A New Friend

  The first week passed the way first weeks pass when you have decided not to be noticed — quietly, without incident, in the steady unremarkable rhythm of someone who shows up, does what is required, and disappears again before anyone finds a reason to look twice.

  Core subjects every day. Mikaela's Runic Studies in the morning — precise, demanding, the kind of class that required your full attention not because she asked for it but because the material punished the absence of it. Aura and Magic Control in the afternoon — quieter in tone, more deliberate, the kind of teaching that felt less like instruction and more like observation. Fitz's Basic Language twice a week — the Human was unhurried and methodical and three quarters of the room spent the first session deciding he wasn't worth their attention, which Diablo noted as their mistake and not his concern. Rhakal's Survival and Fieldcraft on alternate mornings — the Lion Beastman walked in on the first day, looked at the room the way you look at something you are about to take apart, and said nothing for forty seconds before beginning. Nobody had been late since.

  Days settled into each other. He ate. He attended class. He walked the grounds at hours when they were mostly empty not because he was avoiding people but because he preferred the quality of silence that existed when most people were somewhere else. He slept under the two moons and woke before the bell and moved through the academy like someone who had always been here and intended to remain unremarkable for as long as it served him.

  He preferred it this way. That was not the same as being alone by default — it was a choice, made deliberately, the same way every other choice he made was deliberate.

  Nothing worth noting happened. That was precisely the point.

  ───

  The second Alchemy class met in a low stone room in the western wing — smaller than the History classroom, shelves along the walls lined with labeled bottles and sealed containers and the organised clutter of a subject that required material to function. Attendance was low. Six students from different tiers spread across the room with the comfortable spacing of people who had no particular reason to sit close to each other.

  Diablo had been to the first session. He took the same seat. Set his bag down. Waited.

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  The door opened and someone came in late.

  Not dramatically late. Just the last one through the door before the teacher called the room to order. A Beastman — Bat tribe — dropped into the seat beside Diablo, set a bag on the desk and leaned back with the ease of someone who had never once been uncomfortable in a room in their life.

  "First time I've seen you here," they said, leaning slightly toward him. "Were you at the first session?"

  "Yes," Diablo said.

  "What did I miss?"

  "Base compound theory. The first three reactive material families. A practical demonstration with iron salt."

  They nodded with the easy acceptance of someone who had missed things before and found the world continued regardless. "I'm Noctis," they said, extending a hand without making it complicated.

  "Diablo."

  "Tier nine?" Noctis said, glancing at his disc.

  "Yes."

  "Tier five," Noctis said, with the complete ease of someone who had no complicated feelings about that number. "Leviathan Hall for you?"

  "Yes."

  Noctis looked at him for a second — not assessing, just looking — and then turned to the front as the teacher called the room to order.

  ───

  After class Noctis fell into step beside him in the corridor without asking.

  "Do you actually like Alchemy," Noctis said, "or did it just sound interesting."

  "I picked it deliberately," Diablo said.

  "Yeah but do you like it."

  "It's precise. The outcomes are predictable if the process is correct."

  Noctis looked at him sideways. "That's not the same as liking it."

  "No," Diablo agreed.

  They reached the junction at the end of the corridor. Noctis looked one way, Diablo the other.

  "See you next week," Noctis said, already turning.

  Diablo said nothing. He walked the other direction.

  ───

  The following days settled into a new pattern layered quietly over the existing one.

  Alchemy once a week. The canteen at irregular intervals where Noctis appeared with the reliable unpredictability of someone whose schedule operated on entirely different logic than everyone else's. Brief exchanges on the grounds — Noctis talking, Diablo responding in the minimal way he responded to everything.

  It worked. Noctis didn't require more from him than he was willing to give. And Noctis talked enough that the silences on Diablo's end were simply part of the conversation rather than an absence in it.

  Diablo preferred his own company. That had not changed. But he found that Noctis's presence did not require him to be anything other than what he was, which meant it cost him nothing to allow it to continue.

  ───

  On the ninth evening since the start of term Diablo sat on the edge of his bed and looked at the two moons through the narrow window. The white one large and brilliant. The red one low and steady beside it. Their double shadows crossing the plateau's stone in the patient indifferent

  way they always did.

  He went to sleep.