The universe was vast.
Just as the murmurs began to die down, Halver's voice rose once more.
"Before you go, I must tell you sothing important. In a few days, several of you will be selected to travel to the Bernard Empire's Space Research Institute. There, you will continue your studies—not just through diagrams, but through tools, machines, and telescopes that let you see the cosmos for yourselves."
Gasps rippled through the hall.
"There, you will learn what it ans to study the heavens not with incantations, but with instrunts. You will see magic asured, tested, compared against force and motion. You will learn how spells and science might one day work together to carry our kind beyond the stars."
He looked over the class, his gaze resting montarily on each stunned face.
"The Bernard Empire believes in progress. But they also believe in potential. And so of that potential—" he smiled gently, "—sits in this very room."
...
Few monts later
Elina stepped out of the university gates with her cloak pulled tightly against the late-morning wind. The sky above Britannia was steel-grey, streaked with vapor trails from Bernardian survey drones, silent as ghosts. Behind her, the dos of the newly established University of Unified Sciences shimred faintly, like pearls embedded in the ribs of old stone. Her ti there felt like a lifeti packed into weeks.
The stone-paved street outside the university had changed. Where once gravel and wagon ruts marked the lanes, now smooth Bernardian ferrocrete ran in perfect lines, bordered by alloy-laced street markers that glowed faintly in the fog. New roads were rising through Britannia like veins of silver. The old cobbled arteries remained in the outer districts, but here near the academic district, the Bernard Empire's touch was unmistakable.
As she walked toward the southern transit stop, Elina saw a Bernardian patrol passed by—Military Police in standard urban armor: matte gray, ballistic plates over dark-blue fatigues. Each carried an assault rifle slung tight and a compact radio unit fixed to their chest harness. Their red visors glinted like watchful eyes. They weren't hostile, exactly. Just… precise.
Once, the Royal Knights of Britannia patrolled these streets. Now, those noble orders were relics—ceremonial or dismissed. The age of swords and sigils had been overwritten by rifles and surveillance orbs.
"Strange," she whispered, watching a patrol vanish behind a reconstruction scaffold. "It all happened so fast."
The city was changing—stone and spirit. Above her, sigils carved into old arches were now flanked by sleek Bernardian holographic placards. The air buzzed with faint static from the new comm-spires. Steam carts and magic-run wheelchairs shared the thoroughfares with Bernardian vehicles—sleek, four-wheeled machines powered by clean, quiet engines.
Elina caught sight of one now: a sky-blue personnel cruiser humming silently as it curved around the corner. Its tires whispered over the road, its lights blinking in mathematical patterns. She couldn't help but pause. The sound, the shape, the sheer logic of the machine—it was as if it had been cut from another world and dropped into hers.
But not everything had changed.
The raptor-drawn carriages still lined the lower square. The creatures—large, lean reptiles bred for endurance—snorted plus of mist from their nostrils. Their handlers wore mix-matched uniforms, part old Britannian livery, part Bernardian regulation. Adaptation, she thought, had beco the city's new skill.
Elina approached one of the carriages. The driver, an older man with sharp eyes and a chanic's gauntlet, nodded.
" I want to go to the Orphanage"
"Which one?" he asked, recognizing her face.
She smiled. "Mother's Hill."
He helped her aboard. The interior was warm, lined with soft fabric—Bernardian synth-leather, she guessed. As the raptors started their rhythmic trot, Elina sat back and watched the city peel away behind her.
They passed through layers of the city like sedint in a historical to. The inner rings were gleaming now—Bernardian installations, hybrid market squares, clockwork towers fused with light-based tech. Beyond them lay the midring, where old Britannian hos still stood, patched and frad by new power grids. Then ca the outskirts, where change was slower—where people still cooked over fla, and crystal lanterns hung in doorways to ward off ill spirits.
Elina watched it all with a quiet ache in her chest. She'd grown up among these stones. Now they wore the clothing of another people.
"Do you ever think it's too much?" she asked the driver.
He glanced back in the mirror, brow lifted. "The change?"
"Yes."
He was quiet for a mont, then said, "My son couldn't read or write. Now he's learning calculus. My wife used to limp from a bad fall. Bernardians fitted her with a brace that lets her walk just fine. So no, I don't think it's too much. Not yet."
Elina nodded slowly, her fingers resting on the carved emblem of her old house—a symbol she'd had stitched into the lining of her cloak.
"They are good changes. Still... it feels like I blinked and the world forgot how it used to be."
"That's how you know it's working," the driver replied with a shrug. "Real change always feels a bit wrong at first."
The orphanage ca into view about half an hour later. It sat on a low, grassy hill just outside the southern gate of the city. Mother's Hill, they called it, nad for the warm springs that once healed the wounded in the old wars. The building itself was modest—a two-story timber and stone structure, patched but well cared for. A Bernardian wind turbine spun quietly nearby, and solar panels now lined the roof.
Children played in the yard. So kicked around a cloth ball reinforced with enchanted thread, while others chased each other through wooden obstacle fras, giggling as they cast harmless illusion spells that sparked and flickered like fireflies. A few sat quietly on a bench reading old story scrolls under a teacher's watchful eye.
Elina stepped down from the carriage and give the driver Coins.
As the carriage pulled away, she stood there for a mont. Then she turned toward the orphanage gates.
One of the children looked up and pointed. "Miss Elina!"
The others followed, a ripple of recognition blooming across their faces. They ran to her, shouting her na, surrounding her in a rush of small hands and brighter mories.
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