Chapter Seven
There were no desks in the Beast Bonding classroom. No podium, no chalkboard, no benches.
Just cushions. Neatly arranged in concentric circles across the floor, each one marked with a different beast crest. The space was dim and quiet, walls of smooth dark crystal absorbing sound instead of echoing it.
High overhead, magelight orbs scattered like constellations across the arched ceiling.
Cassara hesitated in the doorway. Liri hovered beside her, clutching a book to her chest like a shield.
"This feels like a trap," Liri whispered. "A soft, comfortable, mind-magic trap."
Cassara didn't answer, but she couldn't deny the unease curling under her ribs. It was too still. like the room itself was watching.
Students began to filter in, voices lowering as they entered. Julian swept past her, his stride easy and unhurried as always. He gave the space a once-over and then dropped onto a cushion with exaggerated care, stretching out like he had every intention of napping through the hour.
When he spotted her lingering, he patted the empty cushion beside him with a crooked grin.
Sighing, Cassara moved toward him, her gaze sweeping the room as she did.
She regretted doing so immediately. Gideon was already seated near the center, arms crossed, looking like he wanted to be anywhere but there.
To Cassara’s surprise, Verena sat in the back row beside a dark-haired girl she didn't recognize, managing to look bored and elegant all at once.
She was about to turn away when Gideon's eyes found hers. She could almost see the wheels turning as he flicked his gaze toward Julian, then back to her, and mouthed a single word: Leash.
Heat flared in her chest. She pivoted sharply and dropped onto the cushion beside Liri instead.
"Good call," Liri muttered, glancing toward Julian. "He was going to talk the entire time, I could feel it."
Before Cassara could respond, a soft voice spoke from the front of the room.
“You all sat by trust, not instinct.”
Professor Thendrick Donall stood at the center of the room as though he’d always been there and they simply hadn’t noticed until now.
He was barefoot, robed in star-threaded navy, his dark hair hanging loose down his back in clean, symmetrical lines.
His expression was placid, the kind of calm that unsettled rather than soothed.
“As you all know, I am Professor Thendrick. This is Bonding Mechanics and Empathic Sync. You are here to learn how to listen, not with your ears, but with everything else. Your bonds will not be built with orders. They will not be won by brute force. They will begin here.” He pressed a hand to his chest.
A flicker of motion near his feet caught her attention. When she looked, Cassara glimpsed part of a tail, long and faintly translucent, before it vanished behind his legs again.
Thendrick didn’t acknowledge it.
Instead, he lifted his hands, and the magelights dimmed further until the room was bathed in twilight. “Many of you encountered your first corrupted beast yesterday. You felt fear and helplessness.”
A murmur rippled through the students.
“What you didn’t feel,” he continued, “was connection.”
With a fluid motion of his wrist, he cast a small crystalline orb into the center of the room.
It hovered, then expanded, unfurling into a three-dimensional projection.
In its depths, a corrupted beast materialized, far smaller but no less terrifying than the one that had attacked their ship.
Its segmented body writhed in slow motion, lightning pulsing through translucent sacs.
Several students flinched and one girl near the back gasped.
“Corrupted beasts cannot bond,” Thendrick said, circling the projection.
“They have forgotten how to listen to the mana vibrations. How to connect to the magic itself and thus they are driven only by an insatiable need to consume, to seek that which they can no longer find.” He passed his hand through the image, dispersing it like smoke.
“But they remember. Somewhere deep, they remember what they once were.”
The projection shifted, the corrupted form dissolving and reforming into something sleeker, brighter, the same creature, but uncorrupted. Beautiful in its alien way, lightning sacs now glowing with controlled, rhythmic pulses.
“Today,” Thendrick said. “You will reach out.”
From a hidden compartment in the floor, a second crystal rose, larger, faceted, humming with subtle energy.
“This is an Echo Stone,” he explained. “It contains the empathic signature of a juvenile skywhale. Harmless, curious, and currently circling the eastern tower.”
He gestured, and the stone began to pulse with soft blue light.
"Close your eyes," he instructed. "Breathe. Feel for the presence beyond your own. Don't try to control it. Don't demand its attention. Simply… acknowledge it."
Cassara did as he instructed, skeptical but intrigued. At first, there was nothing, just the darkness behind her eyelids and the awareness of bodies around her.
Then, faintly, a presence brushed against her consciousness, not a voice, not a thought, but a sensation. Curiosity. Movement. The vastness of sky and the joy of currents.
"If you are reaching correctly," Thendrick's voice sounded distant, as though he were suddenly addressing them from across a chasm, "you will feel the skywhale's response."
The presence nudged closer, gentle but insistent, and Cassara's eyes snapped open. Her shoulders tensed, breath catching as she pulled back instinctively from whatever had been reaching toward her.
Around the room, reactions varied. Liri was smiling, eyes still closed. Julian looked bored, though his fingers twitched slightly against his knee. Gideon sat perfectly still, his expression intense rather than relaxed.
Verena's eyes were open, watching Gideon instead of participating.
"Those of you who felt nothing," Thendrick said after several minutes, "do not despair. Connection takes practice. Those who felt the response, remember it. That is the foundation of bonding."
The crystal dimmed and the presence receded.
Thendrick moved between them silently. Once or twice, he murmured something too low to catch.
When he passed Cassara, he paused. His gaze lingered on her for a moment, thoughtful.
"Resistance," he said quietly, just loud enough for her to hear. "Interesting."
She met his eyes. "It's just a meditation exercise."
"Is it?" His expression didn't change, but his tone suggested he knew better. Then he moved on without waiting for an answer.
When Thendrick dismissed them, Cassara gathered her things quickly, not particularly interested in lingering. The professor had already turned his attention to a small stone basin near the wall, his beast, whatever it was, still hidden from view.
"That was weird, right?" Liri said as they headed for the door. "Like, deeply weird?"
"Extremely," Cassara agreed.
"Did you feel anything?" Liri asked, her voice dropping to a whisper. "I think I did, but I'm not sure if I actually did or if I just wanted to."
Cassara hesitated. "Something. I don't know what."
"Well, at least you're honest about it." Liri adjusted her satchel. "Half the class is probably going to claim they had some profound spiritual awakening when really they just fell asleep sitting up."
Despite herself, Cassara smiled. "Probably."
"Come on," Liri said, picking up her pace. "We've got combat class next, and I heard Instructor Nareen makes latecomers spar with third-years."
The first year training field was on the western edge of campus, a long walk that took them past massive windows overlooking the floating academy grounds.
Clouds drifted by at eye level, occasionally parting to reveal dizzying glimpses of the world below.
At one junction, the corridor opened to a balcony where a squad of third-years were engaged in aerial drills, their bonded beasts, mostly avians and winged reptiles, banking in tight formation.
One rider spotted them watching and directed her mount into a theatrical dive that made Liri gasp and clutch Cassara's arm.
"Show-offs," Cassara muttered, but she couldn't help feeling a pang of envy. How long before she'd have a beast of her own?
"We should hurry," Liri said, glancing at her Codex. "We still need to change, and Nareen's class starts in five minutes."
They ducked into the nearest training preparation chamber, a room lined with individual partitions and spell-warmed screens. Liri continued talking as they changed, her voice carrying over the dividers.
"Do you think she'll make us spar right away?
I heard she doesn't believe in warm-ups.
Just throws you into it to see what you're made of.
My cousin said she once made a first-year fight a practice dummy that hit back.
Literally hit back, with actual force. Do you think that's true?
It sounds true. She seems like the type who'd do that.
Oh, do you think we'll use weapons today or just hand-to-hand?
I'm better with a staff than bare-handed, but I don't know if—"
Cassara pulled on her training tunic, the high collar stiff against her throat. Liri's voice was a steady stream of nervous energy, questions tumbling out one after another without pause for answers.
It should have been annoying.
It wasn't. Not entirely.
"—and Barrett said his brother trained under her two years ago and she made him run the obstacle course in full gear in the rain, which seems excessive but I guess that's the point, right? To push you past what you think you can—oh, are you ready?"
Cassara stepped out from behind the partition, adjusting the fitted combat slacks reinforced at the knees. The fitted tunic was a deep crimson and bore Vallemont's silver thread insignia over her chest. No crest yet. That would have to be earned.
"Ready," she said.