Dawn at Aurelian Academy did not arrive quietly.
A horn sounded from the central tower before the sun had fully cleared the eastern wall, and by the time Kaelen reached the courtyard, three hundred new students were already gathered in loose rows, breath fogging in the cold, every one of them wearing the same mixture of nerves and performed confidence he’d learned to read years before any of them had learned to hide it properly.
Wren found him in the crowd and squeezed his shoulder once before peeling off toward the older students’ section.
“Don’t embarrass the family,” she said, entirely too cheerful about it.
“No promises.”
The Placement Trials, it turned out, were not subtle.
At the courtyard’s center stood a towering obelisk of pale stone, veined through with something that pulsed faintly blue, and one by one the new students climbed the dais beside it, pressed a palm flat against the surface, and waited for the school’s Examiners to read whatever the stone chose to show them.
The process was simple enough that even the youngest first-years understood it by the second name called: let the stone read whatever affinity lived in your blood, and listen for the tier the Examiners announced afterward — anywhere from a middling, forgettable rank to the vanishingly rare kind that made even seasoned instructors sit up straighter.
Kaelen watched a dozen names called before his own.
A boy from House Calloway lit the obelisk gold and got a respectful murmur — Fire Affinity, Tier C, a solid and unremarkable result.
A girl he didn’t recognize turned it silver-white and drew actual applause — Tier A, Water and Healing dual-affinity, rare enough to matter.
Then Cassian Rathmoor climbed the dais, pressed his palm flat, and the obelisk flared a deep, satisfied crimson.
“Blood Affinity,” the Head Examiner announced.
“Tier B, trending toward A with proper cultivation.”
Cassian didn’t look at Kaelen as he stepped down.
He didn’t need to.
The smirk did all the talking.
He climbed the dais.
Pressed his palm flat against the cold stone, the way everyone before him had.
Nothing happened.
No color.
No pulse.
No flare of light at all — just the obelisk sitting there, inert, while three hundred students went very quiet in the specific way a crowd goes quiet when it senses something has gone wrong and doesn’t yet know whose fault it is.
“Again,” the Examiner said, frowning, and Kaelen tried again.
Still nothing.
A murmur started somewhere in the older students’ rows.
He heard no affinity at all pass through the crowd like a held match, and felt, underneath the murmur, a dozen different flavors of the same reaction — pity from some, contempt from others, and from Cassian’s direction, open, undisguised delight.
It was the Headmaster himself who finally stepped forward — a tall woman in deep Academy blue Kaelen hadn’t seen approach, silver-haired, unhurried, with a weather about her so carefully controlled that he’d mistaken her for one of the stone columns until she moved.
“Step down, Lord Veyland,” she said, not unkindly.
“The obelisk reads affinities it recognizes.
She turned to the Examiner.
“Mark him Unclassified.
Provisional Tier: Unknown, pending direct instructor evaluation.” Then, quieter, meant only for Kaelen as he descended the dais: “I received a letter about you three years ago, from a Cataloguer who seemed rather more interested in you than the Guild’s usual correspondence allows.
I find I am considerably more interested in what that stone couldn’t read than in what it can.
Come to my office after evening bell.
Alone.”
The Examiner scratched the verdict into his ledger without much confidence in his own handwriting — Unclassified.
Tier pending.
— and the courtyard’s murmur climbed a full notch louder before Kaelen had even finished descending the dais.
The whispers followed him back through the crowd the way they always did — some things about him never changed, obelisk or no obelisk.
Wren caught his eye from the older students’ section, a single sharp glance that meant I heard, and I’m furious on your behalf, and we’ll talk tonight.
Someone else caught his eye too.
A girl in deep green, standing near the front of the crowd where the highest-ranked families gathered, hadn’t laughed with the others.
She hadn’t looked away either, the way most polite courtiers managed when someone else’s humiliation was too awkward to witness directly.
She’d simply watched him the entire time, with an expression that looked, more than anything else, like recognition.
Evening bell, Kaelen thought, climbing down from the dais with the whispers still trailing him.
Apparently my first real day here is going to be considerably longer than I planned.