I quickly noticed that everyone in the place wore matching outfits–black and connected with no seams like the shirt and trousers had been sewn together. The only thing that differed from one person to the other was the colors dyed at the end of their sleeves and right over their wrists. I saw yellow sleeves, orange, blue, red, purple… Some had the same colors as others, and many walked in groups with a different color for each person.

“Dex, do you know what the different colors on people’s sleeves mean here?”

A long pause. Longer than Dex’s pauses typically lasted….

“No, Rayden. I still need to complete my scans. But would you like me to tell you as soon as I have the information?”

“Uh, sure.”

The wide steps that stretched below the gaping mouth of the building’s entrance were filled to the brim with people sitting upon them. They lounged on the marble steps, many craning their necks up to the high and massive ceiling that enclosed the city in a dome-like structure. Most of them had yellow-dyed rings on the ends of their sleeves and those with yellow looked close to my age–boys and girls alike. Some maybe slightly younger, and others just a few years older, but all adolescents or barely in their 20s.

A handful of the loungers on the steps had orange on their sleeves and looked older than those with yellow on their wrists. The youngest of the oranges was maybe in her mid-30s. Did the colors differentiate age groups? Levels of life? Maybe their Tiers?

One person in particular stuck out to me, and I slowed my march at the sight of him. He stood underneath the open archway entrance with arms crossed over his broad chest and black clothes rippling underneath him, blown by the air that flowed out of the building as people walked past him. The portion of the sleeves above his wrists displayed the flame-like orange that a few others in our surroundings displayed.

But this man was still different from everyone else. Why? A dark, helm-like covering hid his entire face. Even the smooth surface hiding where his facial features would be was tinted so dark I couldn’t make out what he looked like at all. But the strangest thing… It felt like he was staring at me. I couldn’t quite determine why I felt that way, but I could almost detect some sort of power prickling along my skin and causing the hairs on my neck to stand on end. And if I had to guess, that power came from the hidden-face-man. That and I noticed that his head moved, though slightly, to follow me as I moved.

Though I was different and one of the only ones not in one of these black outfits with a color on the sleeves, no one else paid me any attention. Newcomers in this city must be a common occurrence. But this man did, and that set my teeth on edge.

I forced my attention away from the mysterious man but could still feel him watching me. I did my best to ignore it and walked over to the crowd sitting on the steps in front of the building.

“Excuse me,” I said to a young woman with bright yellow hair plaited in tight braids. She sat on the bottom step of the three and twirled the end of one of her many braids around a finger.

Her gray eyes (I couldn’t get over the variety of people in this city–my blue eyes had been the only differing color in all of Edrona) flicked up to my face, then she rolled them with an exasperated sigh.

“What d’ya want?” she snapped in a shrill voice.

“Uh, I was told I need to register. Where do I–”

She pointed a finger over her shoulder, directing me to the entrance of the building.

“In there,” she said. “Now leave.”

Was everyone in this place going to treat me like scum?

I hiked up the steps in my clanking armor, feeling increasingly self-conscious that I was still in a set of armor while everyone else wore their matching black clothes. At least no one seemed to care about my presence there. But I couldn’t shake off the chill shuddering down my spine as I passed the helmeted man leaning against the right wall of the archway, burly arms still crossed and head following me as I went.

Once inside the building, I found the interior looked even more ethereal than the city itself. Long, billowy banners painted a deep red spilled over the dozens of white balconies. Sewn into each banner were golden symbols like the ones I’d seen at the entrance to this place, but Dex quickly translated them for me, and I read “Solomon’s Realm Academy” everywhere I looked. The balconies that these banners hung from were built into the tall walls of the building and protruded from doors entirely made of glass. These doors led to what I could only guess were rooms of varying sizes.

The floor was black, with subtle gold veins swirling within its glossy surface. The floor was so slick as I stepped that I had to concentrate to keep my boots from sliding. Orbs of yellow light dangled from the ceiling, hanging by thin silver chains.

I peered up at one of the large orbs. It was transparent, but I couldn’t see any fire within the objects. Where did the light come from? Magic? I’d seen many mysterious lights since entering that first facility of Lord Solomon’s back on my home planet but could only ascertain that some sort of spell was used to create them. But back in Edrona, we'd used torches and candles to light rooms and even to light the spacious altar room in the Temple of Euridice. I’d have to figure out what Skill one needed to create these fireless lights and use my Tier 2 Skill to steal it and use it for myself. It’d definitely come in handy. I’d lost count of the times I’d found myself in some dark, creepy place with no light to reveal my path.

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The long hall that started at the entrance led to a desk at its end, set before a midnight black staircase that wound its way through the many floors above and all the way up until I couldn’t see it anymore. I squeezed between lines and clumps of yellow and orange-sleeved people, the only two colors I saw in this building, save for a sprinkling of a person or two with green on their sleeves. These green people remained on the sidelines and scrubbed floors or wiped windows.

I approached the older woman sitting behind the wide wooden desk at the end of the hall. The desk displayed intricate carvings of creatures with pointed tails and buggy eyes. Carved atop the creatures’ bodies were detailed scales, similar to scales I’d seen on snakes, Nagari, Rockcrawlers, and other reptiles in Edrona. And whoever had carved these reptile-like beasts had depicted them mid-swim in a wave of water hitting a bank of sand. At least, it looked like the piles of grainy golden dirt I’d seen on the surface of this planet, the same dirt Dex had called “sand.”

“How can I help you, child?” the woman croaked through a near-toothless yet kind smile.

My shoulders relaxed as I felt relieved to see even an inkling of kindness. “I was told I need to register or something?”

“Ah, yes. Are you new to this planet?”

“Yes, I am.”

Her beady eyes narrowed into slits as her wrinkles crested over them due to her growing smile. “Very good, very good. And where, may I ask, did you come from?”

“Should I tell her”? I instinctively thought to Dex.

Another excruciatingly long pause.

“Codex, are you alright?”

“My scans are not sensing any imminent danger, Rayden,” Codex said, answering my first question with no acknowledgment of the second.

“My home is on planet X-47-14,” I said to the woman.

“Ah, so you hail from the same galaxy as us. I’m glad you didn’t have to travel far.”

I forced away a grimace at her rotting grin. I didn’t want to offend the one person who’d shown me kindness.

“No, not far….” I agreed half-heartedly.

It felt far to me. Having to climb onto a spaceship, travel through space at hyperspeed, travel across an ocean (and as far as I understood, oceans could cover a lot of distance), then walk an hour down a tunnel to even make it to the city felt exceptionally far. But then again, I haven’t had to leave a galaxy before, or a universe for that matter. Who knew how long it would take to travel to another universe?

With frail, shaking fingers, the elderly woman tapped along the surface of her desk, seemingly pressing buttons that I couldn’t see. But I could hear the clicks as each of her long nails landed on the spots her fingers danced across.

A puff of air blew into her face, making her straggly gray hairs fly up like startled birds. A piece of the desk in front of her slid away, and then an enormous rectangle with a smooth black surface rose from beneath the new hole. The rectangle stopped just above her nose, so I could still see her eyes over it.

“Name, please?” she sang.

“Rayden Grim.”

Her fingers began clicking along the desk again. The desk stood at about my mid-chest, so I rose to the tips of my toes to better see what she was doing. I could barely catch it, but something akin to symbols that quickly turned into Edronan letters, thanks to Dex, flashed across the surface of the rectangle. Was it a sort of screen?

“R, A, I, D–

“R, A, Y, D, E, N,” I interrupted.

“Thank you,” she chirped merrily, tapping her pinky on one spot multiple times before all her fingers began click-clacking again. “And how old are you?”

“16.”

“And what status would you like to assume? Academy Resident or Academy Student? As a resident, you can attain jobs in the city and stay for as long as you’d like. As a student, you can still take on a job, but you will also live within the academy building,” she waved enthusiastic hands around us, gesturing to the entire premises, “and you can take classes and more efficiently advance through the Tiers.”

“I still have not found any danger here, Rayden. I recommend you enroll as a student.”

Taking Dex’s urging, I told the woman, “I’d like to be an Academy Student, please.”

“Very well.” More clicking. “And what Tier are you currently?”

I swallowed. “Uh, Tier 2.” Even before I saw the shadows fall over her eyes, I knew my Tier wasn’t something to be proud of. The Tier 3 core I had couldn’t even buy food here.

“Well, Rayden, I’m sorry to inform you, but Tier 2 is too low to enter the academy program. Please come back and try again when you–”

A shrill and lengthy beep interrupted the woman. She flicked her eyes back onto her screen and raised an eyebrow.

“Oh–uh…” she stuttered with more hurried clicking on her desk. “Well, it seems there is an alert attached to your name. The headmaster is expecting you.”

“Wait, what? How? Does someone already know I’m here? Why would they want to see me specifically?”

I didn’t dare imagine how someone would know I’d arrived. Or imagine the type of someone who wanted to speak to me personally. I didn’t know anyone outside of Edrona. Something felt off about it….

A whirring sound was followed by another sound of paper ripping, all behind the large screen that obscured my view of the bottom half of the woman’s face. She snapped a white sheet of paper in front of me, then set it down on the counter between my clenched fists.

I read the words, “Admission to see Headmaster Jaeke Bohin,” on the square paper in large black letters.

“Is something wrong?” I asked. “Am I in trouble?”

The woman ignored my questions, stretched a long fingernail over the paper, and tapped the words. “The headmaster is on the top floor. His offices are the only rooms on that floor, so you should be able to find him quickly. And this slip will grant you an audience in case anyone asks.”

The woman’s words were snippy, all her kindness and warmth slipping away and leaving my insides cold. Was it that bad to be a Tier 2? Did she feel like I’d wasted her time? Maybe I wasn’t allowed on this planet at all. Maybe everyone was stronger than I thought….

Only one way to find out.

Sighing, I pulled my arms away from the top of the desk and offered her a quick nod in thanks. I retreated to the base of the winding staircase positioned just behind her desk and began the long trek upward.