They found the place on a side street off the market square. It was an inn — or had been, before the crown borrowed it. The sign above the door still read The Barley Sheaf, but the windows on the ground floor had been covered from the inside with cloth, and two soldiers stood on either side of the entrance with the Emperor's crest stitched onto their sleeves. They were not doing anything in particular. They did not need to. Their presence said enough.
Edran glanced at the soldiers the way a man glances at a familiar thing. He did not slow down or speed up. He simply walked to the door as though he had walked past soldiers his entire life, which he had.
"We're expected," he said, and held up the sealed letter.
One of the soldiers looked at the seal, then at Aldric, then stepped aside without a word.
Inside, a woman sat behind a desk that had probably been the innkeeper's counter a month ago. Aldric handed over the letter. She broke the wax, read it, made a note in a ledger, and gestured them through a door at the back without ceremony. It reminded Aldric of the official in Ashford — the same efficient motions, the same sense that his life-changing morning was someone else's ordinary work.
The back room had been cleared out. Whatever furniture the inn once kept here — tables, chairs, barrels — had been moved to make space. The ceiling was low enough that Edran had to mind the beams, and the floorboards creaked where the stone gave way to wood. It was not a grand place. It was a room that had been made to serve a purpose it was never built for, and it showed.
In the centre, four stations had been arranged in a wide line — each one a small table or pedestal holding a single object, spaced far enough apart that a person could stand at one without being near the others. They looked strange against the plain walls and the worn floor. Careful things in a careless room.
A man stood waiting for them. He was older than Tomas but younger than Edran, with a short grey beard and the unhurried manner of someone who had done this a thousand times and still found it worth doing carefully. He wore no crest, no uniform — just a plain coat with ink stains on the cuffs.
"Come in," he said, waving them forward. His voice was warm, the kind that expected nervousness and had already decided not to make it worse. "My name is Brennan. I'll be conducting the assessment today. And you are?"
"Aldric."
"Good. And this is —" He looked past Aldric to Edran, who had taken a position near the wall by the door — close enough to see, far enough not to interfere.
"His grandfather," Edran said. He leaned on his stick and offered nothing more.
Brennan gave him a small nod, the kind that said understood, and turned back to Aldric.
"The Aether Stone confirmed that you have magical aptitude," Brennan said. "What it could not tell us is which school your aptitude belongs to. That's what we're here to find out."
"School?" Aldric asked.
"There are four schools of magic," he said. "Every person born with magical ability belongs to one of them. Only one — you don't get to choose." He held up a finger for each as he named them. "Elemental — mages who wield the forces of nature. Fire, Water, Earth, Wind, Ice, Lightning, Nature. Seven elements, one per mage. Summoner — mages who call spirits and primal beings to fight alongside them. Charmer — mages who influence minds and bond with beasts. And Sanctifier — mages who heal and purify."
Aldric listened. The words were strange and large and none of them felt like they belonged to him. They sounded like something from the stories traders told in the meeting hall — distant, colourful, meant for other people.
"How do you find out which one?" he asked.
Brennan gestured to the four stations arranged across the room. "Each of these holds an object tied to one of the four schools. When a person with the right affinity stands close and reaches out — not with their hands, but with their intent — the object responds. If it doesn't respond, that school is not yours. Simple as that."
Aldric looked at the stations. The objects were all different — shapes and materials he could not identify from where he stood. They sat on their pedestals like things waiting to be woken up.
"What if none of them respond?" Aldric asked.
"They will," Brennan said. "The Aether Stone doesn't make mistakes. One of these belongs to you. We just need to find which one."
He led Aldric toward the first station. "We start with Elemental. It's the most common of the four schools — more than half the candidates who come through this room are Elemental, so it saves time to test it first."
The first station was a shallow stone bowl, no wider than both of Aldric's hands placed side by side. Inside it was ash. Grey, fine, perfectly still. It looked like the remains of a fire that had burned out hours ago and been left to cool without anyone caring enough to clean it.
Brennan stopped beside the bowl and waited for Aldric to stand across from him. "This is dead matter," he said. "Ash. No heat left in it, no life, no energy. It's as inert as anything in this room." He looked at Aldric with steady, patient eyes. "But if you're an Elemental, it won't stay that way. The ash will respond to your presence — not to your touch, just to you standing near it with your mind open. And the way it responds will tell us which of the seven elements is yours."
Aldric stared at the bowl. The ash was so still it barely looked real. It looked painted on.
"All you need to do," Brennan said, "is stand here and let yourself be open. Don't try to force anything. Don't reach for it. Just be present, the way you'd sit beside a fire and let the warmth come to you."
Aldric swallowed. He glanced back at Edran. The old man stood by the wall with his stick planted on the floorboards, watching. He did not nod. He did not smile. He simply stood there — steady, unmoved, the same as he had been on the hilltop, the same as he had been on the road. The only thing that had not changed.
Aldric turned back to the bowl. He let his hands hang at his sides. He tried to do what Brennan had said — be present, be open, let it come. He did not know what that meant. He thought of the stream behind Ashford, the way he used to sit beside it in the mornings without reaching for anything. Just watching. Just being there.
He breathed, and waited.