Corbyn sat with it.
The sky to the east had gone from black to deep grey. Not dawn yet but close enough that the lanterns below would start going out soon.
"We should go down," Ishtar said.
They stood.
Corbyn looked out over the campus one more time from the roof. The commoner block small and plain at the edge of it all. The noble dormitories larger, more windows, better positioned to catch morning light.
He held the pulse behind his sternum and looked at all of it.
Then he followed Ishtar back down.
The courtyard at five in the morning was empty and cold.
Corbyn was crossing it toward the dormitory entrance when he heard footsteps on the far stone path. He looked up.
A figure was approaching from the direction of the faculty building. Plain jacket. No academy robes. Physical documents under one arm and a paper cup in the other hand. Walking at the pace of someone who had been awake for a while and made peace with it.
The figure spotted him from across the courtyard.
"Hard worker," the man called across the distance. "I’ll say that."
Corbyn stopped and waited as the man closed the gap and came to a halt in front of him.
Mid-forties. Lean. The kind of posture that came from years of training rather than anyone telling him to stand straight. Calm eyes that moved over things carefully before settling. No noble crest on his ring finger.
Corbyn looked at him.
"Who are you?" Corbyn said.
The man took a sip from his paper cup.
"Professor Idris Cole," Cole said. "Summoning Theory. Magic Swordsman class." He paused. "Also, as of last night, your personal mentor."
Corbyn looked at him.
"There was a meeting?" Corbyn said.
"There was," Cole said. "You kept your enrollment. It was closer than it should have been." He said it plainly, no drama around it. "I thought you should know."
Corbyn absorbed that for a moment.
"Thank you," Corbyn said. "For volunteering."
"Don’t thank me yet," Cole said. "I haven’t taught you anything."
Ishtar appeared to Corbyn’s left.
Cole looked at her.
She looked at him.
A pause with the particular weight of two people taking each other’s measure without making it obvious.
"Professor Idris Cole," Ishtar said. Not a greeting. Confirmation.
"Ishtar," Cole said. He took another sip. "I read the ceremony log this morning. The administrative record the pillar generated." He looked at her directly. "Not the student’s personal notifications. Those are his alone."
Something shifted in Ishtar’s expression. Faint approval at the clarification.
"You volunteered to train him," Ishtar said.
"I did," Cole said.
"Why," Ishtar said.
"Because nobody else was going to," Cole said. "And because the class he’s holding deserves a real attempt."
Ishtar studied him for a moment.
"Magic Swordsman," she said. "I haven’t encountered that class in a long time. I understood it was nearly gone."
"Three of us left," Cole said.
"Aldric considered it," Ishtar said. "Before he chose the summoner path."
Something moved through Cole’s expression. Subtle.
"What made him choose summoning?" Cole said.
"He said swordsmanship was too lonely," Ishtar said.
Cole was quiet for a moment.
Then he looked at Corbyn with the expression of someone updating a calculation.
"How far did you get tonight?" Cole said.
"I found my mana," Corbyn said.
Cole’s eyebrows moved. Just slightly.
"First night," Cole said.
"She said Aldric took three days," Corbyn said.
Cole looked at Ishtar.
"Can he join my morning session?" Cole said. "I was about to start."
"One condition," Ishtar said. "If you disagree on method you discuss it between yourselves. You give him one unified approach. Not two competing ones."
Cole considered it briefly.
"Agreed," Cole said.
Ishtar moved to the low stone wall at the edge of the courtyard and sat on it with the ease of someone who had watched training sessions from walls for a very long time.
Cole set his documents on a bench and finished the last of his drink.
"Center of the courtyard," Cole said to Corbyn.
Corbyn moved to the center.
"Feet shoulder width," Cole said, walking a slow circle around him. "Weight even. Don’t think about your mana. Don’t think about summoning. Just notice where your weight actually is right now."
Corbyn adjusted.
Cole made one full circuit. Looking at angles. Distribution. The way a body carries itself when nobody is telling it to perform.
"Left shoulder carrying tension," Cole said. "Drop it."
Corbyn dropped it.
"Right knee slightly locked," Cole said. "Soften it."
Corbyn softened it.
Cole stopped in front of him.
"Most summoners treat the body as the vessel and mana as the power," Cole said. "Magic Swordsmen learn that’s backwards. The body is the power. Mana tells it what to do." He looked at Corbyn steadily. "Before you can hold a Calamity-class presence with any real authority your body needs to be something that can carry that weight without collapsing." A pause. "So we start here. Every morning. Before classes."
"How long does this phase take?" Corbyn asked.
"Until you stop asking that," Cole said.
From the wall Ishtar made a sound. Not quite a laugh. Something that lived right next to one.
Cole glanced at her.
"Aldric asked the same thing," Ishtar said. "Same tone exactly."
"What did his instructor say?" Cole asked.
"The same thing you just said," Ishtar said. "More or less."
Cole nodded once like that confirmed something useful.
He turned back to Corbyn.
"Basic movement drills," Cole said. "I’ll demonstrate once. Then you repeat until I say stop."
The sun hadn’t cleared the eastern wall yet.
By the time it did Corbyn’s legs were burning, his breathing was uneven, and he had a clearer understanding of where his body’s weight actually lived than he’d had in seventeen years of occupying it.
Cole watched him finish the last set.
"Same time tomorrow," Cole said. He picked up his documents and his empty cup.
Then he looked at Ishtar on the wall.
"Same time tomorrow," Cole said.
"I’ll be here," Ishtar said.
Cole walked back toward the faculty building.
Corbyn stood in the middle of the courtyard breathing hard, early morning light reaching the stone around his feet.
He pressed a hand briefly to his chest.
The pulse was still there.
Slow. Steady. Patient.
Ishtar appeared beside him.
"Go eat something," Ishtar said. "Your body needs fuel."
"Are you always going to appear out of nowhere?" Corbyn said.
"When the situation calls for it," Ishtar said. "When it doesn’t I’ll stay in the bond." A pause. "Full manifestation costs mana. Yours is still recovering. I won’t waste it."
Corbyn looked at her.
That was the clearest she’d been about the limitations.
"So right now," Corbyn said. "This is costing me."
"A small amount," Ishtar said. "Worth it for the context." She looked at him evenly. "Now go eat. You have classes in two hours."
Corbyn picked up his bag from the bench.
He walked toward the dining hall in the early morning quiet, the campus just beginning to wake up around him.
Behind him the courtyard sat empty in the new light.
The day had started.