So the concept and characters all seem pretty good, and hopefully this gets a little better as the story gets going, but this first chapter really drove me nuts in how much "exposition-speak" there was. Like, "ah, Alfi, my childhood friend!" or "The genius school of magic! As you know, it's the place where blah blah blah..." or "Ah, it's Elliott, Reese's little sister". All the characters say a bunch of unnecessary things which are very clearly just there to inform the reader about a bunch of things they need to know, but it sounds super unnatural. It's not like this kind of thing is uncommon, but it happened so frequently in this chapter that I got a headache reading it.