A leaden weight pressed Elias into the threadbare cot. Awareness returned in fragments, each piece a shard of discomfort. His face throbbed, a dull, persistent ache behind his eyes, a phantom pressure where no physical blow had landed, yet the pain was undeniable. Rust seemed to grind in his joints as he attempted to lift a hand, a sharp protest echoing through his scapula. His shoulder screamed a silent agony.
“Ah…” A rasp escaped him.
He touched his cheek, fingers brushing over skin that felt oddly taut, bruised beneath the surface. He lay motionless for a time, the frigid air of his cell doing little to rouse him. At last, he pushed himself upright, the cot groaning under the effort.
Perched on the edge, he stared into the gloom of the unlit wall. The stone blurred. A whimpering sound, raw and wretched, clawed its way up from his depths. It broke free, a strangled sob that tore at his throat like sandpaper. Shame, hot and consuming, burned through him.
Unable to contain the surge of desperate anger, he lunged for his small writing desk. A pile of meticulously cataloged parchment fluttered to the floor, scattered like discarded ambitions. He cried, he raged, a silent tempest in the tiny cell. He slumped back, his body failing him, collapsing to the cold stone. Clamping his mouth shut, he squeezed his eyes, yet tears stubbornly welled, tracing warm, humiliating paths down his cheeks. Each hitched breath was a testament to his utter brokenness.
“Damn this!”
He longed for annihilation, a swift end to this unbearable anguish. But truly, it was the memory of the previous night, the words, the searing humiliation, that he wished could simply cease to exist.
The heavy door had been secured, he remembered that much. Had anyone heard? Could the thin walls of his cell have carried his cries? Elias squeezed his eyes shut tighter. Damn Septimus. Damn his cruel words. Why had he appeared? Why had he unleashed such destruction?
Septimus had not merely trampled Elias’s physical being. He had crushed his very spirit, his carefully constructed facade of diligent competence, right before Kaelen. That degradation stung far deeper than any of the countless snubs or condescending glances. It was a wound that festered, compelling him to violent tears.
Even amidst this profound despair, a chilling awareness pricked at him: the need to appear composed, to maintain the carefully crafted image of the reserved scholar. This imperative, even now, twisted in his gut.
Silence enveloped him, then registered with stark clarity. He glanced at the hour-glass. The sands were almost run through for the seventh bell. A horrifying thought chilled his muddled brain: an attendant would soon arrive for morning duties. To be discovered in such a state would be catastrophic. His mind, abruptly, cleared.
He could not, absolutely could not, allow anyone to witness this pathetic, disgraced display. Scrambling to his feet, he righted his ink-stand and carefully gathered the scattered parchment. He swept the minor debris of his outburst under the cot. Then, with a practiced air of weary composure, he waited. The soft rap on the door came a few moments later, precisely on cue. He forced his voice to an even, slightly hoarse tone.
“Enter not. I believe a chill has seized me. My constitution feels… unsuited for the day’s duties. I shall forgo the Scriptorium today.”
“Elder Thorne? Indeed? Should the Guild Healers be summoned?” The voice of the young attendant, a neophyte named Lyra, held a note of concern.
Elias swallowed the bitter taste that coated his tongue.
“I shall attend to it, should my condition not improve. For now, quietude is my prescription.”
“Very well. Might I fetch a restorative draught, perhaps warm spiced milk?”
“Leave it outside my door, if you would be so kind. My gratitude.”
“As you wish, Elder Thorne. Rest well.”
He had decided. The Scriptorium was an impossibility. His shattered pride, the lingering phantom pain, rendered him unfit for the precise, meticulous work required.
Thankfully, a small pot of healing balm, intended for parchment cuts, sat on his shelf. He picked it up, fingers trembling, and applied the cool, scented paste to his aching temples, wishing desperately for the torment to recede. Then, with a shudder, he crawled back into the dubious comfort of his cot.
The balm pot slipped from his nerveless grasp, clattering softly to the stone floor. His entire body trembled, an uncontrollable tremor. Yet, more than the physical ache, the profound humiliation gnawed at him, a thousand tiny, cruel pinches in his gut. It was an absurdity, this constant, consuming shame. To hide the tear-streaked ruin of his face, he pulled his threadbare blanket over his head, blocking out the meager sliver of morning light. Only the oppressive weight of the wool offered any semblance of protection from the crushing despair.
Sleep. He *must* sleep. Forcing his eyes shut, he whispered a desperate mantra: it would be fine. His Guild Mentor would not suspect. Septimus would not broadcast his moment of weakness. It would be fine. With that fragile hope, he burrowed deeper beneath the covers.
*****
It was not fine. Not at all.
Hidden beneath the oppressive blanket, he muttered words that clung to the tip of his tongue like bitter ash. To anyone – the Silent Stars, the Ascendant Guild Masters, anyone – he yearned to scream it, a torrent of desperate truth.
Please. It was Septimus. Septimus had struck him, had trampled him into the dust. That fiend. Septimus was unhinged. He was mad. Driven by some dark, internal madness, he… after all the years, all the shared studies, the silent reverence Elias had held… he had crushed it all. Crushed it directly before Kaelen. Elias was an idiot. He had revealed his most pathetic, vulnerable self to Kaelen, too. And the insidious thought that another might have witnessed the sordid scene… it was a suffocating dread.
He choked off his frantic train of thought. A wave of self-loathing, vast and cold, surged through him. He truly wished to vanish.
The most wretched part, the true testament to his fear and shame, was what he did after the silent weeping ceased. His first desperate act was to purge his memory, and then his personal scribe’s log, of every fleeting message Kaelen had delivered that predawn. Then, in a rush of frantic energy, he accessed the Athenaeum’s minor ward-recording crystals, clearing all records of any unusual passage through the inner dormitory halls from the early morning. That night, that unspeakable sequence of events, had become a festering secret, a truth too abhorrent for any to glimpse.
*****
He feigned illness for three days. Despite the profound psychic bruising, his physical body, though weary, healed with the surprising resilience of youth. Perhaps the most visible marks were hidden beneath his tunic, a scattering of livid spots that slowly faded, nothing life-threatening. For those three days, he remained entombed beneath his blankets, weeping in endless, silent sorrow. He ignored every summons, every gentle rap on his door.
He believed he could persist in his seclusion until his mind achieved some semblance of recovery. But fate, as always, held its own cruel designs. The Guild Master, absent from the Athenaeum on a diplomatic mission, unexpectedly returned. Elias had no choice but to panic.
“...Acolyte Thorne, your face.” Guild Master Elara’s voice, though soft, held the sharp edge of inquiry.
“Oh, honored Guild Master, a minor… misfortune.” Elias stammered, his mind racing.
“A misfortune? Lyra reported a chill. Did a fall accompany this chill?”
As Guild Master Elara peppered him with questions, Elias frantically scrambled for a plausible explanation.
“Ah, indeed, I felt unwell. A lesser acolyte retrieved my morning duties for me…”
“And?” Elara’s gaze was unyielding.
“And I… stumbled, Guild Master. On the winding stairs within the Elder Scriptorium. Struck my face on a loosened stone.”
“What manner of ‘stumble’ leaves a scholar’s face thus? Who was present?”
When Guild Master Elara’s voice hardened perceptibly, Elias waved his hands in a frantic, placating gesture.
“No, truly, no trouble was caused. It was a singular, clumsy incident. I have already… compensated the offending stair with a swift kick.” He offered a pathetic, forced chuckle.
“Come, Thorne—why did you truly conceal this?”
“...Well…” After a moment of desperate thought, he concocted a truly wretched, yet disarming, excuse. “I confess, Guild Master, I was… distracted. Contemplating a rather obscure passage concerning the migration patterns of the cloud-leviathans. Lost my footing in my zeal.”
“What?” Surprisingly, his ridiculous answer seemed to diffuse the tension. Guild Master Elara let out a sigh of disbelief, then a soft, unexpected laugh. “Acolyte Thorne, must your scholarship always lead to such dramatic tumbles?”
“No, Guild Master…”
“Let it not happen again. Focus on your feet as well as your texts.”
“...As you command.” It also helped, he realized, that the internal bruising, while painful, did not appear as outwardly grievous as it felt. Thankfully, the incident seemed to blow over.
Something unsettling did occur later. While sharing a meager meal in the common hall, Guild Master Elara subtly shifted the conversation. “By the way, Acolyte Thorne, is Elder Varkos still… frequenting the inner halls?”
“What?” The mere mention of Septimus Varkos forced his image, and the attendant memory of humiliation, into Elias’s mind. His mood soured instantly. He snapped back, his voice brittle. “His movements are as they have always been, Guild Master.”
*The same, my ass.* Damn him. Damn him. Damn him. He felt so ashamed, so utterly humiliated, he wished for the common hall’s stone floor to simply swallow him whole.
“I ask, for I heard a whisper. The Hall Attendant, young Lyra, mentioned a… visitor, early in the week. A friend, perhaps? A rather frantic message, I gathered?”
Elias’s body went rigid. Slowly, he turned his head toward the entrance to the scullery, where Lyra was diligently wiping down a refectory table. A cold dread seeped into his bones. *Did she hear it? Could she have heard anything that night? Was it possible she was the one who’d heard Kaelen’s desperate plea, or worse, Septimus’s scathing pronouncements?*
“Thorne? Are you unwell?” Guild Master Elara’s question startled him. He blurted out a response without thinking.
“Yes. We are… acquaintances, Guild Master.”
What Guild Master Elara said after that, Elias could not recall. The sheer terror that rooted him to the spot wiped all other words from his memory. What he did remember was the look in her eyes when she mentioned Septimus Varkos. It was the kind of look she reserved for ill tidings, for matters requiring delicate handling.
Why? That single question plunged him deeper into a spiral of fear. His fingers grew cold. No. Lyra could not have heard. The hall attendants’ quarters were distant, the heavy doors of his cell thick. She couldn’t have heard anything. But why? Why did it feel so terribly wrong? All he could do was offer a silent, desperate prayer to the Silent Stars he barely believed in.
Three more days passed. Guild Master Elara began subtly urging his return to the Scriptorium. Elias absolutely did not want to. But if he persisted in his seclusion, his Guild Master would surely suspect a deeper malaise than a mere tumble. That was the last thing he desired. So, he forced a semblance of his usual reserved, diligent demeanor. There was nothing amiss with Acolyte Elias Thorne.
The days leading up to his return were consumed by endless worry. What if he encountered Septimus? What if Kaelen, now Septimus’s shadow, was present? Would Septimus verbally dissect him again? Would he humiliate Elias before his peers—or worse, before Kaelen once more? Would he continue to trample Elias’s self-worth like discarded parchment?
The mere thought made his stomach churn with nausea.
When he finally arrived at the Scriptorium, a mountain of overdue work awaited. He hung his scribe’s satchel on the side of his desk, scattering a few random annotations on top, a futile gesture of busyness. Then he sat, staring blankly at the polished oak, while the murmuring clamor of the Scriptorium gradually intensified. As soon as he heard footsteps approach his alcove, he buried his head in his arms, feigning utter absorption in a scroll he pretended to hold.
If he feigned sleep, or intense study, no one would notice the subtle marks of strain on his face. Not immediately. But he had overlooked one crucial detail: the alcove behind his belonged to Theron. Theron, the boisterous, observant acolyte, was precisely the kind of individual who understood unspoken cues yet chose to disregard them entirely.
As soon as Theron arrived, he paused by Elias’s desk. A hand, surprisingly gentle, slipped between Elias’s shoulder and neck. Theron’s fingers then tilted Elias’s face upwards, forcing him to meet Theron’s unblinking gaze. Elias had no time to resist. He had no choice but to let Theron see. Theron raised an eyebrow as he examined the subtle bruising, and asked bluntly, his voice a low rumble:
“What in the name of the Ancestors happened to your face, Thorne?”
“...Nothing of consequence, Theron.”
“Another tumble in the archives?”
“Indeed. A minor mishap.”
“Truly?” Theron clicked his tongue, a sound of skeptical disapproval, and shook his head before abruptly letting go of Elias’s face. Elias nearly slammed his head back onto the desk.
“Damn it, Theron!” He glared at his ally, startled, but Theron only offered a crooked grin, his eyes distant, lost in some unseen thought. Whatever wisdom Theron was pondering, Elias had no way of knowing.
Neither Septimus Varkos nor Kaelen appeared in the Scriptorium that day. They remained conspicuously absent.
But while Elias had been in seclusion, a whisper, like a chilling breeze, had begun to circulate through the Athenaeum’s labyrinthine halls.
“Did you hear? Elder Varkos… that scion, actually…”
No one directly questioned Elias about his injuries. Yet, it was abundantly clear from the curious, lingering glances he received that the rumor, a dark and insidious thing, had already made its way through the entire institution.
Perhaps, Elias thought with a bitter twist of irony, he was luckier than he deserved.
*****
The whispers, of course, centered upon Elias and Septimus Varkos. Neither of them had attended their duties since the day the rumors first began. And even Kaelen, Septimus’s erstwhile shadow, had disappeared shortly after, leaving no one to dispel the growing tide of speculation. With Elias’s bruised and haunted face serving as silent, visible proof, the whispers spread even faster, fueled by the Athenaeum’s insatiable appetite for scandal.
The story, whispered from alcove to alcove, from scriptorium to refectory, was thus: Elias Thorne, the quiet scribe, and Septimus Varkos, the noble scion, had a profound, ignominious falling out. And, Elder Varkos… possessed *unnatural* proclivities.
“That fool Varkos, I tell you, he harbored an… *unorthodox* fascination for that ink-stained wraith.”
“An ink-stained wraith? Gods, wait. Halt. I cannot contain my amusement.”
“He truly does resemble a spectral figure, perpetually hunched over dusty tomes, does he not? A mere dust-mote in the Grand Hall.”
The Scriptorium was filled with these kinds of hushed, cutting conversations.
“All those who once orbited Elder Varkos… they found themselves utterly undone, I hear.”