The amphitheater pulsed with quiet anticipation. As Professor Vorr raised her hands, the ambient light dimmed further, until only the slow-turning aetheric diagram illuminated the room. Its golden glow casting shifting sigils along the curved stone walls and over the upturned faces of nearly two hundred first-years.

"Before you utter a single word of Aetheric Speech," she said, her voice like a blade drawn slowly from a scabbard, "you must understand what a spell truly is."

The sigils above her flared, scattering into elegant geometries before rearranging themselves into a vertical tower of script and symbols, each tier humming with energy. She gestured, and they hovered there like a sacred text made manifest.

"Incantation," she said, pointing to the base. "The verbal invocation. Words that once built cities, broke rivers, and whispered down the walls of kings. Not your language. Not mine. The first language, echo of the first days. The Aether's breath, rooted in will, carved in sound, refined through pain."

Some students looked around in awe; others scribbled frantically on floating parchment, their quills enchanted to follow Professor Vorr's words.

"You do not memorize Aetheric Speech," she continued. "You resonate with it. If your voice does not carry intention, the spell will not listen. And if it does, but wavers... Well, try not to scream too loudly. It disrupts the lecture."

Nervous laughter danced around the room.

With another sharp motion, she conjured a glowing glyph in the air, traced with two fingers as if painting with fire. It hovered above her hand, a spinning, humming symbol of elegance and menace.

"Gesture. Sigil. Shape. The physical component. These guide the aether through the channels your words open. A misaligned sigil leads to... messes. Misshapen arms, singed robes, melted teeth. I've seen it all."

A hand shot up. A girl in the front row. "Melted teeth?"

Professor Vorr tilted her head. "One of my previous students got overambitious with a combustion sigil. It tried to erupt from his jaw."

The girl lowered her hand.

Vorr let the laughter die down, her expression unchanged.

"Aether weaving," she continued. "This is what separates a practitioner from a prodigy. The ability to move aether within yourself, consciously, carefully, in rhythm. Some of you will feel it right away. Most of you will not."

Her voice dropped an octave. "And some of you never will."

The diagram fractured again. This time it became a silhouette of a human body, overlaid with pulsing golden threads. The veins of a spellcaster. The map of the magical self.

"This is what you must learn. Aether flows like blood. It is patient, but it does not forgive sloppiness. You will trace this path a thousand times before your first spell is stable. And you will fail. Often."

A few students began to squirm in their seats.

"Failure is good," Vorr said. "Failure means you're reaching. But failure without reflection is rot. And rot has no place in this school."

Then she gestured and the center crystal shifted into the shape of a wand, a staff, a ring, a grimoire, and then back again.

"Your focus. The amplifier. Wands are most common. Efficient, flexible, elegant. Staffs offer brute power. Grimoires store and sequence spells but require discipline and preparation."

Her gaze scanned the room slowly. "Whatever you chose, understand this: the focus does not do the work. You do. They are precision instruments. Tools that refine and accelerate your command of the arcane. But remember, power lies in the caster, not the conduit. A fool with a legendary wand is still a fool."

At this, Thorne leaned forward slightly in his seat, his gloves glinting faintly under the magical lights. He could feel his core pulsing beneath his skin, already itching to test itself. The Ashthorn Wand at his side pulsed like it had heard every word.

Professor Vorr took one step forward. Golden light flared at her heels, spreading across the platform in branching veins, like a living sigil forming beneath her boots.

"By the end of this term, you will be expected to flawlessly execute at least three Tier 1 spells, and begin your study of Tier 2 structure. If you cannot… you will be reassigned. Aetherhold does not waste time on the complacent."

Around the room, the tone shifted. A few students straightened. Others exchanged uneasy looks. Even Ingrid Valara narrowed her eyes.

"You are not here because you are special. You are here because you have potential. It is up to you whether that potential becomes power… or nothing more than a fleeting flame."

She paused, letting that truth ripple through the air.

"I do not care who your family is. I do not care what your affinity is. In this room, only two things matter. Understanding and discipline. Because the moment you try to command aether without either, it will turn on you."

Her eyes passed over the students like a sweeping incantation. "Magic is not yours. It is not something you own. It is not your birthright, despite what some of your tutors may have whispered to lull you into arrogance. Magic is a force of nature, older than your ancestors, colder than ambition, and more fickle than luck."

She turned to the center of the room and raised her hand.

"Let us talk, then," she said, her voice sharpening, "about spells."

The floating tome from last night appeared with a pop, startling the students in the first rows. It opened to a page midair, parchment glowing faintly, while the hovering quill scribbled notes in synchronized loops. Professor Vorr didn't spare it a second glance, her focus on her students.

"A spell is not a trick. It is not a tool you flick from your wrist when convenient. It is a construction. A layered, deliberate, crafted act of will. Each spell is the culmination of centuries, sometimes millennia, of refinement. Of theory and correction. Blood. Ink. Insight."

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A dozen arcane glyphs flared into view above her head, elegant, spiraling, and incomprehensibly intricate.

"These are frameworks," she explained. "The invisible scaffolds that hold a spell's shape. You won't see them yet. Most of you never will. But they are there."

She began to pace again, and this time her steps left the faintest afterimage behind them, gold tracing her path like memory.

"Now let us contrast," she said. "Spells… and skills."

At that word, the air darkened subtly. Students leaned in.

"Skills are reactive. Instinctive. They are shaped by who you are, what you've lived through. They manifest when the world presses you against its walls, and you press back."

Her tone held no disdain, but no reverence either. Just fact.

"They are crude. Unpolished. Some are impressive, I will admit. In the right hands, a skill can level a street. Bend a sword. Save a life. But they are..." she paused, choosing her words carefully, "... a flash of lightning. Brief. Wild. Unguided."

She gestured toward the spell glyphs again.

"A spell is the architecture of lightning. The conduit. The storm's bones."

Silence fell again.

"A skill is drawn from reaction. A spell is drawn from knowledge."

The floating crystal shifted again, now depicting a jagged bolt of energy next to a precisely carved rune.

"Skills are clubs. Spells are scalpels. A skill might shatter a door. A spell could open it, lock it behind you, and erase all memory you were ever there."

A soft murmur of awe ran through the room.

"Even the simplest spell, when mastered, can bend the battlefield. Illuminate the truth. Reshape fate itself."

Her eyes fixed on one student, a boy with a runed circlet and then flicked toward a pair of twins whispering near the back row.

"You do not earn spells through battle. You cannot unlock them by force. They must be studied. Memorized. Honed. Respected."

She let that sit before her voice softened just slightly.

"If you learn ten spells by the time you leave Aetherhold, ten true spells, then you will have accomplished what most outside these walls cannot dream of. Do not be discouraged by the number. A spell is not something you collect. It is something you become."

"And I am not talking about mimicking gestures or parroting words. I speak of true mastery, where the spell and the caster are indistinguishable. That," she tapped her crystal softy, almost with reverence, "is rare. And precious."

A ripple passed through the students. Some looked shaken. Others, inspired.

Vorr allowed herself a brief pause, her expression unreadable.

"Spells are not skills. They do not awaken in you after battle. They are not born from instinct or trauma. Spells must be taught. They are knowledge and knowledge is power."

The room had fallen utterly silent. Even Cassian Ravenaire, who had been reclining casually, was sitting straighter now.

"Now, as for why you are here," she continued, "and why this school… I must remind you: what we teach at Aetherhold is not what is taught in Sarenvale, or Caerlyn, or Myriholt. There, spells are dim reflections. Repeated fragments of older truths. What you are given here… is lineage."

"For every effect a spell produces," Vorr continued, "there may be a dozen ways to reach it. A dozen variations. But here, at Aetherhold, we do not teach guesswork or unstable offshoots."

Her hand rose toward the glowing diagrams. "Each spell we pass down has survived generations of testing, refinement, and application, crafted by the finest minds who walked these halls. The spells we teach are tools of precision and studied excellence."

She folded her arms now, and her voice dipped with iron.

"You may learn an Illumination spell in Sarenvale," she said, referencing a rival academy to the west, known more for political grooming than arcane rigor, "but it will flicker. It will fade. It will not hold against the wind."

Her eyes swept across the assembled first-years.

"We are the flame that survives the storm. Aetherhold safeguards the art. And when possible, we expand it."

Thorne shifted in his seat, his wand resting beside his fingers, now pulsing more urgently, almost eager. Even he felt the weight of her words settle like a mantle over his shoulders.

Her voice quieted now, but somehow struck harder for it.

"We do not hoard knowledge. But we do protect it. You sit now in the last great hall of true arcana. You walk where spells were first uttered. You sleep above the bones of the founders. If you fail to respect what you are about to learn, it is not your failure alone, it is an insult to every hand that passed the flame forward."

She turned clutching the crystal in her grasp.

A soft ring of light blossomed at her feet, rising in a slow spiral of golden air. The floating quill paused. The tome sealed itself with a whisper.

But she did not leave.

Instead, Vorr turned slowly, surveying the hall once more with that hawk-like gaze of hers.

"I was going to let you begin tomorrow," she said, her tone conversational but edged with steel. "But I've changed my mind. Why waste time?"

The air prickled.

"You will attempt Lux now."

Dozens of first-years sat straighter. Some with excitement. Others with silent dread.

"Open your standard tomes to the first marked spell," Vorr instructed. "Page seven."

Across the amphitheater, there was a flurry of parchment, covers snapping open, textbooks summoned from satchels and bags, some enchanted to float or flip pages themselves. A few whispered the page number and watched their books obediently respond.

Thorne pulled his own tome from the side of his chair. It was heavier than he remembered. Thick-bound, leather textured, with his name already etched into the interior in shimmering aether-script.

Page Seven: Spell of Illumination — Lux.

At the top of the page was a simple glyph, a radiating star, flanked by three sharp sigils, each nested within the next like the rings of a lock.

Beneath that, a neat heading read:

Tier I — Lux

Classification: Utility / Light Incantation: "Lux" Gesture: Single upward arc, ending in spiral tip Aether Flow: Direct from core to wand-tip. No redirection. Steady release.

Vorr raised her voice again. "This is the simplest spell in the lexicon. And yet, I have seen grown mages fail it."

She turned and traced the air with her finger in one smooth motion, an upward arc, followed by a coiled spiral at the tip.

"Light," she said, calmly. "Lux."

A radiant sphere blossomed from the top of her staff, bright and flawless, hovering in the air like a captured star. Students instinctively shielded their eyes. The glow dimmed slightly at her thought.

"Observe the motion. It is precise. Not a flick. Not a jab. An arc. Ending in a coil. Like a closing ribbon."

She turned, and the sphere remained, floating obediently beside her.

"Say the word clearly. Lux. It must be shaped by will. Not muttered like a charm or a wish. If your intention falters, the spell will not obey."

The light pulsed once, then winked out.

"The flow of aether should come from your core," she continued. "Not forced, not squeezed. Just… offered."

She gestured at them, her voice rising slightly. "Your cores are full. You are young, and your aether is eager. This is the best time to learn control, before power becomes habit. Before habit becomes flaw."

She raised her hand and made a sweeping motion toward the room.

"Try."

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