Chapter 10 CHAPTER TEN: First Day of Everything
CHAPTER TEN: First Day of Everything
Classes began on the fourth morning.
I had not slept properly in two days. I had lain in that narrow cot and stared at the ceiling and thought about Sera and the brand on her neck and the four students Lyra Thane had placed inside this academy like pieces on a board.
But I had trained on no sleep before. Entire campaigns had run on three hours and cold water. My body remembered how to function when my mind was too full.
I folded my blanket. Washed my face. Went to breakfast.
Ren was already at the low-rank table with two bowls of porridge and a look on his face that said he had news.
"They posted the class assignments last night," he said. "After the second meal. You missed it."
"What did it say?"
"Low-rank students do not attend the main Aether Theory class. We go to a separate session. The instructor is different." He pushed a bowl toward me. "Also, physical training for ranks four hundred and below is at the fifth hour. The upper ranks go at the third hour."
Of course. Even the training schedule was ranked.
"Thank you," I said.
He looked at me for a moment. Then he set his spoon down. "You know, most people from Croft come in here and spend the first week either furious or completely broken. You are neither one of those things."
"I have been both before," I said. "In a different way."
He looked at me sideways. He opened his mouth. Then he closed it and went back to his porridge, which was exactly the right decision.
The first class was Basic Aether Principles. Our instructor was a thin man named Proctor Senn with a grey beard and very clean hands. He looked at the group of us, forty low-rank students in a side room while the rest of the academy filled the main lecture hall, and he said nothing for the first full minute.
Then: "You are here because your cores are weak, unstable, or simply not yet developed. My job is not to inspire you. My job is to give you the tools to grow what you have. Whether you use them is your concern."
He was not kind. He was also not cruel. He was exact. He said what a thing was and moved on. I respected that.
The lesson covered core anatomy: the three layers of a standard Aether core, how energy flows from the center outward, and why most cores cap at a certain level based on how they formed during awakening.
Standard material. I had read all of it years ago.
But I listened anyway, because sometimes the thing you already know sounds different when someone else says it out loud.
Ren sat beside me and took careful notes in a small book. I did not take notes. Proctor Senn noticed this twice. The second time, he walked past my desk and looked at me.
"Ardell," he said.
"Proctor," I said.
"You are not writing."
"I remember it," I said.
He studied me for a moment. Then he moved on without another word. He did not call on me to prove it and he did not dismiss me either. That was interesting. Most instructors would have done one or the other.
After Aether Principles came Combat Fundamentals. This one was held in a long training hall on the second floor, stone walls, wooden floors, practice staffs in a rack along one side. The instructor was a woman called Proctor Vayne. Broad shoulders, grey streaks in her dark hair, and the way she stood that told you she had spent a long time knowing how to hurt people efficiently.
She looked at us the same way Proctor Senn had. Assessment without warmth.
"Combat at this academy is not about winning," she said. "It is about control. You will learn to control your body before you ever use your Aether in a fight. Anyone who tries to channel Aether in my hall before I give permission will spend the rest of the day on the floor doing pushups. Clear?"
Forty students said yes.
She put us through basic forms. Stance, weight distribution, how to move without telegraphing. Basic soldier's work. Things I had done for twenty years in another life.
I did them slowly. Carefully. Exactly well enough to not stand out.
Ren, beside me, was struggling slightly with the footwork. He kept shifting his weight too early. I said nothing. Then, between forms, I moved my foot very slightly, showing rather than telling. He watched. He adjusted.
He got it right.
He did not say thank you. He just got it right, and we moved on.
After training, in the corridor outside the hall, I felt it again.
Eyes.
I turned slowly.
Sable Voss was walking past with two other upper-rank students, talking about something. But his head had turned slightly in my direction. Not all the way. Just enough.
He looked at me for one second.
Then he looked away and kept walking.
That was the third time.
Three times in four days. For someone ranked five hundred, that was not a coincidence. I did not know what he was looking for. But something about me kept pulling his attention back, the way a wrong note in a familiar song makes you stop and listen.
After the evening meal, I went to the roof.
Not because anyone told me to. I went because it was quiet and I needed to think without Ren nearby asking questions I was not ready to answer yet.
The sky was clear again. The mountains were dark and enormous.
I sat on the stone ledge and let my core breathe. Just a little. Enough to feel the edges of it.
Footsteps behind me.
I did not turn.
"You are up here alone," said a voice I did not recognize.
I turned then.
It was not Sera.
It was a boy about my age. Dark eyes. Sharp face. A rank pin I did not recognize, not in the standard colors.
He looked at me with something that was not quite curiosity and not quite a threat. It was somewhere in between, and he knew exactly where he was standing in that space.
"Zane Ardell," he said. "Rank five hundred."
"Yes," I said.
He smiled slowly.
"She told me about you," he said. "All of it."