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Today we'll be critiquing...

 Chapter 1: Kiageru by anchauvies

jet black hair

-- very cliché description (also you're missing a "his" before you talk about the hair)

Garnet-red eyes

-- again, cliché description. The coupling of colours/gems with hair qualities is very common.

an ounce of common sense

--  an ounce is 28 grams, according to Google. You might want to choose a word that represents a lesser amount, like I dunno, a pinch? A crumb?

The hallways were empty and a cold draft could be felt outside the room.

-- I'm not sure that you need to specify "outside the room" since he is outside already.

It made the already long trip between the various wings seemed to take hours.

 -- "It made... seemed" is wrong. I would say that "It made... feel hours long."

Malakai stopped at a door and knocked although it was already open.

-- Instead of although, I would use "even if". It's a small difference, but "although" doesn't fit what you're saying here.

At the moment, the last thing he wanted to do was encounter his mentor again.

 -- "encountering", but in any case, I would choose a better word, and wording. "At the moment, the last thing he wanted was seeing his mentor." Something like that.

I had put him out of mind for a while

 -- out of MY mind.

Malakai folded the letter and shoved it in the drawer of his nightstand.

 -- I found funny the fact that first he folds it as if caring for it, but then he shoves it in like he doesn't care. 

So there were others in Caelus that knew of the mages' existence.

-- With a "So" at the beginning of the sentence, I think an ellipsis is needed at the end of this sentence, or a question mark.

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On to more specific things... I like your dialogue, it's good. But your exposition isn't as well done. For example, when Malakai needs to decide whether to leave or stay, after Aine gives him the letter, it's not clear what he decides to do of the two, and we know of what he has decided to do when the weird sensation of leaving the castle is mentioned -- considering that right now you're talking from his POV, you should introduce his choice before showing it.

Then, as I pointed above, some clichéd expressions find their way into your writing. In general, in physical descriptions. I'm not saying they are awful and need to be left out (except "jet black hair," that's really so overdone), but there are many more interesting ways to introduce characters and their aspect! you focused on "trivial" things such as eyes, or hair and used pretty "common" words for them: and while you don't necessarily need to find unique descriptions, they sort of take your writing down.

A suggestion for descriptions: focus on something less "intriguing", but make it so, because everything must serve a purpose. Maybe instead of the jet black hair, introduce his skin tone - he might be scratching his wrinkly forehead, or ageless forehead depending on how you want to portray him and that's an interesting point. Garnet-red eyes, if you want to keep the eye colour, maybe rewording to "Demoi snapped, looking up, a garnet flash of anger directed at the boy." or something similar. Or scrap the garnet completely and go for "red", simply - keep the "garnet" for a later occasion when you need to embellish a situation.
As for the description of Aine, "slender, with white hair" tells us NOTHING about her. Make descriptions work, like literally do your job: maybe she's tired? Unusually tired? Tired as always? With a kind smile, but cold eyes? Something!

Your feedback questions...

I'm requesting critique on any aspects someone might be comfortable critiquing whether it be style, flow, overall readability, etc.

I commented on style above. The flow is good, the chapter is interesting, dialogue flows fine, I talked about descriptions and so on plenty already. readability is good also.

Is there anything that needs to be better explained/described?

As I said, be careful on your characters. Do your homework on descriptions. The only thing I feel needs a better explanation is that Malakai decides to leave the castle, and maybe why?
Oh, as an afterthought, explaining that he's going to see Aine to let her know how it went with Demoi would be a good idea also - it sounds like Malakai almost randomly ends up at Aine's, whereas he probably was supposed to go there to tell her anyway.

Is the pace too fast? Too slow?

I thought the pace was good as it was. Things are introduced, stuff happens. 

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Writing Resources

Since there wasn't much writing in your gallery to gauge your improvement from (we usually do this in our second part of the article), I will be offering you some helpful articles centered on the weaker points of your writing from the critique I wrote above. (:

I can't exactly tell how strong your characters are from this small of a chapter, but the few ways you described them make me think that some tips about character building would be good. And then I put in some articles about descriptions, because from what little I could tell, they could be beneficial.

We have an interview article on character building that is really, really interesting - together with its Mentorship Lesson blog, that links to a huge quantity of articles on writing characters:

And then there's description, which is related to both character building AND storytelling, and we have a good interview about that also, together with its Mentorship Lesson: