Aurelis rose from the plain like a thing that had been there forever.
The walls were the first thing Adrian noticed. Not the height but how old it was. Though they were tall enough to make a man feel small.
The stone was pale grey, weathered smooth by centuries of rain and wind, and in some places it had been patched with newer blocks that hadn't yet faded to match. The gates were iron-bound oak, wide enough for four carts abreast. Above them, carved into the stone, was the large imperial crest.
Adrian had seen that crest before. On official papers at the Scar. On the contracts he took. On the letter his uncle had sent to inform him of his parents' death.
It looked different up close.
The traffic moving through the gates was steady but orderly. Carts waiting their turn, travelers with papers ready and guards who moved with the bored efficiency of men who had done this a thousand times.
Mira stopped beside him. She had been quiet for the last hour, her limp better but her face still tight with pain.
"I need to report in," she said. "The academy will want to know about the attack. The patrol that went missing."
Adrian nodded.
She looked at him for a moment. "You're registering for the examination?"
He glanced at her. "If I can still register. It's been almost a month since the ceremony."
Mira shook her head. "The window is six weeks. You have time."
She studied him. "You came all the way from the border?"
"Yeah."
Her eyebrows rose. "That's a long walk."
Adrian said nothing.
Mira reached into her coat and pulled out a small card. A student identification, by the look of it. She pressed it into his hand.
"If you need anything. Someone to show you around" She paused.
"...someone who owes you."
Adrian looked at the card. It was flashy. As expected of the one and only Academy in the Empire. It contained a few details.
Mira. Second Year. Below the name were three digits, probably her room number at the academy.
He tucked it into his coat. "Thank you."
Mira glanced at Lilith, then back at him. "The examination is thorough. They measure everything. Frequency, bond depth, potential." Her voice was careful. "Whatever you're hiding, they might find it."
Adrian met her eyes. "I'm not hiding anything."
Mira's mouth quirked. "No. Of course not."
She turned to go, then stopped. "Dorian."
He waited.
"The way you fought." She looked at Lilith again, something unreadable in her expression. "I've never seen anything like it. I don't know what you are. But whatever it is, be careful. The academy eats people who don't fit."
She walked into the stream of people and was gone.
Adrian stood for a moment, then turned to Lilith.
She was watching the gates, her face calm. The guards paid her no attention. She looked like any other spirit bonder's partner waiting for her human to finish business. Her ash-blonde hair was pulled back, her amber eyes distant.
"That was kind of her," Lilith said.
Adrian looked at her. "You think so?"
"I think she is afraid of what she saw. And she chose to help you anyway." Lilith's eyes followed Mira's disappearing figure. "That is rare."
Adrian tucked his hand into his coat, felt the card there. "We need to find the examination hall. And lodging."
Lilith nodded. She did not offer to lead. She waited for him to move first.
---
The streets of Aurelis were wider than Rivergate's, laid out in a grid that made it hard to get lost. The buildings were taller, at least three or four stories. Their facades were carved with crests and dates that told the age of the families who owned them.
The closer they walked toward the center of the city, the older the buildings became. Stone that had been laid when Beltonia was still a collection of warring kingdoms. Walls that had watched emperors rise and fall.
The examination hall was in the old quarter, near the academy. Adrian found it by following the stream of young men and women moving in the same direction.
Most of them were his age, seventeen or eighteen, all dressed in the practical clothes of candidates who had traveled to Aurelis for the enrollment window. Some walked with the easy confidence of noble names and guaranteed acceptance. Others moved faster, quieter, like people who had earned their place the hard way.
Adrian watched them for a while. A few weeks ago, he had been one of them. Standing in a line in Rivergate, waiting for his turn at the orb. Believing that the ceremony would tell him who he was.
Now he was here, almost a month later, with a bond that should not exist and a name that was not his own.
He stopped at the bottom of the steps. The building before him was old stone with wide doors and unbelievably tall windows. Above the entrance, carved into the lintel, was the academy crest. A tower rising from open pages, the words Scientia est Potentia below it.
Knowledge is power.
Adrian was surprised for a second. He'd seen those words on earth. And the language...
Lilith touched his arm.
"Go on," she said.
He shook his head, flashed her a smile and walked into the building with the other kids.
---
The inside of the hall was cool and quiet. A clerk sat at a long wooden counter, a stack of papers before her. She did not look up when it got to Adrian's turn.
"Name."
"Dorian. No surname."
She wrote it down. "Region."
"Frontier. The Scar border."
Her pen paused. She looked up for the first time, her eyes moving over his coat, his hands, the blade at his hip. The Scar was not a place people came from willingly. It was a place people went when they had nowhere else.
She did not comment. She only wrote something down on her paper.
"The examination is tomorrow at seventh bell," she said. "Late arrivals will not be admitted."
She pushed a small brass token across the counter. Adrian picked it up. It was heavier than it looked, stamped with the academy crest on one side and a number on the other.
"The fee?" he said.
She named a number. Adrian counted out the coins Sebastian had given him, watching the purse grow lighter. With the triple pay he'd gotten at the Scar, he had enough to last him a month. Then he would need work.
The clerk counted the coins twice, then nodded.
"Seventh bell," she said again. "Do not be late."
---
They found lodging in a boarding house near the academy wall. The woman who ran it was old and nearly blind, and she did not ask questions. She took Adrian's coins, gave him a key, and pointed toward the stairs.
The room was small with two beds, a washbasin and a small window that looked out onto a courtyard full of washing lines. The walls were thin; Adrian could hear someone coughing in the next room, a child crying somewhere below. It smelled of old smoke and damp wool.
It was the first roof over his head in weeks that was not a tent or a rock overhang.
Adrian set his pack on the bed and sat down. The mattress sagged beneath him but he did not care.
Lilith stood by the window, looking out at the courtyard. Beyond the washing lines, the wall of the academy rose against the evening sky.
Adrian pulled the letter from his coat.
His father's letter. The wax seal was still intact, the crest pressed into it soft from age, the edges worn smooth from being handled and put away over and over.
He mentally prepared himself and broke the seal.
---
Adrian,
If you are reading this, I am gone. Sebastian will know when to give it to you. I asked him to keep it safe until the right moment. I trust he has done so.
There are places I visited over the years. I was looking for something... answers, but I never found what I was searching for. I left records of what I saw. Maps, notes, fragments. If you are lucky, you might find them. They are hidden in one of the regions I visited and may help you understand what I was chasing.
If I am gone, it means someone found out. Someone who did not want me to keep looking. Do not let that stop you. Whatever they took from me, they cannot take what you will become.
I do not know what path you will walk. I do not know what you will face. But I know you will face it. You were always stubborn like that.
Whatever you become, know that I am proud of you. You are my son, and that is enough.
Forgive me for not being there for you.
— Father
---
Adrian folded the letter carefully and slid it back into his coat, next to Sebastian's journal and Mira's card.
He sat on the edge of the bed, the room dark around him, Lilith still at the window.
"Someone killed him," he said. "For looking for answers."
Lilith did not answer. She was still looking down through the window but he could tell she was listening.
"He left me a map and a warning and a letter saying he was proud of me." His voice was steady, but something in his chest was not. "He died when I was seven. I barely remember his face. And he wrote me a letter saying he was proud of me."
He looked at his hands. The calluses from the sword. The scar on his forearm from the Feeder.
"I am going to find out who killed him. And I am going to find out what he was looking for. And then I am going to take back what they stole."
Lilith turned from the window. Her face was half-lit, the evening light catching her ash-blonde hair.
"Yes," she said.
She crossed the room and sat on the bed across from him, her legs crossed.
"Tomorrow," she said, "you begin."
Adrian looked at the window, at the academy wall rising against the evening sky.
Tomorrow, he would walk through those gates.
The system flickered at the edge of his vision. A new notification had appeared.
[New Quest: Enter Soulmark Academy]
[Reward: ???]
[Failure: ???]
He stared at it for a moment. Then he closed it.
He would find out tomorrow.