The dormitory was quiet in that particular way only a city like Nullhaven could conjure—where silence was never truly empty, only waiting.
Kaelen stepped through the arched threshold of the Initiate Wing and into a space carved from black basalt and long-forgotten intentions. The walls bore faint glimmers of mirrored etching, sigils half-visible unless caught from the corner of the eye. Four bunks, four chests, and no sign of comfort. Just the cold geometry of a place that expected its occupants to break and never complain.
"Roommate?" someone called.
The voice came from above—literally. A boy hung upside-down from the top bunk, hooked by his knees, dark curls dangling over his inverted face. He held a half-eaten ration bar between his teeth and grinned like he enjoyed gravity purely as a suggestion.
Kaelen blinked. "Apparently."
The boy flipped down with a twist and landed smoothly, brushing imaginary dust from his collar.
"Talen Orin," he said, sticking out a crumb-covered hand. "Mirror-Touched. Drama enthusiast. Trauma survivor. How do you like your nightmares—slow and creeping, or loud with extra fog?"
Kaelen shook the hand warily. "Kaelen Miris. Just trying to survive the day."
"You're in the right room for that," Talen said, motioning around. "This is Dorm Six. We call it the Thinking Pit. If you hear whispering at night, it's probably us. If it isn't, good luck."
Before Kaelen could respond, another voice spoke up from deeper inside the room.
"He twitches when he's trying to sound funny," it said. "That's how you know he means it."
Kaelen turned.
The second boy leaned casually against the narrow window ledge, his face pale in the lantern glow. His eyes were the color of extinguished starlight. Black-on-black. His hair, the same. He hadn't made a sound approaching.
"Seren Draal," he said, pushing off the frame with effortless stillness. "Mirror-Touched. I like long walks through collapsed memories and the sound of someone else's regret."
"That's not a joke, by the way," Talen muttered. "He says things like that before breakfast."
"Sometimes during," Seren added.
The last occupant didn't bother standing. He sat cross-legged on his bunk, completely engrossed in a thick sheaf of scrolls.
"Corwin Thatch," he said without looking up. "Noble-born from the Iskar Fold. I brought extra robes, annotated doctrinal charts, and a memory-stabilized moth named Vim. Please don't touch him."
Kaelen blinked. "A moth?"
"He eats fear residue. Keeps the air clean."
Seren tilted his head. "We should feed him Talen's ambition. Might slim it down."
Talen gasped. "How dare you. This ambition is artisanally inflated."
Kaelen stifled a laugh. It was strange how quickly the cold faded when surrounded by people who didn't quite know how to be normal. Maybe that was the point. Maybe being Mirror-Touched meant learning to live in the gaps between what you were and what you pretended to be.
The bell tolled through the walls—one deep, sonorous chime that made the witchlights flicker.
Talen groaned. "Orientation. Time to go be formally threatened by someone in a nicer mask."
Seren had already vanished. Kaelen didn't hear the door open.
Corwin rolled his scroll shut. "They say our instructor this year's a Paragon."
"A Paragon?" Kaelen asked, following the others into the corridor.
"One rank below Sovereign," Corwin said, nodding seriously. "Apparently, his name is Master Drevan. Survived three grief implosions and rewrote a suicidal army's memories so they surrendered to their own shadows."
Talen whistled. "That's either horrifying or hot. Maybe both."
"It means," Corwin continued, "that if he tells you to forget your own name, you'll probably thank him for it."
Kaelen fell silent. The hallways of Nullhaven stretched around them, quiet as always, carved from memory and black stone. He traced the crescent-shaped Brand between his brows without thinking.
A Paragon.
They were walking into a lesson taught by someone who had stood at the edge of despair and chosen not to blink.
Good.
Kaelen had questions.
He just wasn't sure yet whether he wanted the answers.
The Orientation Hall was shaped like an open eye, wide, black, and far too aware. Benches curved along its outer wall, layered in descending steps toward a single monolith at the center. An obelisk, polished obsidian laced with silver cracks. It pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat too slow to be human.
Kaelen sat between Talen and Corwin while Seren took the far edge, half-swallowed by shadow. Dozens of other initiates filled the space, all Mirror-Touched, their Brands glowing faintly beneath hoods and veils.
When Master Drevan entered, he made no announcement.
No footsteps, either.
Only the sudden awareness that he had always been standing by the obelisk.
He wore layered black robes, stitched with mirrored threads that reflected nothing. A half-mask of etched iron covered the upper portion of his face. The skin around it shimmered with memory scars—lines that never healed, not because they couldn't, but because they weren't meant to.
When he spoke, it wasn't loud.
But silence fled to make room.
"You are not chosen."
His voice was calm, precise, heavy with the weight of someone who no longer needed to raise it.
"You are not safe. You are not special. You are fragments. Shards. The Mirror did not mark you out of kindness. It marked you because something in you was already broken."
The obelisk pulsed once. Kaelen felt the resonance in his teeth.
"You carry despair as your inheritance. You will learn to wear it like a blade, or you will be swallowed by it. There are no other outcomes."
He began to pace the spiral of benches, tapping the floor with a slender cane that struck in time with a heartbeat Kaelen could no longer hear.
"The Three Brands rule this world. Flame. Mirror. Veil."
He lifted his hand. Three sigils appeared on the obelisk in perfect clarity.
A crown of fire. A silver crescent. A twisting void.
"The Flame grants strength and command. The Veil, silence, and negation. But you… you bear the Mirror. The Brand of suffering. Of perception. Of memory."
He turned, gaze sweeping the room. "You will learn to fracture your enemies. But first, you will fracture yourselves."
A boy on the far bench raised a hand hesitantly. "What if we don't want to break?"
"Then you are in the wrong hall," Drevan said without pause.
Another voice—a girl, clear and skeptical—called out, "Is it true the Mirror can implant love?"
Drevan smiled. It was not reassuring.
"Once," he said. "If the subject survives, you won't."
Talen leaned over and whispered, "I've changed my mind. I want to be a farmer."
Corwin nodded solemnly. "He's a Paragon. If he says you're a farmer, you probably will be."
Drevan tapped the obelisk. Its surface rippled like water.
"Your ranks will not come easily. From Initiate to Adept, you must survive your own failure. From Adept to Ascendant, you must weaponize it. From there? Sacrifice. Domination. Eclipse. And perhaps, for one in a million, Apotheosis."
He stepped back.
"None of you will reach it."
No one laughed.
"No one expects you to become sovereigns of fate. Only survivors of it."
His hand lingered on the obelisk.
Kaelen stared into the stone, and for one impossible moment, he didn't see his reflection.
He saw three.
Flame over his heart.
Mirror on his brow.
Veil down his spine.
The vision flickered. Gone.
No one else reacted.
Except Seren, who leaned close and whispered, "That was loud."
Kaelen stared at him. "What?"
"Your reflection. It screamed."
Before Kaelen could answer, Drevan's voice cut once more across the silence.
"Remember this: your Brand is not your gift. It is your cage. Your only hope is to outgrow the bars."
He tapped his cane once against the stone. The sigils faded. The room breathed again.
"You are dismissed."
Kaelen stood slowly, pulse thudding like it belonged to someone else.
Corwin was already listing doctrinal cross-references. Talen muttered about enrolling in Veil-brand gardening.
And Seren… Seren was watching the obelisk.
His reflection didn't move.
Kaelen turned away before he could wonder why.
He touched the pendant beneath his tunic.
It was warm again.
And waiting.
Tomorrow, the real training would begin.
And Kaelen wasn't sure if he would survive it, or become the reason someone else didn't.