The room was warm in a way that could hardly be called pleasant; the stone walls still held the night’s chill, yet the air had already grown dense with the smell of chalk and a faint, metallic undertone of magic – always present here, though rarely acknowledged. The students stood in their assigned places, evenly spaced, as dictated by the layout of the hall and the established order of the exercise, a structure that left no room for improvisation.
“Focus on precision, not force,” the instructor said without looking at them. “Transfer of a solid object. Distance: two steps. No showmanship.”
Small metal discs lay scattered across the stone floor–objects stripped of meaning, their sole purpose to end up somewhere other than where they had rested a moment before.
Mael shifted his weight from one foot to the other and raised his wand, feeling beneath his fingers the smooth wood worn down by years of use. For a brief moment, he thought he was gripping it too tightly, though in truth the strength of his hold mattered little. A cold had been bothering him since morning; his throat felt raw, his breath shorter than usual, but none of it seemed reason enough to fail an exercise repeated here almost daily.
He fixed his gaze on the disc in front of him and tried to draw his focus into a single point, imagining a brief motion–not the path or the effort, but the fact of displacement itself, a minimal impulse that usually sufficed.
He inhaled.
“Now.”
Out of nowhere, entirely out of place, breaking the rhythm he had just settled into, an uncontrolled sneeze tore through him. His hand dropped instinctively, his fingers tightened around the wand, and the initiated impulse, instead of dissipating, merely changed direction.
The wand pointed downward.
Straight at his foot.
For a brief instant, Mael felt warmth spreading upward from his foot – not violently, but with a strangely ordered calm, as though his body had been drawn into a circuit that until now had operated beyond his awareness. There was no pain–at least not at first. Instead there was silence, unnaturally even, as if something that was usually in motion had suddenly stabilized.
His knees buckled on their own, and the fall came faster than he could anticipate. The stone floor was cold. Blood ran from his nose, leaving a dark streak that looked almost incidental. The wand slipped from his hand and rolled several steps away, coming to a soundless stop.
The metal disc did not move by so much as a millimeter.
MONITORING INITIALIZED
UNIT: REGISTERED
PHYSICAL STATUS: STABLE
PATTERN COHERENCE: COMPLETE
EMOTIONAL DATA: –UNAVAILABLE–
MAGICAL PARAMETERS: WITHIN NORM
DISCREPANCIES: NONE DETECTED
Voices rose around him–movement, brief commands–but all of it reached Mael as though through a layer of water, too distant to demand a response. He felt only that something within him had been brought into alignment, as if his body had completed a process whose existence he had never known.
“Stop the exercise!” The instructor’s voice was sharp, but controlled. “Immediately!”
Somewhere beyond awareness, within an order that required neither consciousness nor consent, the unit’s condition was deemed stable and not requiring further operational intervention. The image of the ceiling blurred slowly, and the world withdrew without haste, as though nothing of consequence had occurred.
⸸ * ⸸
Consciousness arrived without warning. It did not rise out of darkness or surface from sleep – it was simply there, a sudden fact so self-evident it required no explanation. For a brief moment, existence was the only thing that could be stated. Without a name. Without a history. Without a why.
Only then did light appear.
Bright, diffused, gentle on the eyes. When he opened them, he saw the ceiling – smooth, pale, divided by thin lines running parallel to one another, without a single unnecessary break. He looked at them for a long time, though he could not have said why. The lines were simply there.
His breathing was calm. That surprised him in a way difficult to name, because he did not know what he had been expecting. His chest rose and fell evenly, without effort, as though the body knew the rhythm better than he did. He tried to move his hand. His fingers responded at once, obedient, carrying out an intention that appeared and was completed before he could examine it.
The capacity for action existed within him, though everything that usually gives action meaning was absent.
He noticed the coolness beneath his back–uniform, clean, without scent. Only then did he understand that he was lying down, though the thought I am lying down came later than the sensation itself. The world consisted of facts that did not require names.
The door opened quietly. The sound was distinct, yet it carried no unease. A woman in a light coat entered the room, holding a thin tablet marked with symbols. She stopped beside the bed and studied him with the professional concentration of someone assessing not emotions, but functions.
“Can you hear me?” she asked.
He understood the question. Understanding arrived naturally, like another fact. What he did not know was what to do with the answer. He remained silent, watching her face, searching it for a cue he could not have named.
The woman made a note on the tablet.
“All right,” she said after a moment. “That happens.” She leaned a little closer. “What’s your name?”
The question was different. Heavier. He waited for something to stir inside him that could fill it–a memory, a sound, even a vague impression. Instead, he encountered an empty space, smooth and sealed, like a wall whose existence he had not known until he ran into it.
“I don’t know,” he said at last.
His own voice sounded foreign, as though it belonged to the room rather than to him. The woman nodded, as if she had expected precisely that answer.
“Your name is Mael,” she said calmly. “You’re a student at the Academy. There was a minor incident during class. Your body is in good condition.”
The words reached him one by one, failing to form a whole. Mael provoked no reaction. It was a sound that could be acknowledged, but it made no attempt to settle within him.
“You’ll stay here for a while,” she added. “For observation.”
He nodded–not because he understood, but because the gesture felt appropriate. When the woman left, the door closed behind her almost without a sound, and the room filled with silence once more. He lay still, staring at the ceiling’s straight lines, trying to find even a shadow of something that might confirm a prior order, some sense of continuity. He found nothing.
There was only now. A body functioning without fault, and a name that did not belong to it. He did not yet know that this state had been labeled stability.
He did not hear someone enter the room again. A tall man approached almost without sound. He noticed him only when a shadow fell across the floor in front of him – clean, distinct, certain.
“Mael.”
The name was spoken calmly, low, with that particular intonation that assumes the listener’s attention. He lifted his gaze slowly. The man standing before him was tall and straight-backed, impeccably dressed, like someone who never allowed for chance. His face was severe, intellectual; his eyes cool and focused. He looked at him the way one checks a result.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
The question sounded familiar, though Mael could not have said why. He hesitated.
“Fine,” he answered cautiously. “I think.”
The man nodded, as if that were precisely the answer he had expected.
“The healers have confirmed that your physical condition is without fault,” he said. “That is what matters the most.”
He sat down beside him, maintaining a small but deliberate distance. His presence was stable, tangible, like a pillar one could lean against–provided one knew how.
“Your memory will return,” he added after a moment. “It’s a matter of time and proper stimulation. The Academy has procedures for cases like this.”
Mael listened carefully. He understood the words, their meaning, their logical connections. What he did not understand was why this man spoke to him this way–as though to someone long known, not a stranger.
“Who…” he began, then stopped as the man looked at him more closely.
“Who am I?” the man finished calmly. “I’m your father.”
The sentence provoked no reaction. There was no relief in it, no resistance, no sudden surge of emotion. It was simply a fact to be acknowledged, the way one acknowledges information about the weather.
“My name is Tolenwal,” the man added. “I’m a professor at the Academy.”
Mael nodded, because that was what was expected of him. His father watched him for another moment, as though searching for confirmation in his posture, his gaze, some small, involuntary gesture. He did not find what he anticipated–or perhaps he found something else.
“Rest,” he said at last. “We’ll return to a normal schedule soon.”
Normal. The word hung between them, heavy and ill-fitting. When the man stood and left, leaving him alone on the bed, Mael had the distinct sense that someone very important had just passed through his life–and that this importance had nothing to anchor itself to within him.
His body was calm. His mind functioned.
And yet everything that should have bound him to the world remained beyond reach.
He no longer wanted to lie in stillness. His body was stable–whatever that meant–and he wanted to find some meaning in it. He got up without difficulty. His legs, though they might have been expected to feel weak, registered no weight at all. He looked around the room, and only then did he notice the mirror above the sink: simple, unframed, as though any additional form had been deemed unnecessary. Light fell on it from above, even and cool, distorting nothing, casting no shadows. The reflection was clear.
He stepped closer. For a moment he studied the face, unable to recognize it as either foreign or his own. It was simply… present. Pale skin, almost translucent. Blue eyes–too attentive for someone who did not know what he was looking at. Brows drawn slightly together, as though the body were attempting to recreate an expression of focus whose meaning had long since been lost.
He lifted his hand. The motion was cautious, as if touch itself might alter something. His fingers met his cheek; the skin was warm, real. The reflection mirrored the gesture without delay, perfectly synchronized. It should have offered a sense of continuity. Instead, it produced a faint, elusive tension–as though he were looking at someone who knew more about him than he was able to accept.
He leaned closer, nearly touching the mirror with his forehead. He began to notice small details: a faint bruise along the hairline, barely visible; the collar of his shirt sitting too perfectly beneath the long navy robe, uniform-like in its cut; shoulders that looked accustomed to straightening without effort.
All of it suggested a history. He did not know it. His breathing quickened slightly. It was not fear–rather, an attempt to close a distance he could not name. He stared at his reflection longer than was comfortable, as though hoping that if he did not look away, something would happen. That the face on the other side would finally betray who he was.
Nothing happened.
Instead, at the very edge of his field of vision, something appeared–not as an image, but as an intrusive sense of presence that cut through the silence.
FATIGUE: ELEVATED
EMOTIONAL STATE: UNSTABLE
PATTERN COHERENCE: REDUCED
He blinked sharply and stepped back on instinct. The reflection did the same. For a moment he could not tell whether what he had seen belonged to the mirror or to his own reaction. His stomach tightened slightly–without pain, without panic–like the feeling after holding one’s breath too long. He looked down at his hands. They trembled faintly, almost imperceptibly.
“This…” he began quietly, then stopped.
He did not know whom he was speaking to.
The message vanished as abruptly as it had appeared, leaving no trace behind. The mirror was once again only a mirror. The face was once again only a face.
He stood there for another moment, then lowered his gaze–not because he was afraid of what he had seen, but because he was beginning to understand that what he saw was not enough to answer the question that was only now taking shape within him. Whoever he was, his body knew more about him than he did.
And someone–something–had identified that as a problem.
⸸ * ⸸
The infirmary door closed behind him softly, almost without a sound, as though it did not wish to draw attention to itself. He stood still for a moment, his hand resting against the cool surface of the wood, as if the contact held a meaning he did not yet understand. The corridor was long and bright. Light streamed in through tall windows, evenly dispersed, free of harsh contrasts. The stone walls bore the same hue as the rest of the Academy–neutral, calming, designed not to hold the eye. Everything was in its place.
He was not.
He lowered his hand and took a step forward. Then another. His footsteps sounded normal, steady, unhesitating. His body moved with confidence, as though it knew the route, even if he himself could not have said where it led. That certainty offered a strange sense of safety–unsettling precisely because it had no source.
People passed him along the way. Students, instructors, healers. Some slowed, casting him brief looks with that particular expression that suggested recognition. Someone nodded. Someone else offered a fleeting smile, the kind reserved for someone familiar, not requiring a pause. He returned none of these gestures–not because he did not want to, but because he did not know which one was correct.
He stopped at a junction where the corridor branched in two identical directions, matched in light and proportion. For a moment he stood motionless, aware of a slight tension building inside him. There was no fear in it, no panic. Only the need for a decision, without any criteria by which to make it.
He chose a direction at random. He walked slowly, paying closer attention to his surroundings. Doors with nameplates. Columns set at measured intervals. Benches lining the walls, empty at this hour. The Academy functioned as it always did, indifferent to him. That, more than anything, was what struck him.
He sat down on one of the benches. He leaned his back against the cool stone, his hands clasped close to his body. For a moment he watched the people passing by, trying to understand what, precisely, set them apart from him. They all seemed to have an invisible line pulling them forward–a destination, however trivial. He had only here, and now.
Something cut across his field of vision again, sudden and unwelcome, like a reflection of light where no light existed.
FATIGUE: ELEVATED
EMOTIONAL STATE: UNSTABLE
PATTERN COHERENCE: REDUCED
He flinched slightly and lowered his gaze to his hands. The skin was pale, the fingers long and steady. They did not look fatigued. They did not look unstable. He clenched them on instinct, as if to confirm that the body’s obedience was still unquestionable. It was.
The message vanished as abruptly as it had appeared, leaving behind nothing but a brief sensation that something had just been noticed.
Not understood–noticed.
He lifted his gaze. The corridor looked exactly as it had before. People passed by, doors opened and closed, the world continued in its rhythm. No one paid him any particular attention.
He sat upright, though his shoulders were drawn slightly inward, as if instinctively trying to reduce the space he occupied. His hands rested on his knees, clasped too tightly–but not enough to draw notice. He breathed evenly. Everything in him functioned properly.
Footsteps approached without haste and stopped just in front of him. For a moment he sensed someone’s presence before he looked up. It was distinct, orderly–like something that always knew where it was meant to stand.
“Mael.”
The name was spoken with certainty, without hesitation. He raised his head. The girl standing before him was tall and slender, dressed in an Academy uniform worn impeccably. Her black hair fell smoothly over her shoulders, not a single strand out of place. Green eyes studied him with an expression that was hard to define–not concern, not curiosity, but something closer to appraisal.
“You look… awful,” she added after a moment.
He didn’t know how to answer. He had no point of reference. He watched her in silence, trying to understand why her presence stirred a faint tension in him, like a collar fastened just a bit too tight.
She narrowed her eyes slightly.
“What are you staring at?” she asked, dryly. “Did the overload knock the words right out of you?” She snorted. “You hit the floor so hard I honestly wouldn’t be surprised. Still–I never thought I’d see you screw up a spell this badly. When your mother hears about it, she’s going to tear into you.” She laughed.
“I…” he began, though he had no idea how to continue. “Who are you?” He lifted his gaze fully at last, their eyes meeting. The gesture was cautious, almost apologetic.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Her expression fell. “Don’t tell me you don’t remember me.”
He couldn’t find an answer. He knew–knew, though not how–that something connected the person he had been and the girl in front of him, but he couldn’t define the relationship. He looked at her uncertainly. For a brief moment, something shifted in her gaze. The green of her eyes hardened, as though a hypothesis had just been confirmed.
“Kalis,” she said. “We’ve been in the same group for three years.”
Three years. The information registered, stored somewhere near the surface of his awareness, but failed to attach itself to anything else.
“I see,” he replied, though it wasn’t entirely true.
She sat down beside him, maintaining a distance that felt precisely calculated. Her movements were calm, controlled, as though even stillness obeyed a rule.
“Everyone’s talking about you now,” she went on. “It’s been a while since anyone managed to have a workplace accident that weird…” She laughed again–not cruelly, more like someone teasing a capable colleague.
Mael had no idea how to respond.
“I just don’t get how someone with your level of experience could pull something like that,” she said. “Professor Tornwal definitely already knows about it. And when your mom sees you tonight? Yeah. I wouldn’t expect a quiet evening.”
The word–father–still triggered nothing, but he noticed the way she watched him more closely, as though she were waiting for a crack to show.
“You should be resting,” she added. “Not sitting here like some kind of orphan.”
The words struck deeper than he expected. They didn’t hurt. Instead, they exposed something that had been shapeless until now. He drew in a breath too quickly and dropped his gaze at once.
Kalis stood up.
The Director said you’re excused from classes for the rest of today,” she said evenly. “You should go back to the infirmary–and try not to get pulled into conversations. Someone’s bound to start spreading rumors behind your back.”
She walked away without haste, her footsteps dissolving into the rhythm of the corridor. He remained on the bench, his hands clenched on his knees, carrying the strange certainty that he had just crossed paths with someone who understood his former place in the world better than he ever had himself.