The five were led from the chamber into a long hall lit by cold flame. Stone desks ran in ordered rows, each attended by a scribe in ink-stained robes. The smell of parchment and dust was sharp after the blood-scent of the Trials. Here, the living were made into records.
The hall was quiet, but not empty. Other groups staggered out of their own gates, some intact, some missing one, two, or more. One cluster was only three. Another stumbled in carrying a boy whose face was locked in a silent scream — eyes staring, unseeing. His mark glowed faintly, then dimmed until nothing remained. A scribe shook her head and wrote Broken on her sheet.
Kael's chest tightened. So not everyone walked out whole. Not everyone walked out at all.
"Names," barked a voice.
Their group stood before a desk. The scribe did not look up; his quill danced as though life itself were a column to be tallied. A second man, older, leaned against a rail — robes of silver-grey pooling around him. His eyes, sharp as chisels, did not move from Kael.
"Ardyn, Kael," the scribe intoned as Kael held out his arm. The mark pulsed faintly, black and pale at once, threads curling in strange shapes that did not settle. The shard in Kael's pocket throbbed like a second heartbeat.
The scribe frowned. Dipped his quill again. "Classification… uncertain." He glanced to the silver-robed man. "Candidate shows deviation."
"Record him under Anomaly," the watcher said, voice smooth as still water. The scribe froze at the word, then obeyed. Ink scratched it into permanence.
"Veylan, Darius. Marked. Solde, Rynna. Marked. Vance, Jorek. Marked. Vey, Serran. Marked." Quill scratches, one by one, each fate sealed on the page.
Then the scribe waved them aside, already calling the next group. The ledger had no room for relief or grief — only columns to be filled.
⸻
They were herded into a side chamber, a holding room with benches of stone. The five sat in taut silence, the weight of classification sinking in. Marked. Marked. Marked. Anomaly.
Darius broke first. "What does Anomaly mean?" His eyes darted at Kael, accusation under the words. "Why you?"
Kael's mouth went dry. He didn't answer. He couldn't.
The silver-robed man entered before tension snapped. He moved like a shadow given purpose, robes whispering over stone. His eyes passed over the four — but lingered on Kael.
"You carry something unusual," he said, quiet but cutting through the air. "Most candidates reflect the trials. You… resisted them." He studied Kael's mark as if it were a riddle. "Tell me — what did you see in the Mirror?"
Kael's hands tightened on his knees. He remembered the weight of his fear, the way the shard had steadied him. He remembered the voice inside that whispered: You are not nothing. He would not speak it aloud.
"I saw myself," Kael said simply.
The man's lips twitched in something like approval. He leaned closer, voice low enough the others could not hear. "Good. Keep it that way. Do not share more than you must. Those who watch are not always your allies." Then, as if the words had never left his tongue, he turned and drifted out again, silver trailing like mist.
The silence he left behind was heavy. Rynna shot Kael a worried look. Darius scowled, but there was unease under it. Jorek grunted, rubbing his jaw. Serran's eyes narrowed — not at Kael, but at the man who had spoken. None of them knew what had just marked Kael more deeply: the trial, or the attention it had drawn.
⸻
That night, Kael lay awake in the dormitory. The others slept, breath ragged with exhaustion. His mark pulsed faintly in the dark, a ghostly shimmer only he could see.
He pulled the shard from his pocket. Its surface glowed faintly, runes crawling across it like living veins. When he held it near the mark, they resonated, two notes searching for harmony. Not violent, but not peaceful either. A tension. A promise.
He pressed it to his forearm. The hum deepened. The mark's light bent, threads shifting as though answering an unspoken call. Kael felt a surge of fear — and something else. The edge of exhilaration. Like standing at the lip of a storm.
"I won't vanish," he whispered to himself, voice a vow in the dark. "Not here. Not anywhere."
The shard's glow pulsed once, as though in reply.
And Kael knew, bone-deep, that whatever path the academy forced him down, he would not walk it like the others. He could not. The ledger had already named him: Anomaly.
And anomalies, by their nature, change the record.