{tw: implications of self harm, mentions of suicidal thoughts}

Tyler's second testing room is a large classroom with a single long desk against the far wall. Four people, one being the podium man from before, sit at the desk. They all turn their heads to look at Tyler once he walks in, their eyes following him to the center of the room.

"Tyler Joseph, I presume," the podium man says.

"Uh-huh," Tyler replies, tapping his foot nervously.

"Do you know why you're here?" The woman asks with a British accent."

Tyler shakes his head.

"You are here because you passed the entrance exam into our grad program for the magical adept," the podium man says, "That was the easy part- this is the real test. This is where we get to see the extent of your abilities as a magician firsthand and determine what your discipline is."

"Abilities? Magician? Discipline?"

All four of them laugh. "Magicians are what magically adept called. Your discipline is the trait that appears most in your magical ability," the second woman explains. "What you're best at."

"Oh." Tyler smiles meekly. "Sorry."

"It's alright. You're not the first and certainly won't be the last," the older man says.

The podium man waves his hand at Tyler impatiently. "Go on, then. Do some magic."

Tyler pushes his sweater sleeves up for his elbows, forgetting about the bandages for a moment before pushing his sleeves back down, and nervously fishes out a stack of cards he always carries with him in his pocket. He shuffles them, shows the top card to the four judges, and starts to do a simple close up trick, but the man stops him.

"Stop," his voice booms. He clearly sounds annoyed. "Don't do some stupid card trick. Do actual magic."

"How? I didn't even know magic existed until like an hour ago," Tyler retorts, his hands shaking. Half of the deck spills from his hands, and he rushingly kneels down to pick them up.

The podium man stands from the desk and walks behind Tyler, pulling off his feet by the back of his sweater vest. More of the cards scatter. "You know what's really crazy? That we actually believed you'd be able to do anything remarkable with your life." He raises his voice with each word.

"S-Stop yelling at me," Tyler mumbles.

"You're standing here embarrassing yourself with a deck of cards. Do you want to go back to your old life now that you know all of this?"

Tyler shakes his head, on the verge of tears. His life before discovering all of this wasn't bad by any means. He was lucky to even be considered for a school like Yale, but Tyler had always felt this sense of... loneliness, of emptiness everywhere he went, and it followed him like a cloud.

That was what made him an outcast. Not his self deprecating sense of humor. Not his sexuality (bisexual). Not his obsession with fantasy. No, it was this built-in depression that he couldn't get rid of, no matter what dose of Zoloft he took.

Now that he has this school, a place where he feels like he's home, he can't lose it.

"No, please don't make me go back there," he whimpers helplessly. "I can't go back. I don't know what I'll do if I leave."

"Oh, really?"

Tyler nods, forcing down his frantic panic growing in the back of his throat. "Please. I might as well be dead."

"Then stop dicking around and do some goddamn magic!" The man shouts every word right into Tyler's ear.

"I said stop yelling at me!"

There's a tug at the pit of Tyler's stomach when he screams, and his arm jerks upward towards the ceiling with a life of its own. Suddenly, the cards in his hand and on the ground fly into the air, spinning around him like a hurricane.

He takes a disbelieving step back and the cards follow, his whole body thrumming with an energy he'd never felt before. They seem fly in slow motion, the card's faces changing right before his eyes as the fluttering in front of his face.

"Holy shit," Tyler laughs breathlessly, his lungs feeling tight in his chest. "I- I'm doing this."

The man beside him grins triumphantly and takes a step back. "As I knew you could."

The cards slowly fit themselves together to build a castle shaped like the Fillory castle on the fourth book cover. Some of them even gather around the four spiral towers, spinning like a carnival ride.

Tyler stares at the card castle in awe at himself, seeing what he did, what he made. His head spins.

"This is the best day of my life," he says. Then he passes out.

—

He's in a forest, but he's not sure how or when he got there. His feet follow flat rocks imbedded in the grass, and he doesn't realize where he's going until he stops at the base of a large tree. Clocks stick out from the thick trunk, some ticking quickly while others go backwards.

"I wouldn't touch those if I were you. Time is a tricky thing, you know."

Tyler turns, seeing a young girl sitting on a tombstone, swinging her legs. He recognizes her immediately from the yellowed pages of his Fillory novels, from the articles about Gerard Way and the kids who inspired his characters.

"You're- you're Hayley Williams," he says, baffled by her appearance. "You're from Fillory."

She rolls her eyes and hops off the tombstone, disappearing in thin air. "I'm not from Fillory itself, really, just the novels. I'm actually from Southwest London." Her voice lingers despite Tyler not being able to see her.

"Well, yeah," he says, looking all around him. "I know all about you and your friends, and about Fillory. Wait a minute. This is-"

"The Tree Of Clocks, I thought that was fairly obvious." Hayley taps his shoulder and sighs like she's bored.

Tyler backs away and scrunches up his nose. "You know, I always pictured you as nicer."

"I usually am nicer, but I'm in a bit of a hurry at the moment."

She walks up to Tyler and grabs his wrist, ignoring the yelp of pain he makes when she does so. This has to be a dream. Nothing less than that would make any sense.

Yet it hurt when she touched his wrist, so it needs to be somewhat real. Either that or he's having a very bizarre, realistic dream. He doesn't know which one scares him more.

"Follow the boy made of ash to find a world on the brink of collapse," Hayley recites, pushing up his sleeve. Tyler tries to pull his arm out of her grip but she's stronger than she looks and he can't get away. "He will be your salvation, and you will be the world's undoing."

"What the hell are you saying? What are you talking about? What world?" Tyler asks.

She ignores him and grabs the middle of his forearm with her free hand. A burning sensation shoots up his arm, not painful but unpleasant. He grimaced. Her eyes begin to glow a ghostly white as she speaks again, this time her voice echoing all around Tyler, like she's inside of his head.

"Find the man who shares your soul. Destroy what the gods forgot long ago." Hayley lets go and pushes Tyler into the tree. "Now go!"

Tyler wakes up bolting upright, halfway through a blood curdling scream. Once he gauges his surroundings, he's in a bed that he doesn't think is his, in a room that definitely isn't his. It reminds him of his old college dorm before he moved in with Jenna and her girlfriend Debby. Before they wanted what was supposed to be a boring grad school experience.

Josh stands in the doorway, smiling wickedly at him. "The golden boy lives."

"What..."

"Don't worry, it's only been three days. Not the first time it's happened. Ready for your first day at Brakebills?" Josh cooes almost condescendingly.

Tyler scrambles out of the bed and gets his legs tangled in the sheets, falling and hitting the carpet with a thunk. "Ow."

He looks down at his clothes. They're the same, which meant he wasn't out too long. His forearm still burns in the shape of Hayley's palm, but Tyler ignores at and adjusts his sweater so the bandages are out of sight, out of mind.

"Come on, rosebud," Josh laughs, helping him off the floor. "You're going to miss breakfast."

In the breakfast hall, cups hover in the air, people bending spoons with their mind to shape cannonball launchers to fling good at unsuspecting lunch line victims. Josh freezes a glop of scrambled egg in the air and tosses it back at whoever threw it.

"You'll get used to chaos here," he smiles, stealing a tater tot off of someone's plate and waving it in Tyler's face. "You might even contribute to it. Do you know what your discipline is?"

Tyler shakes his head and scratches the back of his neck, feeling something at the base of his hairline. "I kind of passed out before that guy could tell me."

"That's a shame, I was hoping I'd know if the cute first year I was mentoring would be bunking with us Physical Kids."

Trying to ignore the possible compliment, Tyler continues, "I can't believe any of this is real. I'm afraid I'm going to wake up in a mental hospital at any moment and all of this would've been a dream."

"Why a mental hospital?" Josh asks, replacing his cigarette with the fry. "Most people say in their beds, or wherever they were before they came here. Only the fucked up ones say mental hospital."

"Oh."

He grabs Tyler shoulder and shakes it. "Come on, let's go find out your Hogwarts house." Josh escorts him to a table where he recognizes Ashley from the day before and Jenna, who looks every bit uncomfortable as Tyler feels.

"Look who woke up from his coma," Ashley coos.

Josh chuckles, fishing out a cigarette from its box and pinching it between his teeth. "Tyler, you've already met Ashley Frangipane, local bitch. She can cook up a nasty lust potion."

"Don't you mean love potion?" Tyler asks.

"Oh, he didn't misspeak." Ashley stands and holds a hand out. He reluctantly shakes it. "My my, why does Josh always end up with the cute nerds?"

Jenna chokes on her orange juice, slamming the table with her fist. Ashley stands up to pat her back, sending Josh a wink. Tyler can feel the blush creeping up his neck and to his cheeks, but he ignores it.

He chooses a seat beside Ashley, who plops back down and immediately throws them into a tornado of gossip. Josh sits on the other side of Tyler, an arm around his shoulders, pinning him between two very scary, very attractive people who intimidate him to no end.

This is not at all what he expected when he wanted to go to grad school.