Adamaris patted the last bit of powder over her makeup to seal it on and make sure her mark would be covered out of habit, but she forgot that to today she wouldn’t have to cover herself up but for the sake of her family she pretended like today was another average day. Her tight blue jeans and black crew neck shirt accented her hips and made her look casual with her striking colored hair and bright emerald eyes. She met with her family downstairs where they all took their separate departures, and she waited patiently to be the last to leave since she had to go the opposite way she was used to. Today she would attend Blackwell college, the school of magic. After years of not understanding what she was capable of, today would be the day where it all changes. 

Once she was far enough down the sidewalk, she pulled out a few makeup wipes and began to smear away the coat that had hidden the sapphire symbol that sat on her forehead. The people who had ever seen her marking found it strikingly beautiful, others found it too much and ugly. To each their own, but Ada didn’t really know how she felt about it either. After hiding it all her life, the constant stares down the street began to make her uneasy in which she quickened her pace to the college. Her first class was terminologies of basic magic, and then her second class would be history of the well-known mages, they were taking a field trip downtown to the local museum of the city. 
By the end of her first class her head was spinning, she had heard about these things in books but when it came in to detail there was just so much of it she had no idea how she was going to keep up. There were differences in elemental magic, and manipulation, and spells, and other mages. She could only wonder what category she would lay under. She rushed to her next class but watched the other students who had passed her by, they all looked unique in their own ways. Some had markings like her, some were ridiculously good looking while others were half decent. Walking in to class they quickly took roll and then loaded the small school bus that crammed about fifty students together. 

She had sat by another girl whose name was Alizah. They both talked about how new they were to the school, yet Alizah had a far better understanding of her own powers then Adamaris. She also couldn’t understand why Ada had no common sense over her powers, or had ever tried on her own. “My parents just didn’t allow it, since all my brothers and sisters were normals.” Ada shrugged but Alizah still looked at her in disbelief, which made Ada frown in disappointment in herself. 
“Hey, it’s okay. We all start somewhere.” She tried to warm up the conversation again as the bus arrived to the entrance of the museum. “I’m so excited! I heard that they have a line of dresses, Elizabeth the third wore to emit that she was indeed a mage.” Alizah shimmied a little bit in pride of the fallen princess whose fashion sense was incredible in her day and age. 

“I’m excited to see some of Black’s work, I heard that hair pin that supposedly holds his familiar is here.” The girls leaned in to hear his statement as if it was some kind of secret. Ada was confused by everyone’s expression to hear that name and something about a hair pin. The bus quickly flooded of young adults and the professor soon began his rant as they made their way inside. The girls soon lost interest in his speech and wandered off on their own adventure, not like anyone would notice on the first day of class that they were missing. 

They finally found the dresses Alizah was looking for while the boy they had spoken too earlier quickly made his escape as well. “I thought I was going to die.” Chase huffed as he awkwardly flung himself over the two’s shoulders where they laughed and pushed him off. So far this had been great, she had easily made new friends who got to see her for her. “Okay, now that we’ve seen these. Let’s go find that hairpin.” Chase winked back at the girls and began to twirl around the halls while the girls rolled their eyes and followed along. Every room was filled with enormous paintings and artifacts from previous days. Some of these small monsters that were covering a burning city, Ada’s eyes met with one of the pictures and she stopped midstride. 

She slowly approached the picture of an abstract painting of a silhouette in distress while brightly covered monsters smothered him and this brilliantly colored bird soared in the background. The other two lingered in the back ground, still searching for this damn hairpin. Adamaris’s eyes shifted lower to read the caption before. “The Night, Before the Beginning” She read out loud before looking lower to see a small glass case with a single hair pin inside of it. “Hey I think I found that hair pin!”