Shadows clung to Kaelen Thorne’s eyes, a bruised violet against the stark ivory of his skin. He slumped in his chair, head lolling, a testament to another night spent defying Lyceum curfews. My fingers tightened on the chilled flask of invigorating herbal draught. Feigning annoyance, I placed it with a crisp thud on his desk. Always, on these mornings after his escapades, a cooling draught found its way to him. It was merely to counteract the tell-tale signs of his excesses, I told myself.
"Cease this performance of a dissipated aesthete," I murmured, "and quell that unseemly pallor."
Kaelen stirred, a low rumble in his throat. "Lysander," he drawled, eyes still half-lidded. "A true boon."
"Did your father not rage this dawn?"
A sardonic curl lifted Kaelen’s lip. "Your timely intervention averted the worst of it." He shrugged, a gesture of casual defiance. I simply offered a tight-lipped smirk, turning towards my own seat. That was when my gaze snagged on the sprawling parchment atop the desk beside Kaelen.
Lysander Thorne, Kaelen’s half-brother, occupied that space. He possessed a greater height than Kaelen, just as Kaelen eclipsed my own stature. The seating arrangements, immutable and hierarchical, placed Lysander naturally at Kaelen’s side. I often cursed my own more modest frame, finding cold comfort only in the fact that Kaelen, by mere inches, sat directly ahead of me. That meager proximity served as my sole solace.
Burying that familiar pang of vexation, I indicated the occupant of the adjacent desk.
"When did he arrive?"
Kaelen yawned, a wide, languid stretch that cracked the fragile morning quiet. "Unknown. He was precisely thus when I stumbled in."
"One who departed early last night should not resemble a wraith this morn," I mused, a sliver of judgment in my tone.
A rustle answered my words. The parchment slipped, revealing Lysander’s half-closed eyes. His narrow gaze swept from me to Kaelen, then he too succumbed, a silent yawn stretching his jaw.
"...I intended merely a fleeting dalliance with my texts, then sleep. It appears my intentions proved... less than firm."
Truthfully, yawns were an infectious blight. Kaelen mimicked him, stretching his mouth wide before his features crumpled into a smug, knowing grin.
"This scion. He projects the air of a dissolute rake, yet harbours more academic diligence than most of the Lyceum’s dutiful scribes."
"Do cease your boorish pronouncements," Lysander retorted, voice rough with sleep.
"As you wish, you diligent dullard."
Lysander, whether acknowledging Kaelen’s jibe or simply too weary to care, leaned back and chuckled, a deep, resonant sound. I watched him for a beat, and our eyes met. He glanced towards the stained-glass window, then back to me, an inexplicable tremor crawling beneath my skin. I scratched my shoulder, turning my focus back to Kaelen.
A relative tranquility settled over the Refectory in these early hours. Such exchanges often set the cadence for the day. Soon, other acolytes—young Lord Valerius, Lady Seraphina—would drift near, drawn by Kaelen’s charismatic nonchalance, eager for snippets of his latest exploits. The immutable routine would unfold: whispered confidences, suppressed laughter, and, eventually, the Praeceptor’s arrival to commence the day’s austere lessons.
For individuals considered among the Lyceum’s most influential, it was a surprisingly quaint commencement to the morning.
Yet, at heart, we were still young, still unburdened by the weight of absolute power. Tales of the previous night’s wild indiscretions, particularly when Kaelen featured, often left a faint sourness in my mouth. Still, I played along, maintaining a mask of polite amusement.
Despite the undercurrents, these mornings seldom felt truly unpleasant. But that changed irrevocably six weeks past. The architect of that shift was, entirely, Elias Thorne.
---
"Look, Elias Thorne has arrived."
A student near us scoffed. "Gods. Despicable."
"Does that wretch possess no shame, returning after his latest humiliation?"
Lord Valerius openly sneered, gesturing with exaggerated disdain towards Elias Thorne. At the end of his pointing finger, Elias hunched, shuffling into the Refectory. His face was obscured by lank strands of dark hair. He placed his threadbare satchel on a desk in the front row, immediately slumping over. Watching his cowering form, I exhaled a sigh laden with a peculiar, unsettling irritation.
Elias Thorne was utterly pathetic. His voice was reedy, his frame slight—a truly pitiable excuse for a scion of a noble house, even a lesser branch. As the murmurs swelled through the hall, Kaelen fixed a daggered glare upon Elias’s back, a low curse rumbling in his chest. I abhorred it. That raw, visceral sensitivity in Kaelen—it gnawed at me.
Snatching the discarded parchment that had momentarily concealed Lysander’s face, Kaelen crumpled it in one hand. Then, with a casual flick, he hurled it. Thud. A soft impact, and Elias Thorne’s head slumped further onto his desk.
"By the Void. Do not inflict that odious visage upon us first thing, worm."
Elias placed his arms on the desk, burying his face deeper within them, precisely as Kaelen had commanded. Yet, Kaelen watched this with simmering contempt, then kicked his own desk with a savage thud.
"Hey! Will you not deign to answer me?"
Kaelen abruptly rose, his voice sharp and commanding. Elias, still hunched, stammered a trembling response.
"Y-yes."
"Lift your head. Look at me. Articulate your answer with clarity."
Did Kaelen truly comprehend the preposterousness of his demands? The sheer, blatant absurdity of his posturing extracted a bitter, humorless laugh from my chest.
Whether or not he perceived it, Kaelen advanced. With each deliberate step he took towards Elias, the unpleasant sensations within me sharpened, growing more vivid and raw.
Kaelen closed the distance. That act alone made me feel as though I was losing my grip on the tumultuous emotions I’d worked so diligently to suppress.
This was not the same, fleeting jealousy I experienced when Kaelen sought the company of Lysander. Instinctively, I knew. Deep within, I harbored a darkness as potent and unsettling as Kaelen’s own. Thus, watching Kaelen with Lysander eventually became a bearable, albeit irksome, spectacle. But his interactions with Elias unsettled me more profoundly with each passing day. My hands began to tremble, and I clenched them, knuckles white, beneath the table, striving to conceal the tremor.
Kaelen delivered a fierce kick to Elias’s desk. It shuddered violently, nearly toppling, and Elias jolted upright in terror, his voice still a wavering whisper.
"F-forgive me."
Kaelen stood, silently gazing down at Elias’s tear-glistened face. Elias’s eyes swam with unshed tears, poised on the precipice of a full breakdown. Yet, in that chilling moment, I felt as though I was the one nearing collapse.
Kaelen never dispatched Elias on frivolous errands, but his eyes never truly left him. If Elias ventured to the ablutions during a recess, Kaelen would still track his retreating figure, even amidst our casual conversations. I knew, for my own gaze never strayed from Kaelen.
---
Honestly, my initial impression of Elias Thorne was unremarkable. His complexion was not entirely clear, but his youthful features lent him a face of inherent pleasantness. When he smiled, it radiated genuine warmth, and even his neutral expression carried a certain unblemished brightness.
Before Kaelen began his torment, no one held particular animosity towards Elias. He seemed a scion who had matured within a sheltered, perhaps even doting, environment. While not overtly gregarious, preferring solitary contemplation, his demeanor bore no trace of apprehension or discomfort.
Most considered Elias a decent individual. As he never flaunted the familial affections he’d received, he garnered even greater quiet admiration. Humble, quiet, luminous, and inexplicably agreeable—that was Elias Thorne.
But I never harbored a particular fondness for him from the outset. Nor did I detest him. I simply felt no strong sentiment either way. To assert that he was entirely beyond my consideration would be more accurate. Yet, whenever my associates, Kaelen, or Lysander’s circle, spoke of Elias, I found myself casually fabricating a response: "Ah, him? He seems... tolerable. Amiable enough."
Kaelen, like myself, had initially paid Elias little mind. Kaelen was never one to concern himself with the petty machinations of Lyceum acolytes. After Elias’s transfer six months prior, he and Kaelen had not exchanged a single meaningful word for a full month. Such was their original dynamic.
But one day, the delicate equilibrium shifted. A minute, yet sharp, deviation from the mundane flow of events took root. It transpired just after the midday repast. In retrospect, I don’t believe I have ever regretted an action as profoundly as what transpired that day.
Elias, true to his habit, had retreated to a secluded alcove during the recess, immersed in a text. He was the sort of individual who found solace in the pages of books. I, conversely, cultivated a habit of being overly affable towards those who commanded a favourable reputation.
Hence, when I chanced upon Elias, I initiated conversation concerning the tome he held. I was not, in truth, a scholar of such breadth myself—the pretense of cultured intellect suited my ambitions more readily.
"You possess a true ardor for these tomes, do you not?"
"Oh? Indeed, I suppose so."
At that juncture, Elias and I remained distant acquaintances. Perhaps that very distance made the approach feel less... compromising.
"Have you concluded that particular volume?"
"Almost at its culmination."
"Then set it aside now. The denouement will disappoint you. It is one of those narratives where the ending sullies the entire work."
"You have perused it prior?"
"Some time ago, yes."
To satiate my intellectual vanity, I habitually sought out reviews and critical analyses of texts, ensuring I possessed ready pronouncements for future discourse. Drawing upon those stored recollections, I offered a critique—not an authentic one, merely sufficient to appear learned—and Elias Thorne smiled, a genuinely radiant expression of pleasure. It startled me.
"You are the first individual I have encountered who has read this work, besides myself."
"Is... that truly so?"
"Yet, I shall still finish it. Contemplating the reasoning behind its conclusion is, to me, part of the enjoyment."
"Naturally. Divergent opinions are the very essence of scholarship."
"Your words make me anticipate it all the more."
That smile still haunted my memory, a discordant note. Was it an instinctive disquiet I felt even then?
Following that day, Elias Thorne began to seek me out with increasing frequency. While I found it somewhat irksome, often questioning, *Why me?*, I never outright rejected him. Elias, with his unblemished reputation, was not an undesirable acquaintance to cultivate.
After all, beyond the mandated Lyceum treatises and scrolls, books were practically proscribed for acolytes of our standing. Even if one found the leisure, most regarded such volumes as little more than glorified footrests. For Elias, I was likely the sole person in his orbit with whom he could genuinely discuss such esoteric pursuits.
That particular day marked one of those routine encounters, yet it also proved to be one of the most ill-fated amongst them.
---
Lysander Thorne bore the primary culpability. To this very day, I cannot fathom the impulse that seized me. Why I, a soul who never interjected himself into the affairs of others, chose to pry into matters that did not concern me. Why Lysander, of all things, had left his mock examination on Ancient Runes splayed wide open for any passing acolyte to scrutinize.
I, who loathed having my own scores unveiled, naturally presumed Lysander would desire a similar discretion. So, I merely inverted the parchment to conceal it. That was the precise moment I beheld it: his score. An eighty-one.
My eyes blinked in disbelief, then scanned it once more. Undeniably, an eighty-one. Considering the Lyceum’s exacting thresholds for this particular assessment, it would barely secure a position within the Fourth Tier of scholarship. Yet, it was undeniably on the higher end of that tier.
It was the first instance a deeply held preconception shattered. A faint shock resonated through me, realizing Lysander was not the academic failure I had so comfortably imagined. Naturally, my thoughts turned to Kaelen’s grades. Now, Kaelen truly embodied academic dereliction. A scion who would mark every question with a "B" and slumber through the remainder of an examination, Kaelen had never once managed a score remotely respectable.
Perhaps that was why such a maelstrom of emotions surged within me—as if I had discovered a salvageable shard amidst a heap of refuse. An individual I had once disdained proved to possess more merit than the one I so ardently admired. That strange, unsettling realization must have unbalanced me, for I committed an act I would ordinarily never contemplate.
It was nothing grand, merely a fleeting indiscretion. I seized a nearby stylus and scrawled a brief annotation upon the top of Lysander’s parchment.
"Focus upon the theoretical applications. You shall attain the Third Tier swiftly enough. A commendable effort. —Caelum Lysander. P.S. My apologies for intruding upon your score without leave. I merely inverted the paper for privacy and chanced to glimpse it."
The sheer arrogance of assessing another’s academic achievement and offering unsolicited counsel filled me with a fleeting wave of self-consciousness, compelling me to ramble forth with justification.
I cannot articulate why I penned it in the first place. At that precise moment, I must have been utterly bereft of reason. In hindsight, it was unequivocally the initial misstep in what would become a complex web of entanglements. Every profound misfortune begins with a poorly fastened first button.
If I had not composed that note, I would never have encountered Elias Thorne, clutching a book, as he walked down the corridor.