The first morning away from Eldermire felt… wrong.

Not because of the campfire smell in my cloak, or the sting in my shoulders from a pack I wasn’t used to carrying. It was the silence. No goats. No Lyra’s voice, sharp and amused. No Master Eron’s calm observations or my father’s quiet disapproval. No familiar rattle of the market carts, no echo of children’s laughter chasing after stolen apples.

Just me, Fenric, and the open road.

That silence was broken by Fenric

“Think they’ll let us duel at the academy?” Fenric asked, swinging his sword through imaginary enemies with the enthusiasm of a bard’s tale. “Bet I could take three nobles in one go. Maybe four.”

“I think you’ll be too busy scrubbing floors if you keep saying you can take multiple nobles on.” I muttered, brushing a leaf from my hair and sidestepping a muddy patch he blindly trampled through.

He laughed, loud and full of life. “You’ll warm up, Zildra. You’ve got that broody hero look going, but I bet you’re just a softie underneath. Bet you cry during lullabies.”

I didn’t respond. My mind was elsewhere on Lyra, the tree where we always sat, the sound of the village well creaking at dawn, the shape of her smile when she wasn’t hiding it. I’d already written a letter in my head. Twice. Maybe three times. But there was nowhere to send it yet. No address for broken promises.

We walked for days under a sky that shifted from stormy grey to brilliant gold. At night, we took turns watching the fire, eating dried meat and stale bread while Fenric spun grand tales of glory and blades that sang with magic. I mostly listened.

Caravans passed us by some cheerful, others suspicious, a few outright rude. One merchant offered us work for the day; Fenric almost accepted just to boast about how a Mistalin candidate had once carried crates of fermented onion wine.

The closer we got to the capital, the more the air changed. Not just in smell, though it did shift from pine and moss to the faint trace of iron and smoke but in feeling. The land itself felt older. More awake. The trees stood straighter, and the birds were quieter. Even Fenric noticed.

“Do you feel it?” he asked one dusk, as we made camp under an arching oak.

“Yeah,” I replied. “Like something’s watching.”

And it was. History. Power. Something we didn’t understand yet.

Then, it happened. One morning, with dew still clinging to our boots and fog curling between stones, I stopped walking as i felt a gaze upon me, I looked up to see it.

The legendary Air Castle.

Some called it Mistalin’s Castle. Others whispered the name Skyhold. A fortress hidden among clouds, said to be the final resting place of Mistalin himself, untouched by time and unreachable for over two centuries. Most people lived and died without ever glimpsing it. But there it was gliding silently across the heavens like a phantom citadel. Its towers shimmered with sunrise, windows aglow like stars caught in glass. It didn’t seem real.

I noticed that Fenric was looking at it as well

Fenric’s jaw dropped. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

I nodded slowly. “Yeah.”

According to the stories, it only appeared once every twenty years. And if you were the first to see it… and made a wish…

That wish would come true.

I didn’t believe in legends.

But I wished anyway.

And though I’ve never told anyone what I asked for, if I ever see the castle again I’ll wish I never made that first wish at all.

The castle drifted behind a curtain of clouds, fading like breath on glass. We didn’t speak for a while after that.

The landscape changed again as we approached the city. The trees thinned. The stones beneath our feet became polished brick. Knights patrolled in twos and threes, their white and blue armor gleaming with discipline, not ceremony. The sheer walls of the capital eventually rose before us, wide and defiant, etched with runes that shimmered faintly in the sun.

But the true moment the one I’d imagined since I first heard the name came when the academy gates appeared.

They didn’t rise so much as emerge. One moment, we were in a quiet valley, flanked by hills. The next, black iron gates veined with glowing silver threads loomed above us. They pulsed, faintly alive, responding to our presence like they knew who we were or who we might become.

Mistalin’s Academy wasn’t just stone and magic. It was a promise. A question. A warning.

It was more than a school.

It was a declaration.

And it was waiting.

“Last chance to turn back,” I said, half-joking, half-hoping.

Fenric grinned. “Turn back? I’ve already decided the party name that i will lead.”

I didn’t laugh. I just held up my scroll of acceptance, watched as the silver threads brightened, and listened.

A bell rang.

Not a loud one. Just a single chime, deep and cold.

The gates opened slowly as I entered and shadows spilled across my boots leaving fenric behind.

I waited for him on the other side, and as we met we knew, this is it.

We crossed the threshold.

And just like that, the world we knew was behind us.

Would we be recognized for our efforts to get into the academy as commoners, or would we be ostracized for it?