Soon, the carriage rolled through the massive, ornate gates of the Royal Elemental Academy.
It was big.
Not just "big" in the way castles were big, but the kind of big that screamed we have way too much funding
Towering spires, floating lecture halls, statues of old dead mages trying too hard to look wise — the usual.
Sam stepped out like a proper noble.
Head high, coat adjusted, face blank.
Nyra followed him out.
He looked around.
Yep. Massive place. Buildings everywhere.
Probably had dorms, libraries, alchemy labs, a torture chamber for late-stage exams — the works.
He didn't need directions.
A literal river of eighteen-year-olds was flowing toward one building — the Main Hall — pulled along by dreams, nerves, and the scent of fate.
He joined the current.
The hall was packed.
Overflowing with enough students to start a civil war.
At the center, stood the Awakening Stone — a massive crystal monolith, pulsing faintly, as if it could already smell who was worth awakening and who was just here to be disappointed.
Academy guards stood around, looking bored but armed.
Professors loitered at the edges, whispering with the kind of smugness only tenured magical scholars could afford.
Sam's gaze moved through the crowd.
Groups had already formed.
Nobles clustered with nobles, showing off their family crests and generational entitlement.
Commoners grouped up too — quiet, wide-eyed, clinging to shared nerves and secondhand dresses.
And then there were the in-betweeners.
The exiled. The socially radioactive. The unlucky bastards.
People like Sam.
He stood there, unspoken to, unnoticed, unwelcomed.
He sighed.
"Wow. It's just like high school. But worse. With magic."
His reputation, apparently, had arrived before he did.
Samuel Nightshade: noble, disgrace, walking cautionary tale.
He turned his head—
—and saw her.
Lyra Vessia.
Fiancée. Childhood… acquaintance. Doom grenade in human form.
She spotted him too.
For half a second, their eyes met.
She gave him a polite, shallow nod. The kind nobles give to the help right before ignoring them.
He nodded back.
Then, without missing a beat, she turned and rejoined her little entourage of well-dressed, prodigies, laughing at some joke Sam was fairly sure involved his name.
Nyra coughed lightly into her hand.
Awkward silence.
Sam muttered,
"Charming as ever."
A deep, resounding gong echoed through the hall like divine punctuation.
The crowd stilled instantly. Nervous chatter died. Even the air seemed to hold its breath.
A moment later, the grand double doors at the back of the hall creaked open — because of course they did — and in swept the principal.
Old, white-bearded, and dressed in robes so layered they might qualify as a fire hazard, he looked like he hadn't smiled since the last Ice Age.
Behind him came the Emperor himself, draped in power and gold like a walking national budget.
And beside him?
A girl Sam's age.
She glided, rather than walked, all golden hair and shining eyes.
Every step radiated elegance, every blink screamed royal bloodline.
The crowd parted like peasants before royalty — which, to be fair, was exactly what she was.
Princess Seraphina Elion.
Walking Aspirational Poster.
Probably had her own fan club and a special choir that sang when she blinked.
They ascended the stage together and sat — the Principal in the center, the Emperor to his right, the Princess to his left — like a panel of judges at a magical talent show.
The Principal raised his hand with ceremonial slowness, and a female professor stepped forward with a smile far too cheerful for this hour.
She clutched a scroll and practically beamed as she began,
"We now commence this year's Awakening Ceremony!"
A series of drumbeats followed — solemn and dramatic, like someone was about to be sacrificed instead of tested for magic.
Strange, floating orbs hovered into the air, spinning gently.
Sam squinted.
Recording artifacts.
Cameras, basically.
But magical.
Floating around to broadcast the ceremony outside the Academy — to families, to the press, to the entire damn Empire.
For "transparency," they said.
Sam figured it was really just for maximum "humiliation".
"Each of you," the professor said, "will step forward when your name is called.
Place your hand on the Awakening Stone.
If you awaken an element, congratulations — you'll be admitted into the Royal Elemental Academy next month to begin your path as a mage!"
CLAP! CLAP! CLAP!
Polite applause followed.
The kind that said yay, let's all pretend we're not terrified.
Sam clapped too, lightly.
"Let the ceremony… begin!"
The first name was called.
A boy stepped forward — small, skinny, and shaking hard enough to rattle the teeth in his skull.
He was muttering a prayer under his breath, clutching some kind of family charm like it owed him a miracle.
Sam watched with the detached interest of a man observing someone else's funeral.
The boy approached the Awakening Stone.
With a trembling hand, the boy reached out.
Touch.
Nothing.
He glanced around, panicked.
He touched it again.
Still nothing.
A third try — desperation rising, breath coming fast.
The female professor, voice gentle but merciless, said softly,
"I'm sorry, child… you have no elemental affinity."
The words landed like a knife.
"No, wait—wait!" the boy gasped. "I—there must be—my charm—!"
Sam sighed.
The guards began moving on instinct. Clearly, they'd done this before.
The boy thrashed, still clinging to the stone like it might wake up out of pity.
"No! Please! There must be a mistake!"
The guards didn't even flinch. One grabbed his arms, the other his legs.
"Wait—!"
Thud. Thud.
Scrape.
Dragged out like unwanted furniture.
The heavy doors shut behind him with a dramatic finality that really didn't need sound effects — but got them anyway.
Silence.
Sam leaned toward Nyra. "Well. That wasn't traumatizing at all."