They made it to First Bell on time, which felt like a small miracle and a large lie. The Lotus banners were still half asleep, lifting and settling in that almost-breeze the courtyard always had, and the mosaics on the Hall of Petals floor had decided to be kind and not trip anyone. Uniformed students streamed by in tidy slate lines. The eight of them cut across like a rumor: no uniforms, badges glinting, expression ranges from we've slept to we've made peace with staying up all night.
Hikari reached without thinking and straightened the edge of Raizen's collar. He didn't notice until her knuckles brushed his jaw. They both decided the sun was interesting.
"Schedule," Lynea said, like a prayer and a threat. "Advanced Luminite Theory, Combat Kinematics, History of Vanguard & Symbols. Do not get distracted."
Arashi fell into step the way doors fall open for people certain of themselves. Ichiro existed exactly where he needed to be and nowhere else. Feris walked backwards for three steps, smiling like the day had already sent her a secret.
The bell shook the air, not loud so much as absolute. The day began.
First class. Advanced Luminite Theory. The instructor had already turned half the board white with chalk before anyone arrived. His coat was an intense leather-ish brown. The hair, the committed white of somebody who'd been set on fire and outstared it. His spectacles were perched halfway down his nose like he didn't need them so much as they needed him. Apparently, the Royal Scholars had a professor and classroom to themselves, while the other, normal students were more than 20 in a single class.
"Seats" the professor said, without looking at them. "Pens. Ears. Names later."
He wrote three words in a hand that could have cut fruit: grain, resonance, bleed.
"Luminite is a crystal before it is a miracle" he said. "Respect its grain and you live. Ignore it and you pull a building onto yourself."
Esen opened his mouth. Hikari, without turning her head, kicked his shin. He made a strangled sound and wrote don't die on day one on his slate, the popular term for tablet.
The professor flipped a chunk of raw luminite in his hand. It caught the hall's red light and sulked about it. He drew a lattice so clean it made Arashi's breath do an appreciative thing.
"Resonance" the professor said, tapping the second word. "You do not push energy through a thing. You ask its shape to remember what it is and sing with it. The song is not romantic. It is correct."
He spun, chalk flying, and pointed at Raizen. The chalk dust settled on Raizen's jacket like a blessing that didn't agree with itself.
"You" the professor said. "Fast hands. Tell me what Principles of Luminite Conduction says."
Raizen could feel Hikari beside him go still, the same still she had when a complicated knot turned in her fingers and she refused to let it win. He thought of the gray second edition in his hand last week, diagrams marching like soldiers. He thought of the tenth - cleaner lines, faster claims.
"The newer version cut out all the parts where the crystal said "No" to" Raizen said. "It took the easiest curve, so you can memorize it and feel clever. The older one shows you where it breaks your wrists."
A silence fell that was not unfriendly. The professor's mouth did a very small thing that might have been a smile if it hadn't been so sharp.
"Name" he asked.
"Raizen."
"Keep both books" the professor said, as if this was a verdict. "And your wrists"
He turned to the board again and sketched a figure-eight of energy paths, then another with the loops braided. Keahi leaned forward - her pencil slowed.
"Bleed" he said, underlining the third word. "Energy goes somewhere. It never goes nowhere. If you don't tell it where to bleed, it chooses. It could, and might chooses you."
He gestured, and a trolley of innocuous instruments rolled in from the side door: a tuning fork on a stand, a basket of small metal rings, a modest length of tempered wire stretched between two hooks. He tapped the fork on the desk. The note sank into the room and sat there, tidy.
"Resonance" he said, and touched the fork with the luminite. The sound changed - not louder, but wider, a ripple you could have stepped onto if the floor had let you. The wire shivered. One of the rings hopped like a thankful bug.
"Bleed" he said, and took his hand away. The sound contracted to polite. "It's like music. The more harmonies and chords you use, the better time to use them, the more complex they are, the better they sound, the better your song will turn out"
He let the luminite sit on the desk, casual as a coin. Esen stared at it like temptation. Feris stared at it like a sign.
"Questions" the professor said.
"Can you braid conduction routes through two materials at once" Keahi asked, all at once, then looked like she wished she'd swallowed the words.
"Yes" he said. "It hates you for a week and then thinks you are clever. But don't be clever until you are 100% correct."
He pointed at Arashi. "Define grain in a way that will still be true when I'm dead."
Arashi did not blink. "The path a thing would take if you stopped trying to be important."
The professor blinked for him. "You may continue to wear that jacket" he said. "It makes sense."
From the back, a hand went up, tentative. Esen asked "If resonance is a song, does everyone hear the same one?"
"No" the professor said. "Good ears hear the same song. That's what practice is for. Bad ears call noise truth and build a chapel for screaming."
Esen made a face that Hikari had to copy down because it was, in its way, the perfect face for someone that loved noise.
On the way out, the professor stopped Raizen with a fingertip on his sleeve - not catching, just asking for a second.
"Fast one. Raizen, was it?" he said, soft. Up close his eyes were not old. They were fire set to low. "Don't try to make the tenth edition feel true because it feels easy. Make the old edition safe because it holds the actual truth. If you do the first, I get to be right about funerals. I hate being right about funerals."
Raizen nodded. The hum under the floor tapped his boot once, like a teacher.
Combat Kinematics now. The training hall had windows that pretended to be honest and a floor that wasn't. Rods slept in the ceiling like a field of upside-down grass. The instructor, a woman with muscles that would make a grown man cry wore the expression of a person who understood gravity personally and had decided to weaponize it. She raised one hand - the rods woke.
They dropped in lines, then pendulums, then unpredictable arcs. The air filled with the clean snap of moving metal. The instructor's voice cut through: "Patterns first. Flow second. Don't fight the room. Convince it."
Hikari had already done the convincing. The instant the first pattern set, her shoulders loosened in recognition. The Rust Room had made a language out of movement. This copy spoke a dialect.
"Baseline" the instructor said. "Walk it."
Normal students went first, stepping like thought, hesitating through the wide swings, pausing to let a rod pass like a polite disagreement. The instructor nodded - not approval, exactly. A start.
"Royal Scholars" she said, and the room's attention tightened. "Try. Let me see if you deserve that title."
Hikari stepped in without waiting for anyone to decide if she should. The first rod swept left - she ducked - the second right - she turned - the third split speed - she slid. Nothing flashy. Nothing big. She adjusted by inches, letting the rods graze the space a heartbeat after she'd occupied it. Her braid made its own little weather.
The instructor watched without blinking. "Increase."
The room obeyed. The rods doubled, then crossed, then learned new directions out of spite. Hikari's expression didn't change. Her feet did - a flow that put weight where the floor would like it and took it away exactly when the rod lied. She didn't race. She didn't pose. She finished the circuit and looked mildly surprised to still be attached to herself.
"Again" the instructor said, but there was an almost-smile now. "Maximum."
Someone near the wall made a noise that meant please don't, but the ceiling didn't care. The rods came down like a storm that wanted to be music. Hikari exhaled once, like someone putting a needle to a record, and stepped back in.
Even Arashi forgot to look effortless. Esen's grin went slanted and proud. Feris, hands clasped, whispered something to fate about being nice. Raizen felt that trick in his chest again - breath there, not there - and held it, neither, both.
Hikari cleared the course a second time, with that same un-dramatic clean. She stepped out, cheeks flushed like she'd ignored the idea of oxygen for a minute. The instructor didn't clap. She didn't need to. The hall had done it for her with the click and settle of rods finding rest.
"Who taught you to walk like that?" the instructor asked, curious, eyes sharper.
Hikari hesitated. "An empty room" she responded.
The instructor nodded once like she and the bad intentions had been pen pals.
Keahi watched the first pass, then closed her eyes for two breaths and stepped into the second. She didn't have Hikari's fluency - not yet - but she had stubbornness. She counted beats under her breath - not numbers, rhythm - and put her feet where the next right step would be, not where it was. Two rods clipped her - shoulders once, hip once - and she came out scowling at no one in particular.
"It's fine" she muttered to herself. "I can be better."
"You are better" Arashi said, and made it a fact by saying it like that.
Esen tried one trick too many, thinking he could skip the third swing if he charmed it with the second. The rod corrected his chaos with a tidy hit to the forehead. He bowed to it, to laughter from the wall.
Ichiro's turn took no time and all the time. He didn't move fast. He also didn't get hit. The instructor, who had seen everything and valued three of those things, watched him like a puzzle she wouldn't mind not solving.
"Again tomorrow, and something different" she said, when they'd all cycled through. "You" she added, to Hikari. "You're going to map the course with your feet and then teach me something I missed."
"Yes" Hikari said, without apology.
As they filed out, normal students whispered without malice and with a small amount of awe they hadn't decided whether to be ashamed of. "She didn't even touch them."
"The rods - did you see…?" "Royal Scholars" someone breathed, and someone else, with last year in their mouth, said, "They're just different" and meant it like a complicated hope.
Afternoon shifted the light to a long gold that made the dust in the air look like deliberate decoration. The history classroom had more shadows than it had to, like it enjoyed them. The professor stood at the front wearing the same oxidized-copper coat Raizen remembered from the library. Up close, it looked less like fabric and more like something found in a room that had decided to turn itself into a museum. His hair was the exact wrong length for comfort. He didn't blink until you realized he had and then wished he hadn't. On his desk sat a small tray of pins and four empty little velvet squares, like teeth pulled and waiting.
"Sit" he said, gently, which was somehow worse than if he'd yelled. He didn't introduce himself. He wrote, in tiny white on the board, the four evolutions of the crest - the small four-point star - the star lengthening, a crescent starting to cradle - the full star nested in the up-facing crescent - the final addition of the down-facing crescent, complete. He stood beside the drawings like a priest and a magician both, obscuring nothing and revealing less.
"What is this?" he asked, tapping the first, the smallest. "And say badge and I will take yours for an hour."
"A promise" Feris offered, and then sat back like she'd tossed a coin into a well.
He stepped close to the front row without warning. The uniformed student there went very straight and tried to look like nothing at all.
He reached out, quick as a cat, and plucked Arashi's badge again. Flipped it. Frowned at the back like it had been rude to him personally. Set it on the desk.
"Definition" he said to Arashi, voice mild as weather. "Without reaching for it."
Arashi did not move his hands. "Not a crown" he said. "A compass. It doesn't say what I am. It tells me where I stand."
The professor's eyes did that glitter that isn't kind. He turned the badge in his fingers and set it where Arashi could see it and not touch it.
"Better" he said. "If you call it a crown, you will wear it like a hat and the first wind will take it."
He drew seven strokes on the board under the final crest, like tally marks that had other lives. Three of them he rubbed out with the heel of his hand. He didn't look at anyone while he did it.
"What is the Phalanx" he asked. "And don't say seven unless you can count the ones not here."
Silence, heavy and polite.
Lynea began, careful. "Once seven, now four. Not a myth. A function."
"Close" he said.
"History is a list of things we still allow ourselves to speak out loud" he said then, brighter, like he'd changed hats. "Symbols are memory tricks. This" he tapped the small star, "is the trick that says 'You are being watched. You said you'd try.' It is not a crown. If you wear it like one, I will invite you to my office, and my office collects things." He gestured vaguely at the tray of pins. In it, Raizen saw at least two older badges resting like guilty birds.
He began to pace, slow. He had long fingers. They made quotation marks in the air when he said things people had died saying.
"Why the crescents?" he asked, turning sharp.
No one wanted to be wrong. Arashi wanted to be right out loud. He waited exactly one breath to see if someone else wanted it more. No one did.
"It reminds us of the heavenly object that brightened the darkest nights, when the sky wasn't just clouds." Arashi said. "It's a symbol. We are the lights that make way through the darkest nights."
The professor stopped. For a moment he looked less like a man and more like a decision.
"Good" he said, not smiling. "So why this-" he underlined the empty space between the crescents "-matters more than the crescents?"
Raizen felt, faintly, the floor hum again. Arashi's mouth did a thoughtful slant. "Because emptiness is where the choice happens" he said. "Symbols are shapes, but action is the part that isn't drawn."
The professor set Arashi's badge back on his jacket with exacting care, two fingers pressing it home like a seal.
"You earned it back" he said. "For now."
He moved on as if he hadn't just tested a heartbeat. He taught dates without saying them out loud. He sketched battles without the gore and let the room supply it. He traced the history of the crest, when the second crescent was added, why the down-facing one was fought over by committees for a year because they were afraid of what giving back meant. He made them copy a passage that had been rewritten three times by three different directors of the Academy, each with a slightly more comfortable verb. He showed them how to spot the comfort.
Esen tried a joke once about collectors being thieves with display cases. The professor did not blink for three full seconds and then said "Yes". Esen sat with the sensation of having just won and lost something at the same time.
When the bell let them go, the professor dismissed the class with a nod and an afterthought: "If your badge feels heavy, that's not the metal. That's the promise. If it feels light, check if you're wearing it."
He lingered after most students had filed out, arranging his tray. As the eight passed, he called, without looking up, "Arashi."
Arashi paused.
"Your jacket" the professor said, still not looking. "It does make sense. Keep making it make sense."
Arashi's mouth did the barest thing close to a smile. "Obviously" he said, dry as good wine.
They reconvened in the quadrangle, the afternoon now the color of coins no one spent. Students drifted, the way water finds a lower plane. Raizen hadn't realized he'd held his shoulders tight all day until he let them drop and there, he discovered the muscles he had neglected.
Keahi was still thinking in diagrams. Esen had chalk in his hair and pretended it was a choice. Lynea had the day lined up in her head like a recipe that would either bake perfectly or explode interestingly. Ichiro had acquired a book between classes; no one had seen when.
"Still alive?" came Kori's voice from nowhere and everywhere. She was on the low wall like a cat. "Good. Tomorrow might hurt more."
She hopped down and fell into their knot without asking. "Report."
"Hikari embarrassed physics" Arashi said.
"Raizen insulted an edition" Keahi added, as if proud.
"Lynea fought a verb and lost" Esen intoned.
"Arashi protected a badge with a definition" Feris said, pleased.
"Ichiro continued to be a haunting" Hikari said, and Ichiro bowed an apology to no one.
Kori looked at each of them like she was taking inventory of bones and mischief. For half a heartbeat, something serious cut the line of her smile - pride, or worry, or that old weight she never let live on her face for long.
"Good" she said. "You look like students. We're building wrists and ears."
"Ears?" Esen said.
"For resonance" Kori said, tapping her temple. "For when things sing back. And especially for when I'm yelling."
She pulled a folded notice from her coat and flicked it at Raizen. He caught it on reflex.
"Eon Foundations - orientation at week's end" she said, casual. "Do not sneak into the lab. The small, old woman will end you with a look. Ask me how I know."
"How do you know?" Hikari sighed
"I like that you think I'd incriminate myself" Kori said, already walking. "Come on. Debrief and disaster carbs at home. Tomorrow, Crown Spine before dawn."
Hikari's eyes widened. "Before dawn -"
"Relax" Kori said over her shoulder. "It's a metaphor. It's at dawn."
Arashi sighed like a poem. Keahi made a small sound that might or might have not been excitement. Esen announced that dawn was a social construct and got a pastry shoved into his face.
They crossed the courtyard in two beats - the Academy's hum under their boots, the red of the banners cutting the sky into manageable pieces, the promise of a building old enough to have opinions and young enough to keep making new ones.
Raizen glanced back once at the Hall and the windows that sometimes reflected you and sometimes didn't. The day had been a test that didn't call itself a test. He hadn't failed. He hadn't won. He'd stood where the badge told him and not fallen off the edge of himself.
"Tomorrow" Hikari said softly, falling into step, as if she could read the direction of his thoughts.
"Obviously" he said, and the word didn't even feel like a joke anymore.