RECORDS. THE STONE TURNED HIM AWAY FOUR TIMES. THE FIFTH THING DID NOT. HE SAYS IT FELT PATIENT.
The House Book of Opus.
The Land Ship descended the final slope and ground to a halt at the intake station, a broad stone platform at the mountain’s base, crowded with arriving vehicles and people. The ramp lowered with a heavy thud.
“End of the line, runts,” Torin called out, though his voice lacked its usual bite.
Silas, Kent, and Malachai grabbed their bags. They stepped onto pristine white stone, and it felt alien beneath Silas’s boots, smooth and free of soot. He could see his own reflection in the polish. A soot-streaked boy with hollowed cheeks and scarred hands, staring up at him from the ground.
“Be safe, Cap’n,” Silas said, looking up at the gruff Windmaster.
Sha’Karr nodded, the wind-feathers around his neck rustling. “Keep your head down, lad. The air up here is thin, and this place can be brutal. Don’t worry if you wash out, there are worse fates. We’ll restock, the ship leaves in seven days.”
Silas watched the Land Ship pull away, its great wheels grinding against the stone. He felt something he didn’t want to name. That ship was the last tether to his father, to the shop, to the smell of iron and sweat. He turned away, tightening his grip on his bag.
The intake station was a sea of chaos, but unlike the desperate clamor of the Rustbelt, this was the chaos of wealth.
Silas felt it physically. Pressure. It radiated from the parents escorting their children, high-tier sacred artists, Chrome and above, whose very presence warped the air. A woman in emerald silk walked past, and the grass along the verge leaned toward her as if pulled by an invisible tide, each blade straining to be closer. A man in heavy plate armor laughed, and the sound hit Silas in the chest, heavy with the mana that soaked the man so deeply it bled into the world around him.
Children in pristine presentation uniforms walked beside these titans. They were Silas’s age but looked nothing like him. Their skin was clear, their posture straight, their hands uncalloused and unmarked. Some already carried minor artifacts, rings that hummed faintly, bracelets of woven mana-thread, training weapons holstered at their hips. One girl had a miniature Spirit Core set in her earlobe, pulsing soft gold with every heartbeat.
“Look at them,” Malachai whispered, shrinking into his oversized coat. “They look like they’re going to war.”
“They are,” Silas murmured. “Just a different kind.”
“Well.” Malachai straightened his collar, an instinct, Silas noticed, even though the collar was threadbare and the gesture accomplished nothing. “At least we’ll make excellent cannon fodder. Very authentic. Very rustic. We’ll add some flavor to this lot.”
Kent snorted, then looked mortified.
They paid their way and joined a river of aspirants flowing toward the mountain face, channeled by attendants in uniform who directed traffic with practiced boredom. The path wound upward through a courtyard of shaped hedges and mana-glass fountains. Every edge was sharp. The air tasted like ozone.
Silas passed a statue of a woman in flowing robes, one hand raised, a four-winged phoenix of granite perched on her shoulder. The plaque at the base read: CINDRA, FIRST SOVEREIGN OF TYRANIS. BONDED TO THE ASH PHOENIX. Below the name, smaller text: She who burns brightest lights the way for all.
Even the statues carried propaganda.
A booming voice rolled over the crowd, amplified by mana: “ASPIRANTS. PROCEED TO THE HALL OF ASCENSION.”
They were herded toward a cavernous opening in the mountain face, a mouth of carved stone, fifty feet high, flanked by pillars inscribed with sigils that glowed faintly as each aspirant passed beneath them. A tingle crossed Silas’s skin as he stepped through, like a curtain of warm water parting around him. A scanning ward, reading him.
The Hall of Ascension opened before them, and Silas’s sense of scale broke.
The cavern was vast, large enough to house a fleet of Land Ships, the ceiling vanishing into shadow and the far walls hazy with distance. Pillars of white marble, each as wide as the shop he’d grown up in, rose in rows that stretched the full length of the hall, their surfaces carved with relief sculptures of Spirit Beasts in flight, in combat, in communion with their bonded partners. Mana-lanterns drifted near the ceiling like slow-moving stars, casting a diffuse, shadowless light that made the marble glow.
The floor was polished to a mirror sheen, dark stone veined with seemingly liquid ruby, sapphire, emerald, and gold. Hundreds of teenagers filed across it in near silence, their footsteps muffled by acoustic wards woven into the stone. The silence was enforced. This was a cathedral.
At the far end, a single massive staircase rose to a raised dais of white stone. And on the dais, lit from above by a column of pale light that fell from some unseen aperture in the mountain itself, stood the Communion Stone.
It was a rough-hewn slab of pure white, taller than a man and twice as wide, its surface unpolished and ancient, a jagged contrast to the refined marble of the hall. It looked like something pulled from one of the two moons and set down before the Academy was built around it. Before the mountain was a mountain, perhaps. Above the Stone, the ceiling dissolved into a swirling, misty white sky, not painted, not projected, but an aperture, a window into the Spirit Realm itself. Silas could feel it: a faint vibration in the air, a low hum in the bones of his chest.
The Stone was alive.
Silas fell into line with hundreds of other teenagers. He looked at his worn boots, then at the velvet slippers of the boy next to him. He stopped looking.
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“Welcome.”
The chatter died.
Standing on the dais was a small, elderly man in tweed robes. He wore spectacles and held a battered and open tome. Despite his size, his voice filled every corner of the cavern without seeming to try, an amplification so precise it felt natural, each word arriving at Silas’s ear as though spoken from three feet away.
“I am Headmaster Valerius. You have traveled far for the chance to touch the divine.”
He gestured behind him to the Communion Stone. In the misty sky above, four giant shapes stirred, vast, indistinct, circling like predators in deep water.
“The Council of Ascended Beasts watches us. The Ash Phoenix. The Glacial Serpent. The Stone Dragon. The Verdant Stag. These four Ancients founded our Houses. They, and the countless spirits that reside in their domains, will judge your quality.”
His eyes swept the hall. They lingered, for just a fraction of a second, on the section where Silas and the other commoners stood. Silas couldn’t be sure, but he imagined the Headmaster’s gaze paused on him.
“Most of you will not be selected. This is a hard truth. Do not despair. Society needs the unbonded. The mines need workers. The fields need hands. You may still contribute in many ways. But for those who are chosen, your life ends today. And a new one begins.”
The tension in the hall was a physical thing: a ringing in the ears.
“Let the Communion begin.”
An official with a clipboard called the first name. “Alice Caldera of Ignitious.”
A girl in crimson and gold finery stepped forward. She had hair like spun copper and cheekbones that could cut glass, and she moved through the crowd as if the other aspirants were furniture. She didn’t walk up the stairs; she ascended them, chin high, each step deliberate.
She placed her hand on the pale slab.
The misty sky erupted.
Red, blue, gray, and green swirled above the Stone, but the red flared violently, a sudden, blinding pulse that sent heat rolling across the hall in a wave Silas felt on his face. A piercing cry split the air, high and sharp, and from the mist a spirit-form descended. An osprey of living flame, four-winged and shrieking, trailing sparks and embers. It circled once, twice, and then dove, plunging into Alice’s chest and vanishing.
Alice gasped. Her back arched. When she opened her eyes, they glowed with a faint inner fire, and the air around her shimmered with heat-haze.
“Solar Osprey,” Valerius announced, consulting a floating globe of mana that orbited his left hand. “Fire Affinity. Drafted. House Tyranis.”
The lanterns flashed into deep crimson, changing the room to red. She walked to the Drafted circle, a seating area to the right of the dais split into four prominent sections with some extra seating to the side. She took a seat in the red section, bathed in warm light, to a ripple of applause from those older students already seated. She sat down with the composure of someone who had never doubted this outcome.
The lanterns reset and the procession continued.
A boy from the coast bonded with an Ice Seal, the mist turning glacial blue, frost crawling across the dais, the spirit sliding into his chest like a cold tide. Drafted to House Aquarius.
A girl in gold with granite-rough hands bonded with a Rock Worm, the Stone Dragon’s light flaring so brightly the marble pillars hummed. Drafted to House Geomacus.
A pair of twins from the wealthy coast bonded with twin Fire Hawks in quick succession, the mist barely settling between them before the red flared again.
Most of the nobles were selected quickly. Their Spirit Beasts generally matched family lineage, fire for Tyranis, water for Aquarius, earth for Geomacus, nature for Naturis, as if the spirits had been expecting them. Perhaps these beasts had been groomed for them. The four Ancients’ colors dominated the sky: red, blue, gray, green. A parade of predetermined power.
Then came the rejections.
A boy in fine silk, Aquarius colors, walked up with steady hands and perfect posture. He placed his palm on the Stone with the confidence of someone who had practiced this moment in a mirror.
The mist swirled. It shifted between blue and gray, hesitating. Then it went still.
No color. No spirit. Just the pale white sky, empty and unmoved.
“Unbonded,” Valerius said softly.
The boy’s face crumpled. Not anger, not yet. That would come later. This was the raw, involuntary collapse of someone whose entire future had just been erased in public. He was ushered through a dark archway to the left, and Silas heard a sound through the stone walls that might have been weeping.
More followed. A girl who shook so badly she could barely keep her hand on the Stone. A small girl from the outer districts whispered a “please” that only those near her heard. The mist stayed white.
The rejection rate climbed as most of the nobles had gone through. What had been one in ten became one in five, then one in three. The atmosphere curdled from excitement to dread. The line shortened, and the unkempt commoners at the back began to shift their weight, unable to stand still.
“You’d think,” Malachai muttered, his voice carefully light, “that for an event that determines whether you live a life of power or die in a mine, they’d at least offer refreshments. A queue this long deserves a beverage cart.”
Kent managed a weak laugh. Silas almost smiled, but his chest was too tight.
He’d wanted a Geo bond. Something tough. Something that understood metal, like his father’s own earth-touched bond. Let me be a smith, he’d prayed on the voyage. Let me finish what Dad started.
Now, watching the rejections pile up, he’d take anything.
“Malachai of the Sump.”
Malachai froze beside Silas. The quip he’d been preparing died on his lips. For one unguarded second, he looked like what he was: a hungry, terrified boy from the gutter who had staked everything on this single moment.
Then he steeled himself. He walked up the stairs with jerky, too-fast movements, the tendons standing out in his neck. He looked small against the massive Stone.
He slammed his hand onto the slab. His body said it: Pick me. Pick me or I die.
The mist churned. It turned a sickly, bruised purple, a color that didn’t fit neatly into any of the four Ancient domains. Then a pale green light began to bleed through the purple, toxic and luminous.
A collective gasp rippled through the crowd. A spirit slithered out of the mist, a serpent with scales of dripping venom-green and eyes like rot. It moved with sinuous, predatory grace, and the air around it smelled suddenly sharp, chemical, wrong.
“A Death Adder,” Valerius called, leaning forward. “Toxic Affinity. Rare.”
The crowd recoiled. The spirit dove into Malachai. He staggered, clutching his chest, his face contorting, and then it smoothed. When he looked up, his grin was feral. Triumphant. He had power. He didn’t care that it was poison. The Sump, and every winter it had put him through, had finally been answered back, and the voice doing the answering was his own.
It was his.
“Undrafted.” The headmaster gestured to the gray seats at the far end of the winners’ circle, set apart from the four House sections.
Malachai nodded and walked to the winners’ circle and didn’t look back.
“Kent of the Agrivats.”
“Okay,” Kent whispered. “Okay, okay, okay.” He wiped his palms on his tunic and climbed the stairs on unsteady legs. He placed his hand on the Stone, so gently it was almost a caress.
“Just let me help,” Silas heard him whisper.
The colors warred above. Green and gray swirled together, mixing with a brilliant, blinding gold that hadn’t appeared for any other aspirant. With a ponderous gravity that made the air feel heavy, a massive shape descended, a tortoise, ancient and craggy, with a weeping willow growing from its shell, leaves trailing like green rain. It shrank smaller and smaller, then sank into Kent’s core with a sense of deep, settled peace.
“Terra Tortoise,” Valerius announced, and there was respect in his voice. “Nature and Earth Affinity.”
“Undrafted.”
Kent exhaled. Half laugh, half sob. His eyes flashed green and gold. He turned and gave Silas a shaky thumbs-up, and the relief on his face was so naked it hurt to look at.
The line shortened. More rejections. More tears. The dark archway swallowed them.
“Silas of the Rustbelt.”