I blinked once.
'That was… unexpected.'
Next to me, Ryn saw my expression before he saw the station itself. He followed my gaze, read the name, and went completely still.
He didn't say anything.
He didn't need to.
Ryn had several different kinds of silence, and by now I could tell what most of them meant.
This one in particular was:
He noticed something.
Had opinions about it.
He was holding back the urge to say them because he knew it would do nothing to improve the situation.
His face flattened into this kind of neutral expression that only existed when he was trying very hard not to glare.
I glanced at his assigned seat. He was paired with another student a little farther down the room, close enough to see me clearly but far enough to be separate. I didn't know the student well; he was one of those first-years who had thus far managed the useful feat of not drawing any attention to himself.
Professor Orin spoke again before anyone could properly complain about their allocations.
"This is the first class for the Applied Spellform module," he said. "As some of you may know, spells don't fail because mages lack power. They fail because mages don't bother to understand what spell they've built. This class is about understanding that process. If that bores you, you may leave now and spare me your tepid future."
That was it. Nothing else added.
That was the whole introduction.
It was so brief that it almost felt unfinished, yet the room had already accepted it. He didn't need to establish authority through biography.
His tone and his presence had already done it for him.
Ryn looked impressed despite audibly complaining about his seat allocation.
I headed for my assigned station.
Taron had gotten there first.
He was leaning against the edge of the work table, one hand in his pocket, looking around the room with interest that didn't seem even remotely forced. The workshop lighting suited him more than the lecture halls had. He looked less like an heir arranged for display and more like someone who actually preferred doing things to being watched while he was doing them.
When I approached, he glanced at the pairing script beside the station and then at me.
"Well," he said, easy as breathing, "either it's an extreme coincidence we keep meeting like this or the Academy is conducting a very specific social experiment."
I set my books down. "That depends on whether you consider yourself a control variable."
He laughed, immediately and genuinely.
"Haha. Good. So, you do have jokes."
"That wasn't a joke."
"That somehow makes it even funnier."
His tone was casual. No noble stiffness. No formal distance. No attempt to force familiarity either. He just… talked. Like the fact that he was Taron Caelvarin and I was a commoner shouldn't even be a point of discussion in the world, that it was less interesting to him than the station before us.
That was mildly disorienting.
Not because I was unused to normal social hierarchy. Quite the opposite. If anything, Taron felt more familiar than most people in this world precisely because he behaved the way I would expect a normal person to behave, comfortable in himself, interested in the room, not obsessed with rank unless rank directly affected the conversation.
I took him in for a second anyway.
Bright expression. Open posture. A kind of natural ease that would have been irritating if it didn't seem entirely sincere.
'Interesting.'
Taron caught my look.
"Hm? What's that face for?"
"It's nothing."
"You look like you're trying to assess me or something."
"... I am assessing you."
He grinned, making a face that screamed 'I knew it'. "Well? Did I pass?"
"I haven't finished yet."
"That doesn't sound too good."
"It's just observational."
"That sounds even worse."
Before I replied, Professor Orin's voice cut through the room again.
"The task is simple," he said. "One of you casts. One of you describes what is being built in real time. Then you switch."
He tapped one of the station crystals near the front. A compact projection sprang up above the room.
Assigned spell: Ventus: Spiral Guard
'Interesting choice.'
Basic enough for every first-year to attempt, but detailed enough that structural decisions mattered. It wasn't hard to cast badly and still have it work. Plus, I've never seen or used this spell, so it's a cool new spell for me.
Around the room, students started organising themselves.
Some pairs immediately looked uncertain. Others, mostly nobles and the more confident sponsored students, adopted the posture of people who had already decided the task was beneath them.
Taron pushed off the desk and rolled one shoulder once.
"I'll go first."
Not a question.
Not arrogance, either. Just momentum.
I nodded. "Sure."
He stepped into the casting ring without ceremony, rolled one shoulder loose, and raised a hand.
"Ventus: Spiral Guard."
Wind burst from him in a tight revolving surge.
Not outward like a shove, but more like around him. Air spun up from the line of his stance and wrapped him in a fast-turning shell of compressed wind, a circular barrier that caught dust and loose grit at its edges, pulling them into a pale, spiralling blur. The guard held for a breath, maybe two, the rotation clean and hard enough that anything striking it would've been peeled off-line before it ever reached him.
Then the spell eased apart, the spiral loosening into a harmless breeze of air.
'It was good.'
More than good.
What mattered wasn't that he'd formed the barrier. Plenty of students could brute-force their way into a defensive shell for a second or two.
It was the way he'd formed it.
The outer rotation had widened slightly before tightening, making the guard more stable at the moment of bloom. Most first-years had compressed too early, choking the spin before it found balance. Taron hadn't, and it wasn't because he'd calculated the sequence, no, it was because his instincts had led him around the error before it could happen.
He'd also shifted his shoulder half a fraction at the release point, which redistributed the pressure load through the left side of the barrier and kept the rotation from dragging unevenly.
The whole thing had felt like someone catching a falling blade by reflex and somehow placing it exactly where it belonged.
The Codex flickered at the edge of my vision.
[VENTUS PATTERN DETECTED]
[FORMATION QUALITY: HIGH]
[CONTROL BIAS: INSTINCTIVE]
[ROTATIONAL STABILITY ABOVE EXPECTED BASELINE]
Taron let the last strands of wind die off and looked at me.
"Well, what do you think?"
"It was good."
"Ok, anything else though?"
That was all I needed to hear to get going.
I answered immediately.
"You widened the outer rotation before the shell locked."
He blinked.
I kept going.
"Not by much. Just enough to stop the pressure from choking itself at formation. If you'd compressed it any earlier, the left side would've dragged, and the whole guard would've thinned out at the back."
He stared at me.
I pointed toward the ring where the last dust was still settling.
"You corrected for it with your shoulder before release. Then again, through the spin itself. The barrier didn't hold because you forced it to. It held because you let it find the right rotation before you tightened it."
For the first time since I'd met him, Taron looked genuinely caught off guard.
"How did you know all of that?"
"I watched."
He gave me a look. "No, I got that part. I mean, how did you see ALL of that?"
I considered the easiest answer.
"I don't know. It was just there to see."
Taron stared at me for another second, then barked out a short laugh.
"That is an insane thing to say."
"It was accurate."
"Ok. An insanely ACCURATE thing to say."
"That depends on your standards."
He glanced back at the casting ring, then at me again, his expression narrower now, not suspicious, but sharpened.
"That was…" He shook his head once. "You weren't only describing the spell."
"Yes, I was."
"No," he said. "You were describing why it manifested in the first place. No first-year should be able to do that."
I said nothing.
Taron's smile came back, shorter this time, more real.
"Well," he said, "that's definitely going to be useful."
There was an unusual moment between us. Not dramatic, but not dismissive either.
Taron's instinct was sharp, better than most in the room. My understanding led me to identify why the construct was good, with the help of the Codex, of course, but Taron... he was able to tell just from his own experience.
"Your turn," he said.