The gates are already open when I arrive.

  For a moment, I just stand there with my travel case in hand, watching students move in and out as if this is the most ordinary day in the world. Laughter spills across the courtyard. Someone argues about dorm assignments. A trunk tips over and books scatter across the stone.

  No one notices me. Good they shouldn't.

  The academy rises beyond the gates in pale stone and ivy, sunlight catching along the edges of its towers. It doesn’t feel imposing. It feels lived in. Like it has been waiting for all of us, not just me.

  I draw in a slow breath.

  This is it. The road behind me suddenly feels very far away. I step through the gates. The wards hum differently for a second.

  A breeze stirs my hair. Somewhere to my left, a levitation spell misfires and a chair drops with a dull crack against the courtyard stones. Groans follow. Then laughter.

  I can’t help the small smile that tugs at my mouth.

  I move forward slowly, letting myself take it in. The warmth of the sun on my skin, the faint scent of parchment drifting from an open window, the low hum of wards woven so seamlessly into the architecture they feel like part of the air itself.

  For the first time in a long while, I’m not arriving as someone’s expectation. Not as Kovaria’s fourth-born daughter. Not as the queen’s shadowed child. Not as the princess with the strange ice.

  Just a student.

  The word settles in my chest, unfamiliar but not unwelcome.

  At the base of the grand staircase, I pause again, not because I’m uncertain, but because I want to remember this version of myself. The one standing on the edge of something new. The one who doesn’t yet know which friendships will last, which classes will challenge me, or who I’ll become by the end of it.

  The doors to the main hall are propped open. Inside, I can see orientation banners being hung slightly crooked. Someone is arguing about symmetry.

  I shift my grip on my case and exhale.

  New chapters don’t announce themselves. They begin quietly, with a step. So I take one. And this time, I don’t look back.

  The dormitory corridors are quieter than the courtyard.

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  Thick carpets soften footsteps. Tall windows spill amber light across framed star charts and old portraits whose eyes seem almost attentive. I follow the small brass numbers along the doors until I find mine.

  North Tower. Third Floor. Room 312.

  I hesitate only a moment before pushing the door open.

  The room is already half-claimed.

  One bed neatly made. One trunk at its foot, midnight blue trimmed in silver filigree shaped like constellations. A circular star map is pinned above that bed, delicate threads connecting certain points as if someone has been rearranging the sky.

  Someone stands by the window.

  She doesn’t turn immediately, which gives me time to notice how still she is. Pale hair falling like moonlight down her back. Fingers resting lightly on the glass as though she’s feeling something beyond it.

  “You took longer than I expected.” she says softly.

  I blink. “Orientation hasn’t started yet.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  Her voice isn’t unkind, just distant. Like she’s listening to something I can’t hear.

  She turns. Her eyes are striking, not sharp, not intimidating. Just deep. Reflective. Like she’s measuring not what I am, but what I might become.

  “I’m Nyverra,” I say, setting my case down beside the unclaimed bed.

  A small pause.

  “I know.” she says, not smug, not surprised. Certain.

  The words are simple. The certainty behind them is not. Something in my stomach tightens, quick and quiet, before I smooth the feeling away.

  She steps away from the window and inclines her head slightly. Not quite a bow. Not casual either.

  “Elmyrra Noctyre.”

  The name feels familiar in a way I can’t immediately place. Perhaps I’ve heard it mentioned in passing during political briefings, or whispered in court circles. But here, in a shared dorm room with mismatched furniture and slightly uneven floorboards, it sounds almost ordinary.

  “You can take whichever side you prefer,” she adds quietly. “The light is kinder in the mornings on that one.”

  I glance at the bed opposite hers.

  “You already mapped the sunlight?”

  “The sun maps itself,” she replies. “Most people just don’t notice.”

  There’s a faint hint of amusement in her tone.

  I study her more openly now. She doesn’t seem older than me. If anything, there’s something delicate about her presence, but not fragile. More like fine glass that knows it’s stronger than it appears.

  On her desk rests an open celestial chart, inked with shifting calculations. Tiny annotations mark certain stars with unfamiliar symbols.

  “You’re studying already?” I ask.

  She follows my gaze.

  “I like to know where the sky is moving,” she says. “It makes the ground less surprising.”

  That’s when it clicks.

  Noctyre.

  Royal Oracle.

  Starborn Seer.

  I look at her again, this time seeing the weight she carries beneath the quiet.

  “You’re the—”

  “Elmyrra is fine,” she interrupts gently. No denial. No confirmation. Just a boundary.

  I nod. Noctyre does not send its daughters anywhere lightly.

  A small silence settles between us, not uncomfortable. Just new.

  Outside, distant bells begin to ring, signaling the start of evening assembly.

  Elmyrra tilts her head slightly, listening. “We’ll be late if we don’t leave now,” she says. Then, after the smallest pause, “You walk like someone who watches exits. That will change.”

  I raise an eyebrow. “Will it?”

  “Yes.” She says it the way someone might comment on the weather. Not a threat. Not a warning. Just an observation of something she’s already seen. She reaches for her cloak, constellations stitched faintly along the hem.

  “Come,” she says softly. “It’s better to enter rooms before people decide who you are.”