I got lost four times finding the south entrance.
Not metaphorically. Not "turned the wrong way once" lost. Genuinely, completely, embarrassingly lost in a venue that had about six signs pointing the same direction.
The first time, I followed a cluster of Ruby students down a ramp that looped back to the upper amphitheater. I stood there for thirty seconds staring at the empty seats before accepting what had happened.
The second time, I found a staircase that went down one level and deposited me directly in front of a maintenance closet. The sign on the door said ELECTRICAL. I read it twice like it might change.
The third time, I ended up at the north entrance somehow. I don't know how. I'm not proud of it.
The fourth time, I followed a girl with a 36DD chest and forgot I was supposed to be navigating.
She turned left into a bathroom. I kept walking and found the south entrance by accident.
There it was. Four long folding tables staffed by upperclassmen in academy uniforms, each table representing a house. Long lines in front of each one. Students collecting their orientation packets with the practiced efficiency of people who knew exactly where they were going and had probably reviewed the campus map three times already.
People like that were insufferable.
I joined the shortest line, which happened to be House Obsidian's table. The upperclassman running it was a broad-shouldered guy with a jaw like a brick and zero interest in being here. He had a clipboard and the expression of someone counting down the minutes to literally anywhere else.
The line moved fast. These were mostly guild kids who already knew their assignments.
My turn came.
"Name."
"Jace Monroe."
He didn't look up. Just scrolled down his tablet, finger moving through the list. Then it stopped.
He looked up.
The look wasn't hostile exactly. It was the specific look you give a parking ticket. Like, I'm not surprised this exists, but I'm definitely annoyed about it.
"Lottery," he said.
Not a question.
"Yeah."
He went back to the tablet. Tapped something. Scrolled. His expression did a thing where it got very careful and neutral in the way that people get when they're trying not to say the thing they're thinking.
"Monroe, Jace." He pulled a thick envelope from the Obsidian pile. Held it out. "House Obsidian. Welcome."
The words came out flat. Like two syllables away from "I'm sorry for your loss."
I took the envelope.
"Building C, fifth floor," he added. "Room 5E." He paused. Then, quieter, almost to himself: "Obsidian. Good luck, man."
He was already looking past me to the next person in line.
I stepped away from the table and tore open the envelope.
House Obsidian. Room 5E. Class schedule tucked behind a campus map that was going to be completely useless to me based on established evidence. A welcome letter from someone called Dominic Vale, Homeroom Instructor.
I stared at the house assignment for a second.
Obsidian.
House Obsidian.
Of course.
I thought back to the novel. Tried to remember the important parts. "Hunter Academy: America's Elite" had been a solid enough story. Generic protagonist with a hidden overpowered ability. Lottery winner who shocked everyone. Standard underdog arc. The author had decent worldbuilding instincts but wrote emotional scenes like a robot learning to cry from YouTube tutorials.
But I remembered the houses.
Sapphire was the prestige house. The champion house. Where Katerina Volkov lived like royalty and ran everything with an iron fist wrapped in platinum hair and ice-blue eyes that probably made lesser men forget their names.
Ruby was chaos energy. Loud. Competitive. Good fights and better drama.
Emerald was the nerd house. Smart kids who died in simulations because they overthought everything.
Amber was...
I almost groaned out loud.
Amber was the chill house. The support house. The house where Dr. Vivienne Cross was the homeroom teacher. I'd read her description in the novel and the author, for once, had not undersold anything. 34FF. Purple hair. That outfit she wore where the blazer was basically decorative. The character existed in the story mostly as background flavor but the author had dedicated an entire paragraph to describing the way she crossed her legs during class like it was load-bearing plot information.
It wasn't load-bearing plot information.
But I would have appreciated being in her house for about nine different System-related reasons.
Instead, I got Obsidian.
The Gryffindor of this world, if Gryffindor was split down the middle between the brave kids with something to prove and the legacy-obsessed sociopaths who'd push those kids into traffic if it helped their rankings.
Half the house genuinely wanted to be the best hunters alive. The other half wanted to be the best because their families had been the best and anything less was a personal insult to three generations of combat achievement.
The original protagonist, Javier Mendoza, had been sorted here. Which meant this was where the story happened. The drama. The fights. The rivalries that defined the whole novel.
Also this was where Marcus Steele lived. The Rank #2 Elite Ten member who was all jaw and guild money and an ability that amounted to "I built a room where I'm God, come inside so I can demonstrate."
And Dante Pope. Rank #10. The desperate first-year clinging to his Elite Ten spot by his fingernails.
And Bella Cortez, Rank #5, who the novel had described with the kind of detail usually reserved for religious iconography.
I looked at my campus map.
Building C.
I looked around the south entrance area. There were four visible buildings from where I stood. None of them had letters on them. Or if they did, I couldn't see from here.
Great.
I picked a direction.
Building C was behind the Apex Dining Hall, which was behind the Recreation Center, which was not in the direction I'd initially walked.
It took me eleven minutes to find it.
The Obsidian residence hall looked like every other building on campus from the outside. Glass, steel, clean modern lines. But someone had hung a banner above the entrance with the house insignia. Black raven on a purple crystal. The silver thread on the banner caught the afternoon sun.
It was kind of a nice building.
The lobby smelled like expensive cleaning product and low-grade institutional anxiety. A few students were already moving through, dragging bags, checking phones. Everyone had that same tightly controlled expression of people trying to project that they absolutely belonged here and were not at all terrified.
I took the elevator to the fifth floor.
Room 5E was at the end of the hall on the right.
I used the code from my packet. The door clicked open.
The apartment was bigger than I expected.
I'd read the description in the novel. The academy provided good housing. But reading it and standing in 1,050 square feet of clean, modern living space were two different things. Big windows looking out at the Pacific. A kitchen with actual appliances. A couch that looked like it wouldn't destroy your lower back.
Two bedrooms. Two bathrooms.
No roommate yet.
I dropped my duffel bag on the floor in the living room and walked to the window.