Chapter Three: First Day, First Blood

Registration was a folding table set up in a hallway that could’ve swallowed my entire apartment building, staffed by a woman with antlers and a clipboard who didn’t look up when I approached.

“Name.”

“Mia Callahan.”

She looked up.

Not fast, not dramatic, just a flick of her eyes to my face and then down to whatever list she was holding, and I could see her expression change. I’d gotten good at reading that look over the last day. It meant she’d found my name and understood what it meant that I was standing there.

“Human,” she said.

“Last time I checked.”

“House assignment’s already flagged. Special candidate.” She said the words like they tasted bad. “You’re in Vale House. Dorm building’s east side, room 214.”

“Great, thanks.”

“Physical evaluation’s still pending review,” she added, not looking at me anymore. “Some professors think the waiver should be revoked. You’ll want to keep your head down.”

I didn’t have anything good to say to that, so I grabbed my room key and left before she could see my face do something I didn’t want her to see.

Vale House turned out to be a tower on the eastern edge of campus, and by the time I found room 214, my arms ached from hauling my duffel bag up more stairs than any building should legally have.

The door was already open.

“Finally,” said the girl inside, not looking up from where she was hanging a string of lights across the ceiling. “I was starting to think they gave me a ghost roommate.”

She had violet skin, sharp ears, and hair the color of wet ink, and she was standing on a chair in a way that suggested gravity was more of a suggestion to her than a rule.

“Mia,” I said.

“Sandra.” She hopped down without using the chair’s legs at all, just floated the last two feet like it was nothing. “Dark elf. Don’t worry, I don’t bite unless asked nicely.”

“Noted.”

“You’re the human.” She said it the way someone comments on the weather, no judgment in it at all, which after the last hour felt like being handed a glass of water in a desert. “Everyone’s talking about you already. You waived the physical trial?”

“Apparently.”

“Bold.” She grinned, sharp teeth flashing. “I like bold. This year was getting boring.”

***

I met Vale House’s other first years at dinner, in a hall with a ceiling that showed actual sky instead of stone, clouds drifting overhead like the room had no roof at all. Nobody sat near me at first. I picked an empty table near the back and ate alone, which was fine, which was normal, which was exactly what I’d expected.

Then a tray landed across from me hard enough to rattle my cup.

“You’re the waiver,” said the boy who’d sat down. Peacock shifter, going by the streak of blue-green in his hair and the way he carried himself like every room owed him an audience. “I heard you didn’t even try the physical trial.”

“I heard you have terrible manners. Guess we’re both surprising people today.”

A couple of kids at the next table laughed. He didn’t like that.

“You know what happens to people who take spots they didn’t earn?” He leaned in. “This school eats people like you alive.”

“Cool story. Any actual point, or is this just a warm-up?”

His jaw tightened, and for a second I thought it might turn into something worse than words, but a voice cut through the hall before it could.

“Leave her alone, Callix.”

I looked up. Woman at the head table, sharp-eyed, dark hair pulled back, standing now with her hands folded like she’d been ready to step in the whole time.

“Professor Dorian,” Sandra whispered beside me, sliding into the seat next to mine like she’d been there all along. “She teaches Combat Theory. Kind of a big deal.”

Callix backed off immediately, muttering something under his breath, and Professor Dorian’s eyes found mine across the hall. She didn’t smile, exactly, but her expression softened, like she’d made a decision about me on the spot and it had landed in my favor.

I didn’t know yet that I should’ve been more afraid of that look than of Callix.

The trouble found me again on my way back to the dorm, in a courtyard lit by floating lanterns that didn’t seem to need any wires.

Ronan was leaning against the fountain like he’d been waiting.

“Word of advice,” he said, not bothering with a greeting. “Dorian defending you doesn’t mean you belong here. It just means she’s got a soft spot for lost causes.”

“Is that what I am? A lost cause?”

“You’re a human who skipped the one trial that actually matters.” He pushed off the fountain, closing the distance between us slowly, like he wanted every step to land. “You don’t know what’s out there in the Arena. You don’t know what half these students can do to you without breaking a sweat.”

“Then teach me.” I don’t know where it came from, the words just left my mouth before I could stop them, some mix of anger and exhaustion and refusing to let him see me flinch. “If it matters so much, prove it. Put me in the Arena yourself.”

An unexplainable expression flickered across his face. Surprise, maybe, or something closer to interest, gone before I could name it.

“Careful what you ask for,” he said quietly.

Then, from somewhere above the courtyard, a horn sounded, long and low, and every lantern around us dimmed at once.

Ronan’s head snapped up. Whatever had been in his eyes a second ago vanished, replaced by something sharper.

“That’s the emergency signal,” he said. “That doesn’t happen during orientation week.”

Behind him, the sky over the Academy split open with a sound like tearing paper, and something large and burning fell out of it.