Divinia Academy rose from the island at the center of the lake—marble spires, gilded domes, and stained glass windows that caught the first light of dawn and threw it back in fractured rainbows. The water around it was impossibly clear, impossibly deep, and impossibly still.

Students crossed the bridge in small clusters, their uniforms pressed and pristine. House colors embroidered on their blazers—silver for Air, green for Earth, blue for Water, crimson for Fire. They whispered, laughed, exchanged notes on exams and romances. None of them looked at you twice.

But they would.

A figure waited at the end of the bridge. Tall, lean, wrapped in a black cloak despite the mild spring air. His hair was dark as oil, his eyes the color of a storm at sea. He did not move as the crowd parted around him, flowing past like water around a stone.

Behind him, the great doors of the academy swung open, and inside, the chime of the first bell echoed like a judgment.