The walk down into the compound took considerably less time than the climb up to it, which Xavier privately decided was one of the only fair trades the universe had offered him all week.
Up close, the Warrior School was even larger than it had looked from the ridge — a sprawl of long stone dormitories, training yards ringed by wooden fences, and a central hall three stories tall with banners bearing the crossed-sword insignia hanging from every visible rafter. The clash of practice weapons rang out from at least four different directions at once, punctuated by the occasional shouted correction from an instructor somewhere out of sight. Off to the left, a small explosion went off, followed immediately by enthusiastic applause.
"...I've decided not to ask about that," Xavier said.
"Wise," Bruce agreed.
The old man led them through the gates without so much as a glance from the guards stationed there, which told Xavier everything he needed to know about exactly how welcome this particular old man was around here.
"This is where I leave you," he said, stopping just past the entrance. "Registrar's office is the building with the red roof, there. Tell them the young swordsman wants to sit the entrance exam, and they'll handle the rest." His gaze shifted to Xavier, something unreadable behind it. "As for you... I imagine you'll find your own way into trouble soon enough. You have a talent for it."
"That's insulting, and also probably true."
The old man chuckled, low and warm, and walked off toward one of the nearer training yards, hands clasped behind his back. Within a few strides, the crowd of students and instructors swallowed him whole, and just like that, he was gone, name and all.
For a moment, the three of them just stood there.
Three underdressed teenagers at the edge of a school that clearly took itself, and violence, very seriously.
"Well," Stephan said, cracking his knuckles. "Guess we should go find out where to sign up."
***
The registrar's office smelled like ink and old parchment, which Xavier was beginning to suspect was simply the smell every bureaucratic institution across every world eventually settled into, regardless of how many swords its students carried. A stern-faced woman sat behind the desk, barely glancing up as Stephan announced his intentions.
"Name?"
"Stephan. Gojo, if you're doing it, official."
"Prior combat experience?"
"I've killed several wolves, a bandit crew, and I recently set a merchant ship on fire."
The woman's pen paused mid-stroke. She looked up at him properly for the first time, then back down. "...We'll put down 'some.'"
She slid a form across the desk along with a small metal token stamped with the school's insignia. "Entrance exam is tomorrow morning, first light, east training yard. Enrollment fee is five golden suns, due before you're permitted to test."
Xavier felt his soul quietly exit his body and hover somewhere near the ceiling.
"Five," he repeated, in the tone of a man watching his life savings evaporate in real time.
"Five," the woman confirmed, entirely unmoved.
Bruce, wisely, said nothing, and developed a sudden deep interest in a recruitment poster on the wall.
Xavier dug through their shared coin pouch with the slow, deliberate reverence of a man performing a funeral rite, counting the coins out one at a time as though each one might reconsider leaving his hand at the last second. "This is the elderwood money, Stephan. This is our elderwood money."
"I appreciate the sacrifice."
"I don't think you fully grasp the scale of it."
He slid the coins across the desk, wincing like each one physically pained him on the way out. The registrar swept them into a drawer without ceremony and stamped Stephan's form with a heavy, satisfying thunk.
"Congratulations. You're now a candidate of the Warrior School. Come back at dawn, don't be late, and don't die during testing. We frown on that."
"...Wait, that's a real risk?" Stephan blinked, the earlier bravado wobbling just slightly.
The registrar looked up properly this time, sizing him up with the practiced eye of someone who had delivered this exact answer more times than she could count. "You go home with considerably less coin than you arrived with, and considerably more bruises. Some candidates try again next season. Most don't." She shrugged, entirely unbothered by the stakes she'd just laid out. "Statistically, you'll be fine. You look sturdier than most."
"...Is that supposed to be reassuring?"
"No." She was already looking past them to the next person in line. "Next."
"One more thing," Bruce cut in before they could be fully waved off. "Where are guests supposed to stay? We didn't exactly bring a tent."
"Visitor's lodge, west side of the grounds. Ask for a bunk, tell them you're with a candidate. It's free, it's simple, and if you break anything, you're paying for that too."
"Wonderful," Xavier muttered, already turning to leave. "A whole institution built entirely around taking my money."
***
They spent a few minutes simply wandering the outer yards, taking it all in. Dozens of students sparred in loose clusters. Others hurled javelins at straw dummies that occasionally, alarmingly, hurled something back. A cluster of younger students practiced synchronized shield formations under the watchful eye of an instructor with a voice like a foghorn, and a wooden board near the central hall listed names and ranks in neat, competitive rows — a leaderboard, Xavier realized, for something he didn't yet understand and already felt vaguely anxious about. It was, he had to admit, a genuinely impressive place — the kind of setting that made him feel simultaneously inspired and deeply, deeply out of his depth.
"So," Bruce said eventually, glancing at the long stretch of empty daylight ahead of them. "We've got a whole day with nothing to do before the exam."
"A whole day," Xavier echoed slowly. Something shifted in his expression — the particular look of a man who had just spotted an opportunity and was already regretting it before he'd even acted on it.
"...Why do you suddenly look like that?"
"Like what?"
"Like you're about to do something incredibly stupid."
Xavier was already walking toward the nearest training yard, where a lean young man with raven-black hair stood surrounded by floating rings of glowing script, each one rotating slowly in the air like a cluster of tiny orbiting moons.
"I have an idea," Xavier called back over his shoulder, "and it's a great one."
Bruce put his face in his hands. "That's exactly what worries me."