Leo-Raelian woke to soft blue light seeping through his closed eyelids.
*That's strange. The sunrise isn't blue.*
He blinked awake and looked around their dormitory room. Everything appeared normal except for one detail that made him sit up immediately.
Garrett was awake, sitting on the edge of his bed, staring down at his blanket with the expression of someone who couldn't believe what he was seeing.
The blanket was glowing blue.
Not reflecting moonlight from the window. Not catching some trick of the Academy's magical lighting. Actually glowing with its own gentle radiance, like someone had woven starlight into the fabric.
"Garrett?" Leo-Raelian whispered.
His roommate looked up with obvious relief. "You see it too, right? I'm not imagining this?"
"I see it." Leo-Raelian rubbed his eyes, but the soft glow remained. "How long has it been like that?"
"I don't know. It woke me up maybe five minutes ago." Garrett lifted a corner of the luminescent bedding. "I have no idea why it's doing this."
Leo-Raelian swung his legs out of bed and reached for his bedside candle, intending to light it properly so they could see what was happening more clearly. He channeled just a tiny spark of magic into the wick.
The candle didn't light.
Instead, it burst into a shower of golden sparks that scattered across his desk like tiny falling stars, each one glittering as it landed on his books and papers.
Both boys stared at the twinkling display in complete silence.
"That's not normal either," Garrett said quietly.
Leo-Raelian looked down at his hands. His fingertips were still tingling with magical energy that felt different from usual - stronger, more volatile, like holding too much electricity.
"No," he agreed. "That's definitely not normal."
They sat there in the strange blue glow of Garrett's blanket and the fading golden sparkles of Leo-Raelian's exploded candle, both too surprised to know what to say.
"Do you think we should be worried?" Garrett asked finally.
Leo-Raelian considered this. Despite the obvious wrongness of their situation, he didn't feel sick or frightened. If anything, he felt unusually alert and energetic for being woken up in the middle of the night.
"I don't know," he said honestly. "But panicking probably won't help figure out what's happening."
Garrett nodded, pulling his glowing blanket closer. The blue radiance intensified slightly with the movement, pulsing gently like a heartbeat.
"At least we're both having strange magical problems," he said with a small, uncertain smile. "That's something, right?"
Leo-Raelian found himself oddly comforted by that observation. Whatever was happening to their magic, they weren't facing it alone.
"Yeah," he said, settling back against his pillows to watch the last golden sparks fade from his desk. "It's something."
Outside their window, the Academy grounds lay quiet in the pre-dawn darkness, completely unaware that two first-year students were experiencing their first real magical mystery in the privacy of their small room.
*Tomorrow we'll find answers,* Leo-Raelian thought drowsily. *Tonight, we just accept that magic is strange.*
The gentle blue glow made their familiar room feel like a different place entirely, but somehow not a threatening one. Just... different.
And for now, that was enough.