The white light fades, burning through my eyelids, leaving afterimage ghosts of color drifting in my vision. I've been victim to teleportation spells before, and the vertigo is familiar: a sudden lurch, the world tilting, stomach doing slow sorsaults. I grit my teeth and force myself upright, refusing to let my knees buckle or my insides revolt. So of the others aren't so lucky. I hear the harsh retch of soone vomiting behind , the wet sound of sick splattering on stone, and weak groans echoing from a dozen directions.
I keep my eyes forward, blinking rapidly, trying to orient myself. My first thought is: Where the fuck are we?
I blink hard, forcing my senses to catch up. We're still inside the building. The sa grand hall, the sa high, arched ceilings, the sa banners no, the banners are gone. The air is different. I taste cold wet wind, and the light is harsher, rawer, almost wild. It takes a second to realize the proctors are all still on the platform, looking down on us like a jury about to deliver a sentence and boy don't they fit the part. My gaze sweeps upward and lands on a row of proctors, all standing at the very edge, looming above us. Evanora radiant in her white robes, Dean Abrashi's arms folded across his chest, Julian Boleyn silent and marble-still, Afia Balogun's hands clasped behind her back, and the rest, including the small, forgettable Hilla, whose teal eyes flicker over the crowd with bland disinterest. And the other proctors who have yet to introduce themselves.
Evanora stands at the front, arms folded, lips curled in a sneer. "Listen now, children. The Academy is due north. We expect you all to arrive by the end of the week." Her voice carries no warmth, no amusent just command, pure and simple.
I blink, mouth dry, and the thought stabs through my mind: What the fuck do you an, arrive by the end of the week? Aren't you bastards taking us there? I glance at Elijah, who looks equally baffled, eyes darting between the proctors.
Then, with a flick of her wrist, Evanora waves her hand in a broad, almost lazy gesture. The world shivers. The walls of the building begin to ripple not just flickering, but actually coming undone. The stone peels away in layers, translucent at first, then vanishing entirely, like soone is unmaking the world piece by piece. The ceiling dissolves, letting in a rush of cold, wild air. Dim sunlight floods in. The marble beneath our feet splits and cracks, and suddenly, the floor itself is falling away.
I stumble, instinctively reaching for balance, but there's nothing to grab. In less than a minute, the entire building is gone. I'm standing on grass real, living grass, not the polished stone I've grown used to. The platform is a mory. The only thing left is the pedestal where the proctors stand, now a stone island in a sea of green.
Evanora laughs, the sound brittle and bright. "The Academy lies behind those mountains," she calls, her voice carrying easily over the wind. "We exist over a thousand miles outside of Lusa, in the Great Mountain Range of Sinwade!"
Sinwade. The na thunders in my head. I rack my mory for the geography lessons I mostly slept through. The Sinwade mountains are legend an unbroken, savage wall that stretches nearly two thousand miles, the natural barrier between Avrael and Trola. They're supposed to be impassable, haunted by storms and monsters that have all been made extinct by humans. The terrain is so sinister the weather so bad no cities or outposts were ever even erected near the mountain range.
I swallow, throat tight. If the teleportation spell really brought us here, then we must be at least a thousand miles east of Lusa. The scale of it is staggering.
Evanora raises her arms, and the wind whips her robe around her like a banner. "Make it to the Academy in seven days. You do not wish to find out what happens if you fail."
Her words hang in the air like a curse. I look at the other first years almost four hundred of us, scattered and confused, already forming uneasy clusters by house or by old friendships. So are crying, so shouting in disbelief, others standing stock-still, faces blank with shock. My own heart is hamring, a slow, sick dread creeping up my spine.
A tremor runs through the group. I hear a boy start to protest, but his voice cracks, swallowed by the wind.
My mind races. Seven days. Across a wilderness none of us have seen before. No supplies, no maps, no guide except the sun and the distant promise of safety. I sneer.
Hilla steps forward, her expression utterly disinterested. She lifts her hand, and I catch the faintest whisper "Life Step." The world flashes white again, but this ti it's only the proctors who vanish, leaving us stranded in the middle of nowhere.
A heavy silence falls. For a heartbeat, no one moves. Then chaos breaks loose. Students begin shouting, a chorus of panic and rage.
"Are they serious?"
"Where the hell are we supposed to go?"
"I don't even have a weapon I left mine in my room!"
"What if there are monsters?
"I've never seen a monster"
I stand perfectly still, forcing myself to breathe, to think. Elijah sidles up beside , face pale, eyes wide with the kind of fear he's trying to laugh off. "Well, this is... sothing."
I manage a thin, humorless smile. "Welco to the real test."
He chuckles, but the sound is hollow. "They can't just leave us here, right? There has to be sothing we're missing."
I scan the horizon, searching for anything roads, buildings. Nothing but endless grass and the distant, impossible spine of the mountains in the distance. The wind whips my hair into my eyes. I wipe it away, mind racing.
Assess. Survive. Control the narrative. The old lessons from Cain echo in my head. I can't afford to panic. Fear is honest, but it's also deadly if you let it choke your judgnt.
Already, so of the bigger kids from Luxor and Vespera are shouting orders, trying to form groups, barking at the smaller or weaker students. I see a knot of lruths huddled together, eyes wary, whispering plans. The Umbra are already drifting toward the edge of the crowd. Already the students gravitate to their own.
I try to take stock of House Apophis but the chaos of students crying and running around makes it hard to locate them in the crowd. Seems most of us are scattered.
I look at Elijah "Stick with . No heroics, no splitting up."
He nods, jaw clenched. "Agreed
The grass whispers around our ankles, cold and alive. The sun is already slipping west, painting the mountains in bruised gold. We don't have much daylight left to get organized.
Across the field, soone screams a thin, desperate sound. I see a group of Luxor boys dragging a another boy by the collar, demanding he "prove" he has a useful mark of power. The fools are already bullying the lesser nobles in their own house. Idiots.
The voices in my head whisper, soft and savage: Through hardship to the stars, boy. Or into the dirt. Prove to them you are divine.
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