Leaving home was harder than I thought it would be.
I had imagined this moment a thousand times over the past four years. The triumphant departure, the tearful but proud farewell, the first steps on the road to a bigger world. In my imagination, I had always been brave. Resolute. Ready.
In reality, I stood in the doorway of our house with a pack on my back and my throat so tight I could barely breathe.
Mother held me for a long time. She didn't cry. Elira Vareth was not a woman who cried in front of her children. But her arms trembled, and when she pulled back, her large, dark eyes were bright with something she would never admit to. The morning light caught the planes of her face, those high cheekbones, that smooth dark brown skin, and for a moment she looked impossibly young and impossibly old at the same time.
"You remember who you are," she said. It was not a question. "You remember what we taught you. You remember your faith."
"I will."
"The world will try to change you, Kael. It will show you things that make you angry and things that tempt you and things that make you doubt everything you believe. When that happens, you hold onto what is true. Do you understand?"
"Yes, Mother."
She touched my face with both hands, her slender fingers warm against my dark cheeks, studying me as if memorizing every detail. Then she stepped back and let Father take her place.
Arden Vareth was not a man of many words. He never had been. But the few words he chose carried the weight of mountains, and when he placed his heavy, calloused hand on my shoulder, his dark skin rough against the fabric of my shirt, his thick fingers gripping with a strength that was careful and deliberate, and looked into my eyes, I understood everything he wanted to say without him saying any of it.
"Make us proud, son. But more importantly..." He squeezed my shoulder. "Make yourself proud. The man you become matters more than the power you gain."
"I understand, Father."
"Good." He released me and stepped back, folding his massive arms across his broad chest. "Now go. Before your mother changes her mind and locks you in the cellar."
Lyra waited until last. She stood with her arms wrapped around herself, trying very hard to look indifferent and failing completely. Her lower lip was doing that thing it did when she was fighting back tears, a slight tremble she would deny under torture. The braids framing her face swung as she shifted her weight, and her dark eyes, bright and wet despite her best efforts, refused to look directly at me.
"Don't do anything stupid," she said.
"Define stupid."
"Anything that results in you not coming home."
I pulled her into a hug. She resisted for approximately half a second before grabbing onto me with a fierceness that surprised us both.
"I'll come home," I whispered. "I promise."
"You better." Her voice was muffled against my chest. "Because if you die in some magical academy nonsense, I will find a necromancer and bring you back just so I can kill you myself."
I laughed. It came out wet and unsteady, but it was real, and it made the knot in my chest loosen just enough to let me breathe.
Riven had returned by then and stood apart from the family, leaning against the fence with his thick arms crossed over his broad chest, his close-cropped hair catching the light and the scar above his eyebrow pale against his dark skin. He gave me a single nod. The kind of nod that between brothers meant I believe in you and don't let anyone push you aroundand I'll hold things together here all at once.
I nodded back.
Then I turned and walked away from the only home I had ever known.
The Academy scouts, whose names I learned were Instructor Dorian Halk and Scout Maren Cray, were waiting at the edge of the village with a covered wagon and two horses that looked significantly better fed than anyone in Ashwick.
Dorian was the bearded man, and up close he looked even more tired than he had on the platform. Deep lines framed his eyes, and his silver-streaked brown hair suggested he had been doing this job long enough to have lost all romantic notions about it. He carried himself with the practiced efficiency of someone who had evaluated ten thousand hopefuls and found nine thousand nine hundred of them unremarkable.
Maren was different. There was an energy to her, a sharpness in those brown eyes that hadn't dimmed despite what must have been weeks of traveling from village to village. She was the one who had held the crystal when it did... whatever it did. And she was the one who kept glancing at me with an expression I couldn't quite decode.
"We'll reach the Academy in approximately twelve days," Dorian said as I climbed into the wagon. "There are two other recruits being picked up along the route. You'll meet them at our next stop."
"Other recruits?"
"The northern highland route covers seven villages. You are the third recruit we've enrolled. The other two are waiting in Thornwall, about two days' ride from here."
I settled onto the wooden bench inside the wagon and tried not to think about the fact that I was leaving Greenvale for the first time in my life. The interior was sparse. Two benches facing each other, a few supply crates, and a lantern hanging from a hook that swayed gently as the wagon began to move.
Maren climbed in across from me while Dorian took the driver's seat. She sat down, crossed her legs, and studied me with open curiosity that she made no effort to disguise.
"So," she said. "You want to talk about what happened back there?"
"The crystal?"
"No, the weather." She smiled, a quick, sharp thing. "Yes, the crystal."
I hesitated. The truth was, I had been thinking about nothing else since it happened. That white light. That sound. The way the air had tasted afterward, like metal and lightning.
"I don't know what happened," I said honestly. "I put my hand on it and it just... reacted."
"That's one way to describe it." Maren leaned forward. "I've been a diagnostic scout for six years, Kael. I've tested over twelve thousand applicants. Do you know how many times I've seen a crystal produce a white reading?"
"How many?"
"Zero." She held up a closed fist. "Never. Not once. The standard spectrum runs from dim blue, minimal aptitude, through deep blue, green, amber, and in extremely rare cases, violet. The last violet reading I saw was three years ago, from the daughter of the Eldramere noble house, and she's currently ranked in the top five students at the Academy."
"And white?"
"White isn't on the spectrum. White isn't supposed to be possible." She sat back. "Which means either our crystal malfunctioned for the first time in four hundred years of continuous use, or you are something that the diagnostic system doesn't have a category for."
I processed that. It didn't make me feel better.
"What do you think it means?" I asked.
Maren was quiet for a moment. Through the canvas covering of the wagon, I could hear the creak of wheels and the rhythmic clop of hooves on packed earth. The sounds of a journey beginning.
"I think," she said carefully, "that the High Magisters are going to be very interested in meeting you. And I think you should be prepared for the fact that the Academy is not going to treat you the way it treats other first-year students."
"Is that good or bad?"
"Honestly? I have no idea."
That was, I was learning, the most common answer to any question I asked about my own abilities. Nobody knew anything. Not the healer who called me unusual. Not the scout who had never seen a white reading. Not me.
I leaned my head against the side of the wagon and watched the landscape of Greenvale slide past through a gap in the canvas. Rolling green hills, scattered farmhouses, the distant silver ribbon of the River Cael catching the morning sun.
Lord, I prayed silently, I don't know what's happening. But You do. So I'm going to trust that You have a plan, even if I can't see it yet.
It was the same prayer I had offered every day of my life, in one form or another. And like every other time, no voice answered from the sky, no sign appeared in the clouds. But there was a quiet warmth in my chest that felt like reassurance, and that was enough.
It had always been enough.
We reached Thornwall on the evening of the second day.
It was larger than Ashwick. A proper town, with stone walls and a market district and an inn that actually had a sign with painted letters instead of a piece of bark with charcoal scratches. The kind of place that would have seemed cosmopolitan to me a week ago and now felt like a waypoint on a journey toward something much bigger.
The two other recruits were waiting at the inn. I saw them before they saw me, and I took a moment to observe, a habit Father had drilled into me. Watch before you speak. Understand before you act.
The first was a young man about my age, leaning against the wall of the inn with the practiced nonchalance of someone who wanted you to think he didn't care about anything. He was tall, taller than me, which was an accomplishment, with sandy blond hair that fell across his forehead in a careless sweep and sharp green eyes that tracked everything in his vicinity with predatory alertness. His skin was fair and lightly sun-touched, with a scattering of faint freckles across the bridge of his straight, narrow nose. He had an angular face, sharp cheekbones, a pointed chin, and a jaw that was more defined than wide, with the kind of features that looked aristocratic even when he was trying to appear common. His clothes were simple but well-made, suggesting money that was being deliberately understated. A sword hung at his hip, not decorative but worn in the way tools are worn by people who use them.
The second was a young woman sitting on a bench near the door, reading a book so thick it could have been used as a weapon. She had dark red hair that fell in loose waves past her shoulders, and even sitting down, there was something about her posture, straight-backed, shoulders square, chin level, that suggested a lifetime of being told to sit properly. Her skin was pale and smooth, almost luminous in the evening light, with a dusting of freckles across her cheeks and the bridge of her delicate nose. Her face was heart-shaped, with a high forehead, softly arched brows, and a small, precise mouth. Her eyes were a startling shade of pale green, almost luminous in the evening light, and they flicked up from her book the moment the wagon pulled into the courtyard.
Maren jumped down from the wagon and approached them with familiar ease.
"Darius. Elara. Meet your fellow recruit."
I climbed down and stood before them, acutely aware that my patched traveling clothes and dusty boots told a story I couldn't edit. My dark skin stood out in this highland town the way it always did outside of Ashwick. Not dramatically, but noticeably, a difference that people registered before they registered anything else.
The young man, Darius, pushed off the wall and looked me over with the kind of assessment that was more reflex than rudeness. His eyes lingered on my build, my hands, the way I carried my weight. Sizing me up.
"Darius Ashford," he said, extending a hand. His grip was firm. "Thornwall province. Formerly of the Ashford trading family."
"Kael Vareth. Ashwick village."
His eyebrows rose slightly at village, but to his credit, his expression didn't change. Whatever judgments he was making, he kept them behind his eyes.
The young woman stood, tucking her book under her arm. Up close, she was striking. Not just beautiful, but possessed of a kind of composed elegance that made the simple act of standing up look like a statement of purpose. She regarded me with calm, measured curiosity, her pale green eyes studying my face without flinching or looking away.
"Elara Thorne," she said. Her voice was smooth and precise, each word placed with intention. "Pleasure to meet you."
"Likewise."
There was a pause, the kind of silence that happens when strangers are trying to decide how much of themselves to reveal. I could feel both of them reading me the same way I was reading them, and I found that oddly comforting. At least we were all uncertain.
"Well," Darius said, breaking the silence with a crooked grin. "Twelve days in a wagon together. This should be interesting."
It was the first honest thing any of us had said, and I found myself smiling back.
"Interesting," I agreed. "That's one word for it."