You learn the taste of embarrassment as a raw, metallic tang—the way it coats your molars a full thirty seconds before you've even made your mistake. This is your first lesson, courtesy of Professor Evergreen, delivered in public and without warning.
The central courtyard is a theater of wet stone, shivering sunlight, and hovering mana specters meant to illustrate phase changes for you and the rest of the Level Ones. The lesson plan: "Direct Application—Basic Evocation." The reality: you, opposite a fluted copper bowl, sweating through the syllabus as every eye in the circle awaits your inevitable screwup.
Professor Evergreen stalks the perimeter like a warden, voice tuned to carry an undercurrent of contempt through the damp air. "Mr. Fairview," he intones. "You may commence."
You square your shoulders, try and fail not to glance at the bowl, and reach for the resonance. The flaw is immediate; the scar in your palm blooms with blue-green light before the rest of your body even catches up, feeding back into your nervous system too fast for conscious control. The result: a lancing arc of raw static, meant to ignite the air under the bowl, but instead achieving escape velocity and cracking straight through the dome of the demonstration tent.
The class is silent for one luminous millisecond, then chaos: scaffolds implode, mana projections scatter like bugs before bleach, a half-dozen visiting dignitaries from the north quarter are nearly blinded by the ricochet. You hear a dog bark, somewhere, and realize with horror that it's your own voice, yelping like a stunned animal.
Sudden movement to your left: a tall woman, all sinew and officer's posture, steps forward, unsheathes an impossibly long blade, and slices the errant energy stream in half. Both halves dissipate harmlessly into the sky, leaving only a scent of ozone and the iron in your veins.
She sheathes the blade in a single contemptuous motion, expression flat and unamused. Her eyes—so pale they seem artificial—fix on you with dispassionate assessment. She's not faculty, not staff. You recognize her by the uniform: Ferrum Kingdom, highest echelon, warrior caste. They send observers to the Academy sometimes, usually to poach the best talent or intimidate the rest. You never thought you'd rate direct attention.
Professor Evergreen is on you before the glow in your hand even dims. "Mr. Fairview," he hisses, in a register quieter and more lethal than any shout. "Outside. Now."
You do not remember the walk to his office, nor the first part of his admonishment. Your hearing returns only when he says, "You are a liability, Alex, unless you begin to understand your own perimeter."
He pins you with that emerald-ice gaze, as if he could bend your will through force of disappointment alone. "The artifact is not the danger," he says, for maybe the third time today. "It's your refusal to sync with the rest of yourself that gets people hurt."
He tells you again about the mandatory extra labs, the silence protocol, the wristband you must now wear. You nod, sign the forms, and try to imagine a version of yourself who makes it through a full semester without becoming institutional legend.
Back in your room, the city's twilight has knitted together, reluctance pooling at the base of the windows. You rinse your hands, stare at the scar, and consider a thousand and one ways this could all be worse. You fail to convince yourself that it could also be better.
You do not sleep. Instead, you watch video after video—recorded after every Academy incident, every historical screwup—hoping to find the pattern. You see yourself in each clip, a hundred ways over: the desperate failures, the horror-story headlines, the footnotes never meant for public eyes.
You're still awake when the midnight knock comes. Loud, insistent, unrepeatable.
You open to a face you've only seen online and in the backs of textbooks: Lila Thornwood, the swordswoman from today's rescue, the Ferrum observer. She's taller in person, and even more impossible to look away from.
She studies your room, then you, with a patience bordering on malice. "Fairview?" she says, and doesn't care for your confirmation. "Let's walk."
You barely have time to pull on shoes before she's set a pace down the hallway, each stride calibrated to force you into a gentle jog just to keep up. She doesn't talk until you're in a deserted corridor overlooking the Academy's east facade, wind howling through the open arches like the ghost of some future disaster.
"First thing," she says, planting herself between you and the drop-off, "you're not the biggest mess I've dealt with. Not by half." She folds her arms, muscles shifting under the leather bands of her uniform. "But you have a reputation now. And the Kingdom likes to know the shape of its assets."
You start to protest, but she cuts you off with a single glance.
She unhooks a small, battered canister from her belt, tosses it to you. It's heavier than it looks, packed with some kind of chalky powder.
"Standard protocol," she says. "Ferrum kids start on this day one, but you Library types never knew it existed." Her voice is matter-of-fact, neither friendly nor hostile: a field medic's bedside manner, all triage and no bedside. "Contains the feedback—at least until you learn to want the pain."
That phrase lands, and she seems to register your confusion with a flicker of amusement.
"We don't get better, Fairview," she says. "We get meaner. We get used to it." She steps back, scanning the skyline for threats or witnesses, and you notice she never lets her back face any single window for longer than a breath.
"When you're ready for something useful," she says, "come to the lower gym after lights out. Not before." She pauses half a second. "Don't show up late, either."
You barely manage to thank her before she's gone, silent as mist.
You return to your room, cracking the canister and taking a cautious whiff. It's foul, but after the first lungful you notice your hand stops buzzing, the scar cooling to a dull ache. You can almost think straight for the first time since the incident.
A message waits for you on your comm implant, flagged urgent and coded. You expect another lecture, but it's from Dean Vexington, the provost herself. It reads:
Tomorrow. Central corridor, Level 5. Noon.
No context, no signature. You know better than to argue.
#
Level 5 is off-limits to anyone without tenure or death wish, which you have just enough of to pass muster. The central corridor is a relic of the Academy's older days, every surface carved with pre-Resonance wards so thick you suspect even ghosts would have trouble haunting the place. Vexington is waiting by a lightwell, one hand on the rail, the other worrying a data slate.
She turns as you approach, cataloguing you in that way only people who've survived the worst can manage. "Sit," she says, not a question.
You sit.
She reviews her screen, then faces you. "You're not going to make it, unless you learn discipline." There's no anger in her, only impatience for the inefficient.
"You're what the codices call a polyvector conduit," she explains, letting the phrase marinate. "It means you're a magnet for multiple resonance types, and you pull from any source in range. Which is rare enough that the last one ended up in three separate textbooks, none of them happy ending."
You try to process this, swallowing the urge to ask how bad it actually is.
Vexington pushes a thin envelope toward you. "Accept it," she says. "And never, ever let anyone else tell your story for you."
A pause, long enough to grow into something uncomfortable.
"Report to the lower gym tonight," she says. "Miss Thornwood will train you. Show up sober."
You get the feeling that refusal is not on the table.
She stands, affixing you with her best warden's stare. "And if you ever lose control up here—" she taps her temple, once, hard—"I'll be the one to end you. Not as a threat. As a kindness."
You leave with the envelope unopened, only peeling it back once you're safe in your room. It's a photo. Black and white, decades old. A student, maybe your age, soaked in arcane light, eyes too old for her face. The note on the back is handwritten, sharp and sure:
You cannot run from what you are. Try, and you'll burn twice as soon.
#
The lower gym is a box of sweat, broken glass, and low-level mana emissions. Thornwood is already stripping the armor from a training dummy, her eyes glinting in the spare light.
You learn faster than you expect: how to redirect, how to ground the arcs, how to bleed off excess before your veins burn raw. Thornwood is a merciless coach, but you see faint approval when she watches you not-die for the third time in as many minutes.
Through the haze of effort, you begin to sense the pattern: the cadence of pain and pause, the way your mind opens up under duress, the flood of meaning after the shock. Thornwood's mantra repeats in your head: We don't get better. We get meaner.
At the end of the session, you're splayed on the ground, chest heaving, sweat prickling into the open wound on your palm.
She crouches next to you, offers a flask. You taste bitter alcohol, feel the fire work its way down.
"You keep that up, you might even survive the semester," she says, the edge of a smile there if you squint.
"Why help?" you ask, and the question is naked and terrifying.
She almost shrugs, then changes her mind. "Because you're not what everyone thinks. Not a hero. Not quite a freak, either." Her eyes flick to yours, and for a moment you see a wreckage of kindness under the armor.
"And if you're going to die here," she says, "I want it to be interesting."
You're about to laugh, but the sound freezes in your throat as the door swings open and a third figure enters.
Tall, regal, funereal in long black attire. You sense the mana in her like another limb—dense, hungry, layered. Her eyes are wholly unnatural, the color of first frost and last midnight. She's older than you, but her face carries no age at all.
Thornwood's entire body tightens at the sight, and something predatory and cold passes between them.
"Kaela," Thornwood says, voice so flat you wonder if it left her body at all.
The third woman regards you both, then sits on the bench opposite, folding her hands in her lap like this is just another night at the theater.
"Training's over," she says. "Tomorrow, Fairview is requested at the consulate. Umbra Dominion. Bring the artifact."
Her eyes rest on you. "And the scars."
A beat, then she stands, one fluid motion, and the door hisses shut behind her.
Thornwood says nothing for a long moment.
"They'll eat you alive," she whispers, and you can't tell if she means the woman or the job or both.
You flex your palm, feel the old ache with its new, colder undertone.
"Maybe," you say, "but at least I'll glow in the dark."
And neither of you laughs, but in the silence you sense, for the first time since any of this started, something that almost feels like hope.