I’d passed out so early the night before that I woke up hours before Sowillo rose in the eastern sky. Although the streets were lit periodically by tall lampposts, I didn’t fancy exploring. I didn’t know how to navigate a city yet and didn’t trust myself not to get lost. And Lord Blythe certainly wouldn’t be pleased to hear that I’d wandered off in the night and hadn’t returned by morning.

Cracking open my window proved difficult. The hinge was as stingy as the front door. I cranked so hard that the mechanism shattered and got the window stuck in the open position. Since I liked being cold when I slept anyways, I wrote off the loss and decided to keep the window open at all times.

The climb was a piece of cake. I hopped up and shimmied through the window. Making it to the roof was as easy as standing and pulling myself up. I had to be careful not to break the shingles and the slate was cold against my skin, but other than that it was nice to have a place where I could lay out and look at the stars.

I don’t know how long I just laid there and stared at the stars. Letting my mind go blank was cathartic. Before long, however, my thoughts turned to Magisterium. Besides the advice I received from an ancient dragon, I didn’t know why I decided to come here. It wasn’t like I had anyplace in mind when I ran away from home— just away.

In all my years playing the local deity I had never learned a hard skill that might help me make it in the civilized world, so I couldn’t have paid my way if I’d wanted to.

Magisterium meshed with my needs. Without any formal training, money, wealth, or privilege, I had become an honored citizen in an independent nation practically overnight. My basic needs like food and shelter were taken care of. All I had to do to stay was pay an energy tax and attend the Academy; the latter would likely benefit me as much as it did the city. I felt like I was pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes.

Dawn found me on the roof. I was still working on my cost-benefit analysis of first class citizenship in Magisterium.

“This is my spot, but I’ll let you use this side of the roof if you want.”

In my surprise I shattered one of the roof shingles. I rubbernecked around to find who had spoken. A young girl with short raven hair sat on the roof where the two points met. I sat up straight and turned my body in her direction. How long had she been watching me?

Her eyes were inquisitive. “You the new kid? Shiro, was it? I’m called Rogue.”

I had never seen someone quite like her. Rogue’s skin was tanned and supple. She looked like she was no stranger to hard labor; she was thin and incredibly muscular. In place of incisors she had three-inch long tusks that protruded from her mouth down to her chin. Her dark pupils swallowed up the early morning light, reflecting nothing.

“You deaf or something? Can’t you talk?”

I’d made her uncomfortable. “Sorry, yeah. I’m Shiro. Thanks for letting me have half the roof.” My voice was scratchy from disuse.

“I said you could use it, not that I gave it to you,” Rogue emphasized.

“Right, that. Thanks.”

“And would you stop staring?”

I hadn’t known I had been. “Sorry… it’s just that I’ve never met someone like you before.”

Rogue’s eyes were hooded. “You mean you’re disgusted that a nonhuman like me could invade your perfect little world. Where are you from? No, don’t tell me, I already know— you must be imperial born. Roma, the empire built by humans, for humans,” she practically spat.

I blinked, taken aback by her ferocity. “Why don’t you tell me how you really feel.”

“I just—”

“I didn’t mean it like that, honest. It’s true, I was born and raised within the boundaries of the empire. But But Roma is a big place, and many of the territories under its jurisdiction are raised knowing nothing of imperial law and custom. Altressor was a place like that, although it had its own twisted ways…” I trailed off.

I’d probably said too much. Why was I on the defensive? She was the one in the wrong. I crossed my arms over my chest petulantly.

“Altressor… I’ve heard of it before. Near the cursed city, wasn’t it?” Rogue said.

I took a deep breath. “That’s right. I left not too long ago. It was too stifling, I had to get out before it killed me.”

Not one word was a lie, but all were inherently misleading. Being locked up in a cage for most of my life had indeed been stifling, and being sacrificed so the Seventh could become the next host for Nyx would have killed me for sure.

“I’m sorry I tore out your throat earlier,” Rogue said.

“It’s no big deal. I’m used to being treated different, so I understand how it feels.”

A door slammed.

“What was that?”

Rogue shrugged. “I don’t know. A thief maybe?”

“Crap!”

“What is it?”

“No time!”

I scrambled down the roof and hung myself off the edge. Glancing at the window below, I lined my feet up and stood on the sill. Short on time, I banged my head on the way in. Rushing out of my room, I made it to the first floor landing before Lord Blythe started up the stairs. His pristine white shirt had been stained where he had rammed into the door.

“I hope you don’t mind, I let myself in. You weren’t outside.” Blythe glanced at the entertaining room. “Well hello there, good morning. Rise and shine my fluffy-tailed pupils. Your first class begins today, and none of you will want to make a bad impression on your esteemed professor. You six are lucky kids, let me tell you! They managed to get old Merlin set down his experiments and come out of his workshop to teach you.”

My eyes tracked the movement in the room below. A trio— two men and a woman— had set up shop there. It looked like they’d gotten to know each other since moving to the gray sector and becoming housemates. Something seemed off about them, but I couldn’t say for sure what it was. It looked like

Of the two men, one stood out more. He was of middling height and stocky, with fiery red hair and a goatee that didn’t suit him. The man looked like he could pick me up with one hand or tear me in half, whatever he thought was more fun. He was too busy doing a strength training exercise for his wrists to take notice of Lord Blythe.

Sandwiched between the two old-timers was a tall and serene woman. Her crisp appearance was at odds with the crappy room, and her eyes… her eyes were cold, so cold. I could feel the frigid touch of her gaze from across the room. After dismissing me and Blythe both, she sniffed and went back to examining her cuticles.

The other man was a curious-looking fellow that gave off an air of utter complacency. Like me, he’d received a new set of clothes, but they were already sloppily maintained. His black hair was a rats nest, as was his scraggly beard. He looked like he’d crawled out of a bottle.

The slob straightened himself up so he could look down his nose at Blythe. “Don’t make me laugh. So what, there’ll be an accomplished old guy teaching us the ropes? I don’t want to be here anyways. Isn’t there a more suitable occupation for a first class citizen like me?”

I was already dreading the idea of having these people as my housemates. But it wouldn’t stop there. I’d be sharing my life with them for the foreseeable future. We’d share the same space, the same meals, have to do the same homework, and have the same teachers.

“That’s no way to talk about a master of the arcane, son. I would be careful what you say, less your citizenship papers be improperly filed and you find yourself exiled from Magisterium.”

The slob scoffed at the veiled threat, but he held his tongue.

If Lord Blythe was bothered by the reaction he’d received from my housemates, he didn’t show it. But he was already at the door and hopping from foot to foot. I got the message: he wanted to be on his way— probably had for some time, and I was holding him up.

My suspicions were confirmed. “Shiro, we better get going. We have an appointment with Headmaster Alfarian that we can’t afford to miss.”

“Yeah, alright,” I said absently.

Trailing my hand on the railing, I quick-stepped down the stairs to stand at Blythe’s side. Had my assessment of the trio not been so poor I would’ve at least introduced myself. As it was, I figured it was best to avoid interacting with them until it was absolutely necessary. That didn’t bother me overly much. I didn’t think they would take a kid like me seriously, anyways.

A voice I presumed belonged to the flame-haired man followed us out the door. “Who’s the spook? I can’t believe they’d let a revenant in the City of Wonders.”

“Magisterium must be getting pretty desperate if they’re letting monsters like him take the citizenship test nowadays,” the woman observed.

I kept my face expressionless. The reaction wasn’t altogether unexpected. Not only had my interaction on the roof that morning been revealing, but Cormac had already warned me that I’d have a hard time of it in Magisterium. No one hesitated to belittle someone who was different, and it wasn’t that much of a stretch to call me a monster. I was used to being treated like an outcast anyways.

“Are you going to let abuses like that slide? If you do, you’ll have to deal with more than whispers before long,” Nyx said reasonably.

He talked like no time had passed at all! Like he hadn’t been sleeping like the dead, like it was only natural, like I should’ve known better… like it was always a certainty that he would wake up talk again. I wanted to kill him. If I didn’t have appearances to keep up, I would’ve taken my shadow to ground and strangled him.

Blythe halted his headlong pace to pull up beside me. “You all right son?”

“Never better.” I kept my lips firmly fixed into a smile in spite of how fake I was betting it looked.

“Shiro, you can’t let ignorant fools like that get to you. They’re depressingly common in Magisterium, unfortunately— it’s a problem that plagues the rest of the world too, I’m sure.”

“Are you ignoring me? You are, aren't you! Giving me the cold shoulder, are we? That’s just fine, see if I care!”

I hid the fact that I stomped on my shadow by pretending that the spiteful comments had gotten to me. “You’re right. I won’t let them do that again.”

“That’s a tough lad, good on you! Ah, where has the time gone? We’re late! Decorum be damned, we’ll have to run,” Lord Blythe said. His eyes twinkled.

I grinned. “I’ll be right behind you.”

The exercise was welcome after being cooped up in bed for so long. On our way we sprinted past gossiping academs and yawning professors. I hopped over a mechanical street cleaner— it was powered by anima, of course. Ten minutes later we arrived at the Academy.

Evidently the tour would have to wait, because Blythe made a beeline for a spindly tower set not too far behind the main gates. I had to take the steps two at a time to keep up with his stride, but I managed to make it to the top of the tower without falling.

Lord Blythe was in peak form. I was having trouble staying on my feet, but he was barely sweating. Either there was more to the man than he gave himself credit for, or I was further behind in the endurance department than I’d thought.

“You’re late,” came a raspy voice.

My patron strode through the door without bothering to announce himself. “Headmaster Alfarian,” he bowed his head, “Excuse our tardiness, I take full responsibility.”

“Don’t be obtuse, Orman.”

I trailed behind, breathing heavily. A stack of books beckoned enticingly. I rested my arm against them and let my neck hang low.

“Don’t touch those! And stand up straight. Let me get a good look at you.”

The power of words uttered casually by people used to being obeyed was a scary thing. My back went ramrod straight and my eyes were trained straight ahead. I was overheating before, but at the headmaster’s barked command a chill had gone through me that had turned my sweat cold.

“Is this the one? He looks a little young.”

Blythe nodded. “It is. I brought him like you asked.”

While I stood under the proverbial microscope, my curiosity got the better of me. The headmaster’s office was more like a huge study. Bookshelves lined the entire room and stretched from floor to ceiling. Books were a common theme, they were everywhere. Piled on tables, laying on the ground, stacked haphazardly on desks— there was no end to them.

The headmaster himself was half-hidden behind a heavy tome, his reading glasses high on his big, bulbous nose. His eyes were large, deep-set, and filmed over with age. His skin, which was ashy gray and sagged in places, also spoke to that point. If his gray robe wasn’t enough, the ashwood staff and pointy hat propped up against his beaten up old writing desk were unmistakable markers of his relationship to the arcane.

I tuned back into the conversation when a point of particular interest to me was raised by the headmaster. “What do you make of the boy’s origins?”

Blythe was aghast. “You don’t mean to say you think the boy’s a revenant?”

“I mean what I said. Let’s hear your thoughts.”

“His power is ancient and… familiar as it is alien.”

Alien? What about my aura struck the man as so odd that he’d describe it that way? Nyx chuckled.

Headmaster Alfarian dipped his head in acknowledgement. “He has the blood of the ancients running through him, that’s undeniable. And where might have you encountered the like before?” he probed.

The way I was being talked about like I wasn’t there was sort of unsettling. Finding out two strangers knew more about my origins after meeting me for the first time— that was just aggravating. I wanted to make them acknowledge me, but didn’t. The way they were going about it bothered me, but the conversation seemed to be as much for my benefit as it was for theirs.

Blythe held his thought until I thought I’d explode from anticipation. “If I had to guess, I would say he comes from the same stock as Merlin.”

After I confirmed my eyes weren’t deceiving me, I became fascinated with distortions in the air in front of me. They resembled heat waves, but I didn’t feel any hotter despite my proximity to them. Curious, I poked around the space where the distortions were present. The area in question was six feet by three feet wide. Just then, I had a sinking feeling in my gut.

Headmaster Alfarian tugged at his white beard. “You would, would you? What do you think, Merlin?”

I jumped back in surprise. Merlin popped out of the distortion field he’d created. Magic could be used like that to hide in plain sight?

“This academ is quite perceptive, I can say that much. Untrained whelp though he may be, it’s not often someone spots me behind my Cloak of the Unseen,” Merlin said.

As the static field of anima was no longer being maintained, the compiled energy fractured. Rather than dissipate, however, the anima was absorbed into Magisterium’s collection system. For some reason, I shivered.

Color had risen on Merlin’s cheeks. “That’s what I’ve taken to calling it. It works by bending and distorting light. Now if I could only figure out how to make the blasted thing move it would have more practical applications…”

Nyx snickered. “So he’s just an old pervert after all.”

Merlin rounded on me. “That’s some mouth you’ve got on you, academ.”

Had he heard Nyx speak? No, that wasn’t possible. “I didn’t say anything…”

“You didn’t? You didn’t… hmm. Must’ve been hearing voices again. Well, no matter,” Merlin shrugged.

For someone Lord Blythe had spoken so highly of, I’d expected someone older. He didn’t look a day over thirty, but… I sensed an age to him that clashed with his youthful appearance. That alone was enough to make me curious, but the shock of white hair sprouting from his skull belonged to a man three times his age.

If I’d thought Lord Blythe was an exercise fiend, Merlin was a true monster. His body was lean and hard. Every angle of him was sharp and defined. even his silver hair was styled into a point. The tight-fitting pants he wore— along with an even tighter shirt— put all his bulging muscles on display. I was afraid the professor would shed his clothes if he did anything strenuous.

Merlin walked circles around me, seeming to look both at and through me. The effect was disconcerting to say the least, but I did my best to keep a straight face. “You all know this whippersnapper won’t be of any use as he is now— looks like he’s made of porcelain!”

Headmaster Alfarian tapped-tapped on his desk. “And as you well know, Merlin, we have little time to dawdle. The time is almost upon us, and we must act.”

“How long?” Merlin said.

Blythe gave me an apologetic look. “Three weeks… a month at most.”

“And Merlin… do make sure to be most discreet. There is much at stake here, and we cannot afford any mishaps.”

Merlin bowed to the headmaster, poorly concealing his crooked grin behind the courtesy. “As you command, headmaster, so it shall be.”

Less than a week I’d been here, and already I’d found myself in a frustratingly familiar situation. Be their intentions good or ill, these people wanted to use me to further their cause. No one bothered to ask me what I thought. For all intents and purposes, I was back at square one. I didn’t feel my will was my own. Whatever dark secrets remained untold, Magisterium had planted the seeds of rebellion within me.