No one returned for him.
Not a mage. Not a mentor. Not even a clerk with papers for review.
Kael waited outside the branding chamber as long as pride allowed, until the torches dimmed and footsteps vanished from the marble corridors. By then, the Academy's rites had moved on, preparing to honor the next candidate—someone destined to awaken into flame or stone or wind.
Not him.
He walked out alone.
Through shadowed halls.
Past polished pillars lined with the crests of noble families whose bloodlines bloomed like wildfire.
He wore none.
Shack #6
Kael reached the outer barracks just after sundown. The sky above the Academy still shimmered crimson—like fire had bled into the clouds.
He stepped through the narrow stone path toward the fringe housing, where the structure called Shack #6 waited.
No one had lit a torch near it.
The others had flame-lit walkways, gardens, even minor spirit wards glowing soft blue.
Shack #6 had a broken lantern and a rusted nameplate that no longer read anything at all.
Inside, the air was cold.
Not elemental cold—but the kind that settles when things are forgotten.
A cracked basin. One bed of worn straw. A desk missing a leg, propped up by books that had been hollowed and burned.
Kael dropped his satchel beside the pallet.
Sat on the edge.
And exhaled.
The Academy had no curriculum for the Ashbound.
There were no Brand studies, no combat drills, no strategic theory. They were given cleanup tasks. Furnace scrubbing. Spellfield repairs. Handling misfired conduits and feeding the elemental fauna.
Kael found himself dragging mana-siphon cables down tunnels that steamed with heat.
He scrubbed summoning rings with acid-smelling dust that left his hands raw.
He handled beasts rejected from elemental communion—mutated flamehounds and blind stone-serpents that hissed in pain whenever they sensed heat.
Through it all, no instructor spoke to him beyond instructions.
And no student looked him in the eye.
That night, he dreamed again.
But the voice did not speak this time.
Instead, he stood in a place without ground or sky.
Just a ring of stone, floating in stillness.
And across from him—a throne of molten shadow.
A presence sat upon it. Not a man. Not a god. But something in between.
It did not speak.
It watched.
Kael stared back.
His chest ached.
His palm throbbed.
When he woke, the mark was faintly glowing on his hand again—just for a moment. Just long enough to know it was real.
Then it faded.
On the fourth day of menial work, Kael stood alone in a damaged spell chamber, sent to clean residue from a failed fire test.
The conduits were ruptured. Magic flickered in the air—unstable, lingering.
As he scrubbed the ward marks, his hand slipped.
A burst of stray flame lashed toward him, uncontained.
He flinched—but the fire did not strike.
It bent.
Veered.
Turned on itself mid-air and snuffed out before reaching his skin.
Kael froze.
That wasn't a shield.
That wasn't an instinctive cast.
That was negation.
He looked down at his hand.
Nothing visible. No mark. No glyph.
But the same stillness from his dream coiled in his chest like smoke waiting for breath.
That evening, someone left a folded note under his door.
No name.
No seal.
No handwriting Kael recognized.
"The mirror didn't reject you.
It cracked because it couldn't reflect you."
"When they ask what you are…
Don't answer."
Kael folded the note slowly.
His reflection in the window stared back, barely lit by the faint emberlight of the courtyard lamps.
And for the first time, he realized—
His eyes no longer glowed like the other students'.
They were dark.
Deep.
And something else stared through them.