Corbyn woke at midnight for no reason he could name.
He lay still for a moment, listening. The room was dark except for the faint glow of the campus lanterns coming through the narrow window. Dex was a motionless shape on the other bed, one arm hanging off the edge, breathing with the deep regularity of someone who had made peace with existence.
Corbyn stared at the ceiling crack.
Then the window latch clicked.
Cool air came in.
He turned his head.
Ishtar was sitting on the windowsill with one leg folded and one hanging outside, three floors above the stone courtyard, watching him with the expression of someone who had been waiting and was now done waiting.
"Your mana channels have stabilized enough," Ishtar said.
Corbyn looked at her.
Then at the dark ceiling.
Then back at her.
"It’s midnight," Corbyn said.
"Yes," Ishtar said.
She said it the way you confirm information that isn’t relevant to your plans.
Corbyn sat up, pushed his feet into his shoes, and reached for his jacket on the chair without saying anything else.
There wasn’t much point arguing.
The academy rooftop was flat stone and cold wind.
The entire campus spread out below in the dark. Lanterns still burning along the walkways. Noble dormitories had a few lit windows. Everything else was quiet and still in the way places get quiet when the people in them have stopped performing for each other.
Ishtar stood at the center of the roof.
"Sit down," she said.
Corbyn sat cross-legged on the stone and pulled his jacket tighter.
"I’m not teaching you to summon tonight," Ishtar said. "Your channels aren’t ready for that. Another day at minimum." She walked a slow circle around him without looking at him directly. "Tonight I’m teaching you something that comes before summoning. Before any class, any technique, any formal instruction."
"What?" Corbyn said.
"How to feel your own mana," Ishtar said. "Not use it. Not push it. Just find it."
Corbyn frowned. "Isn’t that covered in the first week of classes?"
"Week three," Ishtar said. "After two weeks of theory modules and orientation." She stopped in front of him. "I taught Aldric in one night. I see no reason to wait three weeks."
Corbyn closed his mouth.
"Close your eyes," Ishtar said.
He closed them.
"Breathe normally. Don’t try to do anything. Just breathe and listen to your body the way you’d listen to a room you just walked into."
He breathed.
Wind across the rooftop. Stone cold beneath him. His own heartbeat, steady and unimpressed by the situation.
Nothing else.
"I don’t feel anything," Corbyn said.
"I know," Ishtar said. "Keep going."
He kept going.
Five minutes. Ten. The cold worked through his jacket slowly. He stopped trying to find something and just breathed.
Then, around the fifteen minute mark, he felt it.
Faint. A second pulse sitting just behind his sternum. Slower than his heartbeat. Different weight. Not warmth exactly — more like the awareness of warmth. The way you sense the sun before it touches your skin.
He almost lost it the second he noticed it.
"Don’t reach for it," Ishtar said. Like she could see exactly what he was doing with his eyes closed. "Just let it know you found it."
He stopped reaching.
The pulse stayed.
He sat with it. Breathing. Feeling this thing that had apparently been inside him the whole time without his knowledge.
It felt like something that had been waiting to be noticed.
He opened his eyes.
Ishtar was watching him with an expression he hadn’t seen from her before. Not pity. Not the quiet recognition she’d shown with Lyra. Something closer to interest. The kind that comes from watching a result you hadn’t fully predicted.
"You found it," Ishtar said.
"It was already there," Corbyn said.
"It is always already there," Ishtar said. "Most students take three days to locate it for the first time. Some take longer." A pause. "Aldric took three days. He blamed the weather."
"How long did I take?" Corbyn asked.
Ishtar glanced toward the eastern sky. The black had started thinning out there. Not dawn yet. Just its intention.
"Just under four hours," she said.
Corbyn looked at his hands.
The pulse was still there. Slow and steady, like it had all the time in the world now that he knew where it lived.
"What does finding it fast mean?" Corbyn asked.
"It means your mana is responsive," Ishtar said. "Possibly because of the class. Possibly because of something in you." She sat down across from him on the stone. "Possibly both."
"And now?" Corbyn said.
"Now you hold it," Ishtar said. "Don’t let go of it. Walk around with it today. Eat with it. Sleep with it tonight. Let your body learn that this is normal." She looked at him steadily. "We build from here."
Corbyn nodded.
Below them the campus was still dark. In a few hours it would fill with students moving between classes, the daily machinery of the academy running the same way it always ran.
Except now Corbyn would be walking through it aware of something most of his classmates wouldn’t touch for another three weeks.
Small. But real.
"Ishtar," Corbyn said.
"Mm."
"What was he like when he was learning this?" Corbyn asked. "Aldric. At the beginning."
Ishtar was quiet long enough that he thought she wasn’t going to answer.
"Reckless," she said finally. "Certain of himself in the way only someone who hasn’t failed badly yet can be." Something at the edge of her expression shifted. "He improved."
"How long did that take?" Corbyn asked.
"The recklessness or the certainty?" Ishtar said.
"Both."
"Years," she said. "But he started the right way."
"How did he start?" Corbyn asked.
She looked at him for a long moment in the dark.
"He stopped waiting for the world to make room for him," she said. "And started moving like the room was already his."
She said it simply. Not as advice. Just as a fact about a person she had known for a very long time.