The Citadel swallowed them whole.
From the street it had looked like a single building with too many windows. Inside, it was a city of corridors. Light fell from high, mirrored ceilings in clean planes that made shadow behave. The floors were dark stone veined with pale lines that caught the glow and carried it along the halls like streams.
Aethryn's lantern hung at his side, dimmed to a polite ember. Even so, Kaelen felt eyes on it. Guards at doorways. Clerks moving stacks of ledgers bound with brass corners. Trainees in gray coats hurrying past with their lanterns clipped and capped. Everyone wore light differently here; they treated it like a uniform.
They passed beneath an arch carved with names. Kaelen didn't recognize any of them, but he counted how many there were. Too many to be comforting. Not enough to be safe.
Aethryn led him down a wide corridor where the walls became glass. Behind them, rows of lanterns burned on shelve, old, cracked, some with one pane replaced by a different generation's work. Each had a tag. Some tags had a slash through them and a date. Kaelen didn't ask why.
A man with ink on his fingers intercepted them at a desk pieced together from salvaged doors. He looked from Aethryn to Kaelen and back, then found a smile shaped like paperwork.
"Dawnbringer Vale," he said. "Intake?"
"Warden candidate," Aethryn said.
The clerk's eyes ticked to Kaelen. "Name?"
"Kaelen."
"Family?"
"None living."
The quill scratched. "Place of birth?"
Kaelen hesitated. "A hall by a brazier."
The clerk blinked, then remembered to sigh. "Village?"
"Wimble."
The quill moved again, more slowly. The clerk's eyes stayed on the page. "We heard."
Kaelen's jaw tightened. He looked anywhere else. The glass wall reflected him faintly and threw back the ceiling light as if to remind him what he was walking into.
"Rooming in the North Wing," the clerk said. "Trainee docket for now. Orientation at second bell. Lantern registry first." He slid a thin copper token across the desk. A sunburst was stamped into it, rays short, as if someone had decided long rays would be rude. "Show this if anyone asks why you're here."
"Will they?" Kaelen asked.
"Constantly," the clerk said, pleasantly, and waved them on.
Aethryn took him through a hall called the Gallery of Mirrors. Not the mirrored spires outside, these were old plates, foxed and dark at the edges, some cracked into spiderwebs. Beneath each, a plaque: a name, a phrase, a date.
Kaelen read the first few without meaning to. Held the line at Three Rivers. Lit the lower ward with her last breath. Walked twelve nights with no oil. Ordinary sentences that stopped your breath. Aethryn's step slowed near a plate with a deep, careful crack through the center.
"Yours?" Kaelen asked.
"No." Aethryn kept walking. "A friend."
They reached a door with a sun sigil etched into the wood. Aethryn knocked once and opened it without waiting. Inside, a woman sat amid piles of books, charts, and lantern panes arranged the way only one person understood. She wore a gray coat and a ribbon at her throat like the priestess's, except this one was pinned with a tiny piece of mirror.
"Archivist," Aethryn said.
"Vale," she said without looking up. "If you're here to tell me the world has ended, you're late. It ended several times this week already."
Aethryn nodded toward Kaelen. "This is the boy from Wimble."
She set down her quill. Her eyes were the color of tea left on a windowsill too long. They flicked over Kaelen like light across an old map, catching where the paper had been folded and torn.
"Step closer," she said.
He did. Her lantern on the table was no larger than a mug; its flame barely showed. Even so, he felt it tugging on the same tired thread inside him Aethryn's had pulled on at the watchpost. The archivist watched his face when it happened. He hated that she watched well.
"Name?" she asked.
"Kaelen."
"Last name?"
"Vire."
She repeated it like she was checking if it made a sound she recognized. "You were found. Not born. A village priestess brought you in under a burned cloth."
"Everyone knows," he said. "Do they know why the lamps went out?"
She smiled without warmth. "We have five theories and a consensus that all of them are missing the important piece. Does that comfort you?"
"No."
"Good," she said. "It shouldn't."
She slid open a drawer and took out a narrow strip of hammered silver stamped with tiny sunbursts. "Wear this on your sleeve until the registry marks you. It tells people not to experiment on you without paperwork."
"That happens?" Kaelen asked.
"In a city this large," she said, "everything happens." She glanced at Aethryn. "You'll take him to the registry?"
Aethryn nodded once. The archivist's gaze lingered on Kaelen a breath longer than was polite.
"Two pieces of advice," she said. "Don't promise what light will do. It hates schedules. And if anyone starts talking about prophecy, leave the room."
"Even you?" Kaelen asked.
"Especially me," she said, and bent over her books as if they were weather she could fix.
They left. The registry sat in a long hall with high windows and a row of polished counters behind which three women and a bored man took notes and asked questions without looking tired. Behind them stood a glass case holding a model of a Beacon Tower. It was all angles and mirrors and wires; the little lantern in its heart was a pearl of light the size of a fingernail.
A woman with a scar under her eye waved them forward. "Lantern?"
Aethryn set his on the counter. "Not mine. His."
Kaelen lifted the chain from his forearm. His lantern, Ashveil, looked wrong here: matte black casing scuffed from travel and work, sigils along the ribs that weren't standard issue and weren't pretty, three-part lens like a cracked coin. He set it down carefully, and the clerk's eyebrows went up a fraction.
"Origin?"
"Shrine basin," he said.
She waited.
"Outer Ring," he added. "Wimble."
She made a note and slid a small ring of etched glass across the counter. "Assessment lens," she said. "Place it over your pane. We'll read your Glow."
Kaelen glanced at Aethryn. Aethryn didn't nod. He just stood, hands behind his back, patient as stone. Kaelen settled the lens over Ashveil's central pane.
"Uncap and breathe once," the clerk said. "Gently."
Kaelen unlatched the door and drew a breath. The lantern's flame stirred, then rose, then reached for him the way he reached for it. The etched glass caught the light and threw it into delicate lines that danced across the counter, climbing the clerk's fingers.
The lines should have settled into a tidy pattern. They didn't. They twisted, braided, and then, briefly, flashed white.
The clerk jerked her hand away. The bored man at the next station looked up for the first time in what might have been hours.
"Again," the clerk said quietly.
Kaelen didn't breathe. The lantern did. A thin thread of light pushed against the glass, then passed through as if the lens hadn't been there. The clerk hissed between her teeth, not in fear, in recognition. Aethryn's shadow shifted on the floor, and that was the only sign he'd moved at all.
"Your Glow is… atypical," the clerk said, voice even. "Registry mark will be temporary." She stamped a small sigil onto the copper token with a device that snapped harder than it needed to. "You'll report for controlled exercises at third bell."
"Controlled," Kaelen said. "Because last time wasn't."
"No," she said. "Because next time might be worse."
Aethryn put the lantern back in Kaelen's hands. The weight steadied him. The hall's lights felt too bright. He wanted a shadow that wasn't owned by the Citadel, just to see what would happen.
They were halfway to the dormitory wing when a familiar kind of silence opened in the corridor ahead. Not Gloom silence, institutional. A pocket of air where voices were not welcome. Out of it stepped a man in a dark coat with iron stitched into the seams in a pattern too subtle to be decorative. His hair was white at the temples, his eyes the flat gray of old steel.
"Dawnbringer Vale," he said, as if listing inventory. His gaze slid to Kaelen and settled the way paper does when a hand is placed on it. "This is the Outer Ring boy."
"Kaelen," Aethryn said.
The man's mouth ticked, more muscle than humor. "Archwarden Luth Orain. I manage what gets burned and what doesn't." He extended a hand. Kaelen shook it because not shaking it would become the story of the day. The Archwarden's grip was dry and exact.
"You'll find the Citadel efficient," Luth said. "You'll also find it crowded with needs. If you intend to be one more need, say so now and we'll give you a blanket and a quiet corner to be tragic in."
Kaelen blinked. "Is that a speech?"
"It's mercy," Luth said. "We don't have time for the other kind."
Aethryn's voice was very polite. "He held a line alone last night."
"So did the shrine basin," Luth said. "We're not making that a Warden." He studied Kaelen for one more heartbeat and then stepped aside. "Orientation. Then training. Then we see if your light burns anything we can afford to lose."
He walked on. People parted. The corridor remembered how to sound.
Kaelen let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been rationing. "Friendly."
"He said what others will try to say prettier," Aethryn said. "That's useful."
They reached the dormitory wing: small rooms with narrow beds and hooks on the wall for lanterns and coats. From an open door, laughter spilled, quick, bright, the kind that makes rooms feel briefly human. A woman about Kaelen's age leaned in the doorway, one boot braced, a lantern at her hip flickering in a dozen small reflections like it couldn't decide which way to throw light.
She looked him over, then Aethryn, then back again. "This the one who cooked a square?"
"Selra," Aethryn said. "Play nice."
"I always do." She pushed off the doorframe and stuck out a hand. "Selra Myrren. If you get lost, follow the smell of burnt sugar and bad decisions."
"Kaelen," he said.
She nodded toward his lantern. "That's ugly."
"It works."
"Good answer," she said. "Breakfast at first bell. Orientation after. Don't sit in the first row. The Archwarden throws chalk at sleepers."
Aethryn cleared his throat. "He throws chalk at everyone."
"See?" Selra said. "Helpful."
When she left, Kaelen found the hook by his narrow bed and hung Ashveil up. The lantern's glow painted a small circle on the floor. He put his pack beneath the bed and stood there with his hands on the frame, not sure what to do with them now that they weren't carrying anything.
Aethryn leaned in the doorway. "You'll meet the others at orientation. Some will want to be your friend. Some will want to see how hard you fall."
"Which are you?"
"I'm the one who tells you the same thing every dawn," Aethryn said. "Every light burns something away. Learn to decide what."
Kaelen looked at his hands. Beneath the skin, the tired thread glowed, faint but insistent, waiting for the next order he hadn't meant to give.
The second bell rang, three bright notes thrown down the halls and caught by mirrors until the whole building felt tuned.
"Orientation," Aethryn said.
Kaelen picked up Ashveil. The flame curled toward him like a cat, then sat. He followed Aethryn out into the bright corridor and told himself a clean little lie: If I do this right, fewer people will die.
The lie fit well enough to walk in.
The orientation hall was a theater built out of discipline. Tiered benches arced toward a raised platform with a blackboard, a table, and nothing else. Light fell from narrow slits high in the walls and gathered at the front like water filling a basin. Everything that mattered would happen there.
Trainees filled the benches, their gray coats making the room look like a storm cloud that had agreed to sit still. Lanterns hung on hooks at the ends of the rows, all capped, all politely asleep. Kaelen felt their presence anyway; a room full of hidden flames is never quiet.
Aethryn left him at the third row with a look that said listen and took a seat along the wall with other Wardens. Kaelen sat at the edge. He didn't know where he belonged, but that at least kept options open.
On the platform, a woman stepped forward and the room adjusted itself. She wore the braided silver cord of a senior Warden and a boredom that might have been earned. Her lantern was a slim column with a lattice of tiny mirrors; even capped, it whispered confidence.
"I'm Warden Fenn," she said. "You will call me Warden Fenn. If you survive long enough, you can call me anything under your breath." A few chuckles broke and died. "This is orientation. It will not be inspiring."
She pointed at the blackboard where three words were written in a clean hand: Fuel. Form. Fault.
"Fuel," she said. "Glow is not a free drink. You pay with hours you haven't lived yet. Burn too much and you'll learn what a Wraith knows about regret. Form. Light is stupid until you teach it shapes. Shields, chains, blades, fine. Teach it fast or it goes where it pleases. Fault. Every lantern has one. A crack, a quirk, a bad habit. Learn yours before the dark does."
Kaelen's mouth went dry. He had a crack you could see. He had another he could feel.
Fenn's gaze flicked over the room and snagged. "Wimble," she said without looking down at a list.
Heads turned. Kaelen kept his spine a straight line he didn't feel.
"You cooked a square," she said. "Don't do it again unless I tell you to."
"It wasn't a choice," Kaelen said.
"Most of what matters isn't," she said, and moved on.
She tapped the board again, wrote two more words: Hollow. Hold.
"Hollow," she said. "Some of you will get there. You'll see things that make you think you can push past cost. You can't. Not and keep your name." Her eyes slid along the rows and stopped, briefly, where Aethryn sat. He didn't look away. "Hold. That's what we do. We hold lines. We hold ground. We hold people who can't hold themselves. It is not noble. It is necessary."
The door at the back opened. Conversation stopped even though there wasn't any. The Archwarden walked down the center aisle like he owned the floor, because he did. He didn't take the platform. He stood at the first row and looked up at Fenn.
"Continue," Luth said.
Fenn did. "Assessment," she said. "One by one. Controlled glow. Registry lens. We see who can count to ten without setting their own hair on fire."
A laugh. Not loud. Relief disguised as humor.
They filed down by row. Trainees mounted the platform, uncapped, breathed, recapped. Some flames wobbled and steadied. Some surged and were pulled back with effort. Fenn's notes scratched, indifferent as rain.
Kaelen's turn came slower than he would have guessed and faster than he wanted. He stepped up. The lens sat on the table, etched lines catching the hall's ambient light. Fenn nodded toward it as if offering cutlery.
"Breathe," she said.
He placed the lens against Ashveil's pane. The glass made a soft sound like a letter opened.
He breathed.
The flame rose. Lines on the lens lit, thin at first, then thicker. They should have formed tidy rays within tidy limits. Instead, they braided the way they had at registry and then bit down into white. The hall's light shifted in response, slight, but enough to make the back row murmur.
"Stop," Fenn said, voice even.
He tried. The flame didn't. It leaned toward him the way water leans toward the shape of a cup. He felt the familiar opening in his chest, wider this time, greedy.
"Kaelen," Aethryn said from the side. Not a shout. Not a warning. A name said like a hand on a shoulder.
He closed his eyes and let go of the thought that always showed up at the worst times. He thought instead of the priestess's small lamp warming the shrine's basin. He thought of Old Sera's cracked lens. He thought of his hands shaking and then not.
The flame sank to a smaller, obedient tongue.
Fenn's chalk hit the slate once. "Fault," she said, writing it next to his name. "Strong pull. Poor stop."
Luth didn't move. He didn't need to. "Again," he said.
Kaelen kept his eyes open. He breathed, and this time the light climbed to a point he chose and stayed. The lines on the lens held. The hall's ambitious glow pretended it hadn't leaned.
Fenn made another mark, more neutral.
"Good," she said. "Take a seat."
He did. Hands on his knees. Jaw unlocked. The room remembered to breathe around him.
Selra Myrren slid into the bench behind his and whispered, "Congratulations. You didn't explode."
"High bar," he whispered back.
"Lower than you'd think," she said.
Two trainees later, a boy with a polished lantern and a family crest stitched into his sleeve stepped up and glanced back at Kaelen like a dare. His flame rose cleanly and stopped exactly where he'd aimed it. Fenn nodded. The boy's mouth tilted, just enough to be rude. When he passed Kaelen's row, he didn't whisper, he didn't need to for Kaelen to hear.
"Vorrik Drenn," he said to no one. "Try to keep up."
Kaelen kept his face empty. Behind his ribs, something tried to stand up.
When the assessments ended, Fenn tossed the chalk from one hand to the other and caught it without looking. "You'll learn formations, basic flares, and how not to die in your first month," she said. "If you fail at any of those, we put your name on a mirror and tell a story about bravery that makes your parents less angry at the world."
"Endearing," Selra murmured.
Fenn pointed at the side door. "Dining hall. Then quarters. Then sleep. Third bell, controlled drills. If you don't know where to stand, follow someone who looks like they won't trip over their own light."
The room began to de-cloud. Lanterns were clipped back to belts. Voices rose, careful at first, then regular. Luth Orain stayed where he was until most had filed out. When Kaelen reached the aisle, the Archwarden's gaze found him again.
"You'll attend an additional session after drills," he said. "With me."
Kaelen didn't ask if that was a request. "Yes, Archwarden."
"Bring your lantern," Luth said. "And whatever it is that makes it look at you like that."
He left. The light fell back into its designed paths, as if the floor had exhaled.
Aethryn met Kaelen at the door. "You did fine."
"I almost didn't."
"You stopped."
"With help."
"Then the help was there when it needed to be," Aethryn said. "Learn to put your hand on your own shoulder."
Kaelen huffed a laugh that didn't know what to do with itself. "That a Lightkeeper proverb?"
"No," Aethryn said. "It's older. People used to call it growing up."
They stepped into the corridor. The Citadel's light ran ahead of them, always a little too bright, always a little too sure. Kaelen's lantern warmed his fingers through the chain.
He thought of the wall of names, the cracked mirror, the archivist's advice, the Archwarden's flat mercy. He thought of the figure that had bowed, and the way the dark had said finally when the lamps went out.
Third bell would come. After that, more drills. After that, Luth Orain. After that, something bigger than a corridor or a hall or a city waiting where the light stopped being architecture and started being reason.
Kaelen adjusted his grip on Ashveil and let the lie he'd chosen keep pace beside him: If I do this right, fewer people will die.
It was still a lie. It still fit well enough to walk in.