Wren began writing down everything she said, filling his notebook with the lecture itself and a few personal notes of his own about the spell she’d cast.
He glanced to his side at one point and saw that Rian hadn’t written a single word — pen resting untouched against a blank page, not out of boredom, Wren realized slowly, but because there was simply nothing here worth writing down for him.
Rian had probably known what a mana gathering formation was since before he could properly hold a pen at all.
This wasn’t new information to him.
It was childhood.
Wren looked around the room properly for the first time since sitting down, half-expecting to find the same blank page, the same idle pen, in every seat around him.
He didn’t.
Scattered among the apprentices with Rian’s easy, half-bored posture were others hunched forward exactly like Wren was, pens moving fast, brows furrowed in the particular way of people trying to catch up to something they’d only ever read about secondhand.
Whatever family had raised Rian on this stuff before he could walk clearly hadn’t raised everyone in this room the same way.
So it’s not all of them.
Just some.
That was almost worse, in a way — a clear, visible line cutting straight through the middle of the class, and Wren already knew exactly which side of it he stood on.
Whatever.
I already knew they’d have a running start on me.
Doesn’t mean I can’t catch up — just means I’ve got less time to waste feeling sorry about it.
He kept writing, making sure to take in every detail Mage Ellowen said.
The lecture ran long, longer than Wren expected for something meant to cover “the simplest form of magic,” though he supposed that was the point — simple didn’t mean short, not when there were this many apprentices who’d never held a crystal in their lives.
By the time Ellowen finally closed her book and dismissed them, his hand ached from writing and his notebook had swelled with twice as many pages as he’d walked in with.
Rian stretched as he stood, rolling one shoulder like the seat had personally wronged him.
“You get all that?”
“Most of it.” Wren closed his notebook and tucked it under one arm.
“You could’ve written something down, you know.
In case you forget.”
“I’ve had this drilled into me since I could talk.
Believe me, I’m not forgetting it.” Rian grinned, entirely unbothered.
“Come on.
They filed out with the rest of the apprentices, the crowd thinning as people peeled off toward the dining hall in twos and threes.
Wren caught himself glancing back once, toward the seat Adeleine had already vacated without a word and wondered — not for the first time that morning — what exactly she’d been doing sitting there at all.
He didn’t have an answer.
His stomach, at least, had an opinion about what came next, and for once it was a simple enough problem to solve.
Breakfast opened the same way it had the past two days, except this time the cafeteria was actually full — dozens of new apprentices filling tables that had mostly sat empty before.
Wren and Rian took the same seats they’d claimed the day before, out of habit more than anything.
This time, Adeleine sat with them too.
Rian waited exactly as long as it took to sit down before he said anything about it.
“Alright, no offense, Khal, but why us?” He gestured between himself and Wren with his fork, entirely unbothered by his own bluntness.
“You’ve got a family name people actually bow to.
Pretty sure half the tables in here would kill for you to sit with them.”
Adeleine didn’t look up from her plate right away.
“Would they?”
“I’m just saying.
You could’ve picked literally anyone.”
“I did pick someone.” She finally glanced up, calm in the specific way that made it hard to tell if she found the question rude or simply beneath a real answer.
“I picked the two people in that evaluation hall who didn’t fit the shape everyone expected of them.
You’re a Kaiser who tests better in Metal than half the noble-blood Metal mages twice your age, when everyone assumed you’d be an unremarkable footnote next to your family name.
And he—” she nodded toward Wren without quite looking at him, “—held a willpower test for almost a full minute with no family name attached to him at all.”
Wren felt something in his chest go very still.
“I find that more interesting than a full table of people who’ll spend the whole meal agreeing with whatever I say,” Adeleine added, returning to her food like she hadn’t just said something that landed like a small stone dropped into still water.
“Family names are common in this tower.
Actual anomalies aren’t.”
Rian let out a low whistle, grinning at Wren over the top of Adeleine’s head.
“Well.
“I wouldn’t call it slumming,” Adeleine said, entirely unbothered.
“I’d call it research.”
Wren wasn’t sure whether to feel flattered or like a specimen someone had decided to keep in a jar, and found, uncomfortably, that both feelings seemed to be true at once.
Elemental Basics opened much the same way the first lecture had.
This time, though, it was taught by a mage Wren already knew, Mage Reinhardt.
“Alright, ye runts.” He didn’t bother easing into it.
“Imma keep this short and simple.
Magic’s split into nine core elements.
Fire, Water, Wind, Earth, Metal, Lightning, Wood, Light, and Dark.”
Wren started writing in his notebook anyway, though none of this was new to him either — it was all sitting in his guidebook already, same words, slightly less colorful delivery.
“I’m an Earth mage.
Earth magic’s mainly used for defense and construction.
Wanna live a cushy, comfortable life?
Practicing Earth ain’t a bad way to go about it, ya hear.”
“Now, the other elements ain’t that complicated either,” Reinhardt continued, waving a hand through the air like he was swatting the whole subject out of his way.
“Fire, Water, Lightning, Wood, Light, Dark.
All of ’em got their uses, all of ’em got their price.
You’ll figure out which one suits you soon enough, and if ya don’t, well.” He shrugged, entirely unbothered.
“That’s what the maintenance floor’s for.”
A few nervous laughs rippled through the room.
Wren didn’t join them.
He glanced down at his notes instead — nine names, nine short lines, the same information he’d already copied once from a guidebook three days ago, now delivered secondhand by a man who’d called a dead apprentice “a damn shame” in the exact same breath he complained about paperwork.
Somewhere in this lecture hall, Reinhardt clearly expected that joke to land as a joke.
Wren closed his notebook without writing anything else down.
The lecture let out not long after.
He gathered his things, fell into step beside Rian and Adeleine without really deciding to, and let the two of them talk over him the whole way out — content, for now, to just listen.