Academy Student

Lore

They always warned her about the bells.

Not the grand tower bells — those tolled at dawn, dusk, and the third hour to signal lecture transitions. Those were expected, even welcomed, their deep voices echoing across the marble cloisters of Solstice Academy like the heartbeat of a sleeping giant. No, it was the little bells — the hidden ones — that were trouble.

Some said they rang just before a spell miscast, or when a student was about to lie to a professor. Others insisted they chimed whenever a soul reached a crossroads — too subtle for adults to hear, but painfully clear to the half-formed ambitions of students. Whisper-bells, they called them. Anxiety made metal.

She'd heard them for the first time during her second Binding exam.

She had studied all night — hands ink-stained, fingertips scorched from low-grade flame glyphs. The First Circle of Conduits, she knew cold. The arcane conversion of heat to momentum? Easy. But when it came to the Living Object Conundrum — the part where you animate something without giving it hunger, pain, or agency — she froze. Her candle stub rolled off the desk of its own accord during the incantation. Not hopped. Rolled. Judged, no doubt, by the Council trio watching behind that one-way crystal. She had heard it then — the faintest chime. Not a warning bell — a mocking one.

The Solstice Academy was beautiful in the kind of way that felt intentional. Courtyards bloomed with sky-wine ivy that shifted color based on the time of day. The ceilings inside the Libraries of Intent shimmered with false constellations that rearranged themselves depending on what you were studying. And yet, beneath all that wonder, the pressure coiled like a summoned serpent.

There were eight branches — the most commonly taught and regulated forms of legitimate magic — ranging from the abstract and theoretical to the raw and elemental. First-years were expected to sample all of them before declaring their specialization in the second year. Theoretical Magic dealt with abstract forces and arcane logic. Elemental Magic, always popular, involved command of fire, water, air, and stone. Restorative was calmer — healing, purification, and bodily repair — while Transmutation focused on the rearrangement of matter itself. Divination offered glimpses beyond the present, often more metaphorical than literal, and Illusion, while frowned upon by some professors, taught the art of misdirection and mental mimicry. Then there was Binding and Enchantment, for those drawn to the anchoring of spells into tools and artifacts. Finally, Chronomancy — the most heavily restricted — explored the fragile weave of time itself.

She wasn’t in any branch yet. Placement Day was three weeks away. Her father had whispered that students with enough promise were sometimes courted early by the heads of discipline. Some in her cohort already wore colors.

No pressure.

Her roommate, a lanky boy from the Stormcast Isles, had already managed a second-circle conjuration — a fox made of scented mist. It had licked her cheek and then evaporated with a small poof, like a smug sneeze. He didn’t even look winded. She still couldn’t get her warming wards to last longer than an hour.

It wasn’t all competition, of course. There were moments — tiny, perfect ones — where magic felt like what she imagined as a child: not rules, but wonder. Like when she snuck into the aviary dome and saw the sky-hawks asleep, tethered midair by floating glyphs. Or when she passed her first transmutation practical and turned a dead leaf into a glass coin — only for it to shatter the moment she doubted herself.

Every failure taught something. That was the lie they told. The truth? Every failure cost something. In pride, in rank, in House points. She had once watched a boy burst into flames from overcasting. Not dangerous flames — Professor Telwin doused her instantly. But symbolic ones. Red embarrassment that refused to fade, even after his robes were replaced.

The Council watched everything. Not just the formal sessions — those rare moments when students were summoned before the Tri-Seal Arch or invited to present discoveries in the Dome of Echoes. The Council’s influence bled into the faculty, into the written exams, into the training golems. It was said the golems were encoded with actual Council members’ mannerisms — that every time you practiced, you were rehearsing in front of someone that mattered.

She didn’t want to matter yet. She just wanted to stay.

Most students who washed out weren’t expelled. They just left. Quietly. Some never returned from the forest trial. Others packed their bags after the fourth failed invocation. You’d find their beds empty. Their names wiped from the class rosters. Even the portraits near the dining hall adjusted themselves — group paintings reshuffled to hide the absence. Solstice was like that. Alive. Forgetful.

Tonight, she sat at her desk with three quills — one broken, one chewed, one still dry — and a roll of blank parchment she couldn’t seem to ruin yet. The assignment: “Define the boundaries of True Sight, and explain why knowing a thing is not the same as understanding it.” The prompt felt personal. She hated it.

There was a test tomorrow. She didn’t feel ready. She probably never would. But outside, the ivy had turned the color of firelight. And somewhere deep in the western wing, a bell rang — not one of the loud ones. A small chime. Clear, faint. Maybe not real.

She dipped her quill.

And wrote.