Intellectual alignment, Elias often mused, formed the bedrock of any worthwhile connection. True regard, he believed, only truly flourished between minds of similar caliber. That was the immutable law of the Athenaeum, the very principle upon which Eldoria’s scholastic guilds were founded. He embraced it. Matching erudition, comparable standing within the Great Houses, congruent mastery of ancient arcana — these were the pillars of happiness, the expressway to the esteem every acolyte, every scribe, every master sought. He, a mere junior scribe, understood this implicitly. He was a clever child, now a painstaking man, who clung to rationality as a drowning sailor to flotsam. His meek diligence was his shield, his recall of obscure texts his sword. He believed in order. He believed in logic. Then, in the year he turned twenty-three, Elias realized a grotesque truth: he was ensnared in an extraordinary, unwelcome entanglement. Perhaps it had been an insidious poison, slowly seeping into his veins, and he was only now succumbing. But because he prided himself on being rational and methodical, he dismissed it as a scholar’s momentary madness, a fleeting aberration, and meticulously filed it away in the deepest recesses of his mind. Still, the feelings, coiled like a serpent in his gut, constricted his throat. They blocked his breath, an unseen vise, and, in the end, threatened to choke him whole. A parchment, hastily sealed and smudged with soot, arrived with the pre-dawn chill. It was a summons, sudden and intrusive, like a forgotten spell erupting mid-chant. A junior page, shivering from the cold, slipped it under the heavy oak door of Elias’s austere cell, then vanished into the labyrinthine gloom. Its message, terse and commanding, stole away his fragile early morning peace. He sat on his cot for a long moment, the rough wool scratching his skin, the parchment a searing brand in his hand. A low curse, a sound he rarely permitted himself, escaped his lips. Then, Elias pushed himself to his feet. The Athenaeum slept, its vast stone arteries silent. Save for the rotating guard patrols, no one would notice his departure. He decided to go. Moving through the hushed halls, the flagstones cold beneath his soft slippers, Elias felt like a ghost. Shadows stretched and danced with every guttering lantern, mimicking his own internal dance of dread and morbid fascination. The Air Guild’s astronomical observation tower loomed in the distance, a dark sentinel against the paling sky. Its presence usually brought him comfort, a sense of enduring order. Tonight, it felt like judgment. He navigated the forgotten passages, the ones known only to senior archivists and those who sought quiet study. His heart hammered a frantic rhythm against his ribs. Reaching a seldom-used service exit, one that opened onto the city’s lower tiers, he paused. A breath hitched in his throat. Outside the Athenaeum’s formidable outer wall, nestled against the weathered stone of a lesser dwelling, stood a heavy, obsidian-lacquered phaeton. Its polished surface reflected the nascent light of dawn in dull, unsettling gleams. Lord Cassian’s phaeton, unmistakable. A year ago, a lesser noble family had abruptly moved from their modest estate nearby, and a new occupant, more opulent in their tastes, had taken residence. Elias had never encountered them directly. Given the insulated nature of Eldoria’s noble districts, with their high walls and private courtyards, such anonymity was not surprising. From the phaeton, he surmised the new owner possessed considerable status, perhaps even a scion older than himself. That phaeton was either casually left out in front of the gate, an emblem of nonchalant power, or it was shoved into a cramped corner of the alley, tightly tethered. Somehow, it reminded Elias of himself. He stared at its stark, gleaming form briefly before looking away, hailing a passing closed carriage. Its driver, bundled against the chill, eyed him with a flicker of recognition, then quickly averted his gaze. Elias slipped inside. During the slow, creaking journey, he kept his eyes fixed on the carriage window, watching the city rouse from its slumber. But as someone prone to queasy introspection, the rolling motion of the carriage combined with his churning stomach eventually forced him to give up. He closed his eyes instead, pressing a cool palm to his forehead. “...” For some reason, Elias had found it difficult to properly digest any food for the past year. A constant knot tightened in his stomach, a dull ache just beneath his ribs. With a sigh, he tried to ease the cold constriction lodged in his chest. He made a habit of ignoring emotions that unsettled him, of neatly cataloging them as ‘undesirable variables.’ With enough effort, he had managed to maintain a composed facade all this time. Just as he was now, stepping out of the hired carriage into the tawdry glow of the Gilded Serpent Inn, the scent of stale ale and cheap perfume assaulting his senses. He bit his lip, tasting iron. His fist clenched, then released, a tremor running through his arm. He focused on the small, smudged piece of parchment in his hand, its hurried script outlining a single numeral. He found the corresponding door in the dimly lit, narrow corridor. Slowly, he raised his hand. He knocked three times, a whisper of sound against the thick wood. “Lord Cassian,” Elias murmured, his voice a dry rasp. “Open the door.” Silence greeted him from the other side. A profound, mocking silence. Irritated, a spark igniting in his weary mind, Elias stared at the blank void for a moment. He exhaled sharply, a ragged sound. He pounded on the door again, this time with a sharp, desperate force that reverberated down the hall. “I said, open the damned door!” This situation — honestly, it was nauseating. Imagining what might have transpired in this room overnight, the scent of cheap wine, the rustle of silks, the careless whispers, made Elias’s skin crawl. But he couldn’t stop himself from knocking. Lord Cassian had summoned him, and he endured this repulsive scene because Cassian was the one who had infected him with that first, debilitating 'illness,' this irrational, unwanted fervor. “Why, in the name of the Ancestors, do you summon me when you’re off with some worthless dalliance, you contemptible scion?” Gods, this is unbearable. The life of a junior scribe. Elias Thorne, bound by a terrible, unspoken oath.

The Price of Unreason