Session 26 — 30 August 2026
The return from Chult has been, for a little while, almost suspiciously normal.
They are all at dinner: Ruben, Lana, Daiki, Kroak, Nymri, Pell, and Adrien. Ruben clears his throat.
“I’ve been thinking about telling you something,” he says. “I’m not sure if it comes as a surprise, but I think I like boys more than girls.”
Daiki is clapping before Ruben can even finish.
“Yay! Just a great step forward, Ruben. I am proud of you.”
Lana blinks once. Twice. “That is very sweet to share, but that is totally normal, right? You just have a love interest, and that is great. Doesn’t matter what gender.”
“Well,” Ruben says, still looking rather nervous despite everyone’s immediate support, “on that point, there’s even more news. I also have a boyfriend. Most of you will know him as Sszethik.”
Lana smiles. “Of course.”
“What do you mean, ‘of course’?”
“This is totally not new, Ruben. I could already tell in Chult. I even knew before Chult, actually.”
Daiki nods earnestly. “I think we all knew, Ruben.”
Ruben looks between them. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”
“Do you think you were alone in Chult in that room?” Lana asks. “We knew. We gave you some alone time.”
There is a brief moment in which Ruben has to process the fact that apparently everyone has been politely pretending not to notice his relationship.
Then he exhales.
“Well. I’m glad it’s out now. You’re basically the first I tell. And of course, I have Sszethik’s permission. It’s always a bit scary.”
That changes the mood slightly. Not the warmth of it, but its weight.
Lana’s voice softens. “I can tell this is a big thing for you. Thank you so much for sharing. And I don’t hear a mention of your parents yet—is that correct?”
Ruben nods.
“If you need somebody to talk to,” Lana tells him, “you know where to find us.”
“That’s why I thought it would be good to start with you.”
Nymri is delighted and offended that she had not known sooner. Pell looks up from his study books, coffee keeping him upright through sheer academic determination, and offers Ruben a small nod.
“Good for you,” he says.
It is, somehow, perfect.
Daiki immediately proposes a celebration at the Firejolt Café, with sweets and drinks. He considers a coming-out party, then abandons the phrase halfway through.
“I think we should call it a Finding Yourself Party.”
Ruben prefers that the news remains within the dorm for now. He and Sszethik plan to go to Daggerford during the weekend, where Ruben’s parents have agreed he may bring a friend for one special day.
“Put confetti in your letter,” Daiki suggests.
“We are not sending a letter.”
Lana, meanwhile, accepts a very tall glass of water from Daiki and somehow manages to take one vodka shot without him noticing. There is training the next day, after all. Daiki has a spa appointment to prepare for and takes the matter extremely seriously.
Over the following months, Ruben and Sszethik do make their trip. Ruben’s parents receive the news with warmth and openness. The idea of a yuan-ti joining the family takes a little adjustment, perhaps, but not rejection. It is new; the relationship is new; and they make room for it.
Back at Strixhaven, everyone keeps growing in their own direction.
Daiki continues flying around campus for Potions, Potions, More Potions, becoming perhaps rather visible as a tiny enthusiastic dragon-person darting between buildings. He trains physically as well as magically, learning to trust his claws alongside his spells. He visits the Feywild. He learns from students who understand illusion, expression, and the strange possibility of making an idea real.
A seed takes root in him.
Perhaps he does not need to become a dragon in the exact way he once imagined. Perhaps he can become something new. His own dragon.
Winter does not agree with him much, so he uses little flickers of his own fire to stay warm.
Lana spends every spare moment not devoted to her violin in the debate club. She builds connections, learns how people argue, how they persuade, how a room can be guided by the shape of a sentence. She grows closer to Silverquill students before she has officially chosen the college. Kroak replicated Goggles of Night, because Lana has decided that seeing in the dark is too useful to give up again.
Ruben studies the principles of mythals: magic woven through objects, places, estates, schools, and ancient structures. He speaks with his father about the magic at the Flushing Estate. He thinks about Chult, the central campus, and the way power lives in a place long after its creators have gone.
He experiments.
One day, an attempt to understand illusion magic beside Daiki results in a nearby bush bursting into flame, grass catching alight, and an uncomfortable amount of fire appearing around Ruben. He puts it out with Shape Water, but the revelation remains.
Magic is moving closer to him. Or perhaps he is moving closer to it.
He copies Find Familiar into his spellbook and gains a new companion: a giant fly with the appearance of a death’s-head hawkmoth. It is clever enough to carry Lana through the air, though perhaps not clever enough for Lana to entirely trust it.
“Can I totally trust it?” she asks Ruben.
“It is stupid as hell,” Ruben admits. “But it has a nice saddle.”
They arrange a Feather Fall scroll as a precaution. Lana pays part of the cost. Ruben pays the rest, because he feels responsible for inviting her to fly on something that cannot follow her commands unless he is present to direct it.
Ruben also attunes to the found Ring of Mind Shielding, although Lana makes it clear that she remains interested in the item herself. It seems the ring houses no soul at the moment.
The academic year turns. A new beginning approaches. On the twentieth of Hammer, Strixhaven holds a ceremony for students choosing their colleges.
Ruben chooses Lorehold.
Lana chooses Silverquill.
Daiki chooses Prismari.
Kroak chooses Witherbloom.
But there is more.
The four of them have been nominated—not merely by faculty, but by fellow students—as Strixhaven Students of the Year.
For the first time in Strixhaven history first-years were chosen as heroes, apparently.
They wait in a changing room near the ceremony hall while the crowd gathers beyond the walls. The roar of students rises and falls around them. Somewhere outside, a speech is already underway. Daiki is flying loops around the room, attempting to look through the door, attempting to look through anything, because one of the founders may be attending.
“One of the founder dragons?” he asks.
“It sure seems like it.”
Daiki becomes even less capable of standing still.
Ruben wears his best robes, carefully freshened, with the gold dragon pin from Sszethik. He touches his spellbook as though it might offer comfort. Lana is calmer, straightening her outfit and watching Daiki with the quiet patience of someone who has accepted that he will orbit a room until stopped.
Then a gnomish tailor bursts in, apologising profusely for being late.
“What school did you pick?”
“Lorehold,” Ruben says.
“Silverquill,” Lana says.
“Prismari!” Daiki shouts.
“And you?” the tailor asks Kroak, with the cautious uncertainty of someone trying very hard not to assume anything.
“Witherbloom.”
The tailor produces fabric. An impossible amount of fabric. Layers and layers of it create beautiful college gowns, accompanied by a golden needle that begins sewing with furious magical speed. The gowns take shape around their bodies: Lorehold colours for Ruben, with a subtle Witherbloom detail hidden inside near his heart; Silverquill elegance for Lana; Prismari flair for Daiki, adjusted carefully around his wings; and Kroak’s black formalwear, embroidered with gold advertisements for Potions and Prophecies.
Only the best for Strixhaven’s Students of the Year.
Sszethik peeks in after knocking.
“Are you guys ready for the honour? Are you dressed? Sorry—I knocked. Are you dressed?”
Ruben shows him the little Witherbloom detail inside his gown. Sszethik runs his fingers over it, delighted.
“That’s so cool.”
“Why are you not part of this?” Daiki asks him. “You are also one of the heroes of Strixhaven.”
“I guess you guys made more impact.”
“I think you were chosen by someone else,” Daiki says, and adds a wink that becomes less subtle the longer it continues.
Sszethik smiles. Then he leaves them to prepare.
The tailor finishes, promises to return with pins, and hurries out.
For a moment, the four of them are alone.
The ceremony continues beyond the walls. The noise of the crowd drifts in, muffled and exciting.
Then it begins to fade.
The mirrors in the changing room fog over.
At first, it looks like breath gathering on the glass. Then the fog grows thicker. The room itself remains clear, but inside each mirror something begins to move. A silhouette stands perhaps ten feet beyond the glass.
A hand wipes at the fog from the other side.
Words appear.
KEEP.
Lana immediately wants the mirrors turned around, yet sees this is not possible.
OFF.
Ruben, for one brief moment, wonders if they are being awarded a keep. It is not impossible. They are Students of the Year. Maybe Strixhaven is very generous.
Daiki tells him to stop talking before they lose the keep.
MY.
The silhouette is wrong somehow—shorter than expected, stouter, not quite human, not dwarven, not gnomish. Daiki studies the handprint and decides it may be something very different indeed.
“The missing student?” he wonders aloud.
Lana does not find this reassuring.
BUSINESS.
Ruben tries to write back with Mage Hand.
Show yourself.
But the fog is not really on the mirror. It does not wipe away.
Lana reaches out telepathically, trying to contact anyone outside the room: the tailor, the staff, anyone.
There is nothing.
Only the four of them.
Only dead silence beyond the walls.
“This is bad,” Lana says. “This is bad shit. This is not good.”
Daiki tries to fly towards Kroak’s Bag of Holding.
He cannot move.
The formal clothes tighten around all of them.
The beautiful new gowns begin to strangle them.
It is not the entire outfit, at least. It is the cloaks: living, enchanted scraps of ceremonial fabric that pull across faces and throats, blinding, suffocating, dragging at the body. Ruben throws up a protective shield before one can close fully around him. Lana is caught. Kroak is caught. Daiki is caught.
Daiki, naturally, responds with fire.
White, iridescent flames burst from him, bright enough to burn the fabric but close enough that the heat lashes back at the people wearing it. He burns his own cloak away from his throat, then strikes at the others. Lana’s cloak catches fire around her face for a terrible moment—less painful than it might have been, thanks to Daiki’s magic, but still not an experience she would recommend.
Kroak Commands Lana’s cloak to drop.
It does.
The fabric goes limp around her body.
Ruben turns his attention towards the mirror and calls forth a massive earthen hand. He cannot reach the figure behind the glass, but he can smash the mirror. The dresser splinters. Glass rains down.
The silhouette disappears from his sight.
Lana tears the limp cloak from herself and burns it with Sacred Flame. She then raises a shield of faith around herself, her composure returning only in the sense that she is now visibly prepared to murder the room.
The cloaks do not stop.
One wraps around Ruben’s face. Another tries to retake Lana. Kroak is blinded, then lifted by their own cloak, their feet leaving the floor as it tightens around their neck.
Daiki, furious that this has happened on what is supposed to be the best day of his life, makes a terrible joke.
“Do you cloth it off?”
The cloak on him is overcome by magical laughter.
It shakes around his shoulders, unable to act. Daiki throws it off, then attacks Lana’s cloak with glowing claws, tearing it apart with radiant fire.
“What do you think of my Daiki Smite?” he asks.
Lana, who is currently trying not to die in a changing room, still finds enough energy to answer, “Nice going, Daiki. You’re doing great.”
Kroak tries to fight through the choking fabric, calling on their cold necromantic magic. The cloak shares the pain with them. Their body begins to look worse. Their neck bends at an alarming angle when the fabric jerks them higher.
Lana gets beneath them.
“I got it,” she says. “I think I got them.”
She catches Kroak as best she can, takes some of the strain, and Commands the cloak to drop. It resists at first.
Ruben refuses that outcome.
The magic shifts. The cloth finally goes limp, and Kroak falls into Lana’s arms. Lana spends part of her healing pool on them immediately, bringing them back from the edge of looking truly dreadful.
Their neck is still not quite right.
Daiki does not hesitate. He turns on the cloak around Kroak and obliterates it with Spellfire Flare. The fabric barely has time to rise again before it is reduced to glowing scraps.
Then Daiki reaches the exit door.
It is locked.
“Let me out of here!” he shouts.
Outside, someone starts knocking.
At the same time, Ruben’s strange new mythal magic reaches outward through the attack. The Ring of Mind Shielding protects him from something worse, but he manages to form a telepathic link with whoever is directing the cloaks.
“Show yourself,” he demands. “Who are you? What do you want?”
Eventually, something answers.
“I am but the executor of the will.”
The voice is unfamiliar. Dark. It enters Ruben’s mind like a weight.
Ruben tells it that people cannot escape punishment merely by following orders.
“This was a polite warning,” the voice replies.
Then it is gone.
The party continues smashing mirrors. Ruben breaks one with his Earthen Grasp, another with molten magic. Kroak, freed enough to move, tears at the remaining cloth with cold necromantic touch. Lana destroys the final cloak with her longsword and divine smite.
The room is wrecked.
The mirrors are shattered. The dressers are ruined. Magical vines, scorched wood, bits of fabric, broken glass, and ceremonial debris cover the floor.
Beyond the locked door, the knocking grows louder.
They can hear Sszethik now.
“Just come out, guys. You don’t have to be nervous. You can do this.”
Daiki scratches at the door with radiant claws and shouts back.
“We are being attacked!”
Ruben, frustrated beyond his usual careful restraint, tells the people outside that they are powerful mages and should “fucking Knock.”
Eventually, someone does.
The door flies open.
A faculty member stands there, along with a stagehand and a shaken Sszethik. They all look into the changing room at the destroyed mirrors, the scorched furniture, the debris, and four very dishevelled Students of the Year.
“You were called up,” the stagehand says dryly. “You were supposed to go up.”
Daiki is done. He prestidigitates himself clean enough to preserve appearances and flies towards the stage in an ongoing dragon rage.
Ruben tries to compose himself, as Rampart has taught him. Kroak heals enough to stand, although their neck retains a troubling slant. Lana checks that everyone is at least upright, apologises briefly for the mess, explains that they were attacked, and then follows the others out.
The crowd has heard explosions, shattering glass, and someone apparently clawing at a locked door.
So when they arrive onstage—Daiki still furious, Lana calm by force, Kroak hunched with a strange neck angle, Ruben clean but unmistakably rattled—the reaction is understandably uncertain.
The dean looks at them.
They look back.
Then she turns to the crowd.
“Applause, everyone, for your first years. Your chosen first years.”
She speaks of an orchard that burns and bears fruit they did not plant. She speaks of heroes, of students chosen by their peers, of a group that has done more than anyone expected from first-years. She calls them examples for those who will choose their colleges after them.
The room applauds.
There is no founder dragon.
Daiki has missed it, or perhaps there never was one.
Lana listens closely to the dean’s words. She hears the structure of the speech, its careful persuasion, its beautiful phrasing, and the places where it bends truth into something more useful. The dean knows how to hold a crowd. Lana knows that now too.
In the aftermath of fire, magic, warning, and a room full of broken mirrors, the four stand before Strixhaven as shining examples of student achievement.
They are the first first-years ever named Students of the Year.
Ruben says it first.
“We are the chosen ones.”
Daiki, still furious but unable to resist the title, corrects him.
“The heroes of Strixhaven.”