CHAPTER THREE: ROOTBOUND

CHAPTER THREE: THE BRANCHES ABOVE

The Academy wasn't built to teach you how to use magic.

It was built to decide if you deserved to.

Founded after the First Collapse, when rogue Arcani nearly shattered the continent, the Academy system was a response — a leash, wrapped in gold and law. In theory, it was a meritocracy. Show potential, unlock nodes, climb the Tree.

In practice? It was a battlefield with a syllabus.

At Dawnmarch Academy, every student was tested weekly. Ranked monthly. Graded not just on skill, but control, creativity, and the ever-ambiguous "combat viability." There were five main disciplines:

Arcane Control – meditation, manipulation, internal tuning

Combat Application – weapon training, Arcana dueling, sparring

Theory & Law – history, arcane ethics, elemental science

Channeling Techniques – the art of drawing from the Tree without overload

Field Simulation – team-based trials that replicated real-world missions

If you failed three evaluations in a row, you were cut. Not expelled — erased. Your Arcana was sealed by the Crown, your Tree locked, and your future burned down to ash.

No pressure.

My daily schedule felt like punishment designed by a committee of sadists.

Up at fifth bell, a shrieking chime system that pulsed directly into the bone. Quick wash, breakfast with tasteless nutrient paste — and then six hours of classes split across Control, Theory, and Combat.

Most students looked graceful when they trained. Their Trees glowed golden, their powers unfolding with discipline and flair.

I looked like I was trying not to explode.

My node — that singular, black pulsing root — didn't behave like theirs. It didn't hum with power. It waited. It responded in flashes, in sudden pulls of reality that left me gasping. Half the time I activated it, I ended up somewhere I didn't mean to be.

I passed my first Arcane Control class only because the instructor couldn't explain how I broke her measuring tools.

On the third day, during lunch hour, I ended up sitting next to Elian Drover.

He didn't say anything at first — just slid his tray down beside mine, cracked open a book titled The Collapse of Dimensional Barriers, and started reading while eating bread one perfect square at a time.

"Still think I'm gonna implode?" I asked.

He didn't look up. "Fifty-fifty."

"Comforting."

"Your Arcana isn't a tree," he added, finally glancing at my palm. "It's a root system. Subterranean. Old magic. I've read about it. Forbidden pathways."

"You read too much."

"You flinch too much."

Fair point.

We ate in silence after that. But when I stood to leave, he spoke again.

"If you want to live, Vale… find a team. Even a bad one."

That afternoon, we were assigned our first Field Sim groups.

The assignment: locate a hidden relay stone deep in the Mistgrove section of the simulation forest and return it without triggering a trap sigil. Standard scavenger trial. Team of three. One hour. No instructors.

My team?

Ren Calden — apparently, someone had noticed our earlier match and decided to double down

Sera Lin — still quiet, still watching, now dressed in reinforced robes with faint glyphs stitched in bone thread

Neither of them seemed thrilled, but neither walked away, either.

We didn't speak much. Just moved.

Ren had surprisingly good instincts — spotted sigil tripwires before I did. Sera walked like she belonged to the shadows. No noise. No heat.

I barely kept up.

Once, I tried to bend space to get around a cliff.

It worked.

Sort of.

I ended up upside-down, three meters off-target, and nose-first in moss.

Sera didn't laugh. Ren did — once — then offered a hand.

We didn't win the sim, but we placed fourth out of twelve teams.

For me, that was practically a miracle.

Then came him.

The top-ranked student in the Academy.

The only one with an active double-branched Arcana Tree.

Cael Virel.

Tall. Unnaturally still. His Tree was visible even when dormant — twin braids of obsidian and platinum etching across his arms, coiling like serpents across his throat. His Arcana? Time and Gravity. A fusion class no one in our generation had ever mastered. His every step carried weight, literal and otherwise. People whispered when he walked by.

They said he once held a battlefield in stasis for twelve minutes during a live-field mission. Froze an entire squad of rogue Arcani in mid-air.

I believed it.

The first time I passed him in the hall, I felt my node recoil. Not in fear. In warning.

"Mono," he said as I passed.

His voice was quiet.

But somehow, it reached the back of the hallway.

I didn't turn. I didn't need to.

Cael Virel didn't say things to start fights.

He said them because he already knew who would win.

That night, I sat in my dorm, staring at the node in my palm.

Still black.

Still pulsing.

Still silent.

I didn't know what it wanted.

I didn't know what I wanted.

But I knew this:

I was already falling behind.

And roots don't reach the sky.

They claw through the dark — or they die trying.