The hall they were led into was larger than anything Levi had stood inside before.
It wasn't ornate. That surprised him. Given the scale of everything else at Shearer—the floating plateau, the engineless vessel—he'd expected the interior to match. Instead the hall was clean lines and pale stone and high windows that let in light without performing about it. Functional. Which somehow made it more impressive than if it had tried.
Seventy representatives stood arranged in seven blocks, one per continent, each holding together with the unconscious cohesion of people who already knew what they represented.
Caelum's ten filed into their space. Levi found himself near the front, beside Mika, Soren and Marcus close behind. Eda drifted to the edge of the formation. The five from the second group settled in around them—Flavia a few feet to his left, Kai scanning the hall like he was cataloguing exits, Ezekiel managing to look half-asleep while standing perfectly upright.
Levi looked across the room.
Six other blocks. Six other continents he'd grown up hearing about the way you hear about distant mountains—real, but abstract. Now they were simply there, close enough to study.
Eyes moved across the hall in every direction, careful, deliberate, nobody wanting to be caught doing it. Everybody doing it anyway.
A figure stepped onto a raised platform at the front—older than Aldrek, dressed in the same grey uniform, carrying it with the unhurried authority of someone who had given this speech more times than they bothered counting.
"Welcome to Shearer." The voice carried without effort. "Seven continents. A pause, long enough to let the number settle. "Before anything else, your princes and princesses, as tradition requires."
The names came continent by continent, and the hall answered each with a ripple of attention.
"Mika of Caelum."
Mika inclined his head slightly. Several gazes shifted toward their block and lingered.
"Lowe of Solara."
A tall figure near the front of the strongest continent's block returned the nod with the ease of someone who had never once doubted being looked at.
"Henry of Ravena."
A hand raised briefly from a quieter block. Ravena's representatives held themselves differently from everyone else—reserved, contained, the posture of people from somewhere secluded.
"Leora of Lunar."
A slight figure who hadn't moved once. Levi thought of how Marcus described Caelum's most dangerous fighter. Never moves the way you expect.
"Limmer of Vael."
A tall man who seemed carefree.
A sharp nod.
"Sparna of Luminus."
A young woman near the front met the room's attention with composure that read more like practice than confidence.
"And Rick of Terratia."
A broad figure near the back nodded, unbothered.
The faculty member let the names settle. "You will train, fight, occasionally fail, and—if you are fortunate—become considerably more dangerous than you currently are." A pause that carried weight. "Shearer has one rule enforced absolutely, without exception, regardless of continent, rank, or bloodline."
The hall stilled.
"No killing."
They landed harder than anything said so far.
"Conflict between students is expected. Encouraged, even. You will fight each other. You will lose to each other. None of that concerns this faculty." The gaze swept the hall slowly. "What concerns us is the line that cannot be uncrossed. Cross it, and Shearer's protection ends the moment you do—political, martial, or otherwise. Take this rule with the seriousness it requires, regardless of how strong you believe yourself to be."
Nobody spoke.
'Everything else,' Levi thought, 'is negotiable.'
The tone shifted, lighter now. "Beyond that, you have more freedom than most of you are used to. No assigned lessons. No assigned instructors unless you request one. Your schedule is your own." A dry note. "The only true requirement is growth. Get stronger, however you choose, and Shearer asks nothing further. However, if you fail to get stronger, you will be kicked out. Tomorrow evening the headmaster will teach you how to gather Aether and make it your own, after that you will be given scrolls and manuals to progress, unless you choose to be assigned lessons."
Levi glanced at Mika. Mika was already looking back, the same surprise on his face.
'No mandatory path,' Levi thought. 'Just get stronger and don't kill anyone while doing it.' He turned that over. It sounded simple. He had a feeling it wasn't.
The briefing continued—logistics, living arrangements, facility locations—but Levi's attention had drifted across the hall. Lowe of Solara, who carried himself like ceiling was a word that didn't apply to him. Leora of Lunar, who hadn't shifted her weight once. The quiet block from Ravena, the only continent not measuring everyone else in the room.
The tour began once the briefing ended, and this was where Shearer revealed itself properly.
A younger guide led Caelum's ten through corridors that shifted character as they walked—stone giving way to surfaces that looked carved from solid light, walkways suspended over open air with nothing visible holding them up, doors opening before anyone touched them.
The library stopped Levi mid-stride.
It rose through a dozen floors, shelves spiraling along the walls into a haze of soft light he couldn't trace the source of. Threads of gold aether moved between levels, carrying things too fast to identify. A handful of students sat scattered through the lower floors, silent, unbothered by the scale around them.
"How many books," Soren asked the guide.
"Nobody's counted," she said.
Soren said nothing further. Levi suspected they'd be losing him here for long stretches in the future.
The training facilities came next—vast enclosed arenas, larger than anything in Fraire, environments shifting to match whoever occupied them. One chamber held a contained storm, lightning crawling across a false sky while a soaked figure trained beneath it. Another held a frozen landscape. A third was simply empty stone, vast and waiting.
"They respond to aether," the guide said. "Terrain, conditions, gravity in the higher tiers. You'll have access once assessments are complete."
Marcus had gone quiet, staring at the storm chamber with the look of a man doing arithmetic about how soon he could justify using it.
The relaxation areas came after—courtyards with water running upward instead of down, gardens with plants Levi didn't recognize growing in patterns too precise to be natural, rooms built simply for being still in. Everything carried the same quality: generations beyond what Caelum considered advanced.
He walked the rest of the tour in silence, cataloguing without commentary. Mika quieter than usual. Eda absorbing everything without comment. Even Kai's constant scanning slowed as the volume of information began to outpace him.
By the time the tour ended, the sun had begun its slow descent.
The guide stopped them at a junction and gestured down two paths. "Your quarters are down the left corridor. You're free from here. Training opens at dawn. Meals are continuous—no schedule for that either." She looked across all ten of them. "Welcome to Shearer. What you make of it is yours to decide."
She left without ceremony.
The ten of them stood at the junction, the weight of the day settling now that there was nothing left to walk toward.
"That storm chamber isn't going to use itself," Marcus said.
"It's evening," Soren said.
"Exactly. Good time to start."
Levi looked down the corridor toward their quarters, then back toward the library.
'No schedule,' he thought. 'No required path. Just get stronger.'
He thought about the distance still sitting between where he stood and what the Aethravyn's aether release had shown him existed. About Lowe's effortless confidence. About Leora's stillness. About forty representatives who had each already proven, in their own way, that they belonged here.
'Then,' he thought, 'I'd better start now.'