The white-stone lobby was a lie—sunlight without sky, silence without peace. Dylan felt it the moment he crossed the threshold: the air was counting. Each heartbeat tallied against an invisible balance, interest dripping like a leaky faucet no wrench could tighten.
He counted thirty-eight survivors. Some were missing fingers, some memories, one boy lacked a shadow—taken as collateral when he'd tried to outrun compound interest by turning into smoke. They stood in loose clusters, eyes flicking to the only exit: a pair of obsidian doors etched with a dragon mid-roar, pupils replaced by clock-faces ticking toward an hour that hadn't been invented yet.
Mercury-girl—her nameplate now read Argent #017—leaned against a pillar, left eye glassed but smirk intact. "Next course starts when the clocks sync. Guess who's the late fee?"
Dylan didn't answer. He was busy reading the mural. The dragon wasn't decoration—it was a calendar. Every tick advanced a miniature scene carved into the scales: bell tower burning, market square flooding, a boy holding a fork of lightning above a corpse-shaped gap in the crowd. The final scale was blank. Ticking toward him.
A gong sounded inside the stone. Not loud—expensive. The kind of sound that sends invoices instead of echoes. The doors cracked, exhaling cedar smoke and the coppery scent of dragon breath that had been aged in casks of student debt.
> [Course Registration: Syllabus of Scales]
[Professor: Senior Wyrm "Valerian" – asset #0001]
[Tuition: 1 dragon scale per student – payable after mid-term]
[Fine print: failure to collect results in forfeiture of all scales – including your own.]
A figure stepped through the smoke. Not the dragon—its teaching assistant. A human-shaped silhouette stitched from parchment and iron filings, face a blank page waiting for a grade. When it spoke the words crawled across its chest like living typeface.
"Seating is first-come, first-served. Bring flame-retardant stationery. No refunds on souls after add-drop period."
It turned, beckoning. They followed because the lobby was already dissolving, tiles peeling away to reveal a lecture hall built inside a volcanic throat. Obsidian benches ringed a central pit where lava bubbled at perfect note-taking temperature. Every desk came with a miniature anvil, a silver hammer, and a single blank scale—opal, warm, alive.
Dylan took #013 again, the number etched into the desk by a claw. The scale pulsed under his palm, matching the Well's mark on his forearm. Two debts shaking hands beneath his skin.
The parchment-TA raised a hand. Lava parted like curtains and Valerian rose.
Not a dragon the way fairy-tales draw them—this was dragon as institution. Scales like contracts, each clause glinting in a different language. Wings folded like ledgers. Eyes twin ledgers balancing lives in real time. When it exhaled the air filled with footnotes.
> [Mid-term practical begins now.]
[Objective: Forge a binding scale. Material: provided. Tool: your strongest memory.]
[Success criteria: dragon accepts signature.]
A ripple of panic. Students grabbed hammers, slammed memories onto scales. A boy offered the sound of his mother singing; the scale shattered, rejecting sentiment insufficiently rare. A girl paid with the color of her first sunrise; the scale drank it, turned gold, passed. Applause came from the lava—clap-clap-clap of cooling rock.
Argent stepped forward, mercury armor liquefying into a sphere. She slammed it onto the scale, forging a mirror that reflected Valerian's own eye back at him. The dragon laughed, a sound like coins falling into a furnace, and the scale folded into a perfect business card. Passed.
More tried. More failed. Memories cracked like cheap glass, collateral scooped into Valerian's ledger hide.
Dylan waited. Not nerves—calculation. The Well's favor burned against his wrist, a blank IOU waiting for a number. He lifted the Lightning Fork, point still warm from the corridor, and offered the only thing left that hadn't been taxed: the echo of the storm he'd already lost. A copy of a copy—derivative debt.
He placed the fork onto the opal scale. Lightning writhed, forging the echo into a promise—a thunderclap to be delivered at a future date of the dragon's choosing. The scale shuddered, accepted, sealed with a spark that branded the contract onto the inside of his eyelids.
> [Scale forged – derivative grade: A-]
[Mid-term passed – tuition deferred until dragon calls thunder.]
[Interest accrues in heartbeats. Current balance: 0 % … for now.]
Valerian lowered one massive eyelid—a slow, deliberate wink. The message was clear: I own your future storm. Pray it doesn't rain on my parade.
Lava curtain closed. The TA dispersed into loose filings. The volcanic lecture hall cooled, obsidian benches cracking like old paint. Students clutched newborn scales, some gold, some cracked, some still humming with unfinished clauses.
Exit doors appeared—plain wood again—but each bore a personal invoice etched in real time:
- Argent: 1 mirror-scale, due in 99 victories.
- Noble boy: 1 credit-scale, due when his House collapses.
- Dylan: 1 thunder-scale, due when Valerian claps.
He tucked the scale into inventory, next to the sealed favor. Two debts, different collectors, same heartbeat countdown.
The obsidian doors opened onto a new corridor—this one paved with dragon-bone tiles, each step echoing like a coin dropped into a deep, deep well. A sign hovered mid-air, chalked in fire:
Next period: Field Observation
Location: Dragon Roost – East Tower
Bring flameproof notes and a willingness to die interestingly.
Dylan walked. The scale in his pocket pulsed in time with the Well's mark, two predators pacing the same cage. Behind him the volcanic lecture hall sealed, lava hardening into a calendar that only Valerian could read.
Ahead, the corridor curved upward, spiral bones winding toward daylight that smelled of sulfur and opportunity.
He counted steps—not to measure distance, but to estimate how much interest a single heartbeat could accrue before the dragon decided to call thunder.
The answer was always more than he could afford.
He walked anyway.