The welcome ceremony was exactly what Quinn had expected from an institution that processed traumatized survivors of supernatural nightmares on a semi-regular basis — organized, efficient, and fundamentally incapable of accounting for the fact that some people simply did not want to be welcomed.
The courtyard was full but not overwhelming, clusters of new Sleepers orbiting each other with the careful, assessing energy of people who had recently survived something and were still figuring out who they were on the other side of it. The Legacy students moved differently — with the particular ease of people who had grown up knowing that the world was dangerous and had simply incorporated that fact into their posture.
Hal lasted approximately four minutes before he had company.
It was, Quinn observed from his corner of the room, entirely the face. Three female Sleepers approached in the time it took Quinn to find a wall to lean against, drawn by whatever gravitational field Hal's new features generated without apparent effort. Hal received them with the calm, attentive courtesy of someone who had spent years as the most overlooked person in every room and was still adjusting to the reversal.
Kai attracted a different demographic. Two Legacy students drifted over within the first ten minutes, their eyes on the mask. It was, admittedly, a remarkable mask — and the body wearing it did nothing to diminish the impression. Kai stood with his arms crossed and answered questions with the economy of someone who had decided that social interaction was a resource to be rationed.
Quinn stood in his corner and was not approached by anyone.
He looked down at himself. Same face. Same build. Same general impression of a man who designed door handles for a living and had recently been through something he wasn't going to discuss at a welcome ceremony.
They probably just don't want to disturb the treasure hidden within, Quinn thought, with the complete absence of conviction that the thought deserved.
"You sure you're not overselling yourself a little?" Hal's voice arrived at his shoulder without warning, which was either a Spectator thing or simply a Hal thing — Quinn hadn't decided yet.
Kai materialized on his other side a moment later, having apparently extracted himself from the Legacy students with the same quiet efficiency he brought to everything.
The three of them formed a small, self-contained island in the middle of the social current, close enough to the crowd to observe it and far enough from it to be honest. Hal swept the room with a single, practiced glance — checking for proximity, checking for eyes that lingered too long — then gave a small nod.
Kai spoke first. "So. What were your nightmares?"
Hal considered this for a moment with the expression of someone deciding how much detail was appropriate. "An old castle," he said finally. "Every night, something moved through it and killed people. We had one gun between us."
"One gun," Quinn said.
"One gun."
"Against what?"
"Something I'm fairly certain was a Fallen Titan."
Quinn and Kai looked at each other.
"So the gun was decorative," Kai said.
"The gun was entirely decorative, yes." Hal's expression remained composed. "I discovered it fairly quickly when I tried shooting the creature and it looked at me the way you look at someone who has thrown a grape at you. The structure itself was protected by something — only humans could enter, which meant the creature had to wear a human shape, which meant it was bound by certain rules. It couldn't kill anyone without a vote."
"A vote," Quinn repeated.
"A vote. So I found the pattern, identified the creature, and then realized I had no reliable method of killing it." He paused. "So I blew up the castle."
"...With it inside."
"With it inside."
Kai stared at him for a long moment. "And you survived this how?"
Hal's left eye closed briefly in something that was either a wink or a twitch. "The explosion was my solution, not my weapon. The unstable potion ingredients I used to advance to Sequence 9 first — those were the weapon. The explosion was just tidying up."
"Right," Quinn said. "Obviously."
"Sequence 9 Spectator," Hal continued, with the calm of someone filing a report. "Chaos Sea, locked. I assume you two are in similar situations."
"Sequence 9 Apprentice," Quinn said. "Sefirah Castle, locked."
Kai uncrossed and recrossed his arms. "Sequence 9 Assassin. City of Calamity, locked."
The three of them stood with that information for a moment, each privately doing the arithmetic of what it meant that all of them had reached the same rank through wildly different nightmares.
"We have a great deal to discuss," Hal said.
The guide's voice cut across the room before anyone could respond, directing new arrivals toward their assigned quarters. Quinn checked the time and realized they had arrived late enough to miss most of the ceremony, which he chose to interpret as efficient rather than rude.
Their rooms were adequate. Quinn arranged his minimal belongings in approximately four minutes and spent the remaining time sitting on the bed thinking about doors, which was either productive or obsessive depending on how you looked at it.
Dinner ended the meditation.
The dining hall was the kind of room that understood its assignment. The tables were long and the food was abundant in the specific way that institutions provide abundance when they want to make a point about plenty — steak, roasted chicken, lamb that had clearly been treated with more respect in death than most things received in life. Silver serving dishes. Actual candles.
"This looks like the Last Supper," Kai observed, surveying the spread with the expression of a man who had recently been eating Russian borscht for extended periods.
"Oh," Quinn said. He looked at Hal. "Uh. No offense."
"Offense taken," Hal said pleasantly.
Kai loaded three plates with the systematic thoroughness of someone who had learned not to trust abundance to last, cited his flaw as justification for taking the food upstairs, and left before anyone could argue. Hal collected a more modest plate and fell into step beside him with the quiet solidarity of someone who understood that sometimes people needed to eat in small rooms rather than large ones.
Quinn ate two full steaks at the table, collected a bowl of ice cream large enough to qualify as a structural element, and jogged upstairs.
Kai's room was the right size for three people who had recently survived multiple supernatural nightmares and needed to talk about it without being overheard. Hal did a sweep of the room that looked casual and wasn't before settling into the chair by the window. Quinn sat on the floor with his ice cream. Kai ate standing up, which was somehow entirely consistent with everything Quinn knew about him.
The food was the best thing any of them had eaten since arriving in this world. They laughed more than the situation technically warranted, which was fine, because sometimes the situation didn't get to decide how much laughing was appropriate.
When the plates were mostly empty and the ice cream was half gone, Hal nodded once — the room was clean — and Kai began.
The arena had been loud, he said. The kind of loud that gets into your bones and stays there. He had fought thirteen bouts before the pit master noticed the face beneath the helmet and decided it was worth more at auction than in the dirt. A wealthy man purchased him to stand in a hallway and look aesthetically consistent with the decor, which Kai delivered with the mechanical precision of someone who had decided that survival was more important than dignity and would retrieve the dignity later.
It was while standing in the hallway that he noticed something wrong with the castle's owner. Not wrong in the way that rich men are often wrong — fundamentally, structurally wrong, in the way that things are wrong when they are wearing a shape that doesn't belong to them.
He advanced to Sequence 9 first, using ingredients collected during his off hours with the patience of a man who had learned that patience was a form of violence when applied correctly. Then he went looking for the creature.
The problem was that the castle was full of people. Too many people to evacuate, too many to fight around. Kai had stood in the hallway outside the creature's chambers for approximately forty minutes before arriving at the conclusion that the only workable solution was to make himself the bait.
He knocked on the door.
The creature killed him.
In the moment between death and dispossession — the narrow, terrible window when the creature was attempting to occupy the body it had just vacated — Kai put a knife through its core.
Nightmare complete.
Quinn had been eating ice cream throughout this account. He lowered the spoon and looked at the space between Kai and Hal for a moment.
"So let me get this straight," he said. "Kai, you had to kill yourself to create an opening so you could kill the thing in time." He turned to Hal. "And Hal, you had to identify the creature by watching everyone in the castle while still fully human, and when you finally found it and realized a gun was useless, you decided to use an unstable potion — knowing it could kill you — and when that still didn't finish it off, you blew up the building."
"Yes," they said, in unison.
Quinn looked at his ice cream.
"You wouldn't believe my nightmare," he said.
Kai glanced at Hal. "Considering the castle situation, you should probably just switch to the Tyrant pathway."
Hal's expression shifted into something that was almost a smile. "Already trying to pre-act as Instigator?"
"I'm just saying."
Quinn finished the last of the ice cream, set the bowl down, and looked at both of them. "Seriously though. You really wouldn't believe my nightmare."
The room was quiet for a moment, warm and close and slightly ridiculous in the way that all good things are slightly ridiculous when you stop to look at them directly.
Outside, the Academy carried on in the dark. Inside, three people who had died in different ways and come back in different shapes sat together and didn't quite say that they were glad to be here.
They didn't need to. Some things don't need saying when the people who need to hear them are already in the room.