Chapter 6 – — Professor Nestor’s private notes #2
She blinks, and her pupils stretch, narrowing into sharp vertical slits, then she blinks again to bring them back to normal. “We can control it,” she says, settling back. “I only use the scary version when I want something.”
Lux grins. “Which is always.”
Ellavee shrugs.
I swallow, nodding like this is all perfectly normal.
Ellavee tilts her head, studying me now with more interest than before. “You’re the human.”
“Yeah,” I say.
“Huh,” she murmurs like I’m a mildly interesting puzzle. Then she looks toward the front. “Orientation’s about to start.”
The moment Headmaster Ashmoor steps onto the stage, an unseen pressure settles across the hall, thinning conversation until voices taper into nothing.
Gazes fix on the tall figure at the front of the room, his posture rigid, his hands clasped behind his back, his dark eyes moving slowly across the first year students as if committing each face to memory.
“Welcome to Ashwell Academy of Medicine and Alchemy,” he announces, his voice carrying. “You sit here because something about you suggested potential.”
His eyes drift across my table, and I become painfully aware of my own breathing. A faint ripple of unease passes through the hall.
“Ashwell exists for one purpose,” he continues, “to produce Veilguards. They are not menders. They are not assistants. They are not sent to ease suffering. They are stabilizers of catastrophe. When fissures open, reality destabilizes. Current surges. Bodies fail in ways conventional healing cannot address. Veilguards enter these environments not to fight but to prevent collapse. They decide who survives and whether entire regions fall into chaos or remain standing.”
His eyes narrow slightly.
“The cycle will come again. It always does. It has been more than a century since the last, and we are far overdue. But even in the absence of an active cycle, fissures form. Twisted creatures and crawlers cross through. Plagues emerge. Corruption spreads. Veilguards are deployed constantly as an ongoing necessity.”
I swallow, unable to look away from him.
“You have been selected for a three-year program.
Bone year is your foundation, and it is where most of you will fail.
You study anatomy across all known bloodlines.
You learn how their bodies work. You learn to stabilize catastrophic injuries and cut out corruption.
You learn to realign shattered bones, set compound fractures, reduce dislocations, and reconstruct structural damage under pressure.
You learn to control hemorrhaging through physical intervention and basic current, and you learn when current will make the situation worse rather than better.
“You are not taught in silence. You are not taught in safety. You are taught in noise, in blood, in smoke, and in chaos. You are taught while people scream. You will be injured. You will make mistakes. You will watch patients die while your hands are still inside their bodies. Ashwell does not simulate danger. It exposes you to it. You will be deployed to controlled fissure zones before this year ends. Some of those zones will become uncontrolled while you are inside them.”
A nervous murmur ripples through the crowd.
“Some of you will die during training. Some of you will withdraw because you cannot endure the psychological toll.
Some of you will fail academically and be dismissed.
Veilguards are the most elite healers in Valen not because they possess superior compassion but because they endure what others cannot.
While you are not trained as front-line combatants, you will receive combat instruction.
You will learn how to defend yourselves long enough to reach your patients.
“Many of you arrive with training. Some of you arrive with experience. That grants you nothing here. Ashwell does not care who you were before you crossed its gates.”
So in his office earlier he wasn’t merely being an asshole to me. It seems this is his personality in general. Intense is an understatement.
“By the end of this year, you either possess a functional understanding of living anatomy across bloodlines or you are not here. If you remain, you proceed to blood year. If you remain after that, breath year. Graduation is not guaranteed.
“I trust your mentors for the day have provided your class schedules and books. Classes begin at first light tomorrow. The Mirror Ceremony has been pushed until tomorrow night. Not all of you will make it even that far.”
His eyes shift, finding mine. My throat tightens, but I don’t look away. His eyes narrow briefly, seemingly looking through me.
“You’re dismissed.”
He steps down from the stage and disappears through a side door, leaving the room suspended in stunned silence.
I realize I’ve been holding my breath.
“Welcome to Ashwell,” Ellavee mutters, a humorless huff slipping from her as she pushes back from the table and stands.
Chairs scrape across the floor all around us as the room begins to empty, conversation returning in low, unsettled murmurs.
Lux rises beside me, and I follow them both automatically, drifting a step behind as they start talking about something I don’t quite catch.
Their voices blur together, distant and muffled, my mind still tangled in everything the headmaster said, in everything he implied.
I barely register where my feet are taking me, then something pale catches the corner of my eye, a flash of silvery white.
I turn.
A tall young man stands a few rows away, light-colored wings folded neatly behind his back, feathers catching the glow of the sconces along the walls. My gaze locks instinctively, tracing the familiar line of his shoulders, the curve of his jaw.
And then his eyes meet mine.
Blue. Impossible, unmistakable blue.
Jace.