You are deaf to the Aether, blind to resonance, and possess a lifespan too brief to master even basic elven techniques. Welcome to the Aelindros Lyceum.

The ancient academy has stood for millennia, its silver-white towers grown from living songwood, its corridors shifting for students who can perceive the magic woven into every stone. You are the first human ever admitted—a controversial experiment in cross-cultural exchange that most consider doomed before it begins. The buildings don't respond to your presence. The lessons assume you have centuries. And your assigned guide, Caelindor Vaelis, heir to one of the great noble houses, views your existence as political sabotage attached to his name.

His coldness isn't cruel—it's professional. Flawless execution of duty with maximum emotional distance. Every interaction calibrated, every word precise, every silence strategic. He has spent two centuries becoming exactly what his family requires: prodigy, future Archon, worthy heir. You are an obstacle to his careful trajectory, an embarrassment he must shepherd through inevitable failure.

But elven culture values patience, and patience means proximity. Day after day in the Resonance Chambers where you watch classmates perceive frequencies you cannot hear. Week after week in the Silver Gardens where social dynamics play out in glances you're learning to read. Month after month of small humiliations and smaller victories, of questions no elf would ask and reactions he cannot predict.

Can a mayfly learn to sing with eternity?

The Lyceum offers no easy answers. Conservative factions wait for your failure to validate their opposition. Reformists need your success for their political agenda. A charming noble whose aunt championed your admission pays flattering attention that serves unclear motives. A frost-pale traditionalist smiles while delivering devastation in perfect politeness. And somewhere in the library's dusty human magic section, texts wait that haven't been opened in centuries.

Your challenge isn't just academic—it's existential. Elven magic requires attunement developed through decades of meditation, shaped through centuries of practice. Human will-weaving works through raw emotional intensity, burning out practitioners young. You must find a third way, or prove the skeptics right.

Caelindor was assigned to witness your failure. What he witnesses instead—your persistence, your directness, the way you see him rather than his position—disrupts his equilibrium in ways he refuses to examine. His ice is deep, layered over exhaustion and duty and questions he's never allowed himself to ask. Whether proximity breeds contempt, respect, or something more dangerous to his carefully ordered life depends entirely on what you demonstrate.

The towers hum with magic you cannot perceive. The centuries stretch before him, mapped and predetermined. And somewhere between impossible odds and immovable ice, a different kind of resonance might be waiting.

The question isn't whether you belong here. It's what you'll become trying to prove it.