The classroom for our second compulsory module didn't feel anything like the lecture hall Professor Naeric was teaching in.
Professor Naeric's room had been built for hierarchy, for voice and its projection, to make it feel like being watched by someone smarter than you.
This room, however... was built for accidents.
Not serious accidents, at least hopefully, but the kind that happened when people were expected to try things and experiment, rather than listen.
The floor was divided into stations, each marked by clean geometric runes laid into pale stone. Waist-high crystal partitions separated each work area without completely blocking the view, so the whole room still felt shared, communal, and dangerous.
Metal racks lined the walls, each fitted with practice rods, spare focus crystals, special-looking gloves, and a few pieces of equipment that looked as if they'd been made specifically because some previous student had done something alarmingly stupid.
To some extent, even the light felt different.
Professor Naeric's room had used filtered daylight the way a courtroom would, all to make everything look more elegant... and expensive.
But this room.
This room used light like a workshop.
Functional, clear, and bright enough that no one could pretend they hadn't seen what they were doing.
Ryn took one look around and muttered, "This room looks way different from others. It's like they're trying to tell us, 'hey, feel free to explode something! It's legal in here!' You know what I mean?"
I glanced at him. "That's a very specific description."
"Nah, seriously, think about it." He motioned toward the nearest station, where the runic floor rings looked just a little too ready for violence. "This is the kind of room where a professor would say, 'Today we'll be doing something simple,' and then five students would proceed to lose all their hair and eyebrows."
"Sounds like the perfect place for you then."
Ryn looked wounded. "Wha?? You say that like I'm reckless."
"You are reckless."
"I prefer the word courageous."
"I don't think anyone would phrase that way."
"Yeah? Well, that's how I would phrase it," he said with dignity. "And since I'm the one whose supposed eyebrows are under threat, I think my opinion matters more."
I let out a quiet laugh that was close enough to a laugh to satisfy him.
More students started to filter in, and unlike in Professor Naeric's class, there wasn't the same clean clustering of nobles at the front and commoners at the rear. The room itself resisted that instinct.
You could tell where people wanted to stand, but the stations forced them into more practical spacing. Nobles still radiated toward the more visible work areas. Commoners still avoided looking like they wanted attention. But the room had enough of a workshop feel that everyone looked just a little less neat than usual.
Ryn leaned against one of the side desks, folding his arms. "You know what this reminds me of?"
I adjusted the strap of my backpack and looked over the nearest station's etched control panel.
'Oh, here we go. I'm sure I'm about to hear something reasonable.'
"The butcher's prep room back in the Basin Sunday Market."
'Huh, not what I expected.'
I blinked, trying to show my surprise, "That is not where I thought that sentence was going."
"Hm? What were you thinking? It doesn't matter, but look, I'm being serious. He pointed across the classroom. "There might be different tools on the wall, and the people here actually might know what they're doing, but they still give off the same vibe. One wrong move and the next thing you know, some young kid is screaming."
"... Uh. That's concerningly vivid."
Ryn shrugged. "What can I say? I'm a vivid person."
'That's one way to describe yourself.' I thought to myself, trying to hold back my grin.
I set my books down at the edge of a station table and glanced around the room again. It wasn't hard to imagine why the Academy would run particular classes here. A room like this would immediately punish anyone with a shallow understanding. If someone had cast poorly, everyone nearby would know. If someone had improved their casting, well, their improvement would be visible.
Ryn caught me looking and narrowed his eyes.
"What?" I asked.
"You're doing the thing again," Ryn replied.
"What thing?"
"That thing you do with your face, where it goes all weird and quiet because you're mentally reorganising the room into some sort of diagram."
"... I don't do that."
"Oh, you absolutely do."
"I was just observing."
Ryn stared at me for a second and then nodded slowly. "Right. Right. Just like how I was being 'courageous' huh?"
"That's not the—"
Before I could finish my answer, the mood of the room shifted.
Both in sound and in attention.
Someone had entered.
Ryn noticed it a second before I did, mostly because he stopped talking mid-breath and straightened up. I turned toward the front of the room and immediately recognised the man walking in.
It was that scarred faculty member.
The same one.
The one from the entrance exams. The one who had watched more than he spoke. The one whose presence never felt accidental.
Ryn looked at me, then back at him. "Uhhhh, Kael. You're seeing this, too, right?"
"Yes, Ryn. I unfortunately am."
The man didn't enter as if he thought the room belonged solely to him.
Yet, somehow, that was almost more notable than if he had done.
There was no grand stride. No obvious clearing of his throat. No slow display of his authority.
He just walked in, carrying a thin slate of paper and a rolled set of planned sheets under one arm. He made his way to the front station, set everything he had down, and looked out at the room like he had somewhere more important to be later and would appreciate it if nobody wasted his afternoon.
The scar along one side of his face was clearly visible under the room's workshop lighting, but he made no attempt to hide it or emphasise it. It simply existed, as much a part of him as the low, controlled way he held his shoulders and the faintly tired expression of someone who had seen enough nonsense in his life to stop fearing any new variety of it.
He looked around once.
Which was enough to make the entire room go silent.
"Hello, class. My name is Orin Davan," he said.
That was all.
No mention of any title.
No mention of any house.
No long ramble of his list of accomplishments.
No polite lecture about how privileged we all were to be here.
And somehow that made him more unsettling, but more open than most faculty.
Ryn muttered under his breath, "Is that it?"
I kept my eyes forward. "Looks that way."
Professor Orin lifted a sheet of paper, glanced at it, and set it down again.
"Before we start," he said, "your seats are assigned. Your pairs are already determined. If you don't like either of those things, I recommend getting over it quickly."
A few students groaned.
Then the stations lit.
Names appeared in bright-yellow script above each paired work circle, hovering long enough to read before sinking into the stone beside the stations themselves.
I scanned the nearest rows, found my own name, and stopped.
Kael Arin and Taron Caelvarin