The sun had not yet risen, but the Academy of Flickering Stars already stirred in restless pockets, like a beast turning in uneasy sleep. Beyond the frost-glazed windows of the lower dormitories, the mountain winds howled low and mournful, carrying flecks of ice that tapped against the glass like impatient fingers. The bells in the highest tower remained silent, wrapped in their ancient enchantment, waiting for the precise moment the first ray of light touched the Crescent Gate. Until then, the world belonged to shadows and secrets.
Inside the wing reserved for scholarship students and those the nobility politely called "low-bloods," warmth pooled from enchanted hearths set into cracked stone walls. The fires burned without wood, fed by runes that glowed soft amber, casting long, dancing shadows over rows of narrow bunks and hand-stitched quilts faded from generations of restless dreamers.
Maria still Marin Velyn to every ledger and tongue here sat up before the first breath of true morning. No nightmare had shaken her awake this time, though fragments of older ones lingered like smoke behind her eyes: towers of glass cracking, a child's laughter turning to screams, blue fire shaped like a spear. Just the familiar tug in her chest, deeper now, insistent like a thread sewn through her heart and pulled by an unseen hand.
She swung her legs over the side of the bunk, bare feet meeting cold stone that warmed instantly under her touch, as if the academy itself recognized something in her it hadn't yet named. The room held five other girls, all breathing the slow rhythm of sleep. One snored like a cursed dragon from old tales. Another mumbled soft sleep-spells that escaped her lips in lazy spirals of pale green light, curling from the open notebook beside her pillow like vines seeking sun.
Maria moved without sound, years of village quite drilled into her bones. She slipped into her rough boots, laced them tight, and let her half-undone braid fall over one shoulder. Then she reached for her scarf the plain gray one, woven by Serene's hands, bearing no sigils, no house crest, no claim at all and wrapped it snug around her neck.
Not to hide the faint scar that sometimes glowed beneath her collarbone.
Just to remember the silence she liked to carry with her, like a secret friend.
"If you wake me again before sunrise," a groggy voice muttered from the shadows, "I'm enchanting your boots to scream with every step you take."
Maria turned, a small smile tugging despite herself.
Arem leaned out from his alcove bunk in the corner boys and girls shared the scholarship wing without pretense of separation his curls a wild halo, a fennel stalk tucked between his teeth like a rogue's cigar. He looked half-asleep, fully amused, eyes glinting even in the dim hearthlight. "I didn't make a sound," Maria whispered back, keeping her voice low so the sleeping girls wouldn't stir. "You breathe guilty," he said, yawning wide enough to crack his jaw. "And guilty breathing means something big is coming. Mark my words." She shrugged into her outer cloak, the wool heavy with last night's frost. "I just like the quiet before everything starts."
"And the quiet likes you back," Arem mumbled, already burrowing under his blanket again. But he paused, peeking out one last time. "Still watch your back today. It's Trial day."
Maria froze halfway to the door, hand on the iron latch.
"The Trial of Masks," Arem confirmed, voice muffled but serious now. "Heard it from a third-year last night. Headmistress announces it this morning. One part illusion, two parts public soul-stripping, three parts 'why did I come to this school.'"
He grinned, but there was real warning in it. Maria swallowed. "Why now? " Equinox Veil's coming. Tradition says the mirrors get hungry around then." He waved a lazy hand. "You'll love it. Or hate it. Probably both."
Down the corridor, two girls argued in sharp whispers about who would outshine whom at breakfast, voices echoing off stone like thrown pebbles. In the boys' wing, a potion exploded with a wet, sulfurous pop followed by muffled cursing and laughter.
Maria stepped into the hall, pulling the door softly shut behind her. The tug in her chest deepened not anxiety, not quite dread. Something older. Waiting. Like the stars above the academy roofs were holding their breath, waiting for her to exhale first. The dining hall of the Academy was, at this early hour, a strange kingdom of controlled chaos and half-elegance. Gleaming chandeliers hovered without chains, crystals catching hearthlight and scattering it in lazy rainbows across long tables of polished obsidian wood. Each table bore the glowing sigil of a different House, though this morning students ignored the divisions, clustering in excited knots to trade rumors and speculate.
The air shimmered faintly enchanted to stay warm even when mountain winds roared outside, carrying the scent of pine resin, hot bread, and something metallic, like spell-smoke lingering from last night's failed experiments. Plates refilled themselves with quiet magic. Bread crusts floated like lazy boats in bowls of thick pumpkin-marrow stew. A single silver fork orbited one girl's head in slow, vengeful circles, stuck mid-charm from yesterday's duel gone wrong.
"You tried to animate it again?" a boy asked, smirking over his porridge.
"It attacked me yesterday," the girl hissed back, swatting futilely at the fork. "I think it holds a grudge. "Maria entered quietly; scarf still damp with morning frost clinging to the fibers. Heads turned some curious, some dismissive but she kept her gaze low and slipped into a seat at the farthest end of the scholarship table, away from the loudest cliques of noble-born.
Arem appeared beside her seconds later, sliding in with two apples and a grin. He immediately began juggling them, drawing a few eye-rolls from nearby tables. "Ten gold says it's Masks today," he announced, catching both apples behind his back. "You already told me." "Now I'm certain. The third-year owed me a favor. "A shadow fell across the entire hall, long and deliberate. Conversation died like a snuffed candle. Headmistress Althara entered between two high wardens whose armor flickered with live protective sigils that shifted like breathing scales. Her robes rustled like ancient parchment caught in star-wind threaded with living ivy and strands of silk the color of captured nebulae. She moved like an omen given form.
When she reached the central platform, she did not need to raise her voice. The room had already bent to her silence, forks pausing mid-air, apples frozen in Arem's hands.
"This morning," she said, voice carrying effortlessly to every corner, "marks the approach of the Equinox Veil." A hush deeper than before. Students exchanged glances. The Equinox came only once a year and it was always followed by the Trial. "As tradition demands," Althara continued, "the first-year Trial shall be held this eve." A tremor rippled through the hall excitement from some tables, dread from others. "You will be tested not by spell or sword, but by the mirror. You will wear a mask. You will face what you reveal and what reveals you." She let the words settle like frost. "It will not be graded by professors. It will be remembered by the academy itself."
A boy across from Maria groaned softly. "Last year my brother's mask showed him weeping over a dead rabbit he'd accidentally killed as a child." "Didn't he end up in therapy for months?" his friend whispered. "Do not attempt to deceive the mirror," Althara warned, eyes narrowing to slits of starless night. "It does not reward bravado. It does not fear nobility or bloodline. It knows only truth and the things that crawl beneath it, begging to be seen."
Arem leaned close to Maria, whispering behind his apple, "That's her scary voice. Someone is definitely crying tonight." The Headmistress lifted her staff. The living ivy coiled tighter, sensing wind from another realm. "The Trial will begin at twilight in the upper courtyard. Attend as you are. Leave your illusions and your lies at the door." She turned to leave. Then paused. Her gaze swept the hall and landed unnervingly, undeniably on Maria. Just for a heartbeat too long. Then she was gone, robes whispering away like secrets returning to the dark. The hall exploded into noise. "She looked right at you." "No, that was Faye." "No, she looked through every single one of us and saw our futures crumbling into dust." "Ugh, I hate mirror trials. Mine's going to turn into my father yelling about duty." "Mine's going to turn into you," one girl purred at another across the table. "Gross," the other shot back, but she was smiling. Maria sat very still.
She hadn't touched her apple. It rolled slowly away from her fingers as if even the fruit sensed the shift. Arem poked her arm with his fork. "You, okay? You look like the mirror already started without you." "Fine," she said. The lie tasted like ash. But in her chest, the thread pulled taut sharp, insistent. Like a mask was already watching her. Waiting for twilight to make her wear it.
High above the dining hall, beyond the noise and gossip and floating forks, Seraphina Valmont watched from behind a veil of enchanted glass. The observatory spire was a world apart warm with trapped sunlight, quiet as a held breath. A dozen illusion-orbs hovered near the vaulted ceiling, replaying moments from below in ghostly threads of light: a fork orbiting a girl's head, Arem juggling apples, whispers passing like contraband.
But Seraphina saw only one thread. The girl at the edge table. Quiet. Pale-haired. Gray scarf wrapped like armor. Head slightly bowed, as if listening to something no one else could hear.
Marin Velyn. Virell, her steward, stepped beside her with a clipboard of shimmering parchment.
"She wakes before the bells," he reported quietly. "Attends every lecture without fail. Speaks to almost no one. Eats little. No known house sponsors her enrollment. No record of the Hollow fire Stag in any summoning ledger." "And yet," Seraphina murmured, leaning closer to the glass, "the stag brought her. "Her green eyes narrowed, sharp as shattered emeralds.
"Pull everything. Quietly. I want to know what she isn't telling the mirrors." You suspect her of… something specific, Your Highness? "Seraphina's fingers tightened on the balcony rail. "I suspect the universe doesn't drop broken stars in our path for nothing," she said, voice soft steel. "And that girl is burning without flame." Below, the Headmistress announced the Trial. Maria sat perfectly still amid the chaos. "She doesn't flinch," Seraphina whispered. "That could be strength." "Or control," Seraphina replied. "Or prophecy." She turned from the glass at last, cloak whispering over marble like wind over ancient graves. Outside, the sky was turning the color of fire-lit wine deep, bruised, beautiful. Twilight was coming. And with it, the masks.