The dining hall at six in the morning was a different place.
Quieter. Half the tables empty. The kitchen staff still setting things out, moving between the service counters with the unhurried efficiency of people who had done this enough times that it no longer required thought.
Corbyn got his food from the commoner line and sat down.
The noble section was mostly empty this early. A few students scattered across the center tables, heads down over communication devices, not interested in the room yet. The merchant tables had maybe a third occupancy.
The commoner table was empty except for Corbyn.
He ate without thinking much about it.
Halfway through his breakfast the two other commoner students from the ceremony arrived together. They looked at the table, looked at Corbyn, looked at each other. Then they sat at the far end with the practiced efficiency of people who had made this calculation before and arrived at the same answer.
Corbyn watched them settle.
Then he looked back at his food.
He understood it. They’d spent yesterday watching a student from their section shatter the Resonance Pillar and summon something that made faculty drop their communication devices. Proximity to that kind of attention had a cost. They were managing their costs.
He didn’t hold it against them.
A folder landed on the table between his tray and the empty seat across from him.
He looked up.
Lyra stood at the end of the table, tray in one hand, the folder already open to the first page. She looked at the empty seats the way someone does a quick calculation and sat down across from him like the calculation had come out in favor of sitting.
"You’re here early," Corbyn said.
"I’m always here early," Lyra said. She pushed the folder toward him. "I went through my family’s private archive last night."
Corbyn looked at the folder.
Inside was a single scanned page. Old document, the original clearly aged at the edges. Handwriting in a precise script that looked nothing like modern notation.
A list of seven names.
Each one had a single word written beside it in the same careful hand.
Calamity-Tier.
All seven.
Corbyn read each name slowly.
Ishtar. Goddess of War, Love and Ruin.
Sekhmet. The Unquenchable Flame.
Abaddon. General of the Sunken Legions.
Nhareth. Warden of Collapsed Skies.
Tiamat. The Primordial Sovereign.
Ereshkigal. Queen of the Land Beneath All Things.
Ares. The God Whose Wars Never Ended.
He stared at the list.
Seven names. Seven Calamity-Tier entities. Every single one of them currently sitting in his pool.
He hadn’t known there were six more.
Neither had I, Ishtar said in his mind. I knew of them. We were never in the same place at once. Aldric summoned us individually, when needed. Between contracts we returned to our own domains. A pause. Seeing his full roster written down like that is.
She didn’t finish the sentence.
Corbyn looked at the list for another moment.
Then he looked up at Lyra.
"These are all in my pool," Corbyn said.
"All seven," Lyra said. "Aldric spent decades building those contracts. One at a time. Each one took years." She picked up her fork. "I thought you should know what you’re carrying before one of them decides to introduce themselves on their own terms."
"Can they do that?" Corbyn said.
"I don’t know," Lyra said. "The historical records don’t cover what happens when a Calamity-class pool sits dormant for two centuries and then suddenly has an active host again." She looked at him. "Which means nobody knows. Including you."
Corbyn looked at the list again.
The seventh name. Ares. Added in slightly darker ink, like it had been written at a different time than the others.
"The last one," Corbyn said. "Ares. The ink is different."
Lyra nodded.
"I noticed that too," she said. "There’s no trial record for that contract. No certification. Just the name and the classification." She paused. "And a note in the margin in Aldric’s handwriting."
"What does it say?" Corbyn said.
Lyra turned the page slightly so he could read the margin.
Four words in faded ink.
He chose me first.
Corbyn stared at it.
That is accurate, Ishtar said quietly in his mind. Ares approached Aldric. Not the other way around. I was there when it happened. Even I didn’t fully understand why. A pause. I still don’t.
Corbyn closed the folder and pushed it back across the table.
"Thank you," he said. "Don’t lose that."
"It’s the only copy outside the family archive," Lyra said. "I know."
She ate in silence for a moment.
Then footsteps approached.
A shadow fell across the table.
Corbyn looked up.
Stellan was passing with his usual group, tray in hand, mid-conversation with the boy beside him. He wasn’t looking at the commoner tables.
Then he was.
His eyes moved across the table. The folder. Corbyn. Then Lyra, sitting across from Corbyn with her breakfast tray like this was a scheduled arrangement.
Something moved through his expression.
Not contempt. Not surprise. Something more careful than either.
He held it for two seconds.
Then he looked away and kept walking.
He didn’t resume his conversation.
Lyra didn’t acknowledge it.
"He’s going to do something," Corbyn said.
"Yes," Lyra said. "The question is when." She ate another bite. "Stellan doesn’t react. He responds. There’s usually a gap between the two." She looked at Corbyn. "Use the gap."
"For what?" Corbyn said.
"To be less easy to respond to," she said simply.
=====================
Summoning Fundamentals was held in a large circular room with a stone floor and ceiling high enough to accommodate whatever students brought out.
Professor Marsh stood at the center with his tablet and the expression of a man for whom this assessment was neither exciting nor tedious. Just necessary.
"Basic demonstration," Marsh said. "One at a time. Show your summon. Hold it for sixty seconds. Demonstrate one ability. That’s all."
He started at the front.
The first student brought out a pair of direwolves. Clean manifestation. Solid hold. Sixty seconds without visible strain.