The day Kai had been building toward for two years announced itself with a drop of cold water on his nose.
He blinked awake under the patchwork roof of his shack as another fat drop fell through a stitched seam and splashed his cheek. The world was still gray—the hour between lantern and sunrise when Clayhaven smells most like smoke and iron and wet rope. Outside, carts squealed over cobbles. Somewhere close, a pipe coughed steam and a woman barked prices for yesterday's bread.
Kai lay still for a breath, listening to the city like a heartbeat he'd learned by feel. Then he rolled from his cot and planted his feet on packed clay.
"Today," he told the floor, voice low. "Stand with me."
The earth did what it always did: it held.
He washed with a cup of boiled water, scrubbed grit from his face, and dragged a short-bladed knife through his hair until it stopped catching on his ears. The mirror shard threw back a boy who looked like someone else's younger brother wearing a grown man's stare: dark hair hacked clean, amber-brown eyes with sleepless brightness, a jaw set against doubt. He pulled on his best tunic—patched but mended straight—and a short jacket he'd stiffened at the seams with hardened mud the color of old leather. Scrap metal laced his forearm brace; the weight steadied him. From the shelf above Bran's old cup,
"Entrance," he murmured, tucking the token under his shirt. "Nothing more. Nothing less."
He stepped outside. Dawn hadn't yet broken—but the city was already awake for it.
Clayhaven climbed in rumpled tiers toward the upper districts like a city that had tried to stand up too fast and gotten dizzy. Steam pipes ribbed the alleys. Laundry lines crossed like webbing. The air tasted of rust. To the east, a vein of dull fire marked the furnaces. To the west, the terraces of cleaner stone began—the part of Clayhaven that pretended it wasn't sitting on the rest.
Rell waited where the alley widened into a lane, hands shoved in his pockets, breath smoking in the cool. His hair stuck up like he'd fought a small fire in his sleep and almost won. When he saw Kai, his grin landed first.
"You look almost respectable," Rell said. "Unsettling. Do I bow?"
"You can try," Kai said. "You might fall."
"True." Rell clapped his shoulders—four faint crimson lines kindled under his skin for a heartbeat and faded. "You ready?"
"No," Kai said honestly. "But I'm going anyway."
"That's the spirit. Move before the nobles decide to shift the gate two streets north just to make us late."
They climbed.
Morning routes were never quiet; today they had edges. Vendors rolled carts earlier to catch the crowd. Children hawked good-luck charms made of bottle glass and twine. A skinny man in velvet offered "trial tips" for a copper, then melted into the press when a guard looked too long. At the Great Sluice, the river—half water, half industrial regret—dragged itself under grates, slapping stone.
"Remember when we tried to sell scrap here?" Rell stepped around a puddle trying to become a lake. "Guard told us to keep the stink down."
"It was the guard," Kai said. "He just noticed himself."
Rell laughed, nerves crackling under the sound. "Think they're really gonna test us fair?"
"Fair is an angle," Kai said. "We find the one that doesn't tip us off the edge."
They reached the first gate at sunrise. Light hit the upper terraces and spilled down in sheets, turning smoke to gold for a few improbable seconds. Guards in lacquered breastplates watched from cut-stone platforms, bored and sharp. Lines braided through the square—merchants' children in new wool, minor nobles in silk, a handful of slum kids in their one good shirt. Every third face looked like it had slept badly. Every tenth like it had never slept badly at all.
A woman with a ledger the size of a paving stone stamped tokens and checked names. Kai pay the three silver entrance fee.
Rell paid in coin—three silvers he'd scraped together through theft, haggling, and one lucky job neither of them named in daylight. The coins flashed once and disappeared into the gate's slot like a hungry mouth.
They passed under the arch and into the middle city—cleaner bones, same body. Broader streets. Painted shutters. Oil smell giving way to bread. But the same layered weight: even this part looked up at something higher.
They climbed again.
And then the Academy assembled out of height and air and intention. Two black rock doors rose taller than any gate Kai had seen, streaked with pale veins that pulsed faintly—ley-light like a slow heartbeat. Beyond them, the complex sprawled across the plateau: courtyards and arcades and towers of white stone crisscrossed by bridges that didn't quite touch until you walked them. Crystal channels lit the undersides of arches like lightning frozen mid-thought. Mana hummed so steadily that silence felt like a sound it made.
Rell stopped dead. "Ah," he said. "So that's what money looks like when it learns magic."
Kai couldn't speak for a breath. The place wasn't just big; it was right. Every column sat where a load wanted to go. Spans resolved tension the way a good answer resolves a question. He had the sudden, ridiculous urge to apologize for every insult he'd ever aimed at stone.
"This is where the sky begins," he said, and realized he'd said the words before—on the night the token felt heavier than his hand.
The crowd funneled toward a sunken oval: the trial arena, ringed by tiers like terraced fields. In the center, smooth stone spread in concentric rings, each etched with runes that folded into one another like gears. Gray-gloved proctors stood at the cardinal points. And at the far end, elevated on a platform with no rail, a single man watched the field with the kind of stillness that made everything else look fidgety.
"Principal," someone whispered behind them, and the whisper rippled. "Dravik Solren."
Kai had heard the name in markets and in lies. Seeing the man made the lies look thin. Solren didn't glitter. No cape of fire. No circus of wind. A plain dark mantle clasped by a silver seal. Iron-gray hair cut close. Eyes pale gold and very, very quiet. When he turned his head, the arena seemed to follow, iron filings orienting around a magnet.
"Welcome," he said, not loudly, and every voice died.
"You have come to ask this place for three things: power, purpose, permission." He let the last word hang like a bright knife. "You may earn two. You will not be given any."
Rell leaned in. "Is he… threatening us?"
"Setting loads," Kai said softly. "So we don't collapse the frame."
Solren lifted two fingers. From the seams between rings, pale light rose—a delicate lattice threading the field and sinking into the floor beneath the candidates' feet. The air sharpened.
"Phase one," Solren said. "Calibration. Control, not spectacle. The craftsman's hand, not the storm's noise."
Proctors moved with surgical economy. Lanes marked themselves in light. Names were read. Groups gathered.
"Kai Terran!" called a voice he recognized. He turned to Ena—shaven scalp, pale eyes, slate in one hand. The air around her seemed to hush by habit.
Ena, Arch-Instructor of Control—a name Clayhaven whispered with a mixture of fear and respect. Former Siege-Warden of the Terra border, rumored to have ended three sieges with logistics instead of fire. Her Vein was an academy riddle—some swore Wind for the way she arrived without sound, others Earth for the way crowds stilled when she planted her foot. What no one disputed: when Ena said Begin, fools stopped being fools or left on stretchers. She taught Control and Combat Ethics and was known in soldier stories as the Silence of the Steps.
"Rell Vance!" she added, and Rell's grin flashed like a spark. "Bam Garren! Taren Gale! Vara of House Varrin!"
They stepped into the same lane.
Kai looked up—and up. The candidate beside him was a mountain wearing clothes. Seven feet if he was an inch, shoulders like a doorway, hands like shovels. River-stone coloration, hair that refused to stay tamed, and eyes—gentle gray—that flicked to Kai and down again, as if afraid of looming.
"H-hi," he said, voice soft. "Bam."
"Kai," Kai said. "Earth?"
Bam nodded, grateful. Four faint amber lines kindled along his wrists and faded. "Yes. I'm… not good with small things."
Rell offered his hand the way you offer a biscuit to a bear—casual, hopeful. Four crimson veins pulsed up his forearms in greeting. "Rell. Fire. If anything needs to be less small, I'm your man."
"Don't encourage him," Kai said.
At the far side stood two others: Taren Gale, a Wind Vein with silver hair and a clasp spinning lazily in air that wasn't moving—when he exhaled, emerald veins spiraled his forearms like vines; and Vara Varrin, Fire noble, ruby pendant bright, two crimson lattices crawling her hands even while she stood still. Vara's smile belonged on a statue you weren't allowed to touch.
"Slum rats," she observed, as if identifying a stain. "How quaint."
Rell bowed almost politely. His crimson lines brightened in a smirk. "Your house has my sincere permission to be impressed later."
"Contain yourselves," Ena said, not unkindly—and words snapped to heel. She lifted her slate. "Calibration: three tasks."
She gestured; trays slid from the floor as if the arena grew them—polished stone basins of pale sand, jugs of water at each corner, a stylus laid like a challenge.
"One: formation. From loose sand, form a perfect cube the size of your fist and maintain cohesion under interference. Two: balance. Keep a flat surface under variable-frequency vibration while inscribing a continuous line. Three: composure. Maintain both while I attempt to distract you. No interference with other candidates. On my mark."
A chorus of yeses. Vara's sounded like obviously. Bam's sounded like I hope so.
Ena snapped her fingers. "Begin."
Rell's hands warmed; crimson climbed his knuckles and sank as he forced himself to control instead of scorch. Vara flicked her ruby and the sand at her tray eddied in hot updrafts before she even bent. Taren exhaled; emerald spirals twined down his forearms as the grains on his surface sorted themselves like schools of fish.
Kai set his fingertips to the sand. It whispered back: quartz, silica, mica; moisture low. Two drops. Compress, hold, release—small pulses, like a tapper evening a block before the chisel. He pictured the cube first—edges true, planes even, no voids to betray him. When the sand answered, it did so reluctantly and then with relief, the way a crowd parts for someone who knows where he's going. Amber traced faintly beneath his skin—Earth Vein lines glowed soft and steady from wrist to elbow, no flare, just rhythm.
The cube rose—not gleaming, not dramatic—just right.
Ena tapped a glyph; the pedestal hummed. Vibration rippled through the basins. Rell's glowing lump starred with hairline fractures. Vara's glassy block pinged musically, then slumped as hidden stress remembered itself. Taren's air-cushioned cube quivered and held. Bam's… Bam's cube was enormous. He blushed and tried to shrink it with both hands, which is not, generally, how cubes work.
"Smaller," Ena said gently.
"Sorry," Bam whispered. He coaxed mana back; amber lines brightened, then calmed. The cube tightened to regulation and, to Kai's surprise, steadied. Not pretty. Stubborn. Kai liked it.
The hum shifted higher—like a string tightening in the dark. Kai felt frequency sweep through his cube and out the corners like lightning looking for ground. He shifted his pressure half a heartbeat out of phase, amber veins pulsing to that off-beat. The worst of the wobble canceled. The cube looked bored.
"Inscription," Ena said.
A line—no breaks, no lifts—around the tray's rim while the surface under the stylus moved like a table being nudged by an invisible giant. Taren's stylus skated, leaving a chancy ribbon. Vara's line was perfect for two-thirds, then clipped itself at a corner so narrowly you'd miss it if you wanted to. Rell muttered a prayer to a mischievous god and committed to confidence; his line came out surprisingly decent.
Kai didn't fight the shake. He rode it. Loose wrist, sure elbow. The chalk laid down like silk from a spindle. Amber traced faint under his skin, steady as a metronome.
"Composure," Ena said, close enough that Kai felt the air change.
She didn't clap or shout. She asked very softly over the hum, "Why do you shape the corners first?"
Because corners fail first if you ignore them. Because the world breaks where it's sharp. Out loud: "Stress concentrates there. If the edges are honest, the face can be persuaded."
A breath that might have been approval. "Time."
The hum faded. Chalk dust settled. Somewhere across the arena, a child began to cry softly, sound swallowed by stone.
Ena lifted Kai's cube with two fingers and rapped it against the tray. It answered with a dull, satisfying note. She weighed it. Set it back. Moved to Bam's. The giant froze like a cliff afraid of heights.
Tap. Bam's cube stayed a cube. His amber lines glowed brighter, then dimmed with a shy smile.
Across the oval, a bell note spilled through the morning—clear, singular. Heads turned. On a raised practice pool near the Principal's platform, a figure stepped onto water as if it were polished stone. Her hair was so white it threw blue where the light hit; her eyes were deep, glacial blue. Azure veins shimmered under her skin as water climbed her calves, froze into twin rings, and stacked with impossible exactness. She nudged a finger. A third ring slid free, equal in thickness, equal in grace, clicking into the others like a promise.
"Aria Frostveil," Taren murmured. "House Frostveil."
Vara made a brittle sound. "Water tricks."
Kai only watched the economy. No waste. No noise. Precision like a law.
Headmaster Solren's gaze flicked to the pool and away—as if excellence were expected as gravity. He raised his hand. Across the field, proctors mirrored him.
"Final stability," Ena said. "Then scoring."
Kai set his fingertips on his cube and found the small places he'd ignored—the lazy corner, the face that wanted to bow, the hidden bubble pretending to be nothing. He adjusted. Amber pulsed to the mountain's beat. The hum rose again; his chalk line trembled and did not break.
Ena's slate clicked. "Done."
She walked their line one more time, charcoal making a friendly scratch. She stopped between Kai and Bam and looked down the lane at all five—Rell with scorched knuckles and a grin he tried to sit on; Taren wind-ruffled and calm, faint emerald still spiraling his wrists; Vara glaring at a world that had failed to bow; Bam trying to occupy less air than he needed; and Kai, heartbeat syncing to stone.
"In this lane," Ena said, "all five pass Calibration."
Bam's mouth made a slow delighted O. Rell whooped before remembering where he was and converted it into an awkward cough. Taren inclined his head like he'd expected nothing else. Vara lifted her chin as if reality had finally taken a useful hint.
Ena checked her slate. "Placements for your next phase will follow shortly." Her eyes slid to Kai for less than a blink. "Do not get comfortable."
"I don't know how," Kai said—mostly to himself.
Above them, Solren's voice rolled again—quiet, inexorable. "Candidates, hold for assignment."
Runes in the floor crawled like living geometry. Beyond their lane, a new gate sighed open, cool air breathing from deeper inside the Academy. Wet stone scented the draft. Somewhere down that corridor, a curated wilderness waited—the Hunting Grounds. Beyond, opponents with names and houses and strategies.
Rell bumped Kai's arm. Four faint crimson veins brightened and faded with the motion. "We made the first cut," he said softly. "Not a dream."
Kai flexed his fingers. Amber glowed and settled. The earth pressed back like a friend.
"We're building," he said.
He looked up—past proctors and nobles, past the cold grace of Aria and the quiet gravity of Solren—up to the bridges lacing tower to tower like lines in a design he hadn't yet learned to read.
A city above a city above a city. A sky that began at ground level if you knew where to stand.
He took a breath that tasted like stone and possibility.
"Ready," he told the floor.
The floor hummed like an answer.