My uncle walked me to the station without saying much, his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his threadbare coat. It was cold for early autumn, the sky a pale, cloudless gray. I wore my favorite shirt anyway, loose cotton, frayed at the sleeves, one of the only things that felt like me. I wore it as a goodbye, not to him but to everything else.

  The shirt belonged to my mother. She used to wear it when she gardened, elbow-deep in herbs and dirt beneath her nails, humming songs she swore were not lullabies but always sounded like one. Now I wore it. The fabric was loose on my narrower frame, and the sleeves were rolled up past my elbows the same way she used to. She died when I was nine. A fever took her fast, and then it was just me and my uncle, neither of us knowing what to do with the other.

  He tried. I know he did. Once, I caught him sitting at the kitchen table. He was staring at a cracked teacup we never used anymore. That silence spoke louder than any words, but he was always more shadow than shape, drifting through the house like a ghost that had overstayed its haunting. Quiet and withdrawn. Grieving in ways I did not understand back then and still do not fully now.

  Sometimes I thought he looked at me and saw her. Never in a good way though. It was like carrying a shadow that was not mine, always trying to step out of the shape he expected, but never quite managing it.

  There was not a lot of conversation between us, but I know he cared because of the little things. For instance, he always left the porch light on too long, and he patched my boots when he thought I would not notice.

  I did not belong in Eldenmere, not really. People looked at me as though they were not sure what I was. A girl too clever for comfort and too strange to belong. There was always talk, especially after my mother passed. Whispers in the market. Teachers who spoke to me like I was some glass thing waiting to crack. I used to come home with scraped knees, splinters, and bruises I never explained. Not because I got into fights. I was not that brave. But because I wandered too far into the woods and forgot how to come back.

  They said my mother had been strange. Always a little too clever and a little too quiet. She did not marry and never talked about who my father was. She did not seem to care that people noticed. Some said she knew things. Ancient things. One of the innkeepers once called her a hedge witch when he thought I was not listening.

  She always wanted to go see the world, and maybe that is why I am here now.

  We did not talk about where I was going. At least he did not say it aloud, but the way his hands clenched into fists said everything. I wanted to ask him if he was scared for me or for himself, but the words stuck.

  "You will write, will you not?" he asked.

  "Of course," I answered.

  "Thalia," he said quietly, "are you sure about leaving?"

  "Yes, I am sure," I lied. Maybe I was not lying. I just did not know yet what sure was supposed to feel like.

  I had spent my whole life in the village of Eldenmere, tucked between the bones of old forests and the breath of the mountains. The kind of place that always smelled like damp leaves and chimney smoke. People there lived quietly. Some by choice, but most because they did not have any other option.

  We had one post office, two bakeries, a general store, and a single narrow road that led in and out. Although most folks only ever went in. There was a rhythm to Eldenmere. The same faces in the same windows. The same whispers passed over fences and the same warnings stitched into bedtime stories. We did not talk about the Dominion unless we had to. There was a woman once who dared to shout about the Dominion's injustice. The next morning, she was found cold and still in the snow. No one ever talked about the Academy, at least not out loud. We did not want to disappear.

  When the letter came, slipped beneath our door with no postage, my uncle went pale. He did not say it, but I saw it in the way he stared at the seal like it might burn him. The paper was thick, creamy, and sealed with a deep green wax stamped with a symbol I had only ever seen in whispered stories, an enormous oak tree. The weight of it felt heavier than the thin sheet of parchment should have.

  He did not ask how or why. He just begged, "Do not go."

  But I did.

  Because people do not say no to the Academy. Not if they are chosen. Not when they want to stay safe.

  Even if no one really knows what happens once you get there.

  The train arrived without sound. One moment the tracks were empty, just steel and frost stretching into mist, then the next the train was there. Black, polished, and taller than any train I had ever seen. It was the kind of thing that looked like it belonged to a different time or maybe a different world altogether.

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  Its windows were smoked glass, impossible to see through. The door hissed open with a sigh, like the train itself was exhaling. My fingers twitched at my side.

  I did not move right away. My feet felt rooted to the ground. I wanted to run back to the porch light still glowing in my uncle’s window, but something, a silent promise or a whisper in the mist, pushed me forward.

  My uncle did not say goodbye. Just clapped a grounding hand on my shoulder and gave me the smallest nod. It was the most affection he had shown in years.

  I stepped onto the train. The steel beneath my fingers was colder than anything I had ever felt, smooth and unyielding.

  The air shifted the moment my foot crossed the threshold. The scent of smoke and iron gave way to something much stranger and older. It smelled like parchment and ozone and something sharp I could not name. The hallway stretched too long for the outside of the train to make sense, narrow and lit by small, flickering lanterns. Velvet seats lined the walls in deep reds and greens. Every surface gleamed like it had been scrubbed a hundred times.

  I walked forward, the door hissing closed behind me, sealing Eldenmere and my old life out in one soft breath.

  I did not see another soul, but I did not feel alone either.

  There was something watching me. I was sure of it.

  I chose a seat near the end of the car, one with its back to the wall so I would not have to worry about someone coming up behind me. The velvet cushions sank under my weight and for a moment I just sat there, my palms resting on my knees and heart still thudding a little too loud in the silence.

  The train began to move without a jolt. One moment stillness and the next a smooth hum that thrummed beneath my boots. I pressed my forehead to the window, but all I could see was mist. Dense, white, and shifting.

  They said the Academy was far beyond the northern border of the Dominion. Past where the maps ended, past the reach of cities and paved roads, and past any places you could name.

  But no one said it directly. Not in Eldenmere anyway. If anyone ever came back from the Academy, they never said much about it.

  Once, I had overheard a traveler in the village inn whispering about it. He was drunk and careless with his tongue, saying that it was built into the cliffs of a lost mountain range, where the sun rose in different colors and the stars did not follow the Dominion's sky. He said the Academy taught things you could not find in books. Power you could not ask for without offering something in return.

  Then he saw me listening, and he stopped talking immediately.

  Outside the window, the fog started to thin. For a breathless moment, I caught glimpses of the land, towering black pines rising like spears from the earth, jagged cliffs leaning out over deep, yawning valleys. We were higher than I realized. Much higher than Eldenmere’s hills had ever climbed.

  Even the air inside the train felt thinner and tighter in my lungs.

  The Dominion stretched wide, that much I knew. Twelve provinces, ruled by twelve Houses that bent to the Chancellor in the capital. Each House with its own mark, its own secrets. Some ruled with gold, some with war. Others with stranger things. Magic was not illegal, but it was not welcomed either, not unless it came with a seal of approval from the upper courts.

  Most people just pretended it did not exist.

  But the Academy was older than the Houses. Older, some said, than the Dominion itself. It did not answer to chancellors or lords. The few who studied there did not return to serve their provinces. They served something else.

  No one ever knew what.

  A soft chime echoed through the cabin, once, then again. I stiffened, but no one appeared. No conductor, nor a voice. Just a low sound like it came from inside the walls themselves.

  The lights flickered once.

  Outside, the cliffs had turned to stone teeth. There were rows of gray rock jutting from the ground.

  I sat back against the seat and pulled my coat tighter around my shoulders.

  I tried to track time by counting heartbeats, but even they felt off-kilter in here, as though the rhythm of the train hummed louder than my own blood. The window beside me showed little now but gray stone and cloud, streaking past in smudges. I thought I saw a shape move across the rocks once. Way too tall and too fast, but when I blinked, it was gone.

  The silence stretched.

  I do not know how long I sat like that with my spine stiff and my hands curled in my lap, but eventually the fog outside cleared just enough for a new shape to emerge.

  Not mist.

  Not a mountain.

  A spire.

  Black and sharp, rising from the cliffside like a dagger stabbed into the world. Then another, and another. A jagged crown of towers. Wrought iron gates twisted into impossible patterns. A bridge of stone so narrow and long it seemed to vanish into the sky. The whole thing looked like it had been carved from shadow. Summoned from a different world entirely.

  The Academy.

  My mouth had gone dry and my breath clouded the glass.

  The train began to slow.

  Not with a lurch or a screech, but something more like a breath being held. As if the entire machine was waiting for permission to stop.

  Then silence.

  The door at the front of the car groaned open.

  A figure stood there, silhouetted in the flickering lantern light. They had to be eight feet tall, with their face hidden beneath a heavy hood. I could not see their eyes, but I felt them. A weight that pressed against my chest like a warning.

  "Thalia Night," the figure said, voice smooth, low, and cold. "Welcome."

  I got up, and my legs felt unsteady.

  I did not ask how they knew my name.

  You did not ask questions here. You followed, so that is what I did.

  I stepped off the train, my boots meeting the first stone of the bridge that led to the gates. The air was colder here, not just from the altitude, but in some deeper, marrow-dragging way. The kind of cold that carried memory or warning.

  Behind me, the train disappeared. It did not chug away but drifted off. One blink and it was simply gone.

  The figure said nothing else, only turned and led me forward, across the bridge, toward the gates of the Academy.