Rise Of The Mirror King

Chapter 11: The Blazing Sun

The academy looked different from the last time I'd seen it.

Not the buildings — those hadn't changed, still the same grey stone and high towers cutting into the sky. What had changed was the crowd gathered at the gates. Twice the size I remembered, twice as loud, carriages backed up along the road behind us like a parade nobody had asked for.

"It's bigger than I imagined," Vax said, pressed against the carriage window like she meant to climb through it.

"You've seen it before. From the road."

"That doesn't count." She turned to me, eyes bright in a way that made my chest ache a little. "Are you nervous?"

"No."

"Liar."

She wasn't wrong, but I wasn't about to admit it to a thirteen-year-old.

The carriage rolled to a stop, and before Argustin could even reach the door, Vax had it open and was halfway out, dragging her trunk behind her like it weighed nothing. I followed at a slower pace, scanning the crowd out of habit I didn't remember learning.

Freshmen clustered near the front gates in their new grey robes, still stiff and uncreased, nothing like the black ones I wore now. Somewhere among them, Vax would spend the next year learning everything I'd apparently already forgotten I once knew.

I didn't like how much that thought unsettled me.

"Symon Wardreth."

I turned. Vance stood near the entrance, arms crossed, watching me the way he'd watched me in class — like a puzzle he hadn't finished solving.

"Guildmaster."

"You're a week early."

"I brought my sister."

His eyes moved past me to Vax, who was already deep in conversation with another freshman, some boy with a nervous laugh and robes two sizes too big.

"Freshman," Vance said. "Interesting."

"Something wrong with that?"

"No." He studied her a moment longer, then turned back to me. "Come. Since you're here, we might as well start early."

I glanced at Vax.

"Go," she said, without even looking over. "I'm fine."

"Vax—"

"I made a friend in four minutes, Symon. I'll survive without you."

I didn't move.

She rolled her eyes and finally looked at me properly. "I'm not made of glass."

"I didn't say you were."

"You didn't have to."

Vance cleared his throat. "The guild isn't going anywhere, Lord Wardreth. Neither is she."

I forced myself to walk away first, which felt harder than it should have.

We crossed the courtyard toward a wing of the academy I'd never had reason to enter — narrower halls, fewer windows, the air noticeably colder the further in we went. The chatter of freshmen faded behind us until all I could hear was our footsteps against stone.

"You've been quiet," Vance said.

"Thinking."

"About the guild, or the girl."

"Both."

He almost smiled. "Good instincts. Keep both, but learn which one to listen to first."

We stopped in front of a set of iron doors, taller than any I'd seen elsewhere in the academy, etched with a sunburst pattern that seemed to catch light that wasn't there.

"Before you go in," Vance said, "understand something. What you've learned so far — mana theory, blood magic basics, the polite fictions the underclassmen are fed — none of that prepares you for this."

"Prepares me for what?"

He studied me the way he had in the courtyard.

"The Blazing Sun isn't a guild for talented students who want a prestigious title, whatever the brochures say. We are the reason the wall between this world and the demon realm hasn't collapsed in three hundred years."

I said nothing.

"Every solo mission you're assigned. Every technique we teach you that we don't teach the general population. It's because somewhere out there, every single day, something claws at the edge of that wall trying to get through." He looked at me.

"Most students don't learn that until they've already sworn themselves to us. I'm telling you now because I suspect you already know it better than most."

I thought of Zeldryl's blade going through my chest. Mazikeen's smile before she vanished. The wet crunch under my boot the night I fell out of the sky.

"I know it," I said.

"Then you understand why your sister being here worries you."

I looked at him sharply.

"You're not subtle, Lord Wardreth."

The doors opened before I could answer, revealing a hall lined with banners bearing that same sunburst crest, students already gathered in rows below a dais.

"Welcome to the Blazing Sun," Vance said. "Try not to die learning what that means."