The road to the Academy was steeper than Kael had expected.
He'd seen a drawing. His father had kept one of the entire country, a rough sketch torn from some book, tucked into the back of the logbook he'd carried through all his years of postings. The sketch showed the plateau from the city below: a flat-topped prominence rising above the city's rooflines, the Academy's main building sitting at its edge as though set there by deliberate hands. It looked, in the sketch, like the city was built around it.
What the sketch hadn't conveyed was the climb.
The road wound up from the city's northern gate in long, patient switchbacks, carved wide enough for supply carts and the occasional dignitary's carriage. Kael was walking it on foot, pack settled across both shoulders — the orientation letter had promised transport from the gate, but he'd arrived two hours early and hadn't wanted to wait. Standing still had become difficult over the last eight months.
The other students who'd made the same miscalculation of arriving early were spread along the road ahead and behind him in small clusters. They were mostly families saying prolonged goodbyes at the base and a few older students walking alone or with friends with the look that said they were grown up and didn't need parents seeing them off. He would have loved to have his parents there to see him off. He focused on students his age and had counted eleven of them so far. These would be his classmates; maybe some of them would even count as friends one day.
He counted exits as he walked. Old habit. His father's voice in the back of his head: You don't need to be paranoid, Kael. You just need to be prepared.
The road offered two branches above the third switchback — one continuing to the Academy, one curving east toward what the sketch had labeled the Plateau Gardens, maintained by the city for public use. Both branches were visible from the switchback's outer edge. One guard post at the Academy branch, staffed by a single figure in Academy colours, checking names against a list. No visible weapons, even though the posture suggested military background. The east branch was unguarded.
Kael filed this and kept walking.
The city spread below him as he climbed, and he let himself look at it once. The grid of streets, the market district's cluster of close-packed rooflines, the long straight avenue that ran from the grid where the city officials lived to the city's southern wall. He'd been to the city twice before, both times briefly, both times with his father, who had pointed at the Academy plateau each time and said something about it. Kael couldn't remember the exact words now. He'd been trying for eight months to remember them and they wouldn't come.
He turned back to the road.
The Academy gate was less imposing up close than it looked from below. Stone, yes, but old in the way of buildings that had been repaired so many times the original stone was mostly memory. The guard at the post was younger than his posture suggested, maybe mid-twenties, with the Academy insignia on his left shoulder and the kind of blankness on his face that came from spending a day watching thirteen-year-olds arrive with their families.
"Name," the guard said.
"Kael Daven."
The guard ran a finger down his list. Stopped. Looked up. Not in surprise exactly, but in the way of someone who had been told the Daven Heir was part of the incoming students. The look barely lasted a second. He returned to the list. "Dormitory C, room fourteen. Orientation begins at the third bell. Calling Ceremony is tomorrow at midday." He handed Kael a folded map of the grounds. "Welcome to the Academy."
"Thank you," Kael said.
He walked through the gate and didn't look back.
The grounds were larger than the sketch had suggested. The main building anchored the plateau's eastern edge — four stories, long, with the kind of architecture that prioritized function. Attached to it on the north side was the training complex, lower and wider, with open-air sections visible above the connecting wall. To the west, a cluster of smaller buildings that the map labeled as specialized facilities, likely gathering prep rooms, classrooms, assessment halls. Between everything: open ground, paths, the beginning of a space that would fill once enough students arrived.
It was mostly empty, loud with the particular chaos of new arrivals.
Kael found Dormitory C without consulting the map more than once. The building was set back from the main complex, three stories, quieter than he'd expected for the number of students it would hold. He found room fourteen on the second floor. A corner room, two beds, a desk each, a window that faced west toward the training complex. The room was empty when he arrived.
He took the bed closer to the door. Unpacked methodically: clothes in the wardrobe, the few books he'd brought on the desk, the small locked box he carried under the desk, his father's logbook — which he had no reason or business to bring and had brought anyway — at the bottom of the box where it would be the last thing visible if anyone searched it.
He sat on the edge of the bed.
The room was quiet. Through the window, the training complex's open-air section was visible. Wooden practice structures, open ground, a far edge that dropped off toward the plateau's western face. Beyond it, Valdenmoor's patchwork of provinces stretched out under an afternoon sky.
His father had looked at this view. Stood at some window in this building, maybe not this one, maybe not this exact angle, and looked out at the kingdom he would spend his life serving. Kael tried to find something in that thought that was comforting. But it was not comforting. It was the kind of thought that sat in the chest and made it difficult to breathe. He still couldn't remember what his father had said. He clenched his hands and breathed deeply and hoped for a distraction.
The door opened. The boy who came in was carrying enough luggage for three people and had the relaxed expression of someone who had never, in his life, encountered a problem he couldn't charm his way out of. He was roughly Kael's height, with clothes that were well-made and practical and the immediate, casual friendliness of someone who'd grown up navigating rooms full of strangers.
He looked at the two beds. Looked at Kael on the bed by the door. Looked at his own luggage. Then, with complete confidence, he dropped everything near the bed by the door, which Kael was currently sitting on, and said: "I was sure the bed by the window would be gone when the guard told me that my roommate was already in. You sure you don't want the bed by the window?"
Kael looked at him and shook his head.
"Great, I will take the one by the window then," the boy grinned. "Better light." He began moving his luggage to the correct bed with cheerful efficiency, apparently unbothered by the fact that there was still a stranger in the room. "I'm Soren. Soren Vael. Scholarship intake, which you probably guessed. You?"
"Kael Daven."
"Daven." Soren considered this as he stacked his bags. "Military family?"
"Yes."
"Thought so. You chose the bed by the door when the one by the window was available." He glanced over. "Either paranoid or practical. Which one?"
Something moved in Kael's chest — small, unexpected. Not quite a laugh. Not yet anyway.
"Both," he said.
Soren nodded as though this was a perfectly satisfying answer and returned to his unpacking. Kael looked back out the window at the training grounds and the long view of the kingdom beyond.
Eight months since the letter had arrived carrying news of his father's death. Eight months of his mother's careful silences and hidden tears and the house that felt like it had too many rooms. Eight months of knowing he would end up here and not knowing what he would do once he arrived.
He was here now.
He would figure out the rest.