Vaelen set the basin of water between them like a small altar. The training hall smelled faintly of damp stone and chalk; the afternoon sun slanted through the high windows and painted the floor in long, pale lines. For once, the hall felt less like a schoolroom and more like the quiet before something significant.
"Almost all magic," Vaelen began, "is defined by its caster. By your tune. By the way you hum at the bones of the world." He let the sentence hang, watching each of them with an intensity that made the dust motes feel watched.
Liora, Riken, and Vell sat cross-legged before him, the focus stones glinting in their palms. Vaelen had given each a crystal the day before — small, cool, and humming just at the edge of hearing if you listened too hard. They'd kept them wrapped against their skin all night; the stones tasted like the after-effect of a dream when held to the tongue: metallic and sweet.
"You've learned to find your note," Vaelen said. "Now you shape. Today we try Tier One: simple constructs, direct effects. They're small, but potent. A Tier One strike aimed at a man who refuses to move will break bone or stop a heart if you press it. So you will shape with control and intent."
Riken leaned forward with that grin he thought made him look brave. "So basically, make a tiny deadly thing. Got it."
Vaelen did not smile. He tapped the basin. "You focus through the stone. You hum your tune. The stone aligns your wavelength to the world's thread. Think, and do not think. Feel, but do not clutch. Remember: the spell follows the intention. The note gives it direction."
He turned to Liora first.
"Liora. You've always hummed like the sea, slow and deep. You will be water-shaped. It will suit you."
She nodded, palms tight around the focus crystal. Beneath her skin the scales along her jaw and collarbone glittered faintly in the sun. She set her hand over the basin and let her tune rise, not as a thought but as sensation — tide-smell and the sensation of pressure in her chest. The hum she'd practiced for weeks settled; now it became a tool.
At first, the water simply trembled. Ripples spread, then condensed. Liora imagined a spear of cold, dense as carved blue glass, and the image held. The crystal in her palm warmed. A thin column of mist rose from the basin, then sharpened into a blade of ice no wider than her wrist, glowing faintly in the filtered light.
The tip was delicate and dangerous. Vaelen's expression didn't change. Liora exhaled, and the ice dissolved into the basin's water as gently as a sunbeam.
"Good," Vaelen said. "Controlled. The water yields when you let it, not when you force it. That is the true mages first step."
Riken snorted. "True Mage?"
Vaelen's eyes flicked to him; for an instant Riken felt older than he believed.
Riken went next, hands trembling a little with excitement. His tune was higher than Liora's — a rapid, skipping pattern that felt, to him, like a bell struck at the wrong end. Vaelen placed his hand lightly on Riken's shoulder to still the motion and reminded him to center.
"Thunder responds to abrupt motion," Vaelen said. "Not brute force—concise shock. You will learn to make space sing."
Riken closed his eyes, teeth set, and felt his note thread through the focus stone. The crystal thrummed, and the air snapped cold for a second as if it had been held in place. He pictured the effect: a focused strike of vibration, an echo of a storm, something that hit with the weight of a fall rather than a flash.
A single, thin filament of pale light jumped from his fingertip to the basin, striking the water. It exploded in a concussive crack that sent a spray up and a sharp, ringing sensation into the bones of all present. Riken grinned, hearing the applause of his own nerves.
Vaelen's chin lifted. "Concise. Careful of your width. Too broad, and it becomes a storm. For Tier One, you must make the bolt single-pointed."
Finally, Vell came forward, hands folded in his lap like a man settling stones for a wall. His note was a quiet thing, a low cord that seemed to hush the hall for a breath. Vaelen's gaze softened with something like approval.
"You carry a darkness that is not malevolent but private," he said. "You must learn to give that shadow shape."
Vell's stone warmed against his palm. Where Riken's effect had been a crash and Liora's a crystal, Vell's was a shiver of absence — a small web of shadow that absorbed the light above the basin, centering it into a soft, velvety void. The dark didn't eat light; it made light politely step aside. When Vell drew the shadow out into a strand and pinched its end between two fingers, it felt cool and like velvet, and when he let go it dissipated into a gentle smudge on the air.
Vaelen nodded. "A Tier One shroud can blind or dislocate a sense for a few heartbeats. Used with intent, it can be crippling."
They practiced until the sun had moved across the window frames and the hall softened into orange. Each repetition steadied their hands, tightened their breath, and taught them the dangerous difference between longing and command.
Afterwards, Vaelen gathered them close and spoke quietly. "You now have something to carry. Understand what you make. Use it precisely. To be a weapon is easy; to be a craftsman is hard."
Liora held her stone and thought of the sea, of cold glass and patient tides. Riken hummed under his breath as he watched a loose board in the floor ring when he tapped it, and Vell kept the shadow at his palm like a secret. They were more than three students who could hum. They were beginning to shape air and water and absence.
When Vaelen finally dismissed them, the focus stones had worn faint grooves into their palms.
"It's not yet practice in combat," he said, "but it is a beginning. Remember, Tier One kills when tipped by will. Never forget the responsibility."
They left the hall with the new weight of possibility heavy in their teeth — the sound of their own tunes buzzing like distant thunder and sea foam.