Chapter 26: The Eighth Awakening.
Ms. Voss dismissed the class after giving them the homework of reading ’Model of Dynamic Mana’ written by herself.
Surprisingly enough Cordelia had the same class that Elian had, so they both left for the next one together.
The lecture hall for Continental History was older than the one Theory of Mana Manipulation had been held in—worn stone benches, portraits of past headmasters lining the walls with the specific dourness that seemed mandatory for the position, and a professor already writing dates on the board with a hand so small Elian doubted anyone past the third row could actually read them.
"Told you,"
Cordelia murmured, dropping into the seat beside him again like this was already an established arrangement rather than something that had happened exactly once before.
"Professor Aldous. Wonderful man. Genuinely believes the year something happened matters more than why it happened."
"That seems like it’d make for a difficult class."
"It makes for an efficient one. I’ve learned to fill in the why myself."
She was already pulling out a fresh page, undeterred.
Aldous cleared his throat, and the room settled with the particular obedience of students who’d clearly learned the hard way that this professor did not tolerate being talked over.
"Today we begin where every first-year begins," he said, in a voice that suggested he found the repetition mildly tedious after however many years of delivering it.
"The Sundering, from twenty four years past, arguably one of the most important even in the course of our history. I trust you’ve all at least heard the term, even if half of you couldn’t place the date without prompting."
A low mutter of vague recognition went through the room. Elian, who had heard the term exactly zero times in his life, said nothing.
"For the benefit of anyone whose provincial schooling was, shall we say, incomplete—"
Aldous’s eyes flicked briefly, pointedly, toward a cluster of students near the back who did not look remotely bothered by the insult
"—the Sundering refers to the near-simultaneous awakening of seven dormant Resonance artifacts across the continent, in the span of a single season, after centuries of collective dormancy."
Elian’s hand, without his permission, tightened slightly around the Everbloom and the staff slightly pulsed... for some weird reason.
"No one has ever satisfactorily explained why they woke when they did,"
Aldous continued, chalk scratching out another date.
"The leading theories range from the credible to the frankly embarrassing. What is not disputed is what followed. Seven artifacts, seven bloodlines suddenly holding power that hadn’t existed in living memory, and four governments that did not trust each other’s intentions with any of it."
"This is the part he skips the context on," Cordelia murmured, not looking up from her notes. "Every kingdom assumed the others had engineered it somehow. Nobody believed it was actually coincidence. That’s the part that actually started the war, not the artifacts themselves."
"....resulting," Aldous went on, entirely unaware or entirely unbothered by the commentary happening two rows from him, "in eighteen months of continental conflict now generally referred to as the Sundering War. Casualties in the low hundreds of thousands. Three kingdoms saw significant border redrawing. Zimovia’s northern provinces changed hands twice in a single year."
Elian glanced sideways at that, filing it away—Milena’s homeland which he had guessed himself, mentioned in passing, in a lecture hall thousands of miles from anywhere she’d call it home.
"The war ended," Aldous said, "not through treaty, but through a single decisive engagement at what’s now called the Ashveil line, where continental forces, having secretly allied, converged expecting a prolonged siege lasting months and instead witnessed the field cleared within a single afternoon, by a small unit under then-Lieutenant Rowan Vale."
The room’s low murmuring picked up considerably at that.
Elian sat up a little straighter.
"Vale’s account of the engagement remains classified beyond the official summary,"
Aldous continued, unbothered by the room’s renewed interest, clearly having delivered this exact lecture every year to every new batch of students who reacted the exact same way.
"What is public record is this: the war ended within the week. The peace that followed was negotiated hastily, by exhausted governments eager to stop counting bodies, and has held—mostly—for twenty four years, propped up by a series of alliances, trade agreements, and, in several notable cases, arranged successions between noble houses meant to keep old rivals tied together by blood rather than treaty alone."
Elian felt that land somewhere specific and uncomfortable, though he couldn’t have said exactly why yet.
"Which brings us,"
Aldous said, finally turning from the board and looking at the class.
"To why this matters to you, specifically, as first-years entering a continent that has spent the twenty four years balancing on a peace nobody fully trusts. Seven Resonance artifacts, once dormant, once waking without warning in a single season."
His gaze swept the room, landing—Elian was almost certain, though it could have been paranoia—on him for half a beat longer than strictly necessary.
"As of this term, an eighth has woken. Alone, twenty four years after the others, with no clear cause anyone’s identified."
The room had gone properly quiet now.
"Draw your own conclusions about what that might mean for the balance everyone’s spent fourteen years maintaining," Aldous said, entirely dry, already turning back to the board.
"We’ll discuss the pre-Sundering political landscape next session. Take notes on the treaty dates. They will, in fact, be on the exam, regardless of how tedious you find them."
Beside him, Cordelia had gone very still, notebook forgotten, staring at him with an expression that had shifted from academic delight into something considerably more serious.
"You didn’t know any of that... did you." she said quietly. Not quite a question, rather something she was saying to convince herself.
"No," Elian admitted hastily. "I didn’t."
She glanced down at the Everbloom, then back up at his face, and for the first time since he’d met her this morning, she didn’t seem to have anything immediately clever to say about it.