A sickly pallor clung to Lord Kaelen’s face, a testament to the gilded cages he frequented past midnight. His eyelids were heavy, his usually sharp features softened by the excesses of the Crimson Alchemist’s Den. With feigned exasperation, I placed a chilled flask of Rejuvenation Draught upon his desk. It was an unspoken ritual, my meager offering on the mornings he indulged, a small price for the secrets I kept.
“Stop preening like a peacock and drain that. You look like you’ve wrestled a shadow beast.” My voice, always a touch too quiet, held an edge I hoped he’d mistake for annoyance, not bitter resignation.
“My thanks, Elian.” Kaelen took the flask, a sly grin touching his lips. He uncorked it with a practiced flick.
“Did your father scold you this morning?” My question was perfunctory. I knew the answer.
“Not a single word, thanks to your silver tongue.” He shrugged, an arrogant grace in the movement. He spoke with the easy pride of a man who knew he was immune to true consequence. I merely pursed my lips, a tight, thin line that betrayed nothing.
As I turned towards my own cramped alcove, my gaze snagged on a bundle of parchment spread across the ornate desk beside Kaelen. It was a recent Courtly Gazette, its bold script announcing the latest noble decrees and whispered scandals. My eyes lingered there, a fleeting discomfort stirring within me.
Kaelen’s usual neighbor wasn’t me, but Lord Valerius Thorne. He possessed a height that dwarfed Kaelen, forcing him into a seat directly adjacent. I often cursed my own unremarkable stature, finding hollow comfort only in my position two alcoves back, just enough to remain in Kaelen’s peripheral view, yet not so close as to truly belong. It was my solitary sanctuary, a fragile illusion of proximity.
Burying the familiar prickle of jealousy deep beneath my composure, I angled my head towards Valerius’s still form. “When did he arrive?”
“No notion. Was slumped there when I walked in.” Kaelen gestured with the flask, a dismissive flick of his wrist.
“How does a man who vanished before the midnight bell look so… untouched?” I murmured, my voice barely audible.
A faint rustling answered me. The Gazette slid to the floor, revealing Valerius’s half-lidded eyes. Their obsidian depths, usually sharp with hidden intent, were momentarily glazed. He stretched, a slow, languid movement, before letting out a profound yawn that seemed to pull the very air from the room.
“...Told myself I’d just unravel one more cipher before rest, and, well.” Valerius’s voice was a low rumble, surprisingly deep for his slender frame.
As if struck by some invisible chord, Kaelen mirrored the yawn, stretching his jaw wide before his face crumpled into a smug, mocking grin.
“This phantom. Appears a wastrel, yet more diligent than Lord Cassian himself.”
“Kindly cease your prattle, Kaelen.” Valerius’s reply was mild, yet firm.
“As you command, dolt.” Kaelen chuckled, tossing the empty flask onto his desk with a clatter. Valerius, either oblivious or indifferent to Kaelen’s taunt, simply leaned back, a hearty, genuine laugh escaping him. I watched the interaction, a knot forming in my gut, until his gaze met mine. His eyes, now clear, held mine for a beat too long before drifting to the arched window, then back. A strange unease tickled my skin. I subtly scratched my shoulder, redirecting my focus to Kaelen.
The mood in the Grand Antechamber, as morning light slanted through the stained-glass windows, was deceptively pleasant. Such casual exchanges often set the cadence for the day. Soon, minor courtiers like Baron Rhys and Ser Garlen would gravitate towards Kaelen, their faces alight with admiration, eager to absorb his embellished tales. The usual performance would unfold: whispered gossip, forced laughter, and eventually, the arrival of the Head Scrivener to inaugurate the day’s lessons.
For youths considered the most celebrated within the academy’s walls, it was a remarkably wholesome prelude to courtly life. We were, after all, still barely men, navigating the treacherous currents of the Obsidian Court. Yet, Kaelen’s whispered escapades, tales of wild, unseemly dalliances from the previous night, invariably left a foul taste in my mouth. Still, I played my part, feigning amusement, my smile a carefully constructed mask.
Despite the disquiet, I often found these mornings tolerable. But that fragile peace had shattered a month and a half ago. The catalyst, undoubtedly, had been Lysander.
“Look, Lysander approaches.” Baron Rhys’s voice was a sneer, barely veiled.
“By the Void. Disgusting.” Ser Garlen added, a dramatic shudder running through him.
“Does that witless wretch truly believe he can show his face after the rebuke he received?” Rhys openly mocked Lysander, pointing with exaggerated disdain. At the tip of his finger, Lysander shuffled into the Grand Antechamber, his slender frame seeming to shrink further into himself. He clutched a worn satchel to his chest, his pale face obscured by a curtain of sandy hair. He made for a secluded desk in the front row, placed his meager belongings, and promptly slumped over, his head buried in his arms. Observing his hunched figure, I exhaled a sigh heavy with irritation.
Lysander was utterly pathetic. His voice was reedy, his frame slight—a pitiful excuse for a scion of even a minor house. As the murmurs of the Antechamber swelled, Kaelen’s gaze sharpened, a malevolent glint in his eyes. He glared daggers at Lysander’s slumped back, muttering curses under his breath. I hated it. That raw, unsettling sensitivity of his—it drove me mad.
Snatching the Gazette that had previously covered Valerius’s face, Kaelen balled it in one hand. Then, with a casual flick of his wrist, he hurled it. It struck Lysander’s head with a soft *thud*. Lysander’s head slumped further onto his desk.
“By the Gods. Don’t parade that repulsive visage around first thing in the morning.” Kaelen’s voice was a low growl.
Lysander, his arms still shielding his face, did exactly as Kaelen commanded. Yet, Kaelen watched this with a deepening disdain, then kicked his own desk with a violent thud.
“Hey! Are you deaf? Respond to me!” Kaelen’s voice boomed, sharp and sudden. Lysander, still huddled, stammered a response, his voice trembling.
“Y-yes, Lord Kaelen.”
“Lift your head. Look at me. Speak properly.”
Did Kaelen even comprehend the sheer absurdity of his demands? The utter irrationality of it all made a bitter laugh catch in my throat. Whether or not he noticed my unspoken mockery, Kaelen rose and stalked towards Lysander. With every measured step he took, the unpleasant feelings swirling within me grew more vivid, more raw.
Kaelen closed the distance between them. That proximity alone made me feel as if I was losing control over the volatile emotions I’d worked so diligently to suppress. This wasn’t the familiar sting of jealousy I felt when Kaelen jested with Valerius. Instinctively, I knew this was different. Deep down, I harbored something just as sinister as Kaelen did, a dark impulse I barely understood. That’s why watching Kaelen with Valerius had eventually become a dull ache, but his interactions with Lysander unsettled me more and more. My hands began to tremble, and I clenched them tightly beneath the desk, a silent effort to hide my weakness.
Kaelen kicked Lysander’s desk hard. The ornate wood groaned, shaking violently, almost toppling. Lysander jolted upright in alarm, his voice still unsteady, eyes wide and glistening with unshed tears.
“F-forgive me.”
Kaelen stood over him, silently looking down at Lysander’s tear-brimmed face. Lysander’s lower lip quivered, on the verge of breaking. Yet, in that moment, I felt as though I was the one who might burst into tears, a strange empathy warring with my own fear.
Kaelen didn’t compel Lysander to run pointless errands, but he always kept his eyes on him. If Lysander sought the washroom during a break, Kaelen’s gaze would track his retreating figure, even as he spoke with us. I knew because I never stopped watching Kaelen, forever seeking to anticipate his next mood.
To be honest, my first impression of Lysander had been unremarkable. His complexion wasn’t flawless, but his youthful features gave him a face that was easy on the eyes. When he smiled, it felt genuinely unburdened, and even his neutral expression carried a certain gentle brightness.
Before Kaelen’s torment began, no one particularly disliked Lysander. He seemed like a quiet young noble who had grown up in a warm, loving household, shielded from the court’s harsher truths. While he wasn’t overtly sociable, preferring to immerse himself in scholarly pursuits, there was no trace of worry or discomfort in his demeanor. Most people thought of Lysander as a decent boy, perhaps a bit earnest. Since he never flaunted the affection he’d received growing up, he garnered even more quiet praise. Humble, quiet, bright, and inexplicably pleasant to be around—that had been Lysander.
But I didn’t particularly *like* him from the start. I didn’t hate him either—I simply didn’t care. To say he wasn’t even on my radar would be more accurate. Yet, whenever I conversed with my peers, Kaelen, or Valerius’s circle, and Lysander’s name surfaced, I would find myself casually fabricating, saying, “Oh, him? He’s quite alright. Gentle enough.”
Kaelen, much like myself, had initially paid little heed to Lysander. Kaelen was never one to concern himself with new arrivals or scholarly standings. After Lysander transferred from the Lyceum of Veridia in May, he and Kaelen didn’t exchange a single word until June. That was how things had truly been.
But one day, something shifted. A small, sharp deviation formed in the mundane flow of events. It happened right after our mid-day repast, and looking back, I don’t believe I’ve ever regretted an action as much as what transpired that day.
Lysander, as was his habit, had claimed a secluded alcove during the break, his nose buried in a rare, leather-bound scroll. He was the kind of person who found genuine solace within ancient texts. On the other hand, I harbored a habit of being overly congenial towards those with pristine reputations, a calculated effort to elevate my own standing.
That’s why, when I stumbled upon Lysander by chance, I initiated a conversation about the obscure text he was deciphering. I wasn’t a true scholar of forgotten lore myself—pretending to be cultured was more my style, a shield against my perceived intellectual shortcomings.
“You must truly cherish these old texts, hmm?”
“Oh? Yes, I suppose so, Lord Elian.” Lysander startled, then recovered.
At the time, Lysander and I were still distant acquaintances. Perhaps that unfamiliarity made approaching him easier, less fraught with the expectations that weighed on my interactions with Kaelen.
“Have you concluded your reading?”
“Almost at the final chapters, yes.”
“Then close it now. The ending will disappoint you. It is one of those tomes where the final revelation diminishes all that came before.”
“You’ve read it?” His eyes widened slightly.
“Indeed, some time ago.” To satisfy my intellectual vanity, I always sought out reviews and critiques of lesser-known works, ensuring I had a repertoire of informed opinions. Drawing on those memories, I offered a critique—not a genuine one, merely enough to sound learned—and Lysander smiled brightly, looking genuinely pleased. It caught me off guard, an unexpected warmth in his gaze.
“You’re the first person I’ve met who’s read this tome besides me.”
“Oh… truly?” My carefully constructed facade almost faltered.
“Yes, but I shall still finish it. Contemplating why the ending unfolded as it did is part of the pleasure.”
“Well, of course. All interpretations hold their own truths.” I quickly regained my footing.
“Hearing you say that makes me anticipate it even more.”
That ingenuous smile still lingers in my memory, a source of uncomfortable recollection. Was it some instinctive unease I felt even then, a premonition of the entanglement to come?
After that day, Lysander began to seek me out more frequently. Though I found it a touch tiresome and often wondered, *Why me?*, I never outright rejected him. Lysander, with his unsullied reputation, wasn’t the worst noble to cultivate an acquaintance with. After all, ancient texts—outside of courtly decrees and strategic manuals—were practically off-limits for most of our peers. Even if someone had the leisure, such tomes were little more than elaborate doorstops to them. For Lysander, I was likely the only individual around who could engage him on such rarefied subjects.
That day was one of those routine encounters, a mundane conversation, but it also happened to be one of the most ill-fated days among them. Valerius Thorne was to blame. To this day, I cannot fathom why I acted as I did. Why I, a man who never meddled in others’ affairs, chose to stick my nose where it did not belong. Why Valerius, of all people, had left his provisional Cipher Analysis scroll wide open for any passing eye to discern.
I, who detested having my own intellectual shortcomings revealed, naturally assumed Valerius wouldn’t want his exposed either. So, I reached out, gently flipping the parchment over to conceal it. That’s when I saw it: his provisional rank. Eighty-first percentile. I blinked in disbelief, checking again. It was undeniably eighty-first. Considering the rigorous standards for such strategic assessments, it would barely scrape into the Fourth Tier. But still, it was on the higher end of that tier, far from the abject failure I’d always presumed of him.
It was the first time one of my preconceptions about Valerius was utterly shattered. A small shock to realize he wasn’t as much of a lost cause as I’d smugly believed. Naturally, that made me consider Kaelen’s performances. Now, *he* was the true detritus, a scion who would mark every question with a ‘C’ and sleep through the remainder of the analysis. Kaelen had never once managed a respectable score.
Perhaps that’s why I felt such a strange mix of emotions—like I’d unearthed a salvageable treasure amidst the rubbish. A noble I’d once dismissed as entirely vapid turned out to possess a latent intellect, far more redeemable than the man I served. That peculiar realization must have unsettled me, because I did something I normally never would have contemplated.
It was nothing grand. I simply retrieved a quill from a nearby stand and scribbled a short note at the top of Valerius’s analysis.
“Focus on Arcane Cryptography. You’ll hit the Third Tier soon enough. Well done. —Elian Vane.
P.S. Forgive my trespass; I merely sought to conceal your work and happened to glance at it.”
The sheer arrogance of evaluating someone’s performance and offering unsolicited advice made me feel a flush of embarrassment. So, I rambled, desperately seeking to justify my intrusion.
I can’t articulate why I even penned that note in the first place. At the time, I must have been utterly out of my mind. Looking back, it was clear this was the first mistake in what would become a series of irrevocable entanglements. Every mess, every tragic unraveling, begins with a poorly fastened first button.
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