The Capitol was a song of stone and smoke.
From a distance, it looked like a rising dream—spires that kissed the heavens, bridges that arched like the ribs of giants, and towers etched with glowing runes that pulsed faintly against the pale morning sky. The walls were not just built but sculpted, layered with reliefs of saints, monsters, and forgotten kings. Domes shimmered with enchanted glass, bending the sunlight into motes that drifted through the air like luminous pollen.
Emil leaned over the edge of the carriage, wide-eyed.
There were people everywhere. Cloaked magisters drifting through the air on levitation runes. Street performers juggling orbs of flame and water. Children selling candied apples that whistled when bitten. A brass automaton swept the cobblestones with a broom affixed to its spinning arms, its glass eyes blinking lazily.
He saw a man reading from a glowing book that hovered in front of him, muttering to the pages as if in conversation. A cat with three tails purred on a merchant's cart. A group of acolytes passed, chanting in unison, each of their voices echoing at a slightly different pitch.
"This is real?" Emil whispered.
Alexander, guiding the reins, chuckled. "This is the Capitol, lad. It's the only place I know where your coin's weight matters less than your name—and your silence costs more than your words."
He navigated the chaos with practiced calm, nodding to a passing spice vendor, flipping a silver obol to a stable hand, guiding the cart through districts as though following invisible ley-lines.
Alexander had friends here. Not nobles, but merchants—brokers of silk, sellers of salt, smugglers of coin beneath official titles. Thanks to an old favor owed from a basilroot trade five winters past, Alexander secured a modest home in the middle tier of the city—small, but well built. Whitewashed walls, a sturdy gate, a clean courtyard. Enough room to rest.
Then came the haggling.
Alexander lit up like a bonfire.
At the market stalls, he became a different man—charming, calculating, relentless. He traded half a sack of saffron for a barrel of smoked venison. Talked a cobbler into throwing in a pair of boots for Emil after buying two for himself. He weaved compliments, gossip, and barbed wit like thread, all with the same hand that once held his wife's.
"Thirty-five silvers for goat cheese? You wound me, friend. That curd's been aged less than my boots."
"You drive a hard bargain," the vendor muttered.
Alexander winked. "That's why my son's eating better than half your customers."
Liz and Raphael watched from the sidelines, amused.
By twilight, the home smelled of stew, bread, and herbs. Emil sat at the table polishing his training sword. Liz paced, uneasy.
She did not sleep that night.
---
The next morning, Liz climbed the Scholar's Spire.
Elorynth's education district crowned the Capitol's second-highest ring. It was a place of hushed voices and pointed hats, of ink-stained fingers and stone courtyards lined with whispering fountains. Birds here were taught to speak three languages before flight. Trees hummed when you passed, storing knowledge in their rings.
At the tallest of the five academies stood a tower crowned in dragonbone gargoyles. Inside, she found him where she knew he'd be: sipping bitterleaf tea and rearranging a constellation puzzle with lazy precision.
"Xavier."
The old man looked up, spectacles slipping slightly. He had a beard that curled like smoke and robes the color of old parchment.
"Lizaria. Stars preserve me. You're early—or desperate."
"Both."
She told him everything. Rapid-fire sentences. Emil's gift. The tragedy. The fire. His fight. Her hope.
Xavier listened without interruption, fingers steepled beneath his chin.
When she finished, she leaned over the table, eyes sharp with pleading.
"He's different, Xavier. Not trained—touched. We can't afford to waste time with ink drills and weather charms. He needs—he deserves—more than what the Common Hall can give."
Xavier sighed.
"You know the law. The four high academies don't admit commoners. Not unless they're adopted into noble bloodlines, and even then—"
"I'm not asking you to change the law," Liz interrupted. "Just the angle."
Xavier raised a brow.
"Emil takes the standard entrance exam," she continued. "The same one every school uses. If he scores highest—not just among the commons, but across all entrants—they'll come to him."
Xavier stroked his beard. "And if he doesn't?"
"Then at least we tried. But I have a feeling… he will."
Silence stretched.
Finally, Xavier chuckled. "You always did like impossible odds."
"I like the ones worth betting on."
He rose. "Very well. I'll register him. But don't expect a parade. The other headmasters won't like this."
"I don't need them to like it," Liz said. "I need them to see him."
With a tenderhearted smile, excited to instigate and incite upheaval, Xavier pondered in silence at what he would start.
Outside, the sun rose high over Elorynth's domes and towers.
And somewhere in the city of stone and smoke, destiny stirred.
---
That night, Xavier and in the quiet that followed, Liz sat by the window and looked out over the glinting towers of the Capitol, her heart torn between pride… and dread.
For if Emil succeeded—if he shone too brightly—then the nobles would not simply notice him.
They would begin to fear him.
---
Three days passed in quiet preparation.
While the city of Elorynth pulsed and thrummed beyond their doorstep with its ever-churning machinery of commerce and class, the modest house Alexander had secured became a sanctuary. A place where silence was not avoidance but intention.
Alexander rose early each morning, long before the city bells chimed the hour. He visited guild halls, bartered for cloth and spice contracts, and reacquainted himself with the local flow of trade. He returned midday, always with something new for the house: a rug woven from firegrass, a polished kettle inscribed with runes to keep water boiling longer, or a set of small wooden figurines Emil could use to act out sword drills.
Raphael spent his days retracing the combat forms with Emil in the narrow courtyard, adapting them to the space. He rarely gave direct compliments, but the way he adjusted Emil's footwork by inches, or the way he quietly nodded after each clean parry, spoke volumes.
Liz, however, was a tempest wrapped in calm.
When she wasn't pacing the study or whispering into enchanted mirrors, she sat with Emil and administered practice tests. She quizzed him on written histories of the Four Provinces, on magical theory, on logic puzzles designed to test not rote knowledge but intuition. And Emil, though visibly bored at times, never faltered.
One evening, as twilight bruised the sky, Emil lingered by the small window in his room.
"Why do the stars look sad here?" he asked.
Liz looked up from her notes, surprised by the question. "What do you mean?"
He pressed a finger to the glass. "They don't blink the same. They feel... quieter. Like they're waiting for something."
She joined him at the window. The Capitol sky was dimmer than the one they left behind, veiled in the thin smoke of thousands of chimneys and lantern-lit towers. And yet, the stars were still there.
"Maybe they're watching over you," she said softly.
"Or maybe they're worried," Emil replied, his voice far away. "Like Mama was."
Liz didn't have an answer.
That night, Emil dreamed.
Not of fire or screams, but of the man again.
He stood at the edge of a great stone bridge suspended in the void. His armor cracked and soot-stained, his blade drawn but lowered. His face still obscured. But this time, Emil felt no fear.
There was sadness in the air, like the scent of old ash.
The man turned, and though no words were spoken, Emil understood.
"The path ahead will ask more of you than pain."
When he woke, his eyes were wet, but his heart steady.
He sat up in bed, placed both hands on the blanket, and whispered something Liz had once told him:
"You don't command magic. You remember it."
And something inside him stirred.
A warmth.
Like the memory of a campfire in winter. Not loud, not bright. But present.
---
Emil had woken long before the city did. The skies remained cloaked in a deep blue veil, the stars retreating slowly as if reluctant to give the world back to the sun. No birds sang. No merchants called. Only the steady breath of a sleeping house filled the silence.
But Emil was wide awake.
He lay still for a time, gazing up at the rough-beamed ceiling. There was something tugging at his chest—a familiar warmth, soft and insistent, like the memory of a fire that hadn't gone out. He placed a hand over his heart. It wasn't grief. Not this time. It was mana.
He slipped quietly from beneath the covers, tiptoeing past the low walls of his room. Liz's gentle snores echoed faintly down the hall, and Alexander's weight shifted in the adjacent room, lost to dreams. Emil stepped outside into the courtyard barefoot.
The air was cool, still scented with ash and bread from the previous day's hearth. The stones beneath his feet were damp with dew, glimmering in the dim pre-dawn haze. He looked up. The city, massive as it was, slumbered beneath its own stars.
Emil closed his eyes and breathed.
Liz always told him to be curious. To follow the tug of questions. And this warmth—it was a question. One he was determined to answer.
He lowered himself cross-legged to the stone and focused, letting his thoughts drift not outward, but inward. He remembered the feeling on the road. The soft realization he had come to after days of gentle thought. That magic did not obey him—it responded to him. It didn't whisper to everyone like it had to him.
And then, he remembered Liz's words: "You don't command magic. You remember it. And it remembers you."
He focused. Not on a spell. Not on a trick or effect.
But on the sensation. The way the mana moved through his veins when he protected himself from the men who tried to harm him. The way it danced and waited—inviting.
The warmth surged. Grew. Expanded.
And then—
A whisper.
It was not sound. Not speech. But something deeper. Ancient.
'You feel it now.'
The voice brushed the edges of his mind like wind through tall grass—powerful, but gentle.
'You've always known. You simply lacked the language.'
Images swirled behind his closed eyes—mountain peaks pierced by skyfire, rivers that ran backward in time, a single golden scale falling through infinity. Then, a face—not human, not even beast, but a presence. Noble. Vast. Wreathed in memory.
One of Themis' dragons.
Not the ones of destruction or power, but one of creation—of communion.
Its essence had given shape to his rebirth. And now, it spoke.
'Magic is not a tool, the dragon murmured within his soul. It is a song. One you were born remembering.'
The warmth in Emil's chest bloomed like a flower in fast-forward. His breath caught.
He raised a hand, and rather than ask—he invited.
The air shimmered.
Light gathered—not as fire, not as frost, but as formless potential.
He envisioned a spiral. The air followed.
He envisioned a bloom. The light obeyed.
The mana didn't respond to his words or his will—it conformed to his understanding.
And with each breath, he understood more. Not in facts or lectures, but in sensation. Truths poured into him through that whisper. Not power, but why.
Why the wind danced. Why the flame curled. Why the river bent.
And why it wanted to shape itself for him.
The whisper faded.
But the knowing remained.
When Emil opened his eyes, the courtyard was softly glowing with floating strands of light, weaving in delicate arcs through the still night. He smiled—not out of triumph, but of kinship.
For the first time, he didn't feel like someone learning magic.
He felt like someone remembering a friend.
And the world around him, old and vast and waiting, seemed just a little bit closer.