William and Gerial sat quietly as I recounted my experience to them. The corridor, the mana, and the scent of rot. We examined each detail and they questioned me from multiple angles to see that I hadn’t missed anything.

“I don’t know what kind of mana it is.” Gerial admitted.

“If it’s green, that means it's the life element, right?” I asked.

“Life mana doesn’t normally smell of rot.” William spoke. “But then again, sometimes it does. It depends on the kind of rot. Are you sure you didn’t get a better whiff? Or see the exact pigment of the mana?”

I shook my head. I hadn’t gotten a close look at the mana. Its smell was only a vague memory, and its colour was sickly, but I couldn’t remember the specific shade. Sickly green was sickly green.

“In other words, we need more information.” I concluded. “What if we found more of the mana?”

Gerial looked at me. “There might not be any more. If it was a result of a spell gone wrong, or a natural phenomenon, then it could be the only type of its kind.”

“Then we can find the one I met agai-”

“Also, you murdered it.” Gerial interrupted. “The moment your mana came into contact with it the green mana was destroyed. No other mana type that you interpret as hostile will survive trying to enter your body. That’s the nature of our mana.”

I thought back to the memories I had recovered. It didn’t feel like I was hostile against the green mana. I wanted to absorb it.

“Your defenses work on a subconscious level.” Gerial saw my expression. “Your mana is you, and it is part of your body. It determines what is or isn't a threat before you’re consciously aware of any danger.”

William tapped his hand against his chair to grab our attention.

“It wouldn't be wise to leave this alone,” He spoke. “I'll keep an eye out, but unless the mana appears again this might be an unsolvable mystery. There is a reason that entire teams are gathered to study new mana types when they are discovered. Most die out before they can be examined, unusable and unwanted by the world.”

We fell silent. It was a strange occurrence, and we wanted to get to the bottom of it. It just wasn’t possible at the moment.

“I’ll let my dad know today.” Gerial remarked. “If it becomes a problem the school can handle it.”

We chatted until the bell for the end of lunch resounded in our ears. We walked towards the exit of the dome promising to make concrete plans. Ones that didn’t involve hiding ourselves from everyone else.

It was nice to catch up with my friends.

Period five today was the school assembly. We split up and went our separate ways. Gerial said he had something else on and wouldn’t attend. William was afraid of attracting negative attention to me after his fight.

He was safe from retaliation; his potential friends were not. Social exclusion isn’t a joke.

I made my way to the hall and looked out for Amanda. We had agreed beforehand to meet up here, and soon enough she waved at me, and we walked over to the seats.

There were some things that didn’t change across both worlds. Boring school assemblies was one of them.

At least we didn’t have to sit on the floor.

Chairs had been prepared for us and the headmaster greeted us with a smile on his face. Behind him several of the faculty stood with their arms to their sides. I could see a couple of them whispering in conversation.

I couldn’t see Tago.

The headmaster’s speech congratulated us on entering the academy. He warned us not to get complacent, as the academy took their study seriously and was a standard of good grades across the continent.

It was the usual school drivel.

Amanda wriggled in the seat beside me, and I looked at her. She leaned in towards my ear.

“I can’t see my brother.” She whispered. “I couldn’t find him at lunchtime either.”

She nodded towards a group of students, and I saw Alexis’ friends sitting together. He wasn’t with them.

“He must be… dang it. He always does this when he’s upset. I’ll need to talk to him before dad finds out.” Amanda grew quiet.

The rest of the assembly passed quickly.

When it finished Amanda gave me a reassuring smile and disappeared into the crowd, either going towards her next class or looking for her brother.

I made my way towards an emptier section of the school. My next classroom was inside the central tower of the school that I had seen from the outside.

Metal magic studies.

I stopped in front of a quiet and unassuming door. There were a couple of students rushing around me to class, but the tower was mostly empty.

I pushed the door open and saw a smaller room than the others. There was a single student sitting down, and he gave me a wave.

Gold flew to the corner of the room and made himself comfortable. He’d decided that this lesson wouldn’t have anything to do with him. He ran his beak through his feathers, ignoring the world around him.

I turned to look at the other student and I saw a statue staring at me. It was another statue of me, just like the earth magic studies, but cast out of metal. It stared at me as I walked further into the classroom.

“Hey man!” An enthusiastic voice erupted from behind me. “Fancy seeing you here.”

I turned around to see Ouros Destin, from my earth magic studies class. His green hair dye had leaked even further onto his blazer, creating green shoulder pads. He waved at me and then stopped when he saw the statues.

“Aw, man.”

He cracked his knuckles and we sat down. The other student gave us a nod. There wasn’t a statue for him in the room.

The moment we sat down a wave of power flew out of the statues. They began to walk towards us, and I raised my hand to manipulate the mana in the metal around me, just as I had before.

The statue touched me on the first try.

It stopped moving and I saw Ouros struggling as well. He lasted until the second wave. The two metal statues turned towards us.

“Your metal manipulation skills are lacking.”

The metal liquidated before our eyes. They combined and other metals joined them from throughout the room.

In a few seconds a man had formed out of the substance, his entire body made of metal from head to toe. I had seen him before.

“I am Tago of metal. I will be your metal magic studies teacher for the semester. Any questions?”

Tago of metal. Tago of the earth. The two were identical in every way except for the substance that made up their body.

Was it insensitive to ask if they were the same person as our earth teacher? Amanda had said it was probably one person casting a spell.

“Are you our earth teacher?” Ouros spoke. “Because you look exactly the same.”

“I am him. He is me. We are currently separate, but later we will convey our experiences to our creator.” Tago replied. “Any other questions?”

So many. I opened up my system library and reviewed the questions I had written down for when I finally had a metal magic teacher.

“I’ve gained a couple of levels in ten months. Is metal magic supposed to level this slowly?” I asked.

I wasn’t counting the month I spent in a coma.

“No. It is not meant to level quickly, but your level of progress is slow.” He raised his hand to stop further questions. “Thankfully, that allows us to segue into today’s lesson. I hope I will be able to resolve your issue in this timeframe.”

I sat up straight. “That would be amazing.”

“I didn’t think there would be so many people attuned to metal in our year level.” Ouros looked at the third student. “I thought that we were rarer than that.”

Tago turned to him. “You are both correct and incorrect. It is true that metal attuned magicians are very rare. Statistically there is less than one per city.” He looked at the third classmate. “This is Lassante. He is in his third year. Until recently he was the only metal attuned student in the school. With you two enrolling, the number is now three. It is a very rare occasion to have this many students in this subject.”

We stared at Lassante and he waved.

This was the class for the entire school?

There were over one thousand students at Koshima academy, and they were all top talents. It hadn’t hit me how rare metal attunement was.

Tago moved over to the desk and sat down. He tapped it and I could see mana moving in the air. Pebbles of different metals appeared on the table in front of me.

“Metal attunement is more specialised than earth magic. Eventually, you will be able to manipulate all types of metal. However, you will only ever be proficient with one type.”

“Today the two of you will be focusing on the various metals in front of you.”

I stared down at the smorgasbord in front of me. This was the information I needed.

I wondered how it worked. Would the metal need to be pure, or could it be mixed, and I would still have proficiency?

That was a question for later.

I started to meditate. Peeling back the physical world and revealing the mana underneath. The metals on the table resonated with me, and I examined them one by one, trying to find a feeling of connection or attunement.

I was only a third of the way done when the class finished. I opened my eyes and stared at the metals in front of me. I hadn’t found the one I was proficient in.

“You will find it.” Tago was in front of me. “Learning is a process, and that process takes time.”

I nodded. I would be able to figure out my metal over the week’s classes.

Ouros hadn’t discovered his either and he shook his head when Tago informed him the class was over.

“Five more minutes. School’s over so there’s no rush to leave.”

Tago didn’t object. I walked to the exit and saw that the other student had already left. Gold flew back onto my shoulder, and we made our way outside.

The hallway was empty now. I walked to the bottom of the tower and into the main compound. My personal space was immediately surrounded by people rushing to leave.

I saw a head of red hair pass by me. “Amanda!”

Amanda skidded to a stop and then turned to face me.

“Andross.” She smiled. “I’m glad we caught up before the day ended, I forgot during assembly, but I wanted to ask if you have a textin-”

The sound of cheering broke through our conversation.

I looked over towards the group of students making the noise. A wave of heat passed through my body, the air turned arid, and the cheers intensified.

Amanda shivered. “That feels really weird.”

“Weird in a bad way?”

“Familiar, yet not.” Amanda flicked my arm. “Let’s go check it out.”

The heat grazed my skin, but the students around me didn’t want to leave. An elbow bumped into my side, and a shoe stepped on my foot. We fought our way through, and whenever someone turned to stop us, they took one look at Amanda and let us through.

A head of red hair revealed itself to me as we made it to the centre of the pile. A student was surrounded by his friends. I’d seen them before. At the arena.

“Alexis!” Amanda shouted. “You-”

I stopped. She sped up. He had transformed since I’d seen him at lunch. Fiery red and orange hair cascaded down his shoulders, not as long as Amanda's, but just as fierce. He turned towards her, and I saw his eyes flicker red.

He waved at her, his hands wriggling as they shifted into flames and then back to flesh. His smile was wide, and the students around him looked at him in awe.

“That’s right.”

He swept her into a hug, flames dancing around them.

“I’ve unlocked our bloodline.”