"How soon?"
"Soon enough that if you plan on strolling to Caelora, you'll miss your chance."
That tightened something in my chest immediately.
After all of this.
After Astralon, the forest, the cave, the dragon, the river, the fruit, the weeks of walking and training and eating whatever I could manage and sleeping in places barely fit for animals…
I was still not there.
Not even close enough for certainty.
The guard seemed to enjoy my silence just enough to make it irritating.
"Thought so."
I forced my voice flat. "How far?"
"Depends how hard you move," he said. "Caelora's the capital. Academy's there." He jerked his chin westward. "You'll pass through one of the border towns before the better roads pick up. From there you keep to the central routes."
The capital.
I knew that, technically. The Academy of Sylarion was in the capital city of Caelora. But hearing it stated plainly by someone who stood inside the country and treated it as ordinary made it feel more real. Closer and farther at once.
"Can I pass?"
He looked me over once more, rude all the way through it.
"You carrying plague? Stolen goods? Beast eggs? Unregistered spirits leaking out of your ears?"
I said nothing.
"Then yes, probably."
He stepped aside with all the ceremony of a man moving around a stain.
"Don't start fights. Don't steal. And if you somehow make it to Caelora, try not to embarrass yourself too badly."
I gave him a long look.
"Charming place."
His expression didn't change. "Move along."
So I did.
Crossing the border itself felt smaller than I had imagined.
No surge of magic. No dramatic shift in the sky. Just a few more steps on a road.
And yet.
The moment I passed between the stone towers and into Sylarion proper, something in me settled.
Not peace.
Not even relief, really.
More like confirmation.
I had made it this far.
Astralon was behind me. The border was behind me now too. Caelora and the academy lay ahead, somewhere beyond roads I hadn't walked yet and time I apparently didn't have the luxury of wasting.
Finn spoke once the checkpoint was far enough behind us that the guard could no longer hear if I muttered aloud.
"You dislike rude men with authority."
"I dislike rude men in general."
"No. Those with authority offend you more."
I kept walking. "That one was useful, at least."
"And now you know the exam is near."
"That's the part I'm focused on."
"It should be."
The road beyond the checkpoint sloped gradually toward a border town not far from the main route. I could see it before I reached it, a denser cluster of buildings than the checkpoint, ringed not by walls but by watch posts and well-kept fencing. Smoke rose in clean lines from several chimneys. Carts moved in and out steadily. A few travelers passed me heading the other way, most armed, most giving me the quick up-down look people reserve for strangers who appear competent enough to be left alone but not pleasant enough to approach.
The town itself felt different from the ones I had drifted through before reaching Sylarion.
Safer, for one.
Not safe in an absolute sense. There were still weapons everywhere, still tension beneath ordinary movement, still the awareness that monsters existed outside organized lines. But the people here moved as if they believed systems would hold. Roads would remain guarded. Trade would continue. Bad things happened, yes, but not to the structure of life itself.
That difference was almost harder to process than the checkpoint had been.
Astralon had been alive in my memory as warmth and noise and ordinary routine. Then it had become ruined so quickly I still couldn't think too hard about it without feeling the old wound reopen. Here, in this small Sylarion border town, I saw a glimpse of what normal looked like when backed by real strength instead of hope and habit.
I stopped at a food stall near the square and bought something hot enough to steam in the cooler air. Bread, meat, broth thick with herbs. Nothing remarkable. It still felt almost luxurious after weeks of making do.
While I ate, I listened.
Border towns made information easy if you shut up long enough.
Two men by a wagon argued over road conditions west of here.
A woman near the well complained about exam traffic making the inns too full already.
At the next table over, a pair of younger travelers, both better dressed than me, both carrying weapons that looked polished for inspection rather than use, were talking quietly but not quietly enough.
"I heard this year's pool is absurd."
"That's what they said last year too."
"No, I mean it. Stronger than normal. A lot stronger."
I kept eating and looked at nothing.
"One of my cousins heard there are people coming from prominent houses this time," the first one said. "Big ones. Not just local talent. Family-backed candidates."
The second gave a low whistle. "That'll make the exam uglier."
"There's more. Someone said royalty might be attending."
That got a short laugh.
"From Sylarion?"
"Maybe. Maybe not. The story keeps changing."
"Stories always do."
"Still. Even if it's only half true, this year won't be normal."
I said nothing, but the words sat in me immediately.
Stronger candidates than usual.
Prominent families.
Maybe royalty.
The academy had already been one of the top institutions in the world according to every version of the story I had ever heard. If the entrance exam this year was drawing even fiercer competition than normal, that changed things.
Not the goal.
Just the pressure.
Finn, naturally, was first to cut into the silence in my head.
"You are behind them in training."
I chewed once, swallowed, and kept my face blank.
"I noticed."
"And perhaps in refinement. Perhaps in education. Almost certainly in resources."
"That's enough."
"You wished for honesty."
I set the empty bowl down more carefully than I needed to.
"They have names," I said quietly. "Families. Money. Training from childhood, maybe. Fine."
"And you?"
I looked past the square toward the western road.
"I have a goal."
For once, Finn did not mock that immediately.
"A goal is not the same as preparation."
"No," I said. "But it's what I've got."
The town noise moved around me, wagon wheels, distant hammering, voices, boots on roadstone.
I thought about Caelora.
About the academy.
About arriving there only to find that everyone else had been raised toward this moment while I had crawled to it through blood and smoke and monster country.
It should have made me feel smaller.
Instead, after the first sharp flare of frustration, something harder settled in.
Good.
Let them come from great families. Let them carry good blades and polished names and lessons built into them since childhood. Let them think the exam belonged more naturally to them than to someone like me.
That changed nothing.
I still had to get there.
I still had to pass.
Finn spoke again, quieter this time.
"The academy is not a refuge. It is not a reward. It is a tool."
"I know."
"Then stop thinking of the others as something to resent in advance. Use them properly."
I frowned slightly. "Meaning?"
"Measure yourself against them. Learn what they possess. Take what is useful. Surpass what can be surpassed. Kill only when necessary."
That last part was so dryly delivered that despite everything, I nearly laughed.
"Comforting."
"I do not offer comfort."
No. He rarely did.
I stood, adjusted the sword at my side, and looked once more across the town. A few weeks ago, reaching Sylarion had seemed like the destination. Now I was here and already being told it wasn't enough. The capital city of Caelora lay somewhere west, still distant. The Academy of Sylarion waited there. The entrance exam was close enough to matter.
No time for lingering.
No time for admiring the border.
No time for frustration.
Just movement.
I bought a little more food for the road, got the simplest directions I could from a woman near the central signpost, and turned back toward the main road out of town.
The western route opened ahead in a long line through fields, low wooded ridges, and the faint promise of larger roads somewhere beyond. Clouds drifted overhead in torn grey strips. The wind smelled cleaner here than it had east of the border.
I took one breath, then started walking.
Behind me, the town continued about its day.
Ahead of me, Caelora waited.
The academy waited.
The exam waited.
And somewhere between where I stood now and the capital, the road would decide again what sort of person I was becoming.
Not the boy from Astralon.
That much was already dead.
Something else.
Something sharper.
Something still unfinished.
Finn's voice settled beside my thoughts as the town began to shrink behind me.
"Move faster. You are late."
I didn't answer.
I just adjusted my pace and kept going toward Caelora.