"It’s as if we have reached a completely different world," Vlad murmured, unable to take his eyes off the marvel before him.

"You two are quite something, making your senior wait for you," a familiar voice entered Vlad’s ears.

He lowered his head from the academy.

He lowered more. And more.

There she was, finally coming into view when Vlad’s chin almost touched his chest.

Sophia stood before him with pouted lips, her hands resting on her waist.

The duo was so mesmerized by the academy’s architecture that they hadn’t even noticed her standing beside the wall, excitedly waiting for them.

"Oh Miss Sophia, I didn’t notice you the—"

"Booo!" Sophia pouted even more, making a cross sign with her index fingers. "I’m in second year. You should be addressing me as Senior if you don’t want to get into trouble."

’Oh, is that why she was sulking before?’ Vlad murmured inwardly before answering, "Oh, I understand, Senior."

"Good," Sophia nodded in satisfaction. "Follow me, I will show you two to your dorms."

She turned on her heel, walking at the front while Vlad and Chloe moved behind her. For some strange reason, Chloe was glaring more at Vlad than at the academy itself.

"Tomorrow, you will be taken around the academy during orientation," Sophia said, keeping the conversation alive. "There will be some fun games as well that the seniors have prepared for their cute juniors. Your uniforms, the courses you wish to enroll in, the books you need for those courses, and the guidelines you must follow here will also be covered tomorrow."

While she continued with her lecture and Vlad listened carefully with a serious expression, Chloe finally took her eyes off him and turned her attention to the runes that slowly orbited around the towers.

"Those are the Mage Towers where final-year students of the Order of Rings prepare for graduation," Sophia revealed, noticing Chloe looking at them. "Due to frequent research failures and explosions within them, the space around them has been distorted, causing irregularities in the gravity around them."

With a grave voice, she added, "They say that true hell begins for students when they enter the Mage Tower, earning the towers an infamous nickname among the students: the ’Four Pillars of Hell’."

"Senior, what does the Order of Rings mean?" Vlad asked, curious.

"Eh? You don’t even know that?" Sophia gave him a surprised look. After a sigh, she answered, "The Arcane Academy is divided into two orders: the Order of Rings for students enrolled to become mages, and the Order of Blades for students enrolled to become knights. I’m from the Order of Rings, while you two will be assigned to the Order of Blades."

After a few minutes of walking, during which Sophia updated them on the basics, they passed through the academy’s main entrance, which was even larger than Vlad’s entire house. Several intricate patterns were engraved on the open wooden doors and appeared to be more than mere decoration. It was as if something deeper was connected to those doors, something Vlad couldn’t quite understand.

Chloe stopped for a moment, her eyes narrowing at the door. She felt as though someone was calling her, a familiar voice she had long forgotten. Something buried so deep in her mind that she couldn’t reach it. A mild headache surged through her.

She slowly raised her hand toward the door. She felt that the voice might grow clearer once she touched it. Just as her fingers were about to make contact—

"Chloe, you alright?" Vlad asked, tapping her on the shoulder.

The voices vanished and everything fell silent again.

"I’m fine," Chloe replied, shaking her head. She gave one last glance at the wooden door before moving forward.

The inside of the academy was nothing short of a maze. A wide open hall greeted them at the front, with four broad staircases leading to the upper floors at each of its four corners. The floor was laid with smooth polished marble, and the walls were painted a clean white, with glowing runes inscribed on the massive pillars that held the hall together. Corridors branched off in every direction from the hall, some vanishing around corners, others descending into dimly lit passages that seemed to swallow the light whole. Even the staircases felt deceptive, each landing revealed yet another branching of paths, as though the academy had been deliberately designed to lose people inside it.

At the centre, a miniature of the academy campus was mounted on a display, revealing the true scale of the grounds.

From what Vlad could make out, numerous additional buildings had been constructed across the campus on the far side of the academy. There were student dormitories scattered at various locations, a dense forest, several small hills, and a wide building spanning the entire far end of the campus. Name placards were affixed to each building for identification, and the structure at the very end was labelled Professor’s Dormitories.

The Academy’s campus was larger than anything Vlad had witnessed before. It wasn’t an exaggeration to say that the academy was a large city in itself, larger than Barton or Velarum. Heck! Even this miniature that Vlad was looking at took up more space than the whole barn on his farm.

"Senior, if someone gets lost here, how many years does it take to find them?" Vlad asked the obvious question.

Sophia’s expression darkened as she revealed, "One time a boy got lost here, and when he was finally found, his hair had already turned grey."

Chloe instinctively tugged at the sleeve of Vlad’s jacket, though her face showed she was completely unfazed.

Vlad, on the other hand, was left with parted lips and wide eyes.

Sophia burst into quiet giggles upon seeing the shock on his face.

"Hehehe, I asked my senior the very same question on my enrollment day and got the very same answer. I almost broke into tears from fright," she revealed between laughs. "Don’t worry, there are signs and guiding maps placed every hundred metres around the campus. As long as you can read, you will never get lost here." 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

With a brief pause, her voice turning grave, she asked, "You two can read, right?"