It was strange, being here.

  Strange to be in an Upper-Tier Plane at all—stranger still to be lying in my old house.

  I wasn’t sure what I remembered and what was a figment of dreams or nightmares. I saw walls painted a soft cream, furniture worn but clean, the scent of soap and herbs that a woman who could only have been my mother had always favored. Was this mine once? I simply wasn’t sure. Memory is a fragile thing. When I looked at the rooms, I didn’t see echoes of childhood. I saw emptiness filled by someone else’s stories.

  Gran. My sister, Ellara. They spoke like they knew me, and I listened like I wanted to know them.

  A few weeks ago, I was still at a military base on a Secondary-Tier Plane. The 34th Warden Cohort had taken me in after I resurfaced. We sat around those iron barracks—the captain and his men—talking about how I should adapt to “modern society.”

  They spoke as if there were a path for people like me. But I could tell by their eyes they didn’t truly believe it. You don’t take someone shaped by the Wastes and slot him neatly back into life on an Upper-Tier World.

  And yet here I was.

  Lying in a childhood bed I didn’t remember, in a world that smelled like clean air and fresh bread, feeling a warmth I couldn’t explain.

  It was torture.

  Maybe it was everything I had done—sleeping in trenches, working with caravans, fighting, killing—that made me flinch away from this world. It didn’t seem like something I should have. I was… I was a ghost, a fighter… a killer.

  No, I reminded myself. That is not all you are. You changed that. Remember.

  I took a deep breath and retreated inward to my Mana Room, checking the connections I still had.

  All intact.

  I closed off the Mana Room. Not now. Maybe not ever again.

  I closed my eyes and, for the first time in longer than I could remember, slept without dreaming.

  It took a couple of days to fall into a rhythm with Gran and Ellara. It would take time for Gran to stop tearing up every time she saw me. Time for Ellara to be able to talk to me without worrying about saying the wrong thing.

  It was actually adorable.

  They took me to the farmers’ market on the second morning, and I swear, I thought I’d stepped into some kind of fever dream.

  There was food everywhere.

  This was not what I was used to—the stripped-down rations of a military caravan or the gray, recycled paste of a siege bunker. This was real food. Fruits the size of my head, spilling colors I’d never seen before and smells that made my mouth water. Vegetables stacked high in neat pyramids—greens, reds, and oranges so bright they hurt my eyes. Cuts of meat marbled with fat that smelled so good I probably could have eaten them raw, something I had done before and would do again gladly now.

  And the chocolate.

  I’d had chocolate in the Wastes, sure. Low-quality bricks hoarded by raiders or traded by smugglers—chalky and slightly bitter, but still precious. Even bad chocolate is still chocolate.

  But here?

  Here I held a little cup of something they called Dominion Dip—mana-freshened strawberries dipped in molten chocolate. Sweet chocolate contrasted with sharp fruit bursting under my teeth, the combination mixing into a smooth, perfect richness that spread across my tongue.

  It was so good it made me want to go back, find the bastards who shot down the transport that dumped me in the Wastes in the first place, and slaughter them all over again. Ten years. Ten years without this. They’d robbed me of it.

  The thought made me laugh—dark, maybe, but it made me laugh all the same.

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  “Oh, my boy, you look so handsome.”

  Gran’s voice pulled me back. It was my third morning home. I stood in front of the cracked hall mirror, tugging at the collar of a clean uniform jacket. My reflection stared back—plain, ordinary, and, in the strange twist of the day, entirely fake.

  Gran and Ellara were sitting at breakfast, fussing with tea and toast. Gran’s eyes shimmered as if she couldn’t quite stop crying, even when she smiled.

  “Handsome,” she repeated, her tone fierce this time, like she dared me to argue.

  I gave her a half-smile and turned back to the mirror. Handsome wasn’t the word. But I supposed she wasn’t seeing the real me—not entirely.

  It would help if I showed her.

  But I wasn’t ready for that. I knew I was going to have to confess, to show and tell at some point—but not today. In the meantime, I was getting ready for school.

  The absurdity of that fact made me snort under my breath. Me? School. I’d been fighting to survive since I was eight—against everything from raiders to armies—and now I was going to school like any other teenager.

  The universe has a sick sense of humor.

  The worst part about this development was the school I was going to attend.

  Arclight Academy was famous. Everyone knew about it—well, everyone but me.

  Apparently, it was one of the Crown Jewels of higher-plane education, where nobles, wealthy merchants, and celebrities sent their children to become more polished versions of themselves. I was going to walk through the same gates as them and sit in the same lecture halls.

  Gran was an administrator there, which was the only reason I’d gotten in. Definitely not as a noble, a merchant’s son, or a celebrity. Hell, not even as a scholar. I was here as one of the placement students—kids with talent, brains, or exceptional recommendations, but no family to back them.

  Ellara fit Arclight Academy. From the little interaction I’d had with her, it was obvious she was smart, kind, and thoughtful. She belonged in that world and among the people in it.

  Me? I wasn’t sure what I was. Smart wasn’t the word for surviving in the Wastes. Resourceful, maybe. Brutal, definitely. A killer, absolutely. None of that mattered here. None of it was what Arclight wanted.

  I buttoned the last clasp of the jacket and looked back at them.

  “Ready?” Ellara asked, her eyes too bright, her nerves barely contained.

  “Ready,” I said, though the word felt like a lie.

  The walk to Arclight Academy was faster than I expected—only about twenty-five minutes from our house. Twenty-five, yet every step felt like crossing worlds.

  We cut through narrow streets that opened onto wide boulevards paved with pale stone that gleamed in the morning light. Hoverlines hummed overhead on suspension cables, silent and orderly, while hawkers called out their wares below. I caught the smell of frying oil, incense smoke, and fresh paper all mixing together—a city alive and unscarred by the battles, scars, and spell pollution of the lower-tier worlds.

  The closer we got to the school, the more expensive everything became—the people, their clothes, their cosmetics, their modes of transportation. All of it escalated quickly into excess.

  I could already tell I was going to be annoyed by this.

  Ellara walked half a step ahead of me, her uniform crisp, hair tied neatly back, like she was trying to set the pace. Gran had fussed over her that morning almost as much as she had over me, reminding her to eat, to smile, to show her brother around. Ellara pretended she wasn’t nervous, but I could read the tension in the way her fingers kept smoothing the edge of her skirt.

  I realized she was worried—probably about me—so I let her lead. I didn’t mind the silence.

  The Academy could be seen in the distance now, its presence unmistakable. The closer we got, the more obvious it became. Its spires rose above the city like glass-and-iron spears, rune-etched and glittering, catching every scrap of sunlight. The walls surrounding the campus weren’t walls at all, but layered barriers—one woven of old stone, one of rune-steel, and one humming softly with protective wards, a clever application of Technica and Arcanum. Even from the street, I could feel the steady pulse of raw mana and the constant Expression conversion all users developed. Everything was deliberate and controlled, like a heart that had never missed a beat.

  Students were being dropped off along the outer avenues by every means wealth could conjure—gleaming sky-trams slowing to gentle descents, rune-driven carriages gliding without wheels, private conveyances humming softly as their mana cores cooled. Attendants opened doors. Drivers bowed. Spells disengaged with polite flashes of light.

  Crowds funneled in through the main gates, a steady river of privilege and expectation. Their uniforms gleamed with personalized touches—tailored cuts, bright clasps, jewelry that whispered wealth rather than shouted it. You could tell who was a noble, who was the child of a merchant prince, who was someone.

  And then there was me.

  Plain. A shadow slipping through the space between people. Eyes slid over me the way water runs off stone. They stepped aside without noticing why, gave me space without realizing they had.

  Ellara noticed, though. She kept glancing back at me, as if afraid the crowd would erase me completely if she didn’t keep checking.

  “Almost there,” she said unnecessarily.

  I gave her a small nod, adjusting the strap of my borrowed bag. The closer we came, the more thankful I was for the preparation I’d had with the captain. My appearance allowed me to blend into the background, which on the battlefield was imperative.

  Was high school the same as a battlefield?

  That seemed unlikely, but more data was needed.

  We reached the gate. Students swiped sigil passes across glowing wards, names flickering into attendance. The guards at the entrance gave cursory glances to each face—except mine. Their eyes slid off me too.

  Ellara tugged my sleeve, her badge already scanned. “Come on.”

  So I followed her into Arclight Academy.

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