The orientation hall felt too big.
It was built like a gathering chamber and a war room had been dropped into the same space and told to get along—tiered stone benches sloping down toward a wide floor of polished dark tile, arcane lines etched into the stone beneath. A ring of crystal pillars circled the chamber, each one humming with a low, steady light, feeding power into the faint sigils hanging in the air above the center.
Those sigils shifted now and then—maps of New Altera, diagrams of the human body, silhouettes of Monari with notes hovering near their limbs and jaws. The images flickered when instructors altered them, controlled from a bank of smaller stones near the front.
Orin slid into a seat along the side, close to the steps in case he needed to leave fast. The bench was worn smooth by years of students shifting, fidgeting, falling asleep on long lectures. A knot of nervous first-years filled the rows below him, packs piled between their feet. A few older students lounged further up, uniforms marked with colored bands and pins.
Kahn-Ra hopped onto the step beside Orin's boots, small black body curling into a neat sit. He seemed unbothered by the crowd, golden eyes half-lidded, tail wrapped precisely around his paws.
You look like you're waiting to be sentenced, Kahn-Ra observed.
Orin kept his eyes on the floor. I'm waiting to see what they do when they realize what I am.
They see only what they expect, Kahn-Ra replied. A tired boy with too many weapons and a quiet beast. Expectations are a very effective blindfold.
Orin wasn't sure if that made him feel better or worse.
At the front of the hall, an instructor stepped into the open circle between the crystal pillars. She was compact, built like someone who'd spent years hitting things and being hit in return, dark hair braided tight against her scalp. Deep scars pushed up from her collar and disappeared under the edge of her uniform.
When she spoke, her voice filled the chamber without shouting.
"New blood, listen up."
The buzz of conversation thinned, then stopped.
"I'm Instructor Tyen," she said. "You'll be seeing a lot of me if you survive the first term, so remember the name. This is Hachi Academy. You already know what you think that means. I'm here to tell you what it actually is."
She let that hang a moment.
"Hachi is not a mercenary guild," she went on. "We're not here to hand you a sword and a contract and hope you don't die too fast. We're not a temple; we don't coddle you because a goddess likes you. We are a place where people with dangerous potential learn how not to become walking disasters."
A faint ripple of uneasy laughter moved through the benches.
Orin didn't laugh.
"Hachi has three main tracks," Tyen continued. She lifted a hand toward one of the hovering sigils. It shifted, showing three interlocking circles. "Blood Hunters. Blessed. Technique and Support."
The first circle filled with red script and the faint silhouette of a Monari. The second glowed sun-gold. The third lined itself with runic diagrams, simple armor designs, and devices that reminded Orin of the tech-crystals in Drill—except more refined.
"Blood Hunters," Tyen said, "are those of you who've gone through infusion, or are preparing for it. You channel Monari blood through human bones. You get stronger, faster, tougher—and you risk losing your mind if you don't learn control."
A few students in the benches straightened with pride at the word.
Orin's hand curled in his lap.
"Blessed," Tyen said. "Solara and Lunara's favorites. You were born touched or got lucky later. You pull light, gravity, fire, sound, whatever your mark chose—directly from the goddess's gift. That doesn't make you special. It makes you responsible for every stray spark."
More movement from that section; several heads bent briefly over glittering marks at their throats and wrists.
"And the rest," she said, nodding toward the third circle, "are the ones who keep the world from collapsing while the loud ones swing for glory. Support class. Medica. Tactical. Arcane reinforcement. Techwrights. You learn the tools, the arrays, the medicine that lets everyone else come back breathing."
The sigils above her shifted again—this time to a stylized outline of New Altera. Points of light flared where cities sat: Drillsoran, coastal hubs, smaller settlements along trade arteries.
"Out there," Tyen said, "are Monari territories, bandit routes, dead zones where old battles broke the land and never healed. You will be sent into those places. Some of you will come back with scars. Some of you won't come back at all. This is not meant to scare you. It is meant to make you honest about what you're asking for."
She let that sink in.
Kahn-Ra's voice slid through Orin's thoughts, wry. At least one of your human nests talks about death before asking for fees.
"Evaluations begin soon," Tyen continued. "You're not all getting them today. Some of you just arrived. Some of you," her eyes swept the benches—Orin thought they lingered on him a moment longer than chance, "need a night of real sleep before we hit you with anything."
Orin couldn't decide if that was a relief or a threat.
"Physical assessment, ability control, Blood Surge management for Hunters, focus and output for Blessed," Tyen said. "Technique track gets a different set of tests. You won't be ranked against each other in this first round. You'll be measured against yourself. What you're capable of. What you can't do. Yet."
She paced the ring slowly, bootheels steady against stone.
"You will be tired here," she said. "You will be frustrated. You will be afraid. That's good. Fear keeps your eyes open. What I want to see is what you do with that fear. Whether you freeze. Whether you run. Whether you turn it into something that keeps the person next to you alive."
Orin's chest tightened. The image of Sonny and the twins flashed hard and fast behind his eyes. He forced air into his lungs.
"Orientation groups will be posted just outside these doors," Tyen finished. "You'll be split by track and provisional focus. You'll get a tour. Rules. Curfew. Where not to spar unless you want to clean blood off the ceiling. Questions can wait until then. For now…"
She gave them a nod that was almost a bow.
"Welcome to Hachi."
The illusion-sigils faded. The crystal pillars dimmed a fraction, their excess power flowing back into the hall wards. Benches creaked as students stood.
Orin stayed seated a moment longer.
He felt eyes on him now and then—the weight of a few glances sliding off his back, pausing on the blades at his shoulders, dropping to Kahn-Ra's compact shape. No one approached. They had their own nerves to carry.
You look like you would rather be anywhere else, Kahn-Ra commented.
I buried four people and walked straight into another hunt, Orin thought back. This just feels like a different kind of forest.
Kahn-Ra's tail tapped once against the stone. Forests burn. Schools crumble. Either way, you still have teeth.
Orin huffed out a breath that wasn't quite a laugh, pushed himself to his feet, and followed the flow toward the doors.The hall outside had turned into a knot of moving bodies and raised voices. Sheets of thick paper had been pinned to a broad board near the entrance, names scrawled in neat columns under headings.
"Hachi Orientation — Track & Group"
Orin edged through the crowd until he could see.
Blood Hunter — Field FocusBlood Hunter — Control FocusBlessed — CombatBlessed — SupportTechnique & Support Track
He scanned the Blood Hunter lists, tracing down each column.
Slain, Orin — Field Focus — Group C
A small relief loosened his shoulders. Field Focus meant they expected him to be out there, not tucked away in labs or hospitals. Whatever else he was, that felt right.
They put you where the teeth are, Kahn-Ra said. Good.
A voice beside him grumbled, "Field Focus? That's where they send the ones they want to break first."
Another voice snorted. "Better than Control Focus. Those poor idiots get locked in rooms and poked with arrays until they stop shaking."
Orin didn't correct either of them.
He followed the arrow scribbled next to his group name around a corner and out into a side courtyard, smaller than the main one but still open to the sky. A metal-framed notice board stood there, someone had chalked circles on the ground in white. A few other students waited already, some talking quietly, some staring at their boots.
Orin stepped closer, Kahn-Ra padding at his heel.
A boy about his age leaned against the notice board, arms folded. He had a wiry frame, short dark hair in need of a comb, and eyes the color of banked embers—warm brown with a faint, unnatural glow deep inside when the light hit them just right. A thin, sun-shaped mark peeked from under the collar of his shirt, edges burned in rather than inked.
He watched Orin approach, gaze flicking briefly to the blades at Orin's back, then down to the "cat."
"You're Group C too?" he asked.
"Yeah," Orin said. "Orin Slain."
"Wake," the boy replied. "Wake Ashfall."
The names sat there between them for a beat.
Kahn-Ra hopped onto the low stone wall and sat, tail flicking.
"You new-new?" Wake asked. "Or transfer?"
"New," Orin said. "From Drill City."
Wake's brows rose. "Drill? That's a haul on foot. You must really like walking."
"I don't," Orin said. "I just like staying alive more than I liked trams at the moment."
Wake snorted. "Fair enough."
He shifted off the board and offered a hand. Orin took it.
Wake's grip was warm, calloused, buzzing faintly under the skin like someone had lit a coal in his veins and forgotten to put it out.
"You a Blood Hunter too?" Wake asked, releasing his hand. "Or just someone who likes sharp metal for decoration?"
"Yes," Kahn-Ra said in Orin's head. Tell him you also collect ancient beasts as accessories.
Orin ignored that. "Blood Hunter," he said aloud. "You?"
Wake tilted his head toward the faint sun-mark at his collar. "Phoenix blood infusion. Rekindling Flame Order did the honors when I was younger. Stopped me from dying." His smile was quick, self-aware. "Side effect: occasionally I set things on fire. Hachi's trying to make sure it's never the wrong things."
Orin's attention sharpened. "Phoenix blood?"
Wake shrugged. "Rare strain. Burns through sickness, burns through weakness, almost burns through me if I'm not careful. But I'm still here, so I'm calling it a win."
There was a casual ease to the way he said it, but Orin recognized the shape of something heavier behind the words. It was a different story than his—no caves, no Vrexus, no uncontrolled slaughter—but the echo was there: I shouldn't be alive, and yet.
Kahn-Ra's voice hummed thoughtfully. This one carries fire like you carry teeth. Interesting.
A girl joined them—a tall student with her hair in a tight coil and a sword strapped across her back—and a few others drifted in. They traded names, places they'd come from, what track they were on. Orin only half-listened, filing faces and voices away.
Field Focus, all of them. Some already had Monari blood in their veins. Some were waiting. None of them knew they were standing next to something that didn't fit either category cleanly.
An older student in a Hachi instructor's vest finally appeared, clapping his hands once.
"All right, Group C," he said. "I'm Den. I get to walk you around and make sure you don't end up in any restricted wards and explode on your first day. Follow close, don't wander, and if something glows and hums and you don't know what it does, don't lick it."
Someone actually laughed at that.
Den led them through a loop of the campus—dorms, training yards, medica wing, armory, the edge of a range where Monari illusions paced behind barrier walls. Orin kept mental notes of exits, high ground, where the nearest warded alcoves were in case something went wrong.
By the time they finished, the sky had shifted toward early evening and the smell of food—real food, hot and plentiful—drifted from a broad building along the eastern side.
Den pointed. "Mess hall. You'll learn to love and hate it. First-years eat on the lower level, upper classes on the balconies. Try not to start fights on day one. The instructors bet on those and they never choose the new kids."
He dismissed them with a wave.
The group broke apart, streams of bodies heading in different directions. Wake fell into step beside Orin instinctively. Kahn-Ra padded just ahead, tail swaying.
"You staying in Barracks Three?" Wake asked.
"Yeah. You?"
"Same," Wake said. "Good. If you snore, I'll just set your bed on fire."
He said it lightly, but the grin that followed took the edge off.
The mess hall doors stood open, light and sound spilling out—voices overlapping, the clatter of trays, the hiss of something cooking in the back. A faint web of ward-lines ran just inside the threshold, tuned to catch wild bursts of power and tamp them down.
Inside, long tables filled the main floor, students packed in shoulder to shoulder. Food lines ran along the walls—stew, roasted meat, spiced vegetables, stacks of flatbread, trays of fruit. Crystals embedded in the ceiling cast a clean, even light over everything.
Orin hesitated just a fraction at the edge of all that noise.
Wake nudged his shoulder. "Come on. If we wait, the good stuff goes to the top level."
They grabbed trays and slid into line. Kahn-Ra wove between ankles like smoke, earning a few absentminded glances and one attempted head-pat that he avoided without looking.
If one more hand descends toward my skull, he said, I will start removing fingers.
You look harmless, Orin thought, collecting a bowl of stew and a thick slice of bread.
Appearances, Kahn-Ra said, are a useful trap.
They found spots at a table along the wall, near enough to the door that Orin didn't feel boxed in. Wake dug into his food like he hadn't seen a meal in days. Orin ate slower, more out of habit than hunger, eyes drifting now and then over the hall.
Students laughed, argued, compared sparring injuries. A pair of Blessed at the far table tossed small motes of light back and forth over their plates, trying to hit each other's cups without getting caught by the patrolling staff. The smell of food, sweat, and too many different soaps filled the air.
It should have felt suffocating.
Instead, it felt… alive. Messy. Loud.
Not a forest full of bodies.
"So," Wake said between mouthfuls, "what's your deal?"
Orin blinked. "My deal?"
"Yeah." Wake gestured with his spoon. "Everyone here's got a story. Why Hachi? Why now? Why not some quieter little life farming river weed or fixing tram stones?"
Orin's jaw tensed. He looked down at his stew.
"I had people," he said. "They're gone. Sonny got me here in a way. Might as well try to do something they'd yell at me about properly."
Wake chewed on that as much as his food.
"Sonny from Drill?" he asked quietly.
Orin nodded once.
"He was a loud bastard," Wake said. "In a good way. Showed up here a couple of times with contracts. Always left laughing. I'm… sorry he's gone."
The simple, honest tone made the words land without pity.
"Me, I always knew I was coming here," Wake added. "Monks who kept me alive said if I was going to burn, I might as well learn where to aim it."
"Sounds reasonable," Orin said.
"Reasonable is overrated," Wake said. "But useful."
Orin almost smiled.
He didn't get to answer.
A sharp clatter sounded from the far end of their row.
"Hey!" a voice barked. "Watch where you're going, runt!"
A smaller boy—first-year, wiry, hair falling into his face—had dropped his tray on the edge of another table. Half the stew had splashed across the boots of an older student sitting there, a second-year by the look of the band on his sleeve.
The older boy stood, chair scraping. He was broad through the shoulders, a thin scar across his chin, the lazy confidence of someone used to being backed up. Two friends flanked him, already smirking.
"I—I'm sorry," the younger boy stammered. "I didn't mean—"
"You didn't mean," the older mocked, shaking stew from his boot. "You know what this uniform cost? Want to pay for it with your teeth?"
He shoved the smaller boy's shoulder. The kid stumbled.
Kahn-Ra's head turned.
Here we go, he murmured.
Orin was already moving.
Wake pushed his tray forward and slid out of his seat at almost the same time. They reached the end of the table together, stepping between the younger boy and the older one's looming presence.
"Easy," Wake said, hands held out, palms empty. "It's stew, not acid. You'll live."
"This doesn't concern you, Ashfall," the older boy said. "Unless you want to clean my boots."
"Pass," Wake said. "Phoenix blood, remember? Fire and grease don't mix."
The older student's gaze shifted to Orin, taking in the weapons strapped to his back, the faint marks of fresh scars.
"And you?" he asked. "Gonna stand there and stare, or move?"
Orin met his eyes, calm and steady. "You knock him down again," he said quietly, "and we find out how much you like eating stew with a broken jaw."
A hush dropped over the nearby tables. Conversations slowed. People leaned back to give the scene space, that instinctive clearing that happened whenever something might turn into a fight.
The older boy's friends straightened. The faint crackle of suppressed ability tickled the air—someone's Blood Surge starting to stir.
Kahn-Ra hopped onto the bench, tail flicking, golden eyes watching without blinking.
No lethal force, he reminded, tone almost amused. Remember your new rules.
Orin's fingers twitched once at his side, wanting the comfort of a hilt. He kept them loose instead.
"New meat thinks he's funny," the older boy said. "You don't even have a rank band yet."
"That means I've got nothing to lose," Orin said. "You want to find out how that looks?"
The moment stretched.
Then a sharp whistle cut through the tension.
A staff member appeared at the edge of the clearing—older, shoulders still thick with retired muscle, apron marked with kitchen stains and a Hachi crest pinned to his chest.
"If you want to bleed, take it to the rings," he said. "Not around my stew. Sit down or get out."
The older boy's jaw flexed. He looked at Orin, at Wake, at the watching faces. Pride warred with common sense.
Eventually, he snorted and stepped back.
"Watch yourself, first-years," he said. "The evaluation rings don't have kitchen staff to save you."
He and his friends moved away, muttering.
The smaller boy sagged a little, shoulders unclenching.
"Th-thanks," he said, voice shaky. "I didn't mean—"
"It's fine," Wake said, clapping him gently on the back. "Next time watch where you're walking. Or at least throw the stew at someone who deserves it."
That got a weak laugh.
"You all right?" Orin asked.
The boy nodded, rubbing his shoulder. "Yeah. I'm Ryn."
"Wake," Wake said.
"Orin," Orin added.
"Stick close to your group until you know who not to bump into," Wake advised. "And eat before they change their mind and take your food."
Ryn nodded again and retreated with his salvaged tray.
Wake watched him go, then glanced at Orin.
"Nice little threat," he said. "You always jump in like that?"
Orin looked back toward their table. "When someone's swinging at people who can't swing back. Yeah."
Wake's grin was quick and bright. "Good. I was starting to think I'd have to save you from yourself alone."
They went back to their seats. The noise in the hall rose again, conversation filling the space the tension had carved out.
Kahn-Ra settled at Orin's feet, tail flicking thoughtfully.
You step into fights that are not yours, he said.
Someone had to, Orin replied.
You say that now, Kahn-Ra mused. We will see if you still say it when the fights get bigger.
Orin took another bite of stew. It tasted better than anything had since the forest, even with nerves twisting under it.
He was still trying to carry too much. Still dragging ghosts behind him. Still terrified of what lived under his skin.
But at a crowded table in a noisy hall, with a phoenix-blooded boy trading jabs beside him and a Black Tiger pretending to be a cat under his boots, the weight shifted just enough to let one thought slip through:
Maybe he wasn't as alone here as he'd expected.