Lyla had slipped a folded schedule under my door the night before, her looping handwriting crowded with ink-smudged doodles and a crooked good luck that almost made me smile. Almost. She'd even drawn a tiny star beside my name, as if that could make any of this feel less terrifying. My first day of training.
The lectures... they read like something out of the mid-century.
Core Theory and Emotional Architecture was the first lesson listed, an old-sounding title for something that, by all logic, should have felt modern and urgent. Instead, it looked like the kind of subject taught in oak-panelled rooms by professors who spoke in riddles and expected you to understand them.
I wasn't entirely sure what the subject of the lessons were going to be, but I hoped, desperately, that it would offer at least some answers, as to what the hell this place was.
I folded the schedule and stepped into the corridor, the cool stone pulling a shiver from my skin. The lights along the wall flickered in soft waves of silver-blue, almost reacting to the sound of my footsteps. Listening.
"Serra."
I turned sharply, almost tripping in the process. Ryn stood by one of the carved pillars, his posture composed, the faint blue light of his Fear Core catching the lanternlight like a pulse.
"Hey," I said, unsure whether I sounded surprised or rude.
He dipped his head in a small nod. "I wanted to see how you were doing... First training day, right?"
The way he said it, quiet, steady and almost careful made something inside me unclench.
"Yeah," I admitted, my fingers loosening around the edges of the schedule.
A hint of a smile touched his mouth, gone almost before I could register it.
"Don't worry," he said. "The first lesson isn't that bad. We usually start with theory."
His calmness should've helped. Instead, it made me hyper-aware of how not calm I was.
Before I could respond, Lyla rounded the corner in a burst of warm perfume and sunlight energy.
"There you are!" she said, looping her arm through mine with the ease of someone who had already decided we were friends.
Her gaze slid to Ryn, slowly and unmistakably playful.
"Well, helloooo Mr. Tall Guy," she said, her smile lifting and eyes examining Ryn from head to feet.
Ryn's posture straightened almost imperceptibly, as if bracing himself.
"Good morning," he replied, polite but clipped, the edges of his voice cooling just enough to counter her warmth.
Lyla's grin widened, more delighted rather than discouraged.
We turned a corner, and the hallway opened into a towering set of brass doors, engraved with swirling lines of light that shifted when the lanterns flickered.
The door swung inward without a sound, letting the beauty of the "theory chamber," as Lyla had called it, wash over us like a sudden gust of wind.
The classroom was enormous, shaped like a circular observatory, its ceiling lost somewhere in the shadows above. Rows of tiered desks curved around a glowing map at the centre of the room. Floating crystal spheres hovered above the diagram, threads of light weaving between them in slow, rhythmic pulses.
Ryn took a seat with quiet precision. Lyla and I slid into the row beside him.
A man stepped into the centre of the room, middle-aged, ink-smudged fingers and a thin coat that made him look more like an archivist than an instructor.
He lifted his gaze toward us.
"Ah," he said, his voice carrying effortlessly through the chamber. "Our new Fear Core. Serra, isn't it? Welcome."
Heat shot to my face as half the room turned to stare.
The instructor stepped closer to the glowing map, his hands clasped behind his back with the easy confidence of someone who knew far more than he would ever say aloud.
"A Core," he began, "is not merely a vessel."
His voice echoed through the chamber, soft but resonant.
"It is memory. Instinct. The echo of what shaped you, and the shadow of what you may become."
Light rippled across the spheres suspended above him, gold, crimson, violet, blue, silver, each one brightening as he spoke.
He gestured toward the golden orb first.
"Hope," he said. "Creation and renewal. The Core of illumination, both literal and emotional."
The sphere brightened, casting warm sunlight across the room.
"A trained Hope bearer can mend wounds of flesh and spirit. They can purify corrupted energy, restore what has been broken, and summon light where none should exist."
Lyla leaned in, whispering, "They're the healers. And the annoyingly optimistic ones."
The instructor moved on, raising his palm toward the crimson sphere.
"Rage," he said, and the air flickered with heat. "The Core of motion, action, and raw power. Fire in all its forms."
The orb blazed, molten light spilling across his fingers.
"Anger bearers summon flame from air, shape heat into weapons, and channel fury into strength that can shatter stone. But uncontrolled... it is just fire. And fire consumes."
A few Anger students smirked proudly.
His hand drifted toward the violet orb, pulsing gently like a heartbeat.
"Desire — connection. Movement between people, energy, intentions."
The sphere responded by casting soft violet waves through the room.
"A skilled Desire bearer can weave empathy, persuasion, and emotional resonance. They can draw energy together or bind their own magic into living things."
I could feel Lyla smiling proudly beside me.
Then the instructor turned toward the blue sphere — Fear.
Its light sharpened, colder, as if listening.
"Fear," he said, his tone deepening. "Instinct. Perception. Survival."
The orb flickered, then glowed steady and bright.
"A trained Fear bearer can hide truths in plain sight, cloak themselves or others, sense danger before it arrives, and craft illusions so real that even the mind that created them may forget where reality ends."
Finally, his hand hovered beneath the silver sphere, its veins of shadow drifting like smoke under glass.
"Grief," he murmured. "Memory. Echo. Stillness."
The orb exhaled a dim, haunting glow.
"Those who bear this Core may relive the past, call forth remnants of energy, or borrow strength from sorrow itself. But the danger lies in forgetting where the past ends and the present begins."
He let the silence settle.
The five spheres hummed in unison, their light spiraling upward like a slow, deliberate breath.
"These," he said, "are the emotions that built our world. Five fragments of emotion in it's purest form."
He paused, letting the words linger.
A student in the back, a girl with crimson streaks in her hair, leaned forward.
"What about the sixth?" she asked.
A hush slid across the room.
The instructor's composure cracked for a fraction of a second.
Then he exhaled, "That," he said carefully, "is not part of your curriculum."
Whispers rose instantly.
Lyla leaned in closer, "They never talk about them."
The crimson-haired girl didn't back down.
"The Trauma Core," she said aloud.
The chamber fell completely still. Every student waiting eagerly for a response.
The instructor closed his eyes for a heartbeat, gathering whatever patience or regret that lived behind them.
"Trauma," he said at last, opening them again, "is not one emotion. It is all of them. Fear. Rage. Desire. Hope. Grief. Every thread snapping at once inside the Core."
A cold prickle crawled across my skin.
"When that happens," he continued softly, "something new is born. Something unstable. Unpredictable. And very, very dangerous."
A Hope student raised her hand hesitantly.
"There's one here," she whispered. "At Velanor."
The instructor's gaze sharpened, voice flattening with warning.
"That," he said, "is none of your concern. The Headmistress allows one such Core to train here under strict containment. You will not interact with him."
The instructor stepped back, letting his final words echo:
"Understand this: Cores like that do not bend. They break. And when they break... they take everything with them."
Lyla swallowed.
Ryn shifted slightly, jaw tightening.
But my mind was already somewhere else, back in the Atrium, in the corner where sunlight had fractured around one person alone.
Aren.
Unstable. Unpredictable. Contained. Yet nothing about him had felt weak.
My heartbeat tightened painfully. For reasons I couldn't name, I kept thinking of the way the sunlight refused to touch him.
And the way he didn't seem to mind.
As the instructor dismissed us, the room exploded into chatter and movement, but none of it quieted the tight pull in my chest.
Not when Lyla grabbed my arm.
Not when Ryn stood.
Not even when she whispered,
"Come on. Physical training's next, and... Serra? Try not to die, okay? ... Commander Dale hates Fear Cores."