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Fizz hovered over the lectern in his tiny vest and oversized spectacles, then rapped the chopstick once like a gavel.

"Roll call," he announced. "Not of names. Of nerves. Raise your hand if you are certain you will be terrible at this."

A nervous wave of hands went up. Laughter loosened the room.

"Excellent," Fizz said. "Confidence without evidence is how barns burn down. We will collect evidence first."

He pointed his chopstick toward a cluster near the front. "League of Fizz, present."

A dozen first-years —his unofficial fan club— straightened with sacred solemnity. Several saluted. One boy almost fainted with pride and then recovered because he wanted to see what would happen next.

"You are brave and therefore volunteered," Fizz said pleasantly. "You, water boy with ink on your cheek. You, earth girl with the serious eyebrows. And you, the air lad who keeps tugging his sleeve because he is not sure it fits his arm."

"Up."

They scrambled onto the stage, cheeks pink, trying to look like they had planned for this all their lives.

Fizz turned to the hall. "Truth number one," he said. "Mana is not a color. It is not a pet. It is the river underneath the dirt. Your affinity is a habit your body learned early. Habits are good. They keep tea from tasting like soup. But habits are not prisons."

He drifted to the water-affinity boy. "Name."

"Orne," the boy said, voice small.

"Orne," Fizz said. "What does water feel like in your hands?"

"Cool," Orne said. "Heavy when it gathers. It listens if I breathe slowly."

"Good," Fizz said. "You are already a poet. Now, Orne, please do not ignite the hall. Instead, you will not make fire. You will make warmth. There is a difference. We begin with tea, not with dragons."

Murmurs. Orne blinked rapidly. "I am water," he said. "I cannot make heat."

"You make heat every time you rub your hands together," Fizz said. "Mana can be a rub. Imagine a dry winter room and the first kettle. Imagine steam on glass. Do not picture flames. Picture the air admitting it is warmer than a minute ago. That is your goal. Not fire. Comfort."

Fizz looked out at the room. "Now, all of you —yes even you in the scowl— put your palm over your own belly and breathe. Four counts in. One count holds. Four counts out. That is how the mana river listens."

He counted them through it — soft and steady. The great hall got quiet in a way halls rarely do. John found himself breathing with them, the line in his chest settling as if it had been waiting to be invited.

"Good," Fizz said. "Back to Orne. Anchor your water. Feel it as your friend. Then we ask the friend to step aside while the guest sits. You do not evict water. You host warmth."

Orne closed his eyes. Fizz hovered nearer, voice low and practical. "Pull a thread of mana up from your heart center. Do not shape it into water. Keep it clear. Now, in your mind, wrap that thread around a cup. A cup you have held. Wrap and wrap until the cup remembers hands. Then —very small— ask the thread to hum faster."

Orne's brow furrowed. His shoulders tensed, then eased. A moment later, a tremor passed through the air in front of his palm. No light. No flare. But John felt it from where he stood — like walking past a bakery door in winter and catching a puff of blessed heat.

A scatter of gasps ran through the first rows.

"Stop there," Fizz said at once, holding up a paw. "Sip, not gulp."

Orne opened his eyes. He was grinning, startled by his own grin. "I felt it," he whispered. "It was— Tea like warmth,"

Fizz said. "Exactly."

He pivoted to the earth-affinity girl. "Name."

"Lysa," she said, chin square.

"Lysa, earth is weight and promise," Fizz said. "Your job is not to fly. Your job is to loosen. Air does not only lift. It dries. It thins. If you can persuade your mana to stop insisting on staying put, you will feel lightness where your feet touch."

He tapped the floorboards with the chopstick. "Everyone who is earth-aligned, imagine your soles as doors that can open to a breeze. Not wind. Breeze. Lysa, bend your knees and hair. Now, thread from the belly. Leave it uncarved. Offer it to your ankles and imagine dust on a summer road. The way dust refuses to be heavy. Invite that refusal."

Lysa breathed. Her frown deepened, then softened. The leather of her shoe creaked. She exhaled —one surprised breath— and her stance shifted half a finger as if a coin had been slid under each heel.

A boy in the third row whispered, "She moved," like he had witnessed a miracle.

"Not much, on purpose," Fizz said, catching the whisper. "You do not go from stone to cloud at noon. You learn the dialect."

He turned to the sleeve-tugging air student. "Name."

"Pek," the boy said.

"Pek, you are very good at not being where fists are," Fizz said. "Congratulations. Today, you will not be fast. You will be stubborn. Earth is a choir that sings one long note. Air mages get bored before the note is finished. Your work is to stay."

He had Pek place his palms on the edge of the lectern and imagine a hill that did not move even when three cows argued on it. Pek's first attempt failed in the honest way of first attempts. The second lasted the length of a full breath. The third made the lectern stop wobbling when Fizz pressed on it lightly with the chopstick.

Fizz turned back to the hall, pleased. "Truth number two. The element you were born comfortable with is your mother tongue. You can learn another. Most people can manage two. More than two breaks most brains and sets hair on fire. There are rare minds who can collect three or four, but those minds are not better; they are built differently. You are not broken if you keep to a pair. In fact, you will be stronger."

He gestured and the three volunteers took a bow to immediate, enthusiastic applause. Orne looked like he might float off the stage without magic. Lysa fought with a smile and lost. Pek studied his fingers as if they had said something interesting.

"Now the rest of you will not ignite, fly, or melt benches today," Fizz said. "You will do the first step for a week. Learn to feel another element breathing in the room with you without your innate one. Its temperature. Its weight. It's patience. If you insist on tricks, your mana will sulk and your eyebrows will not grow back evenly."

That earned him a roar of laughter and a few uneasy pats to foreheads.

Fizz waved the chopstick like a baton. "Paired exercise. Everyone stands and finds a partner who is not your element. Fire with water. Air with earth. If you cannot find a contrary partner, find me and I will be contrary for free."

The room became a clumsy dance that quickly found its feet. Benches scraped. Students shuffled. Fizz zipped between pairs, correcting postures with a tap, scolding breath that ran too fast, praising quiet concentration with a murmured "Yes, like that. Let the thought get heavy."

John ended up across from a quiet girl with a spring of dark hair and a bright ribbon — Rhea's ribbon flashed a row ahead with upper-years, but this girl was another first-year, air-aligned by the way her shoulders never truly settled. John anchored his breath and did what Fizz had told Orne: a thread of uncarved mana around a memory of warmth. The girl wrinkled her nose, then startled.

"I felt it," she whispered. "Like the sun warmth through a window."

"Good," John said.

"And you," she added, surprised, "you feel like a stone that knows where it is going."

He almost laughed at that. Instead, he let the line inside him hum steady, neither void nor show, just the part that liked work.

Fizz crisscrossed the hall like a very opinionated comet.

"Stop glaring at the air," he told a fire-aligned boy. "It does not care about your face. Warm your hands as if you mean it."

"Do not hold your breath," he told an earth-girl. "Nothing in the world listens to people who are about to faint."

"Apologize to the water," he told an air-boy who had tried to light a pretend candle and only made his partner's palms damp. "You're being rude."

The great hall filled with a different kind of noise — the soft surprise of discovery. No one lit anything. No one froze anything. But everywhere, heads tilted the way heads tilt when they hear music next door through a wall. Students shook their hands and blinked. A few grinned, unwillingly charmed by the first truth that had chosen to come in their direction.

Fizz clapped twice. The small sound carried. "Sit."

They folded back onto benches, breathier now, eyes brighter in that way that says a thought had been born and had not yet run away.

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