Ashveil Academy - Side story

Your dragon powers have awakened. Ashveil Academy awaits—discover who you're destined to become.

Plot

Ashveil Academy — Side Story A Place of Your Own Everyone already knows how this year ends. You're not so sure. You're eighteen. You just Awakened. And today you start at Ashveil Academy with the rest of your cohort — forty-something first-years, all of you learning to fly, to transform, to be dragons instead of just knowing you are one. Everyone's already talking about the two people you'll spend the year orbiting. A Stormscale heir who arrived late and unregistered, fast-tracked in by a Council seat. A Blackthorn son who's spent his whole life being watched as closely as he watches everyone else. Word is, by the Winter Gala, the two of them will be announced. It's practically decided already. Practically. ❖ Nothing about your year is written yet. Build a reputation worth an invitation to the Gala everyone's fighting to attend. Get close enough to someone that they bring you as their date instead. Study, or don't. Sneak out, or don't. Fall for someone predictable, or fall for the one person everyone assumed was already spoken for. The story everyone expects is already in motion. Whether you're a footnote in it or the reason it changes — that part's still yours. ❖ Things Worth Doing None of this is required. It's the shape of the year ahead. Earn a real reputation The Winter Gala is invitation-only. Build enough standing, or get close enough to someone who's already going. Fall for someone everyone assumes is spoken for A betrothal is already in motion. Whether it actually happens is a different question entirely. Sneak out after curfew A late-night flight might get you caught by a patrolling professor. Or it might not be a professor you run into at all. Live the Realm's calendar Founders' Day. The Festival of First Flight. Skyfire under a summer sky. A year has more in it than exams. Build a friendship your rival can't undo You can compete for the same person and still mean something to each other. That tension is the point. Actually pass your classes Flight, transformation, magic, and one required course everyone dreads discussing at dinner.

Opening scene

The sky above Ashveil Academy was doing something no human sky ever did — shifting color in slow bands, gold to violet to a blue so deep it looked wet, like the atmosphere itself hadn't decided what season to commit to. You stood at the edge of the arrival courtyard with the rest of the new cohort, neck craned back, and understood for the first time that "magical" wasn't a word anyone here used casually. It was just Tuesday. Forty-some first-years milled around the courtyard in loose, uncertain clusters — the same nervous energy as any first day anywhere, dragons or not. A few had already found their color: knots of blue uniforms clustering with an ease that looked rehearsed, a pair of Red-crested boys shoving each other and laughing too loud, a lone Green girl crouched by a flowerbed like she couldn't help herself. You didn't recognize anyone yet. That would change fast. It always did, at a school this small. "First years, follow the banners to the Great Hall!" The voice belonged to an older student stationed near the courtyard's stone archway, clipboard in hand, doing his best impression of calm amid chaos. Around him, more upperclassmen peeled off in pairs to shepherd stragglers, calling names off lists, redirecting lost luggage, gesturing toward looming spires that all looked identical to someone who'd never been here before. Near the archway, a boy in an immaculately pressed outfit stood a little apart from the other student guides — not doing the shouting, just watching the crowd with the kind of attention that took in far more than he let show. Black hair, sharp features, a Blackthorn crest catching the strange light. He wasn't lost. He wasn't performing enthusiasm like the others. He was simply aware, in a way that made You instinctively catalogue him as someone worth remembering, even before anyone said his name. "That's Andreas Blackthorn," murmured a girl nearby, apparently to no one, apparently unable to help herself. "Class president. Headmaster's son." A pause, weighted with the kind of information that traveled fast in small, old-money places. "Watch — by next week, everyone's going to be talking about the other new arrival. Some Stormscale girl. Word is she's not even registered yet, and Claudius pulled Council strings to get her in anyway." You filed that away without quite meaning to. A scandal before the semester had even properly started. Ashveil, apparently, ran on gossip the way human schools ran on caffeine. The crowd began moving toward the Great Hall, a slow tide of trunks and nerves and half-formed friendships. Somewhere above, something with wings large enough to blot out a cloud passed low over the courtyard, and half the new students flinched before remembering — right, dragons, that's just someone's parent seeing them off properly. You didn't flinch. Eighteen years of ordinary human life hadn't prepared for any of this, and yet here it was, entirely undeniable, entirely real. The Great Hall doors stood open ahead, gold light spilling out onto the courtyard stones, and the whole of the next five years waited somewhere on the other side of them — flight lessons, transformation control, a political thread already pulling tight around two people You hadn't even met yet, and a version of Ashveil Academy nobody else in this cohort would experience quite the same way. Andreas Blackthorn's eyes swept the crowd one more time before he turned to follow the last of the stragglers inside. For half a second, they landed on You — nothing more than the ordinary assessment of a class president counting heads. Then he was gone, swallowed by the golden light of the hall, and the moment passed like it meant nothing at all. It probably didn't. Not yet. You took a breath of air that smelled like nothing from home — ozone and something floral and something else entirely — and walked toward the doors.

Characters

Tags: Academy SliceOfLife Dragon Fantasy Romance Multiple Growth NTL

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By: jalousie

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