Morning sunlight filled the massive lecture hall.
Stone seats rose in tiered rows like an amphitheater, nearly two hundred first-year students settling into them with varying degrees of alertness. Some had clearly slept. Others clearly hadn't. Taro fell into the second category — he dropped into the seat beside Lysander with the specific exhausted energy of someone who had stayed up too late being enthusiastic about something and was now paying for it.
"Why is the first class this early," he muttered.
Lysander didn't answer. He was watching the room settle — who sat where, who gravitated toward whom, the social geography of two hundred strangers becoming a class.
Near the front, Leon sat relaxed and attentive, the kind of person who was naturally comfortable in any setting. Two rows away, Elara had a thick textbook open and was already reading, her silver hair falling forward slightly as she studied. Near the center aisle, a girl with long pale-blue hair sat alone — straight posture, expression composed, not engaging with the students around her.
Valeria Frostborn. Ice element. One of the stronger first-years by rank. She carried the specific stillness of someone who had learned early that composure was armor.
The doors at the front opened and the hall quieted.
An older man walked in — white hair, sharp eyes, a mana presence that was immediately noticeable without being showy. He stopped at the front of the hall, looked across the rows once, and spoke.
"I am Professor Ardent. I will be teaching Mana Theory."
He turned and wrote a single word on the stone board behind him.
MANA
"Everything you will become as hunters begins here. Not with your weapon. Not with whatever blessing you may or may not awaken. Here." He raised one hand and a small sphere of blue energy appeared above his palm, then split into several smaller ones — each a different color, each element represented. "Mana exists in every living being. Most people never learn to control it. You will."
He walked them through the basics — elemental affinities, the difference between external channeling and body reinforcement, what mana exhaustion actually felt like versus what most students thought it felt like. Practical. No performance.
Lysander paid attention in the specific way he paid attention to things that would be useful — absorbing the framework, noting where his own experience already aligned with it and where it didn't. The lightning element sitting in his channels felt different now that he had vocabulary for what it was doing.
The second class of the morning was in a smaller hall.
Professor Seris was already at the front when they arrived — standing rather than sitting, reviewing notes without looking up as students filed in. Elf, dark brown hair worn back cleanly, steel blue eyes that registered the room without making a production of it. She looked like someone who had been waiting for the class to start rather than waiting for students to arrive.
She looked up when the last student sat.
"World History," she said. Not an introduction. Just the subject. "You're here because the academy requires it. Most of you will decide within two weeks that it's the least important class on your schedule. Some of you will eventually realize it's the most important one." A pause. "I don't particularly care which conclusion you reach as long as you pay attention while you're here."
She turned to the board.
"We begin with the Seven Wars. Not because they're the beginning of everything — they're not. But because they're the beginning of the world as it currently exists, and you need to understand what you're living inside before you can understand anything else."
Lysander sat very still.
The Seven Wars. He hadn't heard that term before but the way she said it — like the beginning of everything that mattered — made him pay attention in a different way than he'd paid attention to Mana Theory. This world had history he didn't know. History that had shaped the gates, the academy, the hunter system, everything around him. Understanding it seemed like it could matter eventually.
He would be paying attention.
Elara, two seats to his left, had already opened a fresh notebook.
Club registration happened in the courtyard after midday.
Large boards listed the options. Students moved between them in groups, debating, signing up, some already committed and some visibly overwhelmed by having to choose.
Lysander moved through it without particular drama. He knew what he needed.
Swordsmanship Club — for the training environment and the cover of being a normal swordsman working on normal technique.
Hunter Expedition Club — because that was where the early missions happened, and the early missions were where things went wrong in ways he needed to be present for.
He signed both and stepped away from the table.
The system appeared briefly.
ABYSSAL SYSTEM — NOTE
Hunter Expedition Club registered.
Upcoming event probability detected.
Risk level: Moderate.
He closed the window. The event he was thinking of was still ahead — the Blackroot Forest mission, the monster that wasn't supposed to be there, the person who was supposed to die during it. He had time. Not a lot, but some.
He crossed the courtyard toward the dormitory.
Somewhere behind him, he heard Taro's voice rise above the general noise — apparently delighted about something — and then the specific sound of a wolf tail wagging fast enough to be audible.
Lysander almost smiled.
He filed it for later.