Custas had indeed been correct. Their homeroom was on this floor, however, it was on the opposite wing of the castle. Hound led the three of them across the quiet hallways. As she passed a few doors, Elaine made out the voices of professors who had clearly already begun teaching. Just how late were they?

According to Hound, they still had a few minutes, and he kept them moving at a hasty pace. When Fearne mentioned that all of them were in Homeroom Class No. 7, it elicited a strong hurricane of laughter from the man. He didn't elaborate on why, just told them to "brace themselves". But that only raised further questions.

"So, Mr. Hound, was it?" said Custas, walking alongside the large sorcerer, as well as a couple paces ahead of both Elaine and Fearne. "You seem to know a lot about the school, yeah? The three of us are newbies, getting ready to start a rigorous training of becoming Professional Sorcerers. I was wondering, got any pointers for us?"

Hound side-glanced him with an elevated brow. "Pointers?"

"You know, tips, tricks, advice. Stuff that'll help lighten our load."

"I'm the groundskeeper kid. Not really too versed in the specifics of your lessons," Hound shrugged. "I suggest talking to the professors. They're sure to know way more than I do."

"Come on, man. You said you've worked here for a long time. Surely you've gotta know something."

Hound scratched his beard, which shifted around a sour frown. "All I'll tell you is this," he grumbled. "You Blues are sure to have an easy semester if you stay out of trouble. From my experience, the biggest troublemakers are those who don't know when to stop talking. Get the picture, kid?"

Custas paid Hound's grim advice with a nervous chuckle, only to sedate his pace and retreat a step behind Fearne. Yeah, Hound was a nice guy. But Elaine didn't want to be the one that made him angry or, in Custas' case, worked on his nerves.

"Err, Mr. Hound," said Fearne. "You called us Blues. Are you perhaps referring to our capes?"

Elaine glanced at the blue-colored mantle over her left shoulder. She'd been wondering about that as well.

"You lot are blue capes; I just call them Blues," Hound answered, turning down a corridor on his right. "Each cape represents a school year. The blue capes are for the first-years, red for the second-years, then there's green for the third-years, and yellow for the fourth. Finally, there's the black cape for fifth-year students. Your professors will go far more into depth than I ever could but that's basically the gist of it. At the start of every school year, you will be given a different cape to signify that you've advanced to a new level. Comes in handy for when you're tryna figure out who's who."

Hound stopped by the second to last door before the end of the hallway on his right. Unlike the other rooms they'd passed, Elaine couldn't hear any voices behind it. Not a peep. Were they in the middle of taking attendance? Was there even anyone inside?

Hound coughed into his gloved hand and said, "This is the spot. I'd do well to memorize it as you'll be expected to report here every morning."

Fearne bowed to him, hands clasped in front of her. "We appreciate you taking time out of your schedule to help us."

"Think nothing of it, lass," Hound chuckled. "If anything, it's Glyph's responsibility to look after you students. The fact that you didn't know where to go is a blunder on our part. So relax, and tackle your first day with the ferocious resolve of a dragon."

Hound moved out of the way and motioned a nod at the door. Gulping, Elaine stepped forward, grabbed the brass-colored knob, pulling the door open with a creak. Heads turned, curious eyes peered. She counted twenty of them, all attired in the same uniform as herself. However, she noticed that each of the boys donned red-colored ties hanging from their necks and draping down their chests, just like Custas did himself.

It was a fairly spacious room outfitted with wooden floorboards and walls composed of darkish bricks. There was a warm, somewhat earthy smell permeating the place, a scent like fresh paint sleeping on lumber. Morning sunlight spilled inside through the tall, oval-shaped glass windows on the opposite side of the room, painting the floors, walls, and students with silvery, golden light.

A black-colored chandelier hung from the ceiling; none of the candles fixed around its circular rim were lit. Two tall shelves filled with a plethora of multi-colored books stood at the rear of the room, and another had been posted adjacent to an untouched chalkboard a few shuffles behind a desk where Elaine was expecting to find their professor. The desk was empty.

Elaine counted over eighteen students present in the vicinity. Adding herself, Fearne, and Custas into the equation meant that this homeroom class consisted of twenty-three. Was every class this ginormous, she wondered. Glyph had an impressively low acceptance rate; Elaine hadn't anticipated there to be this many.

But if everyone present had, in fact, earned a place at the academy, it must have meant that they were exceptional mages in their own right. This fact  excited her, but Elaine wouldn't discount the intimidation that made her heart pound heavily against her chest. Would she be able to compete with them? Would she be able to survive against goldbloods? Protiges? The best of the best?

The student desks were organized into six rows; the first and closest to the front of the class consisted of three whilst the rest had four. They were situated evenly. No two desks were overly close to one another—providing each student enough space to stretch out their arms or legs—and so traversing through the pathways between each desk wouldn't prove to be a problem.

As Elaine took another sweep of the place, her eyes landed on one student in particular. She'd met him before, well, not exactly. But she recognized his auburn-blonde hair. He'd been the noble she spotted exiting his flying carriage the day she arrived on campus, and he looked just as disinterested then as he did now.

He was sitting at the last desk of the second row, and so he wasn't that far from the door. He wasn't that far from Elaine. Sitting with a slouch and a chin resting in his palm, his eye sluggishly shifted towards her. Their stares collided, and he expelled a yawn.

Huh. I guess he doesn't remember me, Elaine thought. Not that I expected him to. I haven't even given him my name.

Something deep down within the pits of her stomach spiraled like the enormous whirlpools on the Diamer Coast. Anger? No, that wasn't it. Rage was an emotion that burned. This one melted through the cracks in her fingers, spilling onto the floor into a pathetic, muddy puddle.

It was like seeing storm clouds on a perfect summer morning or a broken wand abandoned in an alleyway. Disappointment. Yes, this was disappointment. Wait a sec! Why am I disappointed?!

"Wow, we really lucked out!" Custas exclaimed as the door closed behind them. "We even got here before the professor did."

Fearne frowned. "Strange. Even if we weren't technically late, I would have thought the teacher would be here by now."

"So did we," voiced someone within the crowd of students. "We've been waiting here for over half an hour. Join the club."

"I'm sure our professor is merely running late. No need to throw a fuss over it. Let's have some modest decorum, yes? The best we can do for now is await their arrival as dedicated students," said a girl in the third row.

She was fair-skinned with pale blue-colored eyes as cold as an icy stone, and she possessed streaming auburn-colored hair characterized by a red tint; it poured like rivers over her shoulders. She spoke with a courteous tongue, each of her sentences articulated to such a degree that Elaine wondered if she had them pre-rehearsed.

"Perhaps one of us should consult the front desk. Inquire as to the whereabouts of our instructor," suggested a boy sitting next to her. He was slender-faced with well-kempt dark hair, and a pair of rectangular glasses sat on his nose. Leaning forward in his seat, he continued, "Even you have to acknowledge this to be an irregularity."

"It is...highly unprofessional, I must admit," the girl said, tapping a finger on her table. "In spite of that, however, I believe if matters went awry, we would have already been contacted. I think it best if we all remain here, lest we incite an even bigger confusion."

She then messaged a leer at Elaine, nodding. "Come, join us. Your names should already be on the desks that you were assigned to."

"Well, isn't that convenient," snickered Custas as he strode past Fearne.

Elaine made her way around the perimeter of the classroom—trying not to make her glance at the familiar blonde-haired kid too overt as she staggered by—and located her desk at the end of the fourth row, the one that was closest to the wall. She'd peel her name tag later, once she'd gotten used to the table's position.

As she pulled out her chair to seat herself, Elaine nearly let an astonished yelp! slip out her mouth. Sitting next to her was a stocky young man with curly brown hair and a squarish face. His thick, muscular arms stretched against his uniform's fabric, and those bulky fists clasped on his desk looked like they could crush boulders. Elaine winced as he shot an inquisitive glare through his pair of narrow, hazel-colored eyes. She said nothing and concentrated on the back of the person ahead of her, hoping their homeroom teacher would get there soon.

They didn't, and time ticked on without any regard for the class' growing irritation and boredom.

This wasn't how Elaine had pictured her first day of Glyph turning out. Trapped in a room surrounded by sighs and moans. As a little girl, she envisioned herself going on magical adventures, hurtling spells out of her wand. But reality and her imagination shared very little in common; the former was vastly more disappointing.

"Argh, sunder this!" growled a boy at the front of the class. "If I knew we'd be spending all this time doin' absolutely nothing, I wouldn't have been in such a hurry to finish my breakfast!"

"Forget breakfast. I wouldn't have gotten out of bed so early," yawned a sleepy voice from behind her. "Oh, well. At least I can catch up on some Zs now..."

"You're missing the point, Laurence! Why should we be forced to sit here twiddling our thumbs waiting on a professor that obviously doesn't give a rat's ass about us?" His tone was harsh, like a caged ogrehound that hadn't been fed in days.

"Eh, I'm sure we're just overreacting."

That nonchalant, laidback tone could only belong to Custas. It sounded like he was sitting at the front but Elaine couldn't pinpoint where. But she'd spotted Fearne at a desk in the row behind hers.

"Maybe there's been a mixup on the schedule," Custas said, "and our missing professor is just scrambling to try and fix the problem. These sort of mistakes happen every now and again."

"That still doesn't alleviate one of their responsibilities," the glasses-wearing kid countered.

"I heard an explosion from outside. I bet the other first years are having a blast," grumbled the harsh-voiced boy. "I came here to learn magic, dammit. Not to count dots on the wall. If our homeroom teacher is too lazy to show up, then I'll go and drag 'em here myself—"

An avian screech fractured Elaine's eardrums, and her thighs rammed the underside of the desk as she hopped in surprise. The creature soared across the room on its ebony wings, scanning with bright blue eyes. Elaine ducked as the bird shot over her head, a dark-colored feather dancing out the air and landing on her desk.

"What the?!" she heard Custas exclaim.

"Who left a window open?" another girl squealed. "How did a bird get inside the classroom?!"

Whenever it flapped its wings more of its feathers would drop the floor in a spiraling pattern. It dove underneath the chandelier, flew past the chalkboard, and finally flung to the entrance door, landing on someone's shoulder.

A cold shiver kissed Elaine's tailbone, streaking up her spine as she glanced toward the man dressed in a black sorcerer cloak, her eyes peeled wide with shock. He was a tall, pale-skinned fellow with flowing pitch-black hair that dropped onto his shoulders and hung as low as his waist. He had a narrow face and wore a stern expression, irises like darkened suns.

He said no a word as he scrutinized the room with a scowl, and nobody dared to make a sound. Not even the most vocal of the bunch, like that harsh-voiced boy from earlier. It was a silence that stung. The atmosphere had become heavy, crushing them all underneath its weight without remorse. Everyone had been effectively oppressed by his overwhelming pressure.

His glare eventually locked on Elaine herself. She felt a sudden wave of consternation crash into her. She sat frozen stiff in her seat, lips sealed shut. When he finally removed his harsh eyes off of her—stalking into the room as the crow ruffled its feathers on his shoulder—it was then that Elaine noticed the straining cramp stab her diaphragm.

Had she been holding her breath that entire time? Elaine breathed in as he arrived at his desk, setting down the stack of thin books and sheets he had been carrying.

"Um, hello," he started in a hard-to-hear mutter. "Welcome to Homeroom Class No. 7. My name is Allan Marsh, and I'll be your homeroom teacher throughout the duration of your five-year student career. I expect each and every one of you to be here at 8:30 on the dot every morning. Those who don't will not be allowed in, and severely punished for their negligence. If there's one thing I hate, it's tardiness."

He cannot be serious, Elaine thought, frowning.

Here he was the last to report to his own class, and yet he had the nerve to lecture them on punctuality? She would have thought that his patronizing statement might have gotten a stronger reaction than it actually did. But instead of shouts or accusations, a muted assortment of whispers and murmurs filled the classroom.

"I can't believe it," someone said. "He's actually here."

"Jeez, how many tokens do you reckon it took for them to afford him?"

"His magic's insane. I gotta see it in action!"

Excitement? Admiration? The entire class had been at their wit's ends mere seconds prior. And now they fawned over him as if he was his Royal Majesty himself. Elaine directed a squint at their lifeless teacher, more than confused.

Suddenly, it struck, familiar history kick-starting her memory. This man, this sorcerer, she did know him. Before she realized it herself, Elaine's mouth had dropped open, and her eyes went bright with amazement, with disbelief. She was in the presence of the Allan Marsh. The feared and infamous Abyssal Sorcerer of Grayrock.