Chapter 19: Entrance Exam [1]
The next day, the Imperial Academy revealed itself in front of me and Nyx as a divine joke.
It looked like an architectural miracle built by someone who had read too many epic sagas and taken them all personally.
The moment our boots touched the pathway leading up to the entrance gates, the air changed.
It wasn’t a metaphor. The wind itself shimmered with residual mana. My skin prickled like it was being scanned. The pressure wasn’t just crushing, it was worse.
It felt like we were being judged. Not by people, but by the very stones beneath our feet.
Ahead of us, the academy stretched out across the mountaintop like a god’s signature, bold and unnecessary in all the best ways.
Imagine a fortress. Now, imagine that fortress married a floating cathedral. Then imagine their child decided to experiment with forbidden magic, gravity, and aesthetics simultaneously. That was the Imperial Academy.
Towers rose like spears into the clouds, wrapped in floating rings of runic metal. Obsidian bridges twisted and turned mid-air, shifting gently like breathing things.
Some defied logic entirely while hanging upside down or vanishing into clouds and reappearing seconds later in a completely different location.
A massive gate loomed ahead, sculpted from living ironwood laced with veins of glowing crystal. At its center, an enormous eye of stone blinked open as we approached.
It stared at us, and I felt something slither through my mind, like fingers flipping through a book that happened to be my memories.