Brent stuffed the flyer he was still holding into his pocket just as the first bell rang, its chime echoing like wind through a canyon. He shouldered his bag and made his way to his first class —elemental conditioning, careful to avoid the eyes that watched him like he was something broken—pitied by some, mocked by most.
Miss Caldra greeted the class with her usual airy voice and a flick of her fingers that turned the chalkboard into a swirling display of glowing symbols. "Today we'll be reviewing elemental convergence theory," she said, her eyes skimming past Brent like he wasn't even there.
He sat in the back, as always. Not because he liked it, but because no one ever asked him to sit anywhere else.
As the lesson unfolded—talk of ley lines, essence flow, and incantation harmonics—Brent copied every word into his notebook with quiet precision. He didn't miss a single term, even though he already understood most of it better than the teacher explained. Magic had rules, like machines. Patterns. He could see them, even if he couldn't use them.
Joran, meanwhile, was busy drawing firebirds in the air with lazy hand gestures, getting giggles and whispers from the girls two rows ahead. Brent pretended not to care.
"Mr. Alder," Miss Caldra said suddenly, and the class turned in unison, a collective smirk building like thunderclouds.
He looked up. "Yes?"
"Perhaps you can explain why the elemental triad between flame, air, and spirit is unstable under eclipse conditions?"
Brent's pulse quickened, but he nodded. "It's because spirit magic acts as a balancing field between the others. During an eclipse, ambient spiritual energy drops, disrupting the resonance. That causes feedback loops in fire and air convergence patterns, especially if the caster isn't shielding properly."
There was a moment of silence. A few students blinked. Miss Caldra gave a tight smile.
"Correct, and no cheating" she said, almost begrudgingly.
Brent sat back, not quite proud, not quite invisible. Just... waiting.
Because one day—soon—he was hoping to prove to everyone that you didn't need sparks or wings or glowing eyes to be something more.
You just had to be smart enough to find the hidden door everyone else missed.
And brave enough to open it.
Brent left the class not feeling like his typical charming self. Soon after leaving and arriving just inside his next assigned class—elemental weaving—Brent noticed all his classmates grouped together based on elemental skills. Brent being the only person in the class without a skill opted to stand in the back of the class. Several snickers occurred and Brent could hear the whispers of many voices poking fun at how he was in a class that he could never truly understand.
As Brent settled in to the back of the room his teacher entered the room and Brent bowed his head in shame. It was Miss Caldra again, this time walking into the room showcasing multiple different elemental skills. It was common knowledge that after you ascend and develop your first spell you are allotted mana. Using this mana you are able to learn all kinds of different ways to bend the elements to achieve many different specialties. After the initial snickers from all the other classmates, Brent was ignored for the rest of the class while the other students took turns showing the class what all they could do.
As soon as the class was over Brent left in search of the library. He was determined to research everything he could about awakening powers and unlocking abilities after the age of 12. His combat class was coming up and he wanted to make sure to be able to grab a few books before they closed.