Room 47 was on the fourth floor, at the end of a corridor that seemed designed to amplify footsteps. Every step echoed—except Elarion's, which fell with the muted quality of sound being actively suppressed. Old habits.
The door was unmarked except for the brass numbers. He tried the handle, found it unlocked, and pushed it open with the caution of someone who'd learned that unlocked doors were often more dangerous than locked ones.
Inside: a narrow room that managed to feel both institutional and uncomfortably personal. A bed with military-grade corners. A desk positioned to face the door—good sightlines, no blind spots. A wardrobe that was probably empty. A window overlooking the courtyard, providing a clear view of everyone coming and going.
Surveillance or consideration? Elarion wondered. Hard to tell.
On the desk sat the promised welcome packet—a leather folder embossed with the College seal. He approached it like it might explode, which, given recent events, wasn't entirely paranoid.
Inside: campus map, course catalog, rules and regulations printed in the kind of dense text that suggested no one actually read them, and a small envelope with his name written in the same precise calligraphy as the original letter.
He opened it.
Elarion,
Welcome to the Arcane College. Your first class begins tomorrow at eight o'clock in the morning, Theoretical Applications, Room 12 of the Scholar's Hall. Do not be late.
You will find that many eyes are watching. This is expected. Your task is simple: be unremarkable.
We know you excel at this.
—A Friend
Elarion read it twice, then held it up to the window light, checking for quantum-phased shimmer.
Nothing. Just ordinary ink on ordinary paper.
Which somehow made it more unsettling.
Be unremarkable.
That's what he'd been trying to do for sixteen years. And now someone—a friend, they claimed—was telling him to do exactly what came naturally. As if his instinct for invisibility wasn't just a survival mechanism but part of whatever test this was.
He set the note down and walked to the window. Students moved across the courtyard in clusters, their conversations muted by distance and glass. He watched them with the clinical detachment of someone studying a different species. Most moved in groups of three to five—social comfort zones. A few walked alone, and those were the ones he noticed. The outliers. The ones who didn't quite fit.
Like him.
Except he'd made an art form of not quite fitting in ways that nobody noticed.
The afternoon bled into evening. He memorized the campus map, noting exits, choke points, places where someone could disappear if necessary. He unpacked his single bag—three changes of clothes, basic toiletries, a knife he'd made himself that didn't look like a weapon until you knew what to look for.
And then, because he couldn't help himself, he spent an hour testing the room's acoustics.
He dropped a coin. Listened to how the sound reflected. Clapped once. Tracked the echo patterns. Tapped the walls at precise intervals, cataloguing which were solid stone and which were hollow enough to carry sound to adjacent rooms.
Room 46 to his left: someone playing a stringed instrument badly. Room 48 to his right: silence so complete it suggested either vacancy or someone else who valued quiet.
By the time darkness fell, Elarion had mapped every acoustic signature in his immediate environment. It was probably excessive. Definitely paranoid.
But it helped him sleep.
Morning arrived with a bell that rang across campus—loud, invasive, designed to be impossible to ignore.
Elarion was already awake. Had been for an hour, running through mental exercises that kept his mind sharp and his magic responsive. Silence manipulation required absolute focus; even a moment's distraction could cause the interference patterns to collapse. He'd learned that the hard way, in situations where collapse meant discovery and discovery meant death.
He dressed in the same forgettable gray, checked his appearance in the small mirror—average height, average build, features that were handsome enough but somehow failed to leave an impression—and headed downstairs.
The corridors were filling with students. He fell into step behind a group of three, matching their pace exactly, letting their conversation mask his presence. They were discussing an assignment, complaining about a professor, worrying about exams. Normal student concerns. Foreign as a different language.
Scholar's Hall was across the courtyard, a building that looked older than the others—stone weathered to a darker gray, ivy climbing the walls with determined persistence. The entrance hall smelled like chalk dust and anxiety.
Room 12 was on the second floor.
Elarion arrived exactly seven minutes early—late enough not to draw attention, early enough to choose his seat strategically. He selected a desk in the back corner, near the window but not directly beside it, where he could see the entire room without being in anyone's direct line of sight.
Other students filtered in gradually. They moved in that self-conscious way of people trying to figure out where they belonged—which seats were taken, which groups had formed, who was safe to sit near. The social calculus of first days.
No one sat directly next to him.
It wasn't deliberate avoidance—not quite. More like an unconscious drift, the way water flows around an obstacle without needing to acknowledge its presence. Elarion had perfected the art of being that obstacle. A subtle confusion effect, barely conscious, that made people's attention slide away without them realizing it was happening.
The room filled. Twenty-three students, by his count. He catalogued them automatically: body language, confidence levels, who deferred to whom. The social hierarchies were already forming—they always did, even this early.
And then she walked in.
Elarion noticed her immediately, which was unusual. He'd trained himself not to notice people unless they posed a threat or an opportunity, and most people were neither.
She was neither.
And yet.
She moved with a careful precision that suggested someone uncomfortable with being watched. Her robes were standard blue, but worn like armor—crisp, proper, defensive. Dark hair pulled back in a practical braid. Eyes that scanned the room with the same strategic assessment he'd just performed, looking for the safest place to be invisible.
She chose a seat near the middle-left. Close enough to seem engaged, far enough from the front to avoid excessive scrutiny.
Smart.
Their eyes met for a fraction of a second as she sat down—just long enough for Elarion to register that hers were a peculiar shade of gray-green, like storm light on water—and then she looked away, and the moment dissolved.
But something in that brief glance bothered him. Not attraction—he'd killed that particular vulnerability years ago. Something closer to recognition. As if she'd seen something in him that most people missed.
As if she could tell he was trying not to be seen.
The door opened again, and a man entered who could only be the professor. Mid-fifties, with the kind of lean build that came from active magic use rather than physical exercise. His hair was steel gray, pulled back in a style that had been fashionable twenty years ago and never updated. He carried a leather satchel that looked older than most of the students.
"Good morning." His voice carried effortlessly—a minor acoustic manipulation, probably unconscious. "I am Professor Aldric Thorne, and this is Advanced Theoretical Applications. If you're in the wrong room, leave now. If you're in the right room and hoping for an easy credit, also leave now."
No one moved.
"Good." Thorne set his satchel on the desk and surveyed the class with eyes that missed nothing. "This course explores the intersection of magical theory and practical implementation. We will not be teaching you spells. You should already know spells. We will be teaching you to understand why spells work, which will allow you to do things that people who only know spells cannot."
He pulled out a piece of chalk and drew a simple diagram on the board—two overlapping circles.
"Magic is not separate from physics. It is an expression of physics. Every spell you cast is manipulation of energy, matter, or information according to natural laws. The difference between a competent mage and a dangerous one is understanding which laws you're manipulating and what the consequences are."
Elarion found himself leaning forward slightly. This was familiar territory—the military had taught him the same principles, just with more urgency and less academic cushioning.
Thorne continued. "Today we'll start with wave mechanics. Who can tell me what happens when two waves of equal amplitude and opposite phase meet?"
Several hands went up. The girl with storm-colored eyes raised hers, then hesitated and lowered it slightly, as if worried about being too eager.
Thorne pointed to a student in the front. "You."
"They cancel out," the student said confidently. "Destructive interference."
"Correct. And the practical application?"
Silence. The confident student had apparently reached the limit of his knowledge.
Thorne's eyes scanned the room, and for a terrible moment, Elarion thought they would land on him. But they passed over his corner without stopping—just enough to make him wonder if Thorne had looked away deliberately.
"Anyone?" Thorne pressed. "Destructive interference. What can you do with it?"
The girl raised her hand again, more firmly this time.
"Yes?"
"Sound cancellation." Her voice was quieter than Elarion expected, but steady. "If you can generate a wave pattern that perfectly mirrors ambient sound, you can create zones of complete silence."
"Excellent. And the limitations?"
She hesitated. "Computational complexity? You'd need to process acoustic information in real-time and generate precise inverse patterns. The margin for error would be minimal."
"Exactly." Thorne looked pleased. "Which is why silence manipulation is classified as a child-level spell in the standard curriculum. Simple in concept, nearly impossible to execute at useful scales."
Child-level spell.
Elarion kept his expression carefully neutral. He'd spent sixteen years perfecting what this professor just dismissed as nearly impossible. The irony wasn't lost on him.
"However," Thorne continued, "what makes a spell 'child-level' or 'advanced' is often just a matter of perspective. A simple spell executed with perfect precision can be more effective than a complex spell executed poorly. Remember that."
He turned back to the board and began drawing more complex diagrams—interference patterns, wave equations, probability distributions.
Elarion watched, absorbing information, while his mind worked on a different problem entirely.
Professor Aldric Thorne. First name on his suspect list. Standing right here, teaching a class on wave mechanics—the exact principle underlying silence manipulation.
Coincidence?
No. Elarion had stopped believing in coincidences around the same time he'd started believing in conspiracies.
The class continued for two hours. Thorne lectured with the efficiency of someone who'd given this presentation many times but still cared about the material. Students took notes. A few asked questions. The girl with storm-colored eyes asked three, each one sharper than the last, revealing a mind that understood not just the answers but the implications.
Elarion asked nothing. Said nothing. Existed in the back corner like a well-placed shadow.
But he noticed things.
The way Thorne's eyes never quite landed on his desk, even when scanning the room.
The way two students near the front exchanged glances when Thorne mentioned "classified applications."
The way the girl looked back once—just once—as if checking whether he was still there.
When the class finally ended, students packed up with the relieved energy of people who'd survived something moderately difficult. They filed out in clusters, conversations already forming about the homework assignment and how hard this class was going to be.
Elarion waited until most of them had left before standing. He moved toward the door with his usual unremarkable gait, already planning his route back to the dormitory.
"Mr. Voss."
He stopped. Turned slowly.
Professor Thorne stood by his desk, organizing papers with deliberate casualness. He didn't look up.
"A word, if you have a moment."
It wasn't a request.
Elarion glanced at the door. The last few students were disappearing down the corridor. They were alone now—or nearly alone. He could hear footsteps on the stairs, fading.
He walked back toward the professor's desk, every muscle tensed.
Thorne finally looked up, and his expression was unreadable. "You didn't ask any questions."
"I didn't have any questions."
"Everyone has questions on the first day. It's a biological imperative—confronted with new information, the human mind naturally seeks clarification." Thorne's eyes studied him with uncomfortable precision. "Unless, of course, the information isn't new."
Silence stretched between them like a blade.
"I read ahead," Elarion said finally.
"Mmm." Thorne didn't look convinced. "Tell me, Mr. Voss. What brings you to the Arcane College?"
"A letter."
"Yes, I'm aware. I signed it."
The admission landed like a physical blow. Elarion's heart rate spiked—he felt it, controlled it, forced his expression to remain neutral.
Thorne smiled slightly. "Surprised? You shouldn't be. I'm the department head. All exceptional enrollment cases cross my desk eventually."
"I'm not exceptional."
"No?" Thorne leaned back against his desk. "A student with no prior academic record suddenly appears, enrollment expedited through channels that typically require months of processing. No entrance exam. No interview. No letters of recommendation. Just... appears." He tilted his head. "That seems rather exceptional to me."
"Maybe you should ask whoever authorized it."
"Oh, I did. Do you know what I was told?" Thorne's smile didn't reach his eyes. "That it was above my clearance level. Which is fascinating, because my clearance level is quite high."
They stared at each other. Elarion calculated exit strategies, attack patterns, how long it would take to drop the friction beneath Thorne's feet enough to—
"Relax, Mr. Voss. I'm not your enemy." Thorne straightened. "But I am curious. You sit in the back corner, you ask no questions, you radiate 'please don't notice me' so strongly that half the class probably forgot you were there by the time they left. That's not normal student behavior."
"Maybe I'm shy."
"Maybe." Thorne walked around his desk, maintaining careful distance. "Or maybe you're someone who's worked very hard to be invisible, and suddenly being in a classroom full of watching eyes feels like a spotlight."
Elarion said nothing. Anything he said would be too much.
"Here's what I know," Thorne continued quietly. "Someone powerful enough to override standard procedures wants you here. Someone who understands that the best way to hide something important is to put it exactly where people expect to find nothing. And someone who trusts—or hopes—that you won't be stupid enough to make waves."
He picked up his satchel and walked toward the door. Then stopped, hand on the frame.
"A piece of advice, Mr. Voss. Being unremarkable is a skill. But being too unremarkable? That's suspicious in its own way. Find the balance."
Then he was gone, footsteps echoing down the corridor.
Elarion stood alone in the empty classroom, heart still racing despite his control.
I signed it.
Professor Thorne had admitted to being part of whatever this was. Which meant either he was bait, drawing Elarion into false trust, or he was genuinely offering information.
Both options were dangerous.
Elarion walked to the window and looked out at the courtyard below. Students crossed in all directions, living their normal, complicated, visible lives.
And somewhere among them—or watching from above, like Thorne—were the people who'd decided Elarion Voss needed to be here.
The question was why.
And whether he'd survive finding out.
He turned away from the window and left the classroom, pulling his unremarkability back around himself like a cloak.
But as he descended the stairs, he couldn't shake the feeling that somewhere, someone was watching.
And smiling.
And taking notes.