THE NEXT MORNING BEGAN LIKE ANY OTHER.

As the sunny yolk of dawn cracked across the sky, Cas stirred from his slumber and rubbed the crusty sleepy-dust from his eyes. He stretched out his long legs from where they had been cramped on the bed overnight and looked around, ready for the onslaught of buzzing, nervous butterflies in his stomach when he couldn’t remember where he was…

Except the butterflies never came.

As the clock bells chimed eight outside, Cas shot upright and tumbled out of bed.

He remembered.

He remembered everything.

All the events of the day before flew through his mind in a flurry: bringing the raven back to life, coming to the Balance Lands, learning about the Master of All and being the Foretold…

Potentially being the Foretold, Cas reminded himself.

Still, he leapt up from the floor and ran over to shake Warrior awake. She groaned groggily and buried her head deeper under her pillow, but Cas pulled her to her feet and began spinning her around the room, the pair of them blundering about like two baboons on hot coals.

“Who sent an electric shock up your bottom this morning?” groaned Warrior, sleepily cracking an eye open as Cas hoiked her this way and that.

“I remember!” Cas gasped, beaming and shaking her shoulders. “For the first time in my life, I actually remember!”

Warrior’s mouth dropped open. Cas’s smile widened. He had the distinct impression that she was rarely lost for words.

The silence was broken by Cas’s stomach emitting an earth-shattering growl.

“Get dressed,” said Warrior, digging out an old Wayward School uniform from one of the trunks. “I’ll go and grab something to feed that grumbling monster in your belly. We’ve got a big day ahead.”

As soon as Warrior departed down the spiral staircase, Cas pulled on the spare uniform she had laid out for him. The plain white shirt was too small and the black trousers were too itchy (not to mention the pockets were full of either mice droppings or mouldy chocolate chips – Cas didn’t dare taste them to find out which), but he knew looking the part of a Wayone was crucial to Warrior’s plan. Afterwards, he settled down in the big bay window and cast his gaze across the horizon, waiting for her to return.

Overnight, Wayward had changed location again. This morning, the sun crawled into the sky above a thick, vibrant bluish-green rainforest. Multicoloured tropical birds exploded out of the dense, leafy canopy that cast dappled shadows over the winding path leading off into the distance, like a mystical golden road. Cas still couldn’t wrap his head around it. He could’ve sworn there had been a sprawling metropolis in the rainforest’s place when he had woken up in the middle of the night.

Shaking his head, he switched his attention to the horde of students arriving for the first day of term. Wayones, twos, threes … and goodness knows how many other years flooded through the great big WS gates and across the courtyard below. Each student was dressed in the same uniform as Cas but with differently coloured cloaks or pristine blazers, each emblazoned with a unique symbol and trim.

Using his excellent powers of deduction (if he did say so himself), Cas guessed that the different colours must represent their Orders. The Earthshapers were clearly the ones wearing thick, green linen cloaks or green-and-brown-trimmed blazers, emblazoned with the sigil of a leafy plant woven around a rock. The Airscapers had to be those in wispy dove-grey cloaks or grey-and-white-trimmed blazers, with a swirl of wind emblem. The Wavebreakers wore shimmering blue cloaks or blue-and-navy-trimmed jackets, and a wave as their seal. And the Firetamers wore leather-cuffed scarlet cloaks or red-and-yellow-piped blazers, sporting a ball of flame.

A knot twisted in Cas’s gut when he realized there weren’t any students wearing any other colours – meaning there truly were no Life or Deathmakers among them. Just as he began searching the crowd for a second time, Warrior burst back into the room carrying a teetering breakfast tray piled high with jammy croissants, marmalade toast, cornflakes, dippy eggs and juice.

They filled their bellies until they were full to bursting, Cas smiling once more about his reason for leaping around the Attic like a springbok.

“I suppose it makes sense, you remembering,” said Warrior, dunking a soldier of toast into her dripping egg. “Others’ powers are strongest here in the Balance Lands, because this is where the threads of power come from.”

“The threads of power?” asked Cas, taking a swig of orange juice.

“The threads are like a magical force,” she said. “They exist within us, as well as around us. They make up everything in the universe, including our world and even the Normie one too. At the beginning of time, there were only purple and white threads of power. Life and death. Beginning and end. Dawn and dusk. They wove together to create everything. As time went on, some of the threads changed into different shades of colour, giving rise to the other powers – earth, air, water and fire – or dulled and lost their powers altogether, like with the Normies. Seeing as we still have powers and they don’t, it’s our job to help protect the Normie world, so the threads made the Balance Lands as our safe place. Our home. Others must always return here eventually because this is where our power is strongest. If an Other stays in the Normie world for too long, where there’s no power, their abilities dwindle and their body withers and di—”

“So you think that’s why I kept losing my memory in the Normie world?” Cas jumped in. “Because I belong here?”

“Like I said, it makes sense,” said Warrior. “If your memories stick around now, that has to be the reason— Oh crumbs!”

Midway through her sentence, the clock bells outside had chimed nine.

“We’re late!” exclaimed Warrior, tossing their breakfast plates aside with a loud clatter. Cereal milk and toast crusts splattered the walls, but Warrior didn’t care. She grabbed Cas’s hand and, to his surprise, dragged him towards one of the walls instead of down the spiral stairs. Frantically, she tapped around until she found a loose panel hiding a trap door.

It drew back, revealing a long, steep chute.

“Honestly – really – I’d rather take the steps,” Cas mumbled, his stomach dropping into his shoes.

“No time,” said Warrior. With a sharp shove, she sent him flying down the slide.

“ARGH!” cried Cas as he slid, uncontrollably, down and down, the metal slide twisting this way … and that … round one corner … looping so he was upside down … then round and down again…

It was dark inside the chute, but suddenly a flash of bright light was rushing towards him.

Faster…

And faster…

And faster…

SPLAT!

Cas’s feet collided with a grated door and he shot off the end of the slide, somersaulted head over heels and landed in a crumpled heap on an old rug.

As the plume of dust from the rug cleared, Cas stood up, only to be knocked off his feet again seconds later by Warrior, who came toppling out and wiped the rug completely from underneath him.

“Ouch!” moaned Warrior. “I’m usually much more graceful.”

Brushing the muck off his clothes, Cas realized they were in the library. Curving rows upon rows of bookshelves surrounded them, extending up to an impossibly high ceiling. Ladders at least fifteen metres tall reached up to the top shelves, and in the centre of the round room there was a large fireplace complete with an eclectic mix of brightly patterned, squishy armchairs.

“Come on,” said Warrior, roughly tugging Cas along.

They streaked through the library, heading for the exit.

“Warrior Bane, is that you?” a voice called out after them. A bespectacled, untidy-haired woman stuck her head out from behind one of the bookcases, holding a tome suspended in mid-air.

“Not now, Mrs Crane,” Warrior called over her shoulder.

“I hope you aren’t causing too much trouble, dear!”

“No such thing as too much trouble!”

In a calamity of dishevelled hair and messy uniforms, Cas and Warrior careered out of the library and into the crowd of students. Warrior ducked and weaved through the sea of boys and girls taking the stairs down to the entrance hall. The manic mix of colours in the throng made Cas feel a bit queasy. It felt like they were passing shoulder to shoulder through a moving, living rainbow. Or swimming in a pool of multicoloured vomit from someone who had eaten too many pick ’n’ mix sweets.

“Don’t we need cloaks?” asked Cas, staring at the vivid students swarming around them. “You know, to blend in?”

“Not you,” said Warrior, heading towards the end of the hallway. The crowd thinned here to a raucous gaggle of uncloaked, plain-shirted students and their parents. “Wayones haven’t had their Orders declared yet, remember? If we want to sneak into the Order Trials, we need you to look bright and shiny and new.”

“I am shiny and new,” said Cas.

“Well, you know what I mean.”

A sudden thought dawned on him. “Where’s your cloak? What Order are you in?”

“Hush,” said Warrior, brushing him off with the air of someone who was too busy to think.

Cas was sure she was avoiding his question, but he didn’t have time to ask her again. They silently slipped into the bustle of uncloaked pupils and joined a queue waiting in front of the entrance to a grand room. A platinum plaque read THE ATRIUM in chipped letters. Sobbing, giddy parents with accents from all over the world hugged their children or kissed their cheeks, before pushing them into line and wishing them good luck for the Order Trials. At the front of the queue stood a stern-looking teacher holding a book of names. One by one, the hopeful first years introduced themselves. The teacher checked their name against her list before ushering them inside.

“This is where it gets tricky,” whispered Warrior. She let out a deep groan when she spotted who the teacher was. “Oh no, not Madame Aster. Anyone but Aster.”

“Why?” queried Cas. “What’s wrong with her?”

“What’s right with her is more like it,” grumbled Warrior.

Sure enough, the woman checking off the names looked very graceful but severe, with slick, waxy black hair pulled into a tight ponytail and high, sharp cheekbones – but how bad could she be?

“You’ll see,” said Warrior, answering Cas’s unspoken question.

Soon enough, he did.

When their turn came, Warrior shoved Cas ahead of her as they stepped up to the front of the line.

“Name?” the teacher droned flatly, her coal-like eyes not bothering to look up from the book.

“C—” Cas began.

“Dewey Cricket,” Warrior cut in, picking a name at random from the list and digging him sharply in the side with her elbow. Oh, right, Cas remembered. I’m not on the Oracle’s list.

“Hey! I’m Dewey Cricket!” a strawberry-blond boy piped up from behind them.

Madame Aster glanced up, glowering. Her large, dark eyes suddenly narrowed, making Cas feel like they pierced right into his soul.

“No, she’s right,” lied Cas, chuckling nervously. “I’m Dewey Cricket. You probably know my cousin, Doughy Cockroach. He used to go here too.”

For a moment, Cas thought they were rumbled. He swallowed hard and prepared himself for a scolding.

On the contrary, the stern teacher sighed and rolled her eyes.

“Both of you, inside now,” she commanded in a slight, lilted French accent. “Zut alors, I don’t have time for this. The Order Trials will be starting soon.” Cas and Dewey both immediately scampered in – but when Warrior tried to squeeze by too, Madame Aster shot out her hand and grabbed a fistful of Warrior’s shirt. “Of course you would be involved, Mademoiselle Bane. Where exactly do you think you’re going?”

“Inside. With my friend.”

Madame Aster laughed cruelly. “Mais non,” she snapped. “You do not have any friends. I believe you should be in Waygates and Portal Physics now, so hurry along. Vite, vite!”

Warrior shot a look of pure venom at Madame Aster, the ends of her hair turning a furious red.

But Aster didn’t budge.

“Fine,” said Warrior, kicking the ground in protest. She turned and reluctantly trudged off down the hall, desperately mouthing “sorry” to Cas over her shoulder.

Madame Aster gave a wicked smirk at Warrior’s retreating figure.

“Did you not hear me?” she barked when she caught Cas lingering. “Inside! Vite!”

Totally lost with their plan up in smoke, Cas had no choice but to follow the real Dewey inside.

The Atrium was built like an amphitheatre. Its ridiculously high glass ceiling allowed bright light to pour into the room, reflecting the calm, sunny weather outside. Shimmering flags displaying each of the five Orders’ symbols were draped from the walls, and seats for the students extended skyward in every direction. Above them, a viewing gallery stretched around the perimeter, where teachers – including Dr Bane – and a few older students who had somehow snuck in to watch sat chattering away.

Cas grabbed a seat between Dewey and another boy who introduced himself as Bracken Moonstrike. Once the last straggling prospective Wayone had entered, the Atrium’s magnificent, intricately carved doors closed with a tremendous thud.

Madame Aster swept past them in her blue cloak and joined the other teachers up on the balcony.

For several minutes, everyone sat in silence.

People whispered behind their hands and nudged one another, pointing to a veiled figure sitting on a chair on a dais in the middle of the room. Cas weaved from side to side, trying to catch a glimpse himself, but he couldn’t see anything properly until the figure suddenly threw back her veil, looked out at the audience with blind, milky eyes and stretched out a bony hand towards them.

The Oracle.

“Power,” she breathed in a voice that was little more than a whisper, but which echoed and bounced around the room until it vibrated through their bones. “That is what resides in every one of you. In some, it is a smidge. A drop. A trickle. But in others, the threads that bind your body together throb strongly – threads which tether you to this world and, in some cases, the next.”

The Oracle moved her hovering hand slowly across the crowd, as if searching for something.

“Quinnberley Crestbourne!” she boomed, startling them all.

Every single head spun around wildly, looking for the owner of the name. Shakily, a brown-skinned girl with dark, frizzy hair and cornflower-blue doe eyes stood up.

“Come.” The Oracle beckoned her. “It is time to judge the might of your power – to see if you are worthy of admittance to our esteemed Wayward School.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Quinnberley Crestbourne tentatively made her way down from the seats and up onto the dais. Her knees knocked together as she drew closer. The Oracle swept forward to meet her and reached out for Quinnberley’s trembling hand. Around the Oracle, there were five objects: a mound of dirt; an empty, airy jar; a bowl of water; a single candle; and a strange dish with a luminous, glowing surface, from which Cas swore he could hear hushed voices coming.

Squeezing her eyes shut, Quinnberley took the Oracle’s hand.

Instantly, an invisible wave of power pulsated out from them over the crowd. The water on the Oracle’s left shook so uncontrollably that it burst out of the bowl. It rose into the air and enveloped the pair of them in humungous, graceful watery arcs, trapping them in a water-spun globe, before sloshing back into place. Out of nowhere, Cas could feel impossible sea spray spattering his cheeks. He tasted brine on his tongue and sensed a dampness in the air that suggested rain.

“Our first new student – a Wavebreaker!” the Oracle roared. A round of applause broke out, including from Madame Aster, who looked ambitiously thrilled that such a powerful Other was joining her Order’s ranks. The Oracle released the shaken girl’s hand and called towards the balcony. “Headmaster!”

Dr Bane stood and cleared his throat. “Headmaster Higgles is, erm – busy – at the moment. As deputy headmaster, I’m acting as envoy.”

The Oracle didn’t seem to care. “This one,” she said, pointing at Quinnberley. “I see great talent and potential in her, more so than in any other in this room. Her gifts will be squandered into submission with basic Wayone classes. She needs proper teaching, proper taming – second year would be more suitable.”

Second year?

Cas’s cheeks heated. He felt like a fool for even showing up. He had never expected the Oracle to declare him to be the most powerful Other there – not when he’d had no knowledge of his powers before yesterday – but how could he possibly be the Foretold when the Quinnberley Crestbournes of the Balance Lands were skipping school years because their talents were too precious to waste?

“Understood,” said Dr Bane, nodding curtly and retaking his seat.

As he did so, Dr Bane glanced down and momentarily caught Cas’s eye. Cas quickly looked away and sank lower in his own seat. He half expected Bane to shout out “Imposter!”, stop the ceremony and kick him out. Yet when Cas chanced a look up again, Dr Bane was simply watching him with a very curious, mildly amused expression. Bane winked, before turning back to the Trials below.

One at a time, the remaining students were called up to the Oracle’s podium and tested. Quickly, Cas noticed a pattern. They were apparently being called up in dwindling order of power.

Akash Gill, the second new student to be accepted, was declared an Airscaper after he sent a miniature whirlwind twirling around the stage. He was followed by Ben Brooks, who joined Quinnberley in the Wavebreakers, though he didn’t skip a year or make the water respond as violently. A golden-haired girl called Laula Spinks was the most talented of the Firetamers, making the candle flame sashay like a pair of tango dancers and grow to twice its size. Meanwhile, a run of three Earthshapers – Dewey Cricket, Bracken Moonstrike and Ellie Green – were enrolled after they made the mound of dirt transform into a muddy, growling bear, a grasshopper and a flowerpot respectively.

Charlotte Smelling, an Airscaper, was the first hopeful to be rejected when she couldn’t even make the empty jar topple onto its side. She ran out of the room bawling, even though Dewey whispered to Cas that she would easily get into any other school with Wayward’s recommendation.

With some of the students, the Oracle asked them a couple of hushed questions first. But the one constant which remained was that, with each passing person, the invisible waves of power pulsating over the crowd lessened, and Cas felt his chance of being the Foretold slipping further away. He waited with bated breath for the Oracle to sense him. But as the waves of power from the Wayones dulled to a barely there tickle over the skin, Cas began to panic.

The Oracle had just finished testing Elliott Icklepickle, another Firetamer, who was rejected, when Madame Aster rose, clapped her hands and ordered all the successful Wayones to line up outside again, ready to be taken to their first classes.

But as the successful students stood and began to leave, Cas stayed where he sat.

He wasn’t sure if he felt more disappointed or amazed that he hadn’t been called at all.

That’s what you get for getting your hopes up, he thought, dread pooling like an icy puddle in his stomach.

Until, unexpectedly, the Oracle sprang forward.

“Wait!” she cried, her voice ringing out so loudly that everybody froze. “There is another. Someone in this room who hasn’t been tested yet. I can sense him not by his power, but by the hole he cleaves among you. He has no aura. No existence. He is a nothing boy.” Her milky eyes found Cas in the crowd. “Come forward, child!”

The Wayones whipped their gazes to Cas – the only person still sitting – amidst whisperings and mutterings under their breaths.

Cas didn’t move.

The Oracle was clearly talking about him … but no aura, no existence, a nothing boy … none of those things were good.

Standing beside him, Dewey Cricket nudged Cas. “Go on. It’s not scary, I promise.”

Despite his gut reaction to run, Cas reminded himself why he had come here. He stood on shaking legs. Over a hundred pairs of beady eyes tracked him as he passed by the other first years. He tried to ignore the gawking faces and speculations as he headed towards the Oracle’s platform. Above him, every teacher and older student was craning their neck over the balcony. Cas had just spotted two very nasty-looking students, a pale pair of twins, leering at him like he was something disgusting on the bottom of their shoes, when he felt it again.

The tingling sensation in his leg.

He reached out a hand to brace himself on a nearby seat, but his leg began to jerk and twitch anyway. Soon it would be in full motion. He had two choices: try to walk or stay still until it passed.

Cas refused to be ashamed or afraid.

He chose to walk.

The mutterings and gasps swelled to a clamour as he pressed on unsteadily, staggering like a baby deer on ice towards the platform. His funny leg was moving this way and that, out of his control now, but he could just about keep heading forward if he concentrated hard on the direction he wanted to go in.

Triumphantly, Cas exhaled as he reached the bottom of the dais, but when he raised his foot to the first step, his knee buckled under him and he fell flat on his face to the floor.

The shocked gasps grew louder – but above them all, there was sniggering, no doubt from the nasty twins.

Shame. Anger. Fear. Confusion. All these emotions grew and roiled in Cas’s stomach. He wanted nothing more than to curl up into a ball and wait for the ground to swallow him whole. But he wouldn’t give in. Using the strength of those feelings, he pushed himself up and finished his climb onto the platform.

As his funny leg disappeared, Cas came face to face with the Oracle.

Her mysterious veiled appearance was even more intimidating up close; her costume seemed to flap in a non-existent breeze, and she had an unsettling sense of foreboding about her – like you wanted to ask her every question in the world but dreaded every answer.

“My child,” the Oracle said. “Come closer.”

Cas gulped, shuffling nearer.

The Oracle reached out her hand but didn’t touch him yet. “My child,” she mused, “you are strange, very strange – unlike anything I have ever sensed before. You are like fog. There, but barely there … like mist I cannot catch with my fingers.” She curled a bony digit and beckoned him closer still. “Tell me, child – what is your name?”

“C-Cas,” he stuttered. “I mean, Casander.”

“And your last name?”

“No last name.”

“Are you from this world, Casander No-Name?”

“Well, no, I’m from the Normie world,” said Cas. “But I don’t really know. I can’t remember. I think I might belong in this one.”

“And do you have a family?”

“No, miss.”

“Have you been cleaned?”

Cleaned? What a weird question to ask.

“I suppose. I had a wash this morning.”

The whole room broke into giggles.

“Not cleaned,” the Oracle corrected him shortly. “Gleaned. Have you been Gleaned?”

This was even more confusing.

“Gleaned? What’s Gleaned?”

The Oracle narrowed her cloudy white eyes. “Gleaning is the process of forcing an Other’s powers out of them before they are ready,” she explained in a low voice. “But as you have no knowledge of this, I assume that you haven’t been.”

“Oh no, definitely not,” said Cas. “At least, I don’t think so.”

The Oracle huffed in approval, making it clear that whatever Gleaning was, it was frowned upon.

“Give me your hand,” she commanded, opening her calloused palm to him.

Cas sucked in a deep breath and took it.

A tidal wave of power unlike any other rocketed through the room. Everyone, from staff to students, was thrown back in their retaken seats. The mound of dirt, the empty jar, the water bowl and the candle went flying, until only the strange, luminous dish remained. The hushed voices Cas could hear from within grew louder. Jets of violet and white light flew from the dish like bullets, taking on humanoid shapes and ricocheting around the room. The spirit-like things rattled the high glass window until cracks appeared, the glass threatening to cave in on them, and the sunny weather outside turned to black clouds and thunder.

“It can’t be…” The Oracle gasped, before releasing him and uttering, “It is.”

As soon as the Oracle relinquished Cas’s hand, the commotion stopped. The spirits vanished, the invisible wave ceased, and the stormy sky returned to perfect azure. Cas staggered backwards, clutching his hand like a deadly weapon.

But the Oracle took a great stride towards him, leaning in until they were practically nose to nose.

“My child,” she cooed, and for the second time in two days, Cas felt like he had just become very hard to ignore. “My child. It is you. My prophecy came true.”