The shower was cold. He let it run anyway.
The water traced the lines of his scars the way water always did. Following the paths without comment, indifferent to their history. For a moment the old woman surfaced in his mind. Her silhouette. The quiet way she used to look at him. He let the memory move through and kept his eyes open and let it pass.
On the bed when he came back: a uniform. Black shirt. Black trousers. A tie that looked like a problem someone else had invented.
He tried it once. Frowned at the result. Left it.
He buttoned the shirt, left the collar open, and looked at himself in the mirror for exactly as long as it took to confirm he was presentable. The scars were visible. He had no particular feelings about that.
He stepped into the corridor.
The academy in the morning was something different from the academy seen from a marble floor with a splitting head. High arches overhead, stained glass breaking the light into colored patterns across the marble, carvings on every wall that someone had spent considerable time on. It was the kind of place designed to make you feel small not through threat but through sheer accumulated intention. Every detail said this was built by people who expected it to last.
Students moved around him. Some glanced. He didn't react.
Through an open window he caught the gardens. Trimmed trees, arranged flowers, stone paths, fountains catching the morning light. A breeze came through against his open collar.
They walk past this like it's nothing. He watched a group of students cross the garden path without looking at it. Maybe it is nothing to them.
He found the amphitheater by following the movement of people. The doors were dark wood reinforced with metal, massive enough that opening them required intention. He pushed them open.
The sound echoed across the chamber.
Every head turned.
White.
Rows of white uniforms, closed collars, perfect ties, clean lines stretching from the front of the room to the back. He stood in the doorway in black and looked at them and they looked at him and for exactly half a second neither party moved.
His eyes dropped to his own shirt.
Who gave me this? Not that I'd wear their white. But one person in black is just more eyes to deal with.
He walked to the nearest empty seat at the back. Each step felt louder than it needed to. The whispers started almost immediately, the particular quality of whispers that aren't trying very hard to be quiet. He sat down, fixed his eyes on the stage, and waited for them to lose interest.
They didn't entirely. But they redirected.
A figure stepped forward onto the stage.
Silver hair under the amphitheater light, moving like something liquid. Posture that had never needed to be taught. Eyes clear and almost luminous, the kind of gaze that was simultaneously distant and precise. She stood at the center of the stage and let the silence settle fully before she opened her mouth.
Selena: "Welcome to the Academy of Ardenthal."
Her voice was soft. It reached every corner of the room without effort.
Selena: "You were chosen among thousands. Some of you come from noble bloodlines. Others from remote territories. Some have already tasted battle. Others have only known training grounds."
She paused. Her eyes moved across the room with the unhurried attention of someone who was actually looking.
Selena: "From this moment forward, those differences no longer matter. Here you are neither heirs nor prodigies. You are candidates. Candidates to become the shield that stands between this world and collapse."
A tension moved through the room. Subtle. Real.
Selena: "The world is changing. The fractures are widening. Villages vanish. Patrols fail to return. Entire regions live in fear of things they cannot name. This Academy does not exist to celebrate your talent. It exists to prevent annihilation. We do not train heroes for songs and statues. We train people capable of facing what most refuse to acknowledge."
She paused again.
Selena: "Some of you will fall. I will not hide that. But those who endure will carry something heavier than a title. They will carry the responsibility of protecting those who cannot protect themselves."
Her eyes moved across the room and for a moment landed on him.
He didn't look away.
So that's her. The one they all admire.
Something cold settled in his chest. He watched her stand up there with her silver hair and her flawless posture and her words about battle and collapse and the weight of responsibility.
You talk like all of this belongs to you. What do you know about the simplest kind of pain? What do you know about any of it?
He had grown up around women who survived by offering their bodies because there was nothing else to offer. He had no hatred for them. It was just what the world was, what it produced, what it required of people who had nothing. Selena stood on a stage and spoke about collapse and he sat in the back row with scars that had been put there by men who would never stand in a room like this and thought about the distance between those two facts.
In any case. I'll probably never cross paths with her. She has private lessons with the finest professors. People like that don't end up near people like me.
The speech continued.
He kept watching her.
When you speak of the devil...