Rise Of The Mirror King

Chapter 12: Welcome to the Sun

The doors shut behind us with a sound like the whole building exhaling.

Rows of students filled the hall below the dais, robes a mix of black — my year, apparently — and darker shades that must've marked the upperclassmen. I counted maybe forty faces before I gave up counting and just picked the ones staring hardest.

There were a lot of those.

"Relax," I muttered to no one, mostly myself. "I promise I'm only mildly cursed."

The girl nearest me — dark hair, sharp eyes, unmistakably related to someone I already hated on sight — did not look amused.

"You're Symon Wardreth."

"Depends who's asking."

"Delilah." She said it like a warning label. "Lucifero's sister."

"Ah." I gave her my best smile. "So the resemblance isn't a coincidence."

"Don't talk to me."

"Bold opening line. I respect it."

She turned away so fast her braid nearly caught me in the jaw, and I decided, immediately, that I liked her more than her brother.

Vance climbed the dais without ceremony, and the murmuring dropped to nothing before he even raised a hand.

"First years." His voice carried without him needing to raise it. "Look around. These are the people you'll bleed next to for the next four years. Learn their faces."

I glanced sideways. Amelia stood a few feet off, arms crossed, doing an excellent job of not looking at me. Astrid gave me a small wave, which I returned with what I hoped was a devastatingly charming grin and which probably just looked like I had something in my eye.

"Some of you," Vance continued, "think you're here because you were talented. Gifted. Special." He let that word sit, heavy with sarcasm. "You're here because four hundred years ago, someone tore a hole between this world and the next, and it never fully closed."

That got everyone's attention.

"The Blazing Sun exists to keep it that way. Not fully closed. Not fully open. Every mission, every technique, every year you spend bleeding through training — it's because something on the other side wants through, and we are, quite literally, the reason it hasn't managed it yet."

Somewhere behind me, a boy raised his hand like he was still in a normal classroom.

"So — the brochure lied?"

A few nervous laughs.

"The brochure," Vance said, "was written by people who wanted your parents to keep paying tuition."

More laughter, less nervous this time.

I raised my own hand before I could think better of it.

"Question."

Vance's eyes found me instantly, like he'd been waiting for it. "Of course."

"If we're the last line of defense against total demonic invasion, why does the syllabus still have a mandatory dance requirement?"

A beat of silence.

Then the hall actually laughed — real laughter, scattered but genuine, and even Vance's mouth twitched at the corner before he wrestled it flat again.

"Because," he said, "even soldiers need to know how to survive a royal banquet without embarrassing the crown. Sit down, Wardreth."

"I'm already sitting."

"Then sit quieter."

I caught Delilah rolling her eyes so hard I was mildly concerned for her well-being.

Vance continued, laying out the year ahead — theory in the mornings, combat drills after midday, and starting in the second term, supervised solo missions along the border wards, the same wards that supposedly kept whatever clawed at the seams of the world on its own side of things.

"Supervised," someone repeated. "That's reassuring."

"It should be," Vance said. "The alternative is unsupervised, and I promise you'll prefer supervised."

A girl near the front — pale, unnervingly still, with something faintly wrong about the way she smiled — raised a hand.

"What happens if we fail the missions?"

"Depends what you mean by fail."

"I mean die."

"Then you fail spectacularly, and we hold a very nice memorial." Vance didn't even pause. "Next question, preferably one that doesn't ruin breakfast."

I leaned toward the boy beside me — broad-shouldered, calm in a way that read more like patience than confidence, a small carved charm hanging from his belt that I didn't recognize.

"Is she friendly?" I asked, nodding toward the pale girl who'd asked about dying.

"That's Feifei," he said. "She's a banshee. Don't ask about the smiling thing."

"I wasn't going to."

"You were absolutely going to."

Fair.

"Call me Baron," he added before I could ask. "Druid. I'm the fourth commandment — before you get any ideas about pulling rank on me."

"I don't even know what pulling rank means in this context."

"Neither do most people who try it. Which is how I know you'll try it eventually."

I decided I liked him too. This guild was shaping up to be full of people who tolerated me exactly as much as I deserved — which, fair, honestly.

Vance was still talking up front, something about ward maintenance and quarterly assessments, but my attention had already drifted toward the back of the hall.

A girl sat there with her arms folded, watching the whole proceeding with the specific boredom of someone who'd clearly been dragged in against her will. Fur-lined collar, a build built for a weretiger's shoulders.

Baron followed my gaze without me having to ask.

"That's Ace," he said. "Don't."

"Don't what? I haven't done anything."

"You're about to. I can see it on your face."

I hadn't decided anything yet, but he wasn't wrong to be worried.

"She's Draco's half-sister," he added, quieter now. "If you're planning to introduce yourself, maybe pick a day her brother isn't three guilds away and still furious with you."

"Everyone here seems to have a brother who hates me."

"You have that effect."

Vance's voice cut back through the hall, sharper now.

"Last thing. Whatever rivalries you brought with you from the academy floor — leave them there." His eyes swept the room, and I could've sworn they lingered on me half a second longer than anyone else. "In this hall, you're Blazers first. Everything else is a distant, distant second."

Nobody argued.

I glanced once more at Amelia, who still hadn't looked at me, then at Delilah, who was very deliberately still not talking to me, and decided that "leave your rivalries at the door" might be the single most optimistic thing anyone had said to me since I'd arrived in this world.

Vance dismissed the hall a few minutes later. As everyone rose in a scrape of chairs and low chatter, Astrid fell into step beside me.

"You survived your first hour," she said.

"Barely. I made an enemy, a sister-shaped enemy-adjacent, and possibly offended a banshee."

"Feifei likes you. That's the concerning part."

"Why is that concerning?"

"Because Feifei doesn't like anyone."

Behind us, Delilah made a noise that might have been a laugh she was actively trying to swallow.

I decided I was going to enjoy this guild, whether it enjoyed me back or not.