Compact Hall

Highsun 13, afternoon. Compact Hall’s first-court atrium takes the light through ward-glass and lays it in long pale bars across the stone. Wardens cross behind you without slowing. The desk in front of you has already been turned toward a new Gifted.

Neris Calden is on duty — brown hair worn neatly, a warm working smile that does not hurry the air. She has already greeted you as unmarked, not yet in the Compact’s ink, and pushed a clipboard where your hands can take it. The header reads Gifted Basic Record. Name, how to send word, hour of awakening, owned Gifts: every printed line still empty. The quill she offered waits beside it. Her fingertip still rests near the Gift line, as if the pointing has only just finished.

“Write it as you already know it,” she says, public courtesy rather than a grilling. “Name, how to send word, when it woke, and the Gift. Circle comes after. A simple trial in the undercroft vault — Gift-line and judgment together. It is not a heavy burden.”

She leaves the board in reach.

“Ask anything you like. You can take your time.”