three-foot circle of dead air. “And this?”

  “A void pocket. Phase state nullification.” She opened her folio, sketching their positions. “This entire academy is built on seven of them. But here it’s the strongest, spells cast here just unravel.”

  Garett applied the salve to his palm, wincing as the paste contacted raw tissue. “Why map it?”

  “Because I need to win,” She said plainly, “I can’t cast competitively. But I can still think.”

  She stopped sketching and looked up, “I’m Gwen, Gwen Maesly, I’m a third year here.”

  “I’m Aron, this is Garett, we came for the exam….”

  “Well, nice to meet you, now step over there, and Garett, you go on the other side over there,” she said, pointing to two spots down the aisle. “This won’t take long.”

  Aron stepped into one of the circles she had pointed to, and for the first time, in a long time… he felt absolutely nothing from his palm.

  She looked up, eyes too large, too bright, and they began charting the observations of her work.

  Frost crunched under their boots as they left the library. They had been helping Gwen for only half an hour, but heard another gong from down the hallway, and knew they had to get back soon. They hastily climbed the narrow stairwell, until they could hear the bustle of nobles again, following the sound to where everyone had gone.

  It was the assembly hall this time, which occupied a cellar vault, stone walls sweating condensation onto the shoulders of those who crowded the plank floor.

  The crowd of students was too thick for Aron to make his way through. It was impossible to even enter the room like this.

  Garett stepped forward confidently. “Let’s go”

  Using his mass to carve a path ahead, canvas coat brushing against silk shoulders that recoiled at the contact. Aron followed close behind, passing a girl weeping into her collar and a boy staring at the floor with vacant pupils.

  Soon they found themselves at the far side of the room, where a registrar in dark red robes stood before a billboard, built into the wall and illuminated by a single chandelier of small fire enchantments. Chests sat beside him, velvet lining visible, holding surrendered flasks. Bodies pressed close, some shaking with suppressed sobs, others rigid with held Gwenon.

  “The results!” Aron rushed forward next to Garett.

  Aron prepared himself for the worse. Mentally telling himself that he had failed, that it was over… trying to protect himself by denying himself hope.

  He began scanning the name column, his heart racing… Knapper, Aron…. Then his eyes slowly followed it over, across the board… Passed.

  At that moment, he wasn’t sure what to do. What to feel.

  Wait, Garett. He looked over at his friend who was still scanning the board, trying to find his name. Aron turned to look also, racing to find Garett on the board.

  Lok, Garett…. Again he followed it slowly with his eyes across the board…. Passed (probation). The red chalk marks smudged slightly, as if written in haste.

  They turned to stare at each other in sheer disbelief. Speechless, the world around fading back into noise. They stood there, unsure what to do next…. As nobles shoved their way past them to look at the board for their own names.

  But their moment was interrupted, as a disk of compressed air shimmered above them, lowering Sarah into the crowd near them. Still in the same black silk robes, her leather armor catching the warm light. She hovered at chest height, looking down at the billboard for her name, then at Aron. "Oh? Don’t tell me you passed… what is this Academy coming to?" She smirked, then the disk rotated, carrying her toward an empty corner near the heating pipes.

  Aron hadn’t seen her demonstration, but given the apparent authority her father displayed, he wasn’t even sure she was required to take the exam.

  Scanning the crowd, Aron spotted William Malborne, standing isolated across the hall. His sky blue robes wrinkled, head tilted toward the floor. He looked defeated…. Aron turned to check the billboard, Passed. He didn’t understand, but he didn’t have time to give it more thought just then.

  Another instructor walked to the hall's podium at the head of the room, slightly raised from the crowd, dark red and golden robes swaying. Silence contracted the room. "Congratulations to those who have been accepted. Dorm room assignments will now be posted. Also, new inductees are reminded that the Crown Exhibition Tournament convenes in six weeks. Participation is voluntary. Survival is not guaranteed." He struck a nail into the wall, posting two broadsheets of thick parchment.

  Aron moved closer and his eyes tracked the ink, noting the parameters. Triad combat. Teams of three. Single elimination. Winner receives a limited Mage License, four year stipend, and one medical grant applicable to for Academy treatment. Seeding matches begin in three weeks. No registration accepted without three confirmed members.

  He calculated the stipend against his father’s mason wages. Twenty years of income compressed into one tournament cycle. His gaze caught the phrase medical grant. He looked at Garett’s hands, at the raw flesh glistening where the rags had peeled away.

  Garett rewound the bandages, knotting them with his teeth. "Three members?" A sound escaped his throat, half breath, half bark. “Well, we have two, it’s just the last one that might be a problem."

  Across the room, near the servant’s exit, a grey wool silhouette shifted. Gwen leaned against the archway, brass inhaler clutched in both hands, the crystal window showing nearly empty. Her eyes fixed on the word grant, the same as last year. She pushed off the wall, leather satchel bumping her hip, and vanished into the corridor’s darkness without a word.

  Aron and Garett checked the dormitory list, their rooms were relatively close to each other. But before leaving, Aron needed to retrieve his flasks, then met Garett back at the entrance again to find their rooms. Exhausted from the day, desperate for sleep.

  “We’ll worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.” Aron said as they searched down the various corridors,

  “Tomorrow is all I wanted.” Garett sighed in relief.

  They found their dormitory cells tucked away from the others, apparently the “conscript dormitories”, not those they would use for nobles. Measuring ten feet square, stone bunks stacked against the wall with basic beddings, no windows, only a grate in the ceiling exhaling warm air from the kitchens below. Garett collapsed on his bed, spreading his hands palm up. Burnt skin cracked but too tired to care. He wouldn’t move again till morning.

  Aron left to his own room and collapsed, playing back the demonstrations he had seen in his head, until he too faded to sleep.