Two days later, Lysander discovered a small, tightly furled parchment tucked beneath a specific tome in the restricted lore-chamber. Its edges bore the faint shimmer of a minor illusion, enough to deter casual inspection, but not his own discerning eye. He unrolled it, his breath held.
“*Could you meet me in the unused Rune-Chamber before the morning’s Arcanum-wide lecture? Urgent.*”
Lysander considered the message. It wasn’t a summons from a High Tutor, nor an instruction from House Varrick. His mind, trained in the intricate dance of Arcanum politics, dismissed any notion of personal appeal. Such things were unheard of, especially from one of his quiet standing. It must be some esoteric runic query, a minor task for a lesser House that wished to avoid drawing attention to their struggles.
He forgot the note until just before the fourth bell, signaling the start of the morning’s lecture series. Changing from his lecture robes into simpler, unadorned work-tunic – a concession to the dust and grime of the older Arcanum sections – he headed towards the designated chamber.
Curiosity pricked at him. Who could it be? He expected an acolyte struggling with a complex ward-scheme, or perhaps a junior tutor seeking clarification on ancient script. Yet, the person waiting proved utterly unexpected: a wisp of a girl, Elara Thane, her hands twisting the frayed edges of her sleeve, her small frame dwarfed by the chamber’s shadowed corners. She was from a lesser House, barely a whisper in the Dominion’s grand tapestry of lineage.
“Elara Thane?” Lysander’s voice was a low murmur, edged with confusion.
Her head snapped up, a frantic movement. Her dark eyes, too wide in her pale face, darted between him and the chamber’s grimy walls. A nervous, almost pained smile touched her lips, a gesture Lysander had seen before, one that always seemed to precede trouble.
“What is it? Why here, so suddenly?” Lysander kept his tone even, though a familiar knot of anxiety tightened in his gut. Being seen with a Thane, especially in such a secluded, disused space, could spark unwanted whispers.
Elara clutched her hands, her knuckles white. “Ah, I… I have something I wished to speak about…”
“Speak, then.” Lysander wanted to leave. Quickly. The Arcanum thrived on rumour, a poison that could cripple a student’s standing. He had cultivated his quiet existence precisely to avoid such entanglements. He only ever offered help just enough to maintain the façade of studious detachment, never more, never less.
Oblivious to his rising discomfort, Elara chewed on her lower lip, her gaze flickering around the storage chamber. Indecision warred with a fragile resolve on her face. Each time she seemed on the verge of speech, her lips pressed into a tight, frustrated line.
Lysander watched her, a slow burn of irritation igniting within him. He rarely interacted with students from lesser Houses, finding their anxieties and overt deference grating. He prided himself on his self-sufficiency, his quiet mastery of lore. This hesitant display only amplified his distaste. Her small mouth twitched, an action that others might find endearing, but to Lysander, it was excruciating. He chastised himself. He was becoming overly sensitive.
“Look, I apologize, but the lecture will begin soon. Can you just say what you need to say?”
His nerves were frayed this morning. A restless frustration had gnawed at him since his last encounter with Kaelen, leaving his thoughts a tangled mess. Perhaps his anger wasn’t truly directed at Elara. Perhaps he simply needed a target, any target, to lash out at. The unsettling weight of Kaelen’s ‘Keeper’ still pressed heavily upon him.
While Lysander wrestled with his internal turmoil, Elara seemed to finally find her voice. It emerged small and stammering. “Lysander… I… you see, I…”
“Yes?” Lysander responded half-heartedly, rubbing the back of his neck. Break-time was almost over. He wished he could simply extract the words from her, pry them free from her reluctant grasp.
Just then, the heavy, rune-etched chamber door groaned open. Both Lysander and Elara turned, their eyes meeting those of Valerius Thorne, who stood gasping for breath. No, not quite meeting Lysander’s. Valerius’s furious gaze was fixed solely on Elara.
“*Hnn… hnn…*”
His ragged breathing gave him away. Valerius had been running, likely scouring the Arcanum for Elara. Lysander’s own chest tightened with a suffocating premonition.
Valerius exhaled a long, shuddering breath, then strode confidently into the chamber, his posture radiating menace. Unconsciously, Lysander lowered the hand that had been rubbing his neck. Valerius’s eyes, burning like banked embers, flickered between Elara and Lysander, his expression a mask of barely contained fury.
“Why are you here with him?”
The question hung in the air, directed at no one, yet accusing both. Valerius’s fists clenched, then slowly opened, a silent threat.
Behind Lysander’s outwardly calm demeanor, his insides churned with dread. After a long, tense pause, Valerius finally looked at Lysander. The venom in that gaze was unbearable.
“What in the Abyss, Valerius.” Lysander's voice was barely a whisper.
Please, *please*, don’t look at me like that. Blame Elara for calling me here. Why were Valerius’s eyes, usually so dismissive of Lysander, filled with such raw resentment? He had been dragged into this petty drama by Elara’s fear.
Even as he thought this, Valerius’s burning eyes remained locked onto him. Lysander knew those weren’t the eyes of passion or fervor. They were the eyes of someone consumed by rage, possessiveness, and a terrifying, desperate sense of betrayal. It was the face of a scion deranged by the perceived slight, a face Lysander found both pitiful and deeply unsettling.
“Why are you here with him!”
You look pathetic, Valerius. So utterly pathetic. Lysander met his glare, unyielding, though his stomach churned. Yet, a cold dread whispered that the truly pathetic one wasn’t Valerius, but himself.
Before Lysander could even react, Valerius’s long strides closed the distance between them. The world tilted the moment Lysander looked into his face.
“...!”
He couldn’t process it. His body toppled to the rune-etched floor, and only then did his mind replay the blur of movement.
“No… impossible.”
Valerius had struck him.
Valerius Thorne had *hit* him.
Lying on the ground, Lysander touched his cheek with trembling fingers. The shock was a cold, sharp blade. How could this be? How could Valerius, a scion of House Thorne, stoop to such a base act?
“L-Lysander!” Elara, horrified, lurched towards him, but Valerius screamed like a madman.
“You craven! I told you to address me by my full House name! No, don’t even speak it – don’t address me at all, you mewling coward!”
Seeing Valerius’s furious face, Elara’s expression grew increasingly pale, tears welling in her eyes.
“I-I’m sorry, Valerius, I’m so sorry.”
“You pledged! You *swore* fealty to House Thorne! Damn you!”
Elara stumbled back, her face streaked with tears. But no, she wasn’t the one who should be crying – Lysander was. The humiliation scalded him, a mark far deeper than any bruise.
Thankfully, before Lysander could break down entirely, Valerius cursed violently and stormed off, dragging Elara by the arm, her small form almost tumbling in his wake. It all happened with disorienting speed.
Left sitting alone on the cold stone floor of the disused Rune-Chamber, Lysander stared at the half-open door. A thin shaft of weak Arcanum light streamed through the crack. Something inside him finally gave way. The dam holding back his humiliation burst, and though no tears escaped, his spirit wept.
He hated everything. Elara Thane, who had dragged him into this with her pathetic summons. Valerius Thorne, who had struck him. He wished they would both simply vanish from the Arcanum, from his thoughts. He felt miserable, reduced to a mere bystander in their twisted drama of patronage and fealty.
He rose, a dull ache throbbing in his cheek. He skipped the morning’s Arcanum-wide lecture and instead sought out a Lesser Tutor, feigning a sudden, debilitating headache from a 'complex runic translation'. His ashen face made his excuse believable, and the Tutor, accustomed to the vagaries of studious minds, seemed to understand without prying.
---
Back in his cramped quarters, Lysander collapsed onto his cot and allowed exhaustion to claim him. When he woke, his cheek throbbed, and a faint, purpling bruise bloomed just beneath his eye. Out of habit, he checked the small scrying slate he kept hidden, a relic from his initial Arcanum entry. A message from Cassian Varrick, Kaelen’s older brother, flickered on the surface.
Lysander didn’t typically exchange messages with Cassian, though their paths sometimes crossed due to Kaelen. *Damn House Varrick.* If it were anyone else, he would have ignored it. But Cassian Varrick was not just anyone. He was a power unto himself, a scion of one of the Dominion’s greatest Houses, wielding influence over entire cadres of students and junior tutors. Lysander could not afford to ignore him.
“*Lysander. Absent from the lecture? The High Tutor noted your unusual silence. All well?*”
Lysander clicked his tongue, the sound sharp in the quiet room. He composed a reply, carefully cultivating a tone of detached competence, sending it belatedly after several hours.
“*A momentary lapse of constitution, Master Varrick. An unexpected confluence of arcane symbols in an old text. Nothing of import.*”
He deliberately kept it vague, light. He did not want anyone, especially not Cassian, to know about the incident. The thought of others learning that Valerius Thorne had publicly struck him was unbearably humiliating. And all because of Elara Thane, no less.
“*Indeed. Take care, then. Such lore can be taxing.*”
Cassian Varrick, showing concern? The strange anomaly made Lysander shut off his scrying slate. Hours later, a wave of profound self-pity washed over him. Even Cassian’s thinly veiled inquiry felt suffocating. Other peers, those he occasionally studied with, had also sent perfunctory messages, but none of it was what he truly desired.
No one searching for him included Valerius Thorne. He must be out of his mind to even consider it. Still, he consoled himself, this was the fate of a pawn caught between powerful Houses. He lay there, still, doing what he did best – closing his eyes and turning a blind eye to the reality of his own precarious existence.
“...I’m not the only one,” he whispered to the silence. Perhaps Elara Thane and he were in the same, wretched situation. That strange, twisted, grotesque thought lingered. A selfish, wicked, childish hope intertwined with it. While lying on his cot, staring at the scarred ceiling, another message came through. It was from an unknown, untraceable rune-shard.
“*Lysander, are you feeling very unwell?*”
Lysander frowned. Who among his peers would use such a familiar, almost pleading tone? Cassian? But this was not his usual encrypted sigil. Before he could ponder further, a follow-up message arrived, relentless and infuriating.
“*I am so sorry. Truly sorry. It is all because of me.*”
“*Please forgive me.*”
Whether it was three words or four, the messages made Lysander want to scream. He hurled his scrying slate onto the floor in frustration. How did this wretched Thane acquire his private rune-shard frequency? And how was someone who supposedly possessed no such personal artifacts sending him messages?
Then it hit him. Oh. He had sent her a brief, encrypted message once, several cycles ago, regarding a forgotten text. He cursed his idiotic memory and let out an angry sigh. To vent his frustration, he pounded his fists against his cot for a while until he was too tired to continue and eventually fell into a fitful sleep. Just before his thoughts completely faded, one last message resonated within his mind, a faint echo of the rune-shard.
“*Please, don’t hate me.*”
Funny. He had harbored a quiet, simmering disdain for her and her ilk for months.
The next morning, when he woke, his cheek was swollen, the bruise a darker, more prominent mar against his pallor.
---
He skipped the day’s scheduled practicum in applied runic architecture. No matter how diligently he pursued his studies, he wasn’t so lost to reason that he would show up with a face like this.
A junior House Servant, assigned to his quarters that cycle, prepared a light meal for him. As he ate, the Servant couldn’t resist a soft chiding, advising him to be more careful with the Arcanum’s volatile energies. The meal itself was nothing special—a bland, nutrient-rich broth and soft, stewed fungal-root. He swallowed it all in one go, his mind elsewhere.
As he set his spoon down and reached for a glass of revitalizing draught, the House Servant came to clear the dishes. With a plate in one hand, she said,
“Master Vance, you have a visitor.”
“What?” Lysander’s mind, fogged by a restless night, sharpened immediately.
“Shall I admit them?”
A visitor. His heart fluttered, a sensation he despised for its raw vulnerability. Before he could even identify the emotion, his mind had already begun imagining who might be standing at his door.
Could it be… Valerius Thorne?
It seemed like a wild fantasy, given the previous day’s events, but it wasn’t entirely impossible. Few students ever visited his quarters, and fewer still knew its exact location. If it were Valerius, then he must have come to offer some form of apology, a political maneuver after finally recognizing the impropriety of his actions. Valerius had never resorted to such a crude display before, not once. Yes, he must be concerned, perhaps even seeking to mend the rupture for the sake of House relations.
“Yes, please, admit them.”
The fantasy solidified into a certainty. Even though he chastised himself for such naïve hope, he couldn’t help but feel a small, inexplicable sense of satisfaction. Despite everything, he was still important enough to warrant an acknowledgment from a House Thorne scion. That thought, treacherous and fleeting, filled him with a faint, dangerous warmth. He quickly turned towards the door, his pace quickening with a flicker of anticipation.
But the person waiting there wasn’t who he had expected.
“Yo, Vance. What’s all this?”
Cassian Varrick, sharp-featured and observant, greeted him with a knowing, cynical smirk, a small, sealed phial of a potent herbal draught clutched in his hand. As soon as Cassian’s eyes fell upon Lysander’s face, his smirk faltered, replaced by an unusually serious expression.
“What in the Abyss happened to your face?”
Lysander’s knees almost buckled from the sudden, profound letdown. The warmth in his chest dissolved into cold dread. How did Cassian Varrick even know where his quarters were, or that he was unwell?
“...A misfired experiment,” Lysander replied flatly, his voice hollow.
Cassian frowned, twisting his lips in that sardonic way he always did before delivering a cutting remark.
“You really are an idiot for lore, aren’t you, Vance?”
Lysander didn’t bother to argue. He merely rubbed his throbbing, swollen cheek, the dull ache mirroring the embarrassment surging through him. He was such a fool. Valerius Thorne didn’t think of him as someone important. And here he was, wagging his metaphorical tail like a hopeful cur – a complete moron.
“Here. Take this. It’s for the pain.” Cassian offered the phial.
Lysander accepted it, immediately opening the lid to examine the contents. The draught within shimmered with a pale, emerald light.
“...It’s an Elven pain-nullifier.”
“Is it? Didn’t even notice.” Cassian shrugged, affecting nonchalance.
“Figures. Why would you care?”
“Damn, that’s harsh, Vance.” Cassian paused. “What are you even doing cooped up here?”
“What do you think? I’m recovering. Mind if I just… step inside?” Cassian didn’t wait for an answer. Without hesitation, his long legs carried him over the threshold, into Lysander’s private space.
“Where’s your personal study?”
“Hey, where are you going?”
“Where else? There’s nowhere else of interest in your quarters, is there?”
Lysander had no comeback for that. Cassian was right. Arcanum quarters were all much the same, weren’t they? Feeling awkward, trapped by Cassian’s dominant presence, Lysander followed the scion of House Varrick, who seemed intent on inspecting the interior of his spartan, lore-filled room. The incident with Valerius and Elara might have passed, but now, a new, equally unsettling presence had entered his carefully constructed solitude. His burden had only grown heavier.