Volume I: The Call of the Academy -Part I
The monotonous hum of the transformer on the corner pole was an inseparable part of Emiliano's afternoons. It blended with the distant barking of dogs and the muffled murmur of the radio his mother kept on in the kitchen, as if the whole world carried a soundtrack made of small repetitions. He was fifteen, of medium height—about 1.70 meters—black-haired, with a few freckles on his face. One could say he was a handsome boy, though not quite a model. His life was marked by those invisible routines that are rarely questioned: the brush of the backpack strap against his shoulder every morning, the comforting weight of his dog, Buster, resting his furry head on his lap during the last homework of his final school year, the yellowed notebook pages that smelled of dust and graphite, the sticky heat of the streets when he returned home after class.
Everything seemed fixed, almost immovable. Like the old carob tree in the nearby park, rooted to the ground for decades, indifferent to the passage of time. For Emiliano, life was much the same as that tree: a solid trunk, deep roots, and branches that barely stirred in the wind. There was nothing new on his horizon, no hidden mysteries to uncover—only the reflection of the sun in puddles after the rain and the routine promise of another day just like the last.
And yet, the universe rarely reveals its plans in advance. That boy, who felt so small in a neighborhood that seemed eternal, was about to discover that the ordinary could shatter in an instant, and that behind habit awaited a world so vast and strange that even the most fantastic tales would fall short.
Lately, however, a dissonance had begun to creep into the rhythm of his days. It was a subtle dissonance, like a ripple across the placid surface of his routine, like a whisper carried by a wind he could not hear. One night, he had noticed strange lights dancing across the sky—too fast for airplanes, too erratic for satellites. Of course, one might think of a UFO, but alongside that came unsettling news reports: sudden storms bursting from clear blue skies, patches of stubborn fog clinging to the ground like spectral shrouds. Adults dismissed it all, of course. "Atmospheric anomalies," they said. Or, "Collective hysteria, fueled by too much science fiction." Emiliano, however, felt a tingling on his skin, a deep, instinctive unease that refused to be easily explained. It was the sense of standing at the edge of something vast and unknown, a silent tremor beneath the familiar earth.
Though he didn't know it yet, soon Emiliano would no longer hear the transformer's hum at the end of the street, nor the neighborhood dogs' barks. Instead, he would hear terrifying roars. And the air would no longer smell of dust or freshly baked bread, but of the smoke of magic and the iron tang of bloodied scales.
The call was closer than he imagined.
The day everything changed began like any other.
The sun had barely climbed over the rooftops, spilling timid light across the chipped walls of the street. Emiliano ate breakfast in silence, a piece of still-warm bread in his hand, his gaze lost on the table worn down by years of knocks and pencil scratches. His mother spoke of simple things—the price of fruit at the market, the laundry that needed doing—and he nodded without really listening, wrapped in that drowsiness that clings to fifteen-year-old mornings.
Then, it happened.
A sharp knock on the door—not loud, but enough to break the monotony of the moment. Emiliano looked up, confused. They weren't expecting visitors. His father, brow furrowed, stepped forward to open it. And there, on the threshold, was no person at all—only a large, thick white envelope that seemed to glow in the sunlight. It was sealed with an unfamiliar mark: a wax seal of deep indigo, incredibly elegant. Pressed into the wax was a design that sent an involuntary shiver down his spine—a coiled dragon with spread wings, its scales carved with such intricate detail it seemed almost alive. He had never seen anything like it. The air suddenly felt strange, as though the room itself were breathing with them.
His father picked up the envelope between thumb and forefinger, as if doubting its solidity, and held it against the light, scrutinizing the seal with the practiced skepticism of a man who had seen too many scams and debt notices in his life. For an instant, he seemed tempted to break it open himself, but instead let it fall onto the table, setting the dishes rattling. He didn't hand it to Emiliano, nor push it toward him—he simply left it there, between the bread and the jug of milk, like a ticking bomb.
"Is it for you?" he asked, forcing a dry laugh that never reached relief. The absurdity of the question was as obvious as the envelope itself, yet the words lingered in the air, impossible to take back.
The name—EMILIANO—was written in bold, sweeping letters, with a script that seemed from another century. No one in the family, at school, or even in the neighborhood wrote like that. It was handwriting that was both art and threat, carrying a promise or a warning within its strokes. Emiliano felt a shiver crawl down his spine, from the base of his skull to his tailbone, as if the air itself had turned cold. He stared at the envelope for a long time, without touching it.
"Who sends you letters, boy?" his mother asked, setting aside the butter knife. She spoke softly, almost a whisper, as if afraid to awaken something sleeping.
Emiliano shook his head, unable to form an answer. He had no pen pals, no distant relatives. No one beyond his parents and his dog Buster even knew he existed. And yet, there it was—the undeniable, physical envelope that contradicted every rule of his small universe.