The mountain didn't look real.
Ren stood at its base with the rest of his year, craning his neck back until his spine complained, and still couldn't find the summit. Grey rock climbed into a bank of low cloud that never seemed to thin, its surface a brutal geometry of sheer faces, jagged overhangs, and narrow ledges that from this distance looked barely wide enough for a bird to land on, let alone a person.
"Mount Shredder," Zephyr had called it, back at the villa, in a tone that suggested the name wasn't a joke.
Ren was beginning to believe it.
"First lesson," said the instructor standing at the base — a broad, weathered woman with forearms like bridge cables and a voice that didn't need any magical amplification to carry across one thousand four hundred assembled first-years. "Physical Conditioning. I am Instructor Grael. You will learn to hate me within the hour, and that is by design, so save your complaints."
