It was her name on the grave in front of her, a name that should have been lost to time.

  “I guess this is the end, huh?”

  She turned around and saw that the voice belonged to one of the two shadows standing behind her. Though their names and faces escaped her, she felt her heart ache.

  “I guess it is,” spoke the figure beside them, also staring straight through her. “What are you going to do now?”

  “I think…”

  It finally hit her, where she was standing.

  Ruins. Her once-beloved school was in ruins. The ten-story lecture hall building was all but burnt to the ground, the derelict library to her side not unlike it; what remained of the Great Hall’s foundation were mere fragments of shattered stone, and the excessive and overgrown weeds growing through it and in all directions were a testament to how long the place had been abandoned.

  In the distance, the far-reaching Lycean plains she could have never seen from the courtyard in the past. A thin layer of snow barely blanketed it, soft like an important memory.

  “Did you get your happy ending?”

  Her eyes widened and she turned to the taller shadow, whose wavering gaze almost seemed to meet hers.

  But before she could answer, they disappeared. The clear blue sky became a deep and foreboding red, and the campus transformed into a great glade surrounded by dark, towering trees. Alone she stood at its center, bloodied and bound up like the enemy she was to the world.

  Yet there was an unmistakable smile on her face as fire engulfed her.

  * * *

  “Yes,” Ty answered dully as she let the common room door slam behind her.

  Why do they care that I’m heading to practice early, anyway?

  The dorms courtyard was lively, much like it always was when the sun was preparing to set. Students were hurrying to and from the old stone buildings, heading to who-knew-where because, frankly, none of it was any of her concern.

  It was half past five, which meant that she had to be on the opposite side of the schoolgrounds and have everything prepared by the time the entire class was in attendance. Of course, she had written up some plans and diagrams during the week, but there was still one giant, glaring problem that she had not yet been able to take care of: the rest of the class didn’t exactly like her. At all.

  You don’t need them to like you, she tried to convince herself as she brushed a few rogue strands of long hair out of her eyes, weaving around other students and speeding across the grassy courtyard onto the main Academy path to get to the eastern practice yard. You just need to do your job.

  Trying not to let her thoughts consume her upon arriving at the gate, she hurriedly took off her class pin and placed it over the small wooden seal embedded into the wood only to be met with a faint click and nothing else.

  She stared at it dumbly for a second, mind drifting off to that morning’s bizarre dream when a tall figure from behind her pushed open the door instead.

  “For the class leader, you sure seem out of it,” muttered the dark-haired student, walking past with Ty trailing behind.

  “I was thinking,” she replied mildly, heading over to the main tactician’s table overlooking the arena and sitting down before pulling out her class materials.

  While Faris crossed his arms and leaned against the table to get a good look at the entire courtyard, she couldn’t help but remember how much of a pain he had been from the first day of school. Uptight and privileged, it was a wonder how he got along with everyone else, especially after announcing on the first day that he had no intention of making friends with anyone.

  “Hey, let’s fight.”

  Ty blinked, lowering her checklist and pen to give her class caster a critical look. “Excuse me?”

  He looked into the distance with an indifferent frown on his face, his stark violet eyes unfocused and bored. “You’re 1-A’s tactician, you must have gotten the highest entrance mark in the entire year. Let’s see how strong you are.”

  Just as she sighed and checked Faris’s name off her attendance list, far too busy to deal with yet another one of his challenges, more of her classmates entered. “I don’t need to fight you to know who would win,” she muttered impatiently, checking Cyril, Callie, and Elias’s names off before heading to the arena to configure the target dummies.

  “Oh, you two sure are early,” Cyril grinned, his voice teasing as he took a seat across from Faris. “Don’t tell me you finally got to battle?”

  “Seems like he’s pissed her off instead,” noted Elias, who barely glanced at Ty’s papers before sitting down. “How many times has it been now?”

  Callie sat down at the opposite end of the two, watching Ty intently and musing, “At least once every day, so…seven?”

  Unable to tune out the voices that echoed throughout the large courtyard, Ty flipped open her book and placed a hand on the wooden, human-shaped target in front of her, quickly reading under her breath the lines of script the Headmistress had prepared for all class leaders.

  “Do you think she’s afraid?”

  “Dude, she can hear you from here.”

  “It’s always the quiet ones you don’t expect, right, C—”

  “Don’t drag me into this, Elias.”

  “But she’s the class leader for a reason, isn’t she?”

  “I think she’s weird.”

  Ty looked up after finishing her third spell, gingerly lifting her hand off the mannequin before glaring at Faris. “I don’t care if you think I’m weird,” she declared unabashedly, making sure he met her gaze before returning to her work.

  By the time she had finished going around the courtyard and returned to the table, all her classmates were already there and waiting for her instructions.

  All eyes on her, she silently checked her timepiece, hoping she had a bit more time.

  She didn’t.

  “We’re going to skip introductions, unless someone cares,” Ty began quietly, taking a cursory glance around the table. Everyone’s files had been handed to her a week prior, so there wasn’t a real need to go over anything, but it was comforting to know that her classmates who were a year older than her didn’t seem too daunting; among the ten of them, it was Cyril, Elias, Korinna, and Alex who were nineteen. Darius’s age was curiously left blank, but the rest of them were still eighteen.

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  “Go ahead,” someone spoke gently just as her eyes fell on Theo patting her weaponsmith’s half-raised arm.

  Darius looked around uneasily, barely making eye contact with Ty. “Weapons…armor. List, need for tomorrow meeting.”

  A bit stunned, yet at the same time relieved that introductions weren’t necessary, Ty nodded to the shy student. “Yes, I’ll have a list for you by the end of practice.”

  It was Darius’s turn to nod, except he did it while getting up noisily from his seat. “Then I go. Thank you.”

  The students watched with semi-disbelief as he headed out, none of them particularly interested in forcing the large-framed student to stay.

  Elias broke the silence first, an amused look on his face as he craned his head to watch the door close. “So…what’s up with him?”

  Alex, who had been quiet since her arrival, finally spoke, her eyes lighting up. “He’s an Ancient, isn’t he?”

  The courtyard descended into silence.

  Ty was the first to break it, sighing. “It doesn’t matter what he is, he’ll—”

  “—be able to enchant weapons and make tomes,” Theo finished, turning his head to the entrance with his hand on his forehead. “Only a handful have ever entered the Academy. I thought he was tan because he’s from the coast, I have a lot of rare—”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t think I was supposed to say that, let’s just forget about it,” Alex interrupted distressingly, her face pale in the afternoon light.

  “Or maybe they’ll whisk him away,” whispered Selene, who was sitting close enough to Ty that she heard the comment.

  Right as Callie was about to also make a defensive comment rebuking the ominous whisper, Ty finally had enough.

  “We’re going to continue, because I don’t care,” she seethed, feeling the annoyance start to subside as soon as silence was restored. “You all can chat later, on your own time.” She looked down at her hard work and continued in a softer voice. “There’s a lot that I have to get through.”

  No one dared to make any further remarks.

  “I’ve enchanted nine targets in the arena; if all of you can cast a basic close-range Break onto it, I can start figuring out how to organize our group.” She then turned to Elias, who she had expected would decline.

  “Yeah…can’t read Ancient script,” he shrugged without a care in the world.

  “Useless,” muttered Faris, reaching into his bag to grab his tome.

  Elias immediately snapped back, “Funny, ‘cause I recall you not being able to beat me when we fought earlier.”

  “It was a tie.”

  “Fine by me. That just makes you equally as useless.”

  Ignoring the two, Ty nodded. “That’s alright, I’ll do a long-range one on yours to demonstrate. Everyone else, if you don’t have your books, there’s enough in the back.” She took out a combat tome from her bag and shifted in her seat so that she was facing the area full of stationary targets, briefly checking to see if the spell she wanted was authorized—it was—before focusing on a particularly sad target in the back. Not wanting to be cocky, she flipped to the page for Break.

  A glance at the script was all it took before she recalled phrases she had committed to heart long ago. She spoke the first sentence quickly, under her breath as she glanced at the target once more.

  But it was gone.

  And then, right when it seemed like it was never going to reconstitute like it should have, prompting Ty to hastily re-check her page in case she got the wrong spell, it miraculously returned to its original form.

  “That was definitely not a Break,” muttered Theo—far too quietly for Ty to hear from across the table—before taking the book that had been sitting on his lap and getting up along with the other students. Save for one.

  Ty turned to Faris, who sat speechlessly at the table. “I know you’re our principal offensive caster, but can you just do it?”

  He tore his eyes away from the target Ty had decimated to meet her neutral gaze. “I’m going,” he announced irately before heading over to an unoccupied mannequin.

  “What’s up with him?” Elias commented, comfortably slouched over the table.

  “I don’t know.” It was the truth.

  Ty waited in silence, watching the targets crumble one after the other before reconstructing themselves like they were supposed to.

  Theo, who was enrolled as the class’s physician, completed his task first, while Faris, the class’s caster, was a close second. Alex, one of the class’s two duelists, felled hers next, followed by Callie, the class’s support; Korinna, the chemist, and Selene, the botanist, finished theirs at around the same time as well, leaving a single sheepish healer alone in the middle of the courtyard when one of the students finally dared to speak up.

  “Maybe we should call him to come back, he doesn’t look too well.” Callie spoke softly, a worried look on her face as she wrung her hands in her lap.

  Alex hummed indecisively. “Maybe he needs some more time?”

  As much as she didn’t want to do it, Ty conceded, calling out for Cyril to come back to the group. There wasn’t time for her to wait for every small thing.

  Perking up at the tactician’s order, he happily put away his tome and ran back in a hurry, probably before she could change her mind. “Oh, thank the Graces, I was hoping you’d let me off the hook.”

  “You’re going to have to defend yourself in some way or another one day,” Faris pointed out bluntly.

  “I’ll be fine with all of you guys protecting me, right?” Cyril pouted at Faris, forcing the usually stoic student to look away.

  “Royalty, can’t stand it,” he muttered into the palm of his hand.

  “You’re one to talk,” Theo shot with a sidelong glance, not even looking up from his lap as he flipped through his tome.

  Faris’s eyes narrowed at the challenge, preparing to rebuke the accusation when Ty interrupted before it spiraled out of control again, flipping to the next exercise in her book. “Just a few more tests, and then I’ll let you go. Please cooperate.”

  * * *

  More than an hour later, with the sun almost fully set, her classmates now dismissed, Ty let out a long sigh. Her fa?ade dropped.

  Just this last target to dispel, and then today will be over.

  Like what she had done with the others, she placed her hand on the remaining target near the back of the courtyard, expecting to feel the cold, coarse wood. This one was the one that had malfunctioned, so she was slightly wary of it acting up again, but it looked just as normal as the rest.

  Except it didn’t feel like coarse wood at all.

  Instinctively stepping back and clutching the tome so hard her knuckles turned white, she looked away and yelled what she could of a shielding spell before the mannequin burst into a thousand pieces, none of which landed on her.

  But the damage had been done. The target vanished, and she dropped her tome, turning slowly to observe the searing pain coming from the bloodied hand that had once held it tightly. Trying to process what had happened.

  No, you’re not allowed to do that, she scolded herself.

  You have to protect yourself, her mother had told her.

  This is a great burden, the Headmistress had said.

  She remembered. Before school had officially begun, all the tacticians had gone together with the Headmistress to visit the Magic Association and Tome Society headquarters to receive their authorization rings. After all, the Academy—the Academy of the Graces—belonged to them, and they regulated all use of magic throughout Chloris.

  In life-or-death situations, sometimes there isn’t enough time to authorize spells, so this will allow you to cast without them. There will have to be sacrifices. Including you, she distinctly recalled them saying.

  At the moment, and to many, it had felt like a great power, though limited by a hundred uses. A power that her mother had warned her about many a time, knowing that she was one to make split-second decisions that typically did not take into account her own wellbeing.

  But there was another, deeper secret that she had harbored since her childhood. A solitary feeling that stirred in her chest as she watched the other tacticians gush at their new rings and beam at being able to call a spell without actually possessing it. And then the cost: the blood of the bearer, deducted tenfold upon cast. Not enough to make a difference at first, but when done repeatedly, in quick succession—it was a death sentence for the gluttonous, and possibly a worthy cost for the desperate.

  A sharp jolt of pain in her hand snapped her out of the reverie and she looked at where the dummy once stood.

  She replayed the events in her head: she had begun casting a Break—

  But it was gone by the first sentence.

  That’s right: a basic Break spell wouldn’t have done that much damage. Something like that would have overridden the initial spell that she had placed onto it—there was no reason why it should have returned to normal. But what did she cast? Did she not take—no, she had, that morning. She wouldn’t forget.

  Theo got up with a book in his hand.

  She used her free hand and steadied herself on the pillar beside her, head spinning from the pain and blood loss, trying to figure out what spell he must have cast. It must have been temporary—and what was it bound to?

  Whatever it was, he knew I’d discover it at the end of class.

  Ty turned around to face the golden courtyard, catching a single shadow standing in its center and waiting for their presence to be discovered.

  “So, that spell.”