The fifth bell's chime sliced through Vel'Thara's morning mists like a whetted blade. Raka watched droplets condense on the academy's obsidian gates, each one reflecting the spires beyond in warped miniature. Just like him - a distorted version of what should have been.
"Next!" The administrator's quill tapped impatiently against her ledger.
Raka stepped forward, his new body's muscles twitching with residual dissonance. Two days since the transfer, and still this vessel resisted him. The original owner - Eren Lathrin, farmboy scholarship student - had expired from exhaustion mere hours before arrival. A fortuitous vacancy.
"Name?"
He hesitated. To claim the boy's identity would be safer. To use his own...
"Raka. Lathrin." The surname tasted like ash - stolen bread from a dead boy's table.
The administrator's eyebrow arched. "Middle name?"
"Just Raka." He watched her quill scratch the parchment, committing his first lie to official record. How many more would follow?
"Spell affinity?"
"Unawakened." This at least was truth. Whatever magic this body might have held remained dormant since the transfer.
The quill paused. Her eyes flicked to his calloused hands - farmboy hands, not warrior's. "Green Dormitory, Room 213. Orientation at Moon Hall in one hour." She waved him off with a gesture that said waste of a slot clearer than any words.
The courtyard beyond thrummed with energy. Novices in gray uniforms practiced levitation charms, their spells fizzling like wet firecrackers. A cluster of blue-robed upperclassmen observed with predatory smiles. Raka's skin prickled - he knew that look. The strong assessing the weak.
Vel'Thara unfolded before him in layers of impossible architecture: floating bridges connecting towers that bent at gravity-defying angles, libraries with shelves that rearranged themselves when no one looked, training yards where the very air shimmered with residual power. Every stone whispered of secrets and sacrifice.
Room 213 smelled of pine resin and steel polish. His roommate already occupied the left bed, polishing a dagger with methodical strokes. Reddish-brown hair, green eyes sharp as broken glass. The boy looked up, blade still circling the whetstone.
"Roommate?" A challenge in the word.
Raka set down his meager pack. "Seems so."
"Coren Vess. Scholarship warrior track." The dagger found its sheath in one fluid motion. "You look like someone kicked your dog and stole your girl."
"Raka Lathrin. Magic applicant." He tested the bed's straw mattress - harder than a coffin's pillow. "No dog. No girl."
Coren's laugh cracked like a whip. "Even better. Nobles here are stiff as their family trees." He tossed an apple across the room. "You snore, I stab you. Fair?"
Raka caught it mid-air, the fruit's skin cool against his palm. A test passed. "Not sure if I snore. The last person who'd know is dead."
Something flickered in Coren's eyes - recognition of a kindred darkness. "Then welcome to Vel'Thara, Not-Sure-If-I-Snore. Try not to die before classes start."
Moon Hall stole Raka's breath. The open-air coliseum curved like a scythe's blade, its silverstone tiers humming with ancient enchantments. Hundreds of students sat in precise rows, their collective energy pressing against his skin like stormfront pressure.
The air itself trembled when Master Lorr appeared. Silver-streaked beard, posture like a drawn longbow, eyes that had seen too many students break. His voice required no amplification:
"Vel'Thara doesn't coddle. If you expected songs and safety, leave now."
A few nervous laughs died when Lorr's aura detonated. The force flattened grass, sent first-years tumbling, knocked the breath from Raka's lungs. He locked his knees, tasting copper - and saw Lorr's gaze linger on those still standing.
"Magic doesn't make you special. Bloodlines don't make you strong." The master's boots echoed as he paced. "We teach power here. Misuse it..." His knuckles cracked. "...we break you."
Raka's stolen heart hammered. Not from fear - from recognition. This was no pampered academy. This was a forge, and he'd walked in wearing another man's skin as the rawest of materials.
The orientation dissolved into bureaucratic murmurings - class schedules, dorm rules, tournament qualifications. Raka absorbed none of it. His focus remained on the runes carved into Moon Hall's foundation stones. Some he recognized from battlefields four lives back. Others... others made his vision blur if he stared too long.
"You're either very smart or very dead." Coren materialized at his elbow as the crowd dispersed. "No one ignores Lorr's speeches and keeps their teeth."
Raka touched his tongue to a canine. Still there. "What's the curriculum like?"
"Brutal. First week's attrition rate is twenty percent." Coren grinned at his expression. "Not from death. Mostly from realizing they'd rather keep their intestines inside their bodies."
They passed a training yard where two students sparred with live steel. No protective charms. Blood speckled the sand.
"Failures get reassigned to support roles," Coren continued. "Alchemy assistants, library catalogers, spellfuel harvesters." He shuddered. "Better to die."
Raka's fingers twitched. This body remembered farm work - the ache of dawn-to-dusk labor, the stink of animal pens. He'd take a sword through the gut first.
As they crossed a bridge that floated with no visible support, a voice called from below: "Hey! New meat!"
A girl with twin daggers and a nose ring leaned against the bridge's underside - somehow standing on what should have been ceiling. Gravity-reversal charm? Natural talent? She winked at Raka.
"Lira Vexen," Coren muttered. "Second year. Don't play cards with her."
Lira flipped up onto the bridge, landing in a crouch. Her eyes, gold-flecked and unblinking, scanned Raka like a butcher sizing livestock. "You're the unawakened kid, right? The gamble?"
Before Raka could answer, a bell tolled - deep and sonorous, vibrating in his molars.
"Survival drill!" Coren grabbed his arm. "Move!"
The courtyard erupted into chaos. Students sprinted in all directions as the air itself began to shimmer. Raka smelled ozone, felt static lift the hairs on his neck.
"First test starts now!" Lira yelled over the rising wind. "Try not to piss yourself, farmboy!"
Then the world turned white.
Raka blinked spots from his vision as the light faded. The academy grounds had transformed. Walls now bore claw marks the size of wagon wheels. The air tasted of burnt hair and iron. And from the forest beyond the gates came a sound that chilled his blood - not a roar, not a howl, but something between, vibrating at a frequency that made his bones ache.
Coren's dagger found his hand. "Welcome to Vel'Thara's orientation week."
Lira cracked her knuckles. "Better learn fast, Raka Lathrin. The hungry things always smell fresh meat first."
Raka exhaled slowly, feeling the strange new energy in this world's air - the potential, the danger, the raw materials of rebirth. For the first time since awakening in this stolen body, he smiled.
Let the hungry things come. He'd died before.
This time, he'd do it properly.