Ashes of the Elite

It's been a few hours since my duel with Alaster, and already everything feels different. After Evanora's little spectacle out on the platform—her making the others salute me, painting a target on my back—the proctors herded us into the station building. From the outside, it looked small, almost like an afterthought tacked onto the tracks. But the moment the doors swung shut behind us, that illusion shattered. The inside was enormous, the ceilings high and echoing, corridors branching off in every direction. Each hallway seemed to stretch impossibly far, and when I peered down the stairwells, the floors unspooled downward into a kind of gray-lit infinity, lined with numbered doors as far as I could see.

They sorted us quickly. Girls to the upper floors. Boys down lower. Two to a room, they said. Yet when I reached my assigned floor, the proctor leading us paused before a solitary door near the central stairwell and waved me inside without a word. No roommate. A reward, they claimed, for killing another Elite before stepping foot on the Academy's true grounds.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't grateful.

The room is simple but larger than I expected which I guess considering how the rest of the building was unnaturally big makes me seem kind of dumb. Cool stone floors, dark wood furnishings, and a bed with soft, untouched sheets. There's also a narrow desk with an inkwell, a wardrobe holding a fresh Academy uniform my normal black outfit, with a new robe a serpent embroidered at the collar in silver thread. A narrow window set high in the wall lets in a sliver of light although if the sun outside the window is real or not is up for discussion. There's a private bath behind a paneled door, steam still lingering from the heated water as if they knew I'd be arriving. I stripped off the dust, sweat, and dried blood from the duel and let myself soak until the water turned cool.

Now, dressed in the new uniform, I sit on the edge of my bed waiting. The proctors haven't said when the interviews or tests for House assignments will begin whatever that means, only that we'll be "called upon" soon. I've managed to pick up the names of three proctors so far. Evanora Hilta, the pink-eyed woman with the silver hair and that jagged scar; she moves with the assurance of someone who expects obedience and is used to getting it. Jax, the tall, green-eyed man who shapes stone like it's soft clay; his voice is always bored, his gaze sharp. And Eve, the purple-haired woman with those mindaro-colored eyes hers is the face I remember twisted in disgust as she disposed of Alaster's body. The rest of the proctors have deemed it unnecessary to share their names yet.

I keep thinking someone will barge in any moment summon me for an interview, or one of these "house" assignments they keep talking about. I don't even know what a house is. A team of some sort I suppose? How are they supposed to sort eighty of us—more, once the other trains arrive—through "small tests" in a single day? Do they divide us by power, personality, bloodline? The logistics alone seem impossible. Maybe they just throw us in an arena and see who comes out walking.

I'm turning these questions over, picking at the threads, when the silence shatters.

Boom.

A muffled, thunderous crack shakes the walls. I sit up sharply. Dust filters down from the ceiling. What the hell?

Another explosion this time closer. The floor trembles beneath me, and distant shouting bleeds in through walls. Screams. Panic.

Is this the test? What is happening?