The carriage stopped, and I understood immediately why the book back home had only spent one paragraph trying to describe this place. A paragraph was not enough.
The Royal Academy rose out of the hill like something carved rather than built, white stone gone silver in the afternoon light, spires stabbing up into a sky too blue to be fair. Stained glass caught the sun in long arched windows, throwing broken color across the courtyard below, where hedges had been cut into shapes precise enough to embarrass every gardener I had ever met. Lamp posts lined a stone path wide enough for six carriages abreast. Students moved along it in clusters, uniforms sharp, voices low, the particular hum of several hundred people trying very hard to look like they were not nervous.
"Close your mouth," Sera said, stepping down beside me. "You look like a fish."
"I do not look like a fish."
"You look exactly like a fish."
Before I could argue further, a voice cut through the noise from somewhere off to our left, bright and immediate.
"Sera!"
A girl broke off from a nearby group and closed the distance fast, arms already open before she reached us. She had the kind of face built for grinning, sharp-featured and quick, dark blonde hair pulled back in a braid that had clearly given up trying to stay neat.
"Eliza." Sera’s voice softened in a way I had not heard yet, something closer to genuine warmth than the dry amusement she usually gave me. "You are early."
"You are late. As usual." Eliza pulled back and turned her attention on me without missing a beat. "And this must be the infamous little brother."
"Not that little," I said.
"He is younger than you by two years and half your height," Sera said flatly.
"I am standing right here."
Eliza laughed, the kind of laugh that did not care who was watching. "I like him already." She glanced back over her shoulder and raised a hand. "Arthur! Come meet him before Sera scares him off the family entirely."
I studied her for a beat longer than the moment really called for, some quiet part of my mind turning over a detail that did not sit right.
’Eliza Eesper. I do not remember that name. Two hundred Chapters, and I do not remember that name at all.’
It was not a large thing. The novel had never bothered cataloguing every friend Sera ever had, and there was no reason it would have, considering how little space it spared for anyone who was not directly relevant to the plot. Still, Sera’s best friend felt like exactly the kind of detail that should have shown up somewhere, even in passing, even as a single throwaway line.
’Maybe I just forgot. Two hundred Chapters is a lot to hold onto perfectly.’
I filed the thought away without much weight behind it, the way I had been filing away every small inconsistency since waking up in this body, and turned my attention back to the moment actually happening in front of me.
A boy detached himself from the same cluster and jogged over, blonde hair falling loose over his forehead, uniform coat half-buttoned like he had gotten dressed in a hurry and never fixed it. He had an easy, open face, the kind that made you trust him before he had said a single word.
"Arthur Eesper," he said, offering a hand. "You must be Edmund. Our fathers have been friends since before either of us could walk, apparently."
I shook his hand. "Edmund Rhys. Apparently."
"Do not let his manners fool you," Eliza said. "He once tried to introduce himself to a duchess by tripping over his own boots."
"That happened one time."
"It happened twice."
Arthur did not even attempt to argue the second time, just sighed like a man who had accepted his fate, and I found myself already liking him for it.
Around us, the courtyard kept filling, uniforms sharp and dark against the pale stone. Long black coats for the boys, cut close through the shoulders, worn over black trousers and boots polished enough to catch the light. The girls’ uniforms ran similar in color but different in shape, fitted black coats falling into long, slim skirts, high collars closed at the throat.
’Everyone looks like they are dressed for a funeral,’ I thought. ’A very expensive funeral.’
"Everyone looks so serious," I said.
"Give it an hour," Arthur said. "Half of them will be crying and the other half will be bragging. I am told it evens out by dinner."
"Comforting."
"I try."
Sera and Eliza had already fallen into their own conversation a few steps away, heads bent together, voices low enough that I only caught fragments, something about a professor, something about last term. I watched my sister laugh at whatever Eliza had just said, easy and unguarded, and felt something in my chest settle just slightly.
’She has a real friend here. That is good. That is genuinely good.’
The crowd’s noise shifted before I noticed why, a ripple of attention moving through the courtyard like wind through tall grass. I turned toward the academy’s main gate in time to see it open.
It did not creak. It did not groan. The massive iron-bound doors simply parted, silent and smooth, and a man stepped through them flanked by two very different kinds of company.
On his left walked figures in dark, high-collared coats, their exposed skin covered in tight, precise lines of ink that shifted faintly even at rest, like the marks were still being written. Their eyes held nothing readable in them at all.
"Ink-Bound Constables," Arthur murmured, close enough that only I heard. "Bound by blood contract. They protect the faculty. Do not stare too long, it makes them twitchy."
On the man’s right, something heavier moved, footsteps landing with a low metallic thud against the stone. Two towering constructs of brass and dark iron, steam hissing faintly from vents along their shoulders, blank plated faces giving away nothing at all.
"And those?"
"Clockwork Myrmidons. They exist to eat spells and take hits so the important people do not have to." Arthur’s tone stayed light, but I caught the flicker of genuine respect underneath it. "I would not want to be the one testing what they can absorb."
The man walking between them needed no introduction once he reached the top of the entrance steps, the crowd’s noise dying almost instantly, hundreds of students falling silent without being asked. He was not physically imposing, silver-haired, lean, dressed simply compared to his escort, but the courtyard had gone quiet around him the way it only does for someone everyone already respects.
"Welcome," the Headmaster said, and his voice carried without him raising it, "to the Royal Academy."
I felt Sera step up beside me again, Eliza and Arthur closing ranks as well, the four of us shoulder to shoulder near the back of the crowd.
"Every year," the Headmaster continued, "this courtyard fills with students who believe they already understand what they are about to become. Every year, I am reminded how wrong that belief usually is." A faint, humorless smile. "The Awakening Ceremony begins within the hour. Your cores will be tested. Your affinities, if any, will be recorded. What happens after that is entirely up to you."
He let that sit in the silence for a moment, gaze sweeping slowly across the crowd, and for one uncomfortable second I could have sworn it lingered on me longer than anyone else.
’That is probably just nerves. Probably.’
"Enter the academy," the Headmaster said finally. "Your futures are waiting inside."
The crowd surged forward as one, and I found myself swept along with it, Sera on one side, Arthur on the other, the doors of the Royal Academy opening wide to swallow us all.
’Well,’ I thought, ’here we go.’