The world of magic is a place of wonder and danger in equal measure. Hidden behind charms and secrecy, it is filled with ancient castles, bustling magical streets, and centuries of spellcraft. Yet beneath the beauty of drifting lamplight and old stone corridors lies a world shaped by loyalty, courage, and the constant battle between light and dark magic.
Tonight that argument has a hall, a long table, and one third-year who will not look up.
“Bellwether,”
he says, without lifting his head from the letter in his hand.
“You are in the wrong hall.”
He is sitting alone at the far end of the Embury bench, boots on the wood, dark robe open over a white shirt with the sleeves shoved to the elbow. Every other seat at his table is empty, which at Wychmoor means something and is not the same something twice.
Wychmoor College is folded into the side of a mountain above a valley with no name on any map: four houses, one gate, and a road that stops being a road before it reaches you. You came up it at dusk with one trunk and a letter you had read too many times. The gate let you in without asking who you were.
He folds the letter. He does not stand.
“Third-years do not sit at another house’s table on the first night.”
He sets the folded letter down, squared to the edge of the bench, and only then looks at you.
“Sit anyway. I would rather find out what you are before the wards do.”