Spandrex stepped through the iron gates of Umbran University with mud on his boots and silence on his tongue.
The gates creaked open only for him.
The carriages had already arrived—sleek, floating things draped in family banners, pulled by creatures that looked like horses but moved like ghosts. Students stepped out in silk-lined robes, their faces glowing with enchantments woven into their collars. Laughter floated through the air like perfume, deliberate and practiced.
They were sons and daughters of old magic and older money—families with spell-kept estates and names that filled volumes of registry books. Spandrex was none of that.
He came with a secondhand coat two inches too short at the wrists, and a letter sealed with fading red wax folded in his coat pocket: Scholarship Recipient – Orphan House of Harbrin. Admitted by Special Grant.
He didn't meet the eyes of the robed guards. He didn't speak. He barely breathed. Just walked past them, clutching the strap of his satchel like a lifeline.
The courtyard beyond was massive, paved with black stone that shimmered in the light like ink in motion. At its center stood a towering statue of the university's founder, a woman in robes and chains, holding an open book that bled smoke from its pages. Spandrex glanced up once. For a moment, he thought the statue turned its head.
The university felt alive.
Buildings sighed with age. Gargoyles blinked when no one watched. Ivy crept along walls in patterns too symmetrical to be natural. The sky was a constant gray-blue, as if caught between dusk and storm.
A floating brass sign drifted past the gates and clinked to a stop before him.
Orientation: Follow the Hall of Echoes.
He followed.
The hall was long, arched, and silent—except it wasn't. As Spandrex walked, the stone around him breathed with soft sounds—whispers with no mouths, shoes with no feet. The walls leaked memories from centuries of students long gone. He didn't understand what they said, but they pressed into his ears like smoke against skin.
And they lingered.
Like they recognized him.
He was one of only two orphans chosen every three years to receive the university's "Mercy Grant"—a scholarship for the nameless, the forgotten, the poor.
But this year, only one had arrived.
The other child, a girl from the same orphanage, disappeared two days before the letter was sent. They'd searched the dormitories, the basement, the records. Nothing. No note. No body. Not even a trace.
The caretakers whispered it was nerves.
The older orphans whispered it was the shadows.
Spandrex didn't speak about it. He had shared a wall with her. He remembered her voice—strange, distant. She used to talk in her sleep about books that breathed, pages that screamed, and a door that opened inward instead of out.
He hadn't told anyone what he saw the night she vanished: a pool of ink that didn't reflect light, seeping from beneath her door.
Orientation was held in the Thornspine Chamber, a circular hall with floating lanterns and an enchanted ceiling that mimicked the sky—except today, the sky was blank. A pure, flat grey.
The seats were arranged by House—Opheliad, Draeven, Myx, Lunex, and Veld. Each one bore its crest in glowing gold. Their students arrived in clusters, robes embroidered in house colors, names called aloud with pride and applause.
Spandrex sat at the back.
His chair had no symbol.
It creaked when he sat.
He pulled his coat tighter around him as the Headmaster—an old man with a copper eye and a voice like parchment tearing—spoke of legacy and law, of the sacred discipline of recorded magic, and of the danger knowledge posed to the unworthy, the unready, and the uninvited.
Spandrex listened.
The others didn't.
"That's the scholarship boy," someone murmured behind him.
"From Harbrin House."
"They actually let him in? I thought that grant was discontinued."
"Disgusting. Imagine reading spells next to… that."
Their words weren't cruel to them. They were just facts. They didn't whisper to avoid hurting him—they whispered because talking too loud might let his poverty touch the air they breathed.
Spandrex said nothing.
He knew how to disappear in a room.
He'd had to.
After the speeches, after the roll calls and the feasts laid out for the elite, Spandrex was handed a folded sheet of paper by a silent, robed figure with no visible face. The paper unfolded itself as soon as it touched his hand.
Dormitory Assignment: South Wing.
Room: 17.
Occupants: 1.
Note: Walls are old. Do not speak to them.
He made his way through misted arches, past glass staircases and a garden that bloomed only in moonlight, until he reached the door marked 17. The hallway was darker here. The air colder. The shadows sharper.
He unlocked the door and stepped inside.
It smelled like paper and stone.
The room was small, single-windowed, and entirely silent. There were no luxuries. A bed, a desk, and a trunk already waiting at the foot of it.
His name was burned into the wood of the lid.
He didn't remember packing anything.
Inside were exactly three things:
A folded uniform—plain black, no crest.
A dull iron quill with a faint hum.
And a book.
He hadn't brought the book.
Its cover was the color of ash. No title. No author. No clasp. Pages closed, edges faded, but warm—warm, like it had been waiting.
He stared at it, not daring to touch.
Then glanced up—toward the mirror mounted above the desk.
And there he saw himself.
But in that reflection, his eyes were not brown.
They were black.
And blinking.