Morning in Ash Court did not care that anyone had almost died to reach it.
The bell hit the stone the same way it always did. Cold water. Issued cloth. Bram cursing the concept of education while hopping on one foot to find a boot. Kai sat on the edge of his bed and stared at the slit window like it might offer an excuse.
It did not.
Another day of forms, channel humiliation, and trying not to get socially deleted by people with better handwriting. Truly, the dream.
Lira and Sera were already at the painted post when he and Bram reached it. Separate dorms. Same route into the mountain’s throat. Lira looked awake in the stubborn way. Sera looked awake in the efficient way. Both of them looked better than Kai felt, which was rude of them.
"You slept?" Lira asked.
"Define slept."
"Unconscious and not dying."
"Then yes."
Bram raised a hand.
"I slept like a man haunted by the number nine."
"Nobody asked," Sera said.
They joined the stair flow toward the east terraces. The academy was already moving: seniors cutting across lower traffic, stewards calling block changes, a Redmark pair laughing too loud on a higher span. Somewhere above, better stone was having a better morning.
Kai tried to keep his eyes on foot traffic.
Then Lira took the steps two at a time in front of him and the issued pants did that thing again.
No. We are not doing this. There is a gorge right there. There are stewards. There is a whole military daughter on this mountain who ends men in one move. I am not about to die because of an ass.
His eyes betrayed him anyway.
Sera, without turning around, said,
"If you fall down the stairs staring, I’m not catching you."
"I wasn’t staring."
"You were," Lira said.
Bram made a sympathetic noise.
"For what it’s worth, I support his poor decisions. Spiritually. From a distance."
---
Foundation Forms was almost ordinary.
Deneil ran recovery ladders until shoulders burned, correcting crest kids and Ash Court with the same flat voice. No public execution. No house speech. Just steel, feet, and the slow insult of improvement.
Kai landed two clean recoveries in a row and felt absurdly proud of something that would not have impressed anyone in Highcourt.
Look at me. A man of culture. I recovered on purpose. Mother would be sobbing if she existed in this world and also if she cared.
Across the sand, Davian Kreil drilled with a face like unpaid debt. People still glanced at him, then away, the high-court story stuck to his back. He did not look at Aminah’s usual tier. She was not there. The empty space where rumor expected her somehow felt louder than attendance.
Ceren Valenne worked through forms two pairs down, polished and bored. Mirea watched from a rail with her arms folded, occasionally saying something sharp to Soren that made his smile thin. Lysa Sarthin passed the outer arch once, senior braid neat, eyes moving over the intake like a woman checking inventory. She did not stop.
Ada Lex did stop — not in their block, on a higher connecting span — silver hair bright against darker coats, laughing at something a House Lex junior said. She looked like trouble that paid tuition.
Kai filed all of them the way Ash Court had learned to file predators: present, named, not today’s problem unless they chose to be.
Deneil dismissed them with a reminder that tomorrow’s ladder would be harder. Someone groaned. Someone else asked if harder meant points. Deneil looked at them until the question felt stupid.
---
Channel Basics remained a personal enemy.
Corves had them hold structure until wrists shook. Crest-born threads tickled the brass lines. Kai pushed and got the same dead-key feeling as always. Desire Sense could taste other people’s channel like distant heat. His own stayed locked behind a door the System refused to open without the wrong kind of payment, and a classroom full of teenagers was not the place.
Bram finished the hold bright red and whispered,
"Mana is fake."
"Mana is real," Sem muttered back. "You’re fake."
"Both can be true," Orlen said.
Lira managed a thin, stable scrape that earned a nod from Corves. Sera’s was smaller and cleaner. Kai’s was a polite failure.
I can survive ranked blades in a meat grinder, but a brass line on a floor defeats me. This is fine. This is totally fine. I am not jealous of people who learned this in a nursery. I am serene.
He was not serene.
After dismissal, the corridor clogged. In the press, a Highcourt boy clipped Bram’s shoulder and kept walking without looking back. Bram opened his mouth. Kai stepped on his foot.
"Not worth it."
"My honor."
"Your face," Sera said. "Keep it."
They took the long way toward the mess terrace because the short way was packed with Redmark colors and nobody in Ash Court felt like becoming accidental furniture.
---
Lunch was stew that had met vegetables once and remembered them fondly.
Ash Court claimed a lower table near the wall. From there the mess hall opened in tiers, same as everything else on the mountain: better seats, better bowls, better laughter higher up. Clan pins dotted upper tables inside academy house clusters — blood and house in the same body, still not the same thing.
Lira ate like someone fueling for war. Sera ate like someone measuring portions against future disasters. Bram talked with his mouth full until Sem told him to stop committing crimes.
"I’m just saying," Bram continued anyway, "if they wanted us to learn channel, they could implant it. Stone. Forehead. Done."
"That’s not how anything works," Lira said.
"It should."
Kai leaned back on the bench and let their voices blur for a second. For the first time since the Crucible, ordinary noise almost felt safe. Not safe. Safer. The kind of safer that could make a person stupid if they trusted it.
His eyes drifted, traitorously, to where Lira reached across Sera for water and both of them moved in the same small space.
I live in a dorm cell with a man who hates me for being lucky, I have house notes, iron doors, and a board line that can erase people, and my brain is still doing commentary tracks on my women like a failed poet. Pale bastard in the white room, if you can hear this, your selection criteria were unhinged.
Lira glanced up.
"What."
"Nothing."
"That face is not nothing."
Sera didn’t look up from her bowl.
"He’s having a thought. It will pass. They always do."
Bram pointed his spoon.
"If the thought is romantic, I will scream."
"If you scream," Sem said, "Halrik will appear out of the floor."
As if the mountain enjoyed jokes, a steward’s shadow crossed their table and everyone went briefly virtuous. The steward kept walking. Bram still waited three full seconds before exhaling.
---
Afternoon open drill on the east shelf was optional for their band and still crowded.
Kai ran forms until his arms shook, trying to make Deneil’s recovery feel less borrowed. Lira paired with a Stoneveil girl and argued quietly about footing until both of them improved out of spite. Sera watched two Redmark juniors spar, head tilted, then marked something in a tiny notebook she should not have had and refused to explain.
Near the rail, Tor Sarthin threw spear forms into empty air with ugly precision. Ceren passed through once with two Highcourt hangers and did not bother looking down at Ash Court. Davian trained alone at the far end, too hard, like volume could erase a one-move story.
No Theodore.
Kai was glad about that in a pure, cowardly, life-preserving way.
When the shelf emptied, the five of them walked the lower spans back toward Ash Court as the light went thin. Wind came up the gorge and made conversation lean in.
"Tomorrow’s going to hurt," Orlen said.
"Tomorrow always hurts," Lira said.
Sera glanced up toward the higher terraces, where lamps were starting to catch on better windows.
"Ordinary days are the point," she said. "If you can’t survive the ordinary ones, the counted ones finish you."
Kai looked at the three of them — Lira stubborn under cooling sky, Sera calm and sharp, Bram already preparing a complaint for the stairs — and felt the strange weight of still being alive in a place that made survival look like attendance.
Ordinary mountain. What a lie. But if this is the lie we get between disasters, I’ll take it. Just... nobody end a man in one move at dinner. And nobody schedule my doom before breakfast.
Ash Court’s mouth closed around them again: painted post, hearth smell, scratched faces under glass, thin mattresses waiting.
For one evening, no new notice went up on the landing board.
That, more than anything, felt suspicious.
Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!
Use arrow keys (or A / D) to PREV/NEXT chapter