They step out of the mirror into another corridor carved from marble so polished it seems to glow from within.
Lena keeps walking at a pace that suggests she was born late and has been compensating ever since.
"We'll stop at Registration first," she says. "Get your classes, schedule, uniform, materials list. Then lunch. Then the markets so we can buy everything you'll need before classes start tomorrow."
She glances over her shoulder. "Any questions?"
Aster considers the approximately eight hundred currently rioting in his skull.
"Oh, loads," he says. "But I'm trying to ration my confusion into manageable portions. If I ask everything at once, one of us is going to have an aneurysm, and statistically it'll be me."
Lena beams, apparently pleased he's trying not to collapse.
"You'll need seven courses for first year," she says, ticking them off on her fingers. "Four core classes everyone takes: Cultivation, Combat, Spellcraft, and History. Then three specialisations based on your typing. For you, that'll be Artificing, Alchemy, and Scripture."
Aster opens his mouth.
She moves past. "Yani will help you with Artificing and Alchemy. She's Spirit-typed too. I'll handle Cultivation and Spellcraft. And Musa can help with Combat and Scripture."
Aster blinks. "That's… alarmingly organised."
"Of course it is," Lena says. "You're starting classes tomorrow with a cursed bug, no training, no stats worth respecting, and the survival instincts of a concussed pigeon. If I don't organise this, you'll die."
That feels a touch severe, but not wildly inaccurate.
They emerge into Registration: a vast chamber of silver-veined marble and crystalline windows, somewhere between a train station and a temple built by people who thought bureaucracy should inspire dread. Students queue beneath floating signs while clerks in gilded robes process forms with the dead-eyed calm of people who have long since accepted that hope is finite and paperwork is eternal.
Lena spots someone across the room and brightens in a way that makes Aster immediately suspicious.
"I'll be back," she says, already veering away. "That's Musa."
Aster follows her gaze.
And, unfortunately, understands at once.
Musa stands near one of the far pillars in pristine white uniform, broad-shouldered and composed, with the kind of posture that suggests gravity itself has negotiated a separate agreement with him. He's tall enough to make Aster's self-esteem file a noise complaint, built like someone carved a war god out of old-school discipline and then taught him manners. Dark umber skin. Close-cropped hair. A cheetah pelt draped over one shoulder of his uniform like a casual reminder.
The truly offensive part is that none of it feels performative.
He doesn't carry himself like a peacock. He carries himself like a man who has never needed to.
Lena says something to him. Musa looks over.
Aster, standing thirty feet away in a registration line with the posture of a damp receipt, experiences the sudden and humbling realisation that he has been introduced into a world containing people who look like they should come with orchestral accompaniment.
He spends the next several minutes being processed by a clerk who seems personally offended by his existence. Core classes assigned. Specialisations confirmed. Uniform and schedule to be delivered by courier fish, which Aster privately files under Further Evidence That This Plane Was Designed by Lunatics.
By the time he escapes the desk, Lena is waving him over.
"Aster," she says, "this is Musa. He's going to help with your Combat and Scripture classes."
Aster stops in front of him and has to tilt his head back slightly.
That really should be illegal.
Up close, Musa's presence isn't threatening so much as settled. Solid. Like a mountain has decided, for reasons of its own, to become a person and attend university.
Every alarm in Aster's head starts flashing.
DO NOT FIGHT. DO NOT SASS. DO NOT EVEN ATTEMPT BANTER.
Aster sticks out a hand.
"Nice to meet you," he says. "Please don't kill me."
Musa looks at his hand, then back at him, and breaks into an easy grin that immediately improves him from intimidating to deeply dangerous in an entirely different way.
His handshake is warm and firm and feels vaguely like grabbing hold of a steel beam.
"I'll do my best," Musa says gravely. Then he winks. "At least until we've picked you a weapon."
Musa lets go and nods toward the corridor beyond Registration. "I'll take you to the Vault after lunch. The school keeps a weapon depository and a scripture archive for initiates. Most Legacy students ignore it and use whatever their families hand them, but if you're starting from scratch, it's worth looking through the school's options first."
Lena folds her arms, clearly pleased with herself for assembling a social support network around him like he's an injured rescue dog.
"Musa's one of the strongest first-years in our intake," she says. "He's scripture-focused, top of Combat, and actually knows how to teach without causing permanent trauma."
Musa lifts a shoulder. "Only moderate trauma. I pace myself."
Aster glances between them. "And you're both just… volunteering for this?"
Lena snorts. "Volunteering implies we had a choice. Ndlovu assigned me to keep you alive."
"And I'm helping," Musa says, "because anyone Lady Aerathena personally drops into a classroom is either very important, very dangerous, or very entertaining."
Musa glances toward one of the mirrored transit gates lining the wall. "Meet me at the Armory Vault after lunch."
He starts toward the nearest mirror, then pauses and looks back at Aster.
The grin is still there, easy and bright.
"Don't worry too much," he says. "Everyone starts somewhere."
And then, because the universe has clearly decided Aster will never be allowed to experience a normal social interaction again, Musa adds:
"Though in your case, 'somewhere' appears to be several disasters deep."
He steps through the mirror and vanishes.
Aster watches him go.
Then he looks at Lena.
"…I can't tell if he just encouraged me or threatened me."
Lena starts walking. "With Musa, it's usually both."
Aster falls into step behind her, still trying to process the fact that he apparently now has a combat tutor built like divine propaganda and a schedule full of classes he doesn't understand.
This school, he suspects, is going to kill him in ways that require paperwork.
________________________________________
Another mirror spits them into a vast glass-domed greenhouse. It looks less like a cafeteria and more like something a retired god might commission after deciding conquest was exhausting and what he really needed was a tasteful place to eat lunch. Waterfalls spill down sculpted cliff faces into pools so pristine they probably judge your shoes. Sunlight filters through enchanted panes overhead, scattering through condensation in little prisms. The whole place smells of wet earth, citrus blossom, and money.
Aster follows Lena through the crowd, weaving around floating tables and students mid-argument, mid-meal, or mid-something involving glowing noodles and a lot of hand gestures.
A petite Indian girl spots them from a table near a patch of bioluminescent ferns and waves them over.
Small. Eager. Dangerous in the way only people who enjoy group projects can be.
"Aster, this is Yani," Lena says, nudging him forward like he's a nervous shelter dog being introduced to a family.
Aster offers a polite half-smile. "Hi. Very nice to meet you."
Yani shakes his hand with alarming firmness and an expression that says she's already decided she likes him and will be deeply offended if he turns out not to deserve it.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
"She's Spirit-Typed too," Lena says, dropping into the seat beside her. "And one of the best Artificers in the school. She'll be helping with your classes."
Yani gives him a grin. "Spirit Typing isn't flashy, but we make up for it by cheating. Everyone else gets locked into one Typing. We get to play with almost all of them—at least where Artefacts are concerned."
He nods slowly, mind already backpedalling through everything he thinks he understands about Artificing—which, if he's being honest, amounts to "probably something like magical blacksmithing." Apparently not.
"What exactly is an Artefact?" he asks, hoping the question sounds curious and not like a child asking why the moon doesn't fall out of the sky.
"Think of it as a conduit," Yani says. "You channel a little energy into it, and boom—it unleashes a preset ability. Like a spell caught in amber."
Aster doesn't seem happy with that explanation.
She reaches into her satchel and pulls out a bone dagger no longer than her forearm. It glows faintly along the edge, pale blue light pulsing through carved grooves in the hilt.
"Artefacts are basically crafted abilities," she says, setting it between them. "Instead of casting a technique directly from your Astral Vessel, you build the technique into an object. Then you feed it power, and it does the work for you."
Aster stares at the dagger. "So magical tech."
"Exactly."
"Made from dead things, judging by the bone."
"Also exactly." Yani taps the dagger with one fingernail. "Most Artefacts are made from Astral materials—bones, cores, carapaces, essence, whatever a creature leaves behind that still holds enough of its Typing to be useful. Refine the material, shape it properly, script the effect into it, add a power source, and you've got a working Artefact."
"Script the effect," Aster repeats. "Like programming?"
"Pretty much. If I kill, say, a Water-Typed beast with a mist-aligned ability, I can turn part of it into a weapon that reproduces that effect. Short-range mist-step. Water blade. Fog veil. Depends on the glyph, material, craftsmanship, and how much energy the user can feed it."
Aster squints at the dagger. "So someone with mediocre cultivation could use one of these to punch above their weight?"
"Absolutely," Yani says. "That's half the point. The catch is that Artefacts aren't free. They need Aether or Faith to run, and the good ones cost a fortune to make. But yes—if you're clever, or rich, or obscenely lucky, they let you do things you otherwise couldn't."
"Excellent," Aster mutters. "Weaponised capitalism. My favourite genre."
Yani laughs. "Spirit Typers are especially good at it because we're not locked to one element's toolkit. We can combine essences from different Typings and make hybrid Artefacts other cultivators can't easily replicate."
"So Spirit Types are enchanters."
"We prefer 'engineers of the impossible,'" Yani says, with the kind of shameless pride that suggests she's practised the line in a mirror.
Aster leans back in his chair, trying to absorb all of that without looking as overwhelmed as he feels. It doesn't help that every new explanation about this place makes the entire Astral Plane sound less like a civilisation and more like a particularly successful startup founded by a war cult.
Then, because he's Aster and can't help himself, the philosophical anxiety spills out: "Is that all this place is? Power hoarding? Everything here—every class, every system—just seems designed to help people climb higher. Why build a whole society around the sole purpose of gaining power?"
That, at least, makes both girls pause.
Lena answers first. "Because if you don't have power here, you die."
Which is fair. Also, grim.
"Before the Council unified the Archipelago," she goes on, "the Astral Plane was full of things that could flatten cities. It took generations just to carve out territory we could survive in. Power wasn't a luxury. It was infrastructure."
"And the dangerous things never actually went away," Yani adds. "We just pushed them farther out. Into the Storm. The Wilds. The deeper caverns. But they're still there."
Aster glances around the food hall. The waterfalls. The polished stone. The students discussing lunch with all the serene confidence of people who have never once had to choose between groceries and electricity. It is unsettling to realise this whole beautiful place has apparently been built on top of a long-running arms race with monsters.
"And cultivation isn't just survival," Yani says. "Not really. The Vessel itself is built to grow. That's what it was designed for."
Aster frowns. "Designed by who?"
She shrugs. "Depends which theory you subscribe to. The common one is that the Astral Vessel keeps cycling through lives because it's trying to become something else. Stronger. Complete. The end goal of cultivation isn't just power—it's transcendence. Breaking free of reincarnation altogether."
Aster nearly spits his tea.
He stares at her.
Then at Lena.
Then, because his mouth remains humanity's most committed enemy, he hears himself say, "Right. Is that, like, the accepted theory here, or is that something you people believe?"
The silence that follows is so complete it deserves cathedral acoustics.
Aster feels his stomach drop through the floor.
"No," he says immediately. "No, I didn't mean you people like that, I meant—you know—culturally? Regionally? Religiously? I just meant if reincarnation was—"
He stops. Because every word makes it worse.
In his defence, she is Indian. In the material world, that generally comes with a statistically increased chance of reincarnation featuring somewhere in the spiritual framework. He hadn't meant it like that.
For one terrible moment, Aster becomes convinced he has crossed into an entirely new dimension only to discover he is apparently capable of interplanar racism.
Yani and Lena look at each other.
Then both of them burst out laughing.
Not polite laughter. Full-bodied, helpless, tear-in-the-corner-of-the-eye laughter, as if Aster has just slipped on a banana peel and accidentally delivered a TED Talk on colonial anxiety.
He sits there in silence while his soul attempts to quietly exit through his shoes.
Lena finally gets herself under control enough to wipe at one eye. "Sorry," she says. "It's not you. That was just spectacular."
Yani grins at him over the rim of her cup. "For the record, no. There's no religion in the Society of the Aware."
Aster blinks. "None?"
"Not in the way you mean." She props her chin on one hand. "We know what gods are."
That sentence hits him hard enough to momentarily knock every other thought out of his skull.
"And that is?" he asks carefully.
"Constructs," Yani says. "Metaphysical machines built solely to gather and process Faith."
Lena nods. "Huge spiritual engines. People believe in them, worship them, feed them Faith, and the machine converts that belief into usable power."
"So no worship?" he asks, still trying to emotionally uncurl from the cringe.
"Would you worship a vending machine?" Lena shoots back. "Even if it gave out miracles, once you knew it was just gears and programming?"
Aster considers that.
"Depends," he says. "How good are the miracles?"
That gets a smile out of Yani.
"And the priests in the real world?"
"Some know," Lena says. "Some don't. Depends who built the thing and how honest they felt like being."
Aster looks between them, waiting for one of them to laugh and admit they're joking. Neither does.
He takes a long sip of his tea, mostly because it gives him something to do while he tries to reorganise his understanding of reality into a shape that doesn't actively make his head hurt.
"Still," he mutters into the cup, "you didn't have to laugh quite that hard."
Yani reaches over and pats his arm with exaggerated sympathy. "We really did."
________________________________________
Aster discovers the next problem when he takes a look at the menu.
Specifically, he discovers that the menu appears to have been designed by someone who believed the concept of prices was too vulgar for direct communication.
There are numbers, yes. But they glow in different colours and sit beside symbols that look less like currency and more like alchemical threats.
He stares harder. One particularly smug-looking sandwich is marked "10 [🜁]." He has no idea what the symbol means, but something in its design suggests "spiritually unaffordable."
"Uh," Aster says, turning to Lena, "how exactly do I… buy anything here?"
"Oh," she says brightly, like she's been waiting for the question. "You'll need the Veneration spell."
"The what now?"
Before he can object, Lena reaches across the table and taps his forehead with two fingers—light, precise, like she's double-clicking his soul.
A flicker.
A soft chime echoes inside his skull.
Then—
Compatible Glyph Detected. Install "VENERATION" Module?
[YES] [NO]
The words float in his vision, crisp as glass and glowing with faint metaphysical smugness.
Aster blinks. "...Am I being spiritually prompted?"
"Click yes."
He hesitates for a beat on principle alone, then does it anyway, because hunger is beginning to beat paranoia in a straight fight.
Something shifts inside him.
Like a hidden wire has been connected somewhere behind his sternum—a subtle internal click, followed by the deeply unpleasant sensation that some vast invisible bureaucracy has just found his file and added him to a mailing list.
Aster sits up straighter. "Why do I feel like I've just signed a lease on my soul?"
"I Venerated you," Lena says. "Now think your name."
"My what?"
"Your name."
He does.
The familiar stat screen unfolds in front of him, and beneath the usual entries sits a new tab.
═════════════════════════════════════════════════════
[ ASTRAL VESSEL: NOOTROPIC DISPLAY ]
═════════════════════════════════════════════════════
NAME: Aster Elchen
SPECIES: Human
TYPING: Spirit (Sahasrara)
CULTIVATION: Initiate - Veiled Moon
CULTIVATION TYPE: Symbiocultivator
PROGRESSION TIER: 1 - Aware
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
⚙️ CORE STATS [+]
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
🌌 GATE ALIGNMENT [+]
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
🔶 GLYPHS [+]
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
📜 SCRIPTURES [+]
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
⚔️ ARTEFACTS [+]
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
⚙️ VENERATION [-]
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
FAITH BALANCE:
Blue — 750
Yellow — 2,100
Red — 137
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
═════════════════════════════════════════════════════
Aster stares at the coloured values at the bottom.
"What," he asks slowly, "am I looking at, and why does it feel like a tax audit?"
"Your Faith profile," Lena says. "Blue is liquid Faith. Cash, savings, stock, anything easily spendable from the material world. Yellow is fixed wealth—property, business value, vehicles, harder assets. Red is karmic reserve."
Aster looks up. "I'm sorry. Karmic reserve?"
"Luck. Goodwill. Spiritual momentum." Lena takes a sip of tea. "The universe's emergency savings account."
"That is not comforting."
"It shouldn't be."
She points to the first number. "Blue is what you'll use most often. It converts from your real-world liquid assets when you enter the Astral Plane."
Aster does the maths in his head, frowns, then does it again in case the first attempt has been a stress-induced hallucination.
"So my hundred and fifty grand became seven hundred and fifty Faith?"
"Roughly, yes."
He stares at the menu again with new and immediate hatred.
"And yellow?"
"Assets the Scale can still draw from if you're desperate enough. Property damage. Tax headaches. Bad timing. The usual consequences of metaphysical accounting."
Aster glances down at the yellow number and silently apologises to every object he has ever owned.
"And red," he says carefully, "is the one where reality starts repossessing bits of my life."
Lena smiles. "Now you're getting it."
He looks back at the menu. Ten blue for a sandwich. Two thousand rand for lunch. Apparently the Astral Plane has independently invented airport pricing and then decided it wasn't cruel enough.
Unfortunately, his stomach has not eaten in over a week and has begun lobbying for desperate measures.
For two thousand rand, he reasons, this has to be one of those gourmet hotdogs. Thick sausage. Toasted bun. Onions. Cheese. Some kind of relish made by a man with forearm tattoos and a deeply personal relationship with mustard.
He presses his thumb to the menu.
A pulse of energy passes through him. His balance drops from 750 to 740.
A minute later, a tray arrives carrying a dry bun and a single pink vienna sausage with all the charisma of a petrol station crime.
Aster stares at it.
Then at Lena.
Then back at the hotdog.
"Great," he says. "I've crossed dimensions just to get robbed by cafeteria food in a stronger currency."