A chill, colder than the Sanatorium’s sterile air, crept into Julian Thorne’s veins when Lord Vane’s voice, a silk-edged blade, sought news of Elias.
His carefully constructed detachment fractured. Valerius Blackwood, the prostrate symbol of ruin, became an embodiment of every threat to the Thorne legacy, every subtle erosion of their standing. The elder Blackwood’s 'atonement' was a farce, yet the underlying current of danger it presented to Julian’s younger brother was profoundly real.
Lord Vane departed then, his footsteps echoing down the long, silent corridor. Only a moment later, Kael Vane, Lord Vane's nephew and a constant, disquieting presence in the Academy’s periphery, slipped into the chamber, his smile a thin, knowing line.
Valerius Blackwood lay motionless, his features pale and drawn, a defeated scion drained of his venom. He seemed little more than a husk. Yet the very sight of him, still breathing, still occupying space, ignited a slow, simmering resentment in Julian’s chest. The man who had caused so much silent turmoil for the Thornes was granted a luxurious prison, a stage for his elaborate fall.
No longer playing the part of a mere observer, Julian moved towards the bed. He stopped beside Valerius, gaze sweeping over the intricate wards woven into the bedframe – passive, meant to soothe, not confine. His fingers, almost without conscious thought, brushed a minor focusing crystal embedded in the pillow’s silk. It hummed with a placid, restorative arcane current.
With a fractional shift of his thumb, a meticulous, nearly imperceptible re-alignment of a single micro-etch, Julian subtly warped the crystal's resonance. It would not harm, would not even register as a disruption to a casual inspection. But for a sorcerer of Valerius’s former caliber, even in his diminished state, the newly discordant vibration would be a persistent, subconscious irritant—a sliver of raw static beneath the layers of soothing magic. A whispered entropic pulse, subtly undermining his enforced tranquility, eroding the very solace his atonement was meant to provide.
A breath drew in sharply behind him. Kael Vane. Julian heard a soft, dry chuckle.
“Quite the touch, Thorne,” Kael’s voice purred, low and appreciative.
Julian feigned adjusting the heavy velvet curtain by the window, his movements deliberate, dissipating any residual trace of his minor sorcery. His heart thumped a staccato rhythm against his ribs, but his expression remained a mask of practiced indifference. He turned, meeting Kael’s amused gaze.
Kael clapped his hands softly, a sound jarring in the hushed chamber. “This—this must be what true satisfaction feels like, Julian!”
Julian offered a slight, almost imperceptible shake of his head. An inscrutable glance, dismissive. If Julian was merely a scholar, Kael Vane was an enigma, a storm of calculated chaos.
---
We left the Imperial Sanatorium just as the last rays of the afternoon sun bled across the Azure Empire’s skyline. Kael Vane hummed a tuneless melody, his stride loose and unburdened. Julian walked beside him, a silent counterpoint to Kael’s casual ease.
Suddenly, Kael ceased his humming, turning to face him.
“Thorne, a thought.”
Julian paused, waiting.
“Care to join me this evening? A private session.” Kael’s eyes glinted, promising something beyond the Academy’s staid curriculum, something veiled and perhaps illicit.
“Whatever,” Julian murmured, the word a brush-off, yet an acceptance.
Kael stepped ahead, then pivoted, placing a hand on Julian’s shoulder. His touch was light, almost a caress, yet Julian felt a prickle of discomfort, as if being assessed.
“Julian.”
“What.” Julian’s voice was clipped, a question and a challenge.
“There’s a spark in you, after all,” Kael mused, his tone tinged with a condescending amusement. “Not entirely a dull blade.”
The slight, almost imperceptible nuance of his words—the praise offered from a position of assumed superiority—strained Julian’s composure. Should he lash out, reclaim a measure of dignity? Or simply endure, pretend not to notice? Such choices, small and significant, always arrived without warning, forcing a decision.
What would lead to a better outcome for his family’s position, for his own precarious standing within the Academy? For the sake of a peaceful tenure, an unmolested pursuit of knowledge… he chose the path of least resistance.
Julian allowed a faint, knowing smirk to touch his lips, shrugging subtly. “Merely a shared disdain for pretense, Vane.” He still clung to a thread of his own pride.
“A shared disdain?” Kael repeated, then stretched his lips into a slow, deliberate grin as the last light faded from the sky. “Damn. You truly loathe Blackwood, don’t you?”
Mockery dripped from Kael’s voice, yet it carried no true hostility, only a cold, frostbitten expression. Julian glanced at the darkening sky reflected in a nearby window, then to Kael, whose white teeth shone faintly in the gloom.
“Thanks.”
For what? For his carefully executed, petty act? For showing a hint of the venom he usually kept suppressed? Kael never clarified, leaving Julian to ponder the exact nature of the gratitude.
“Let’s go.”
“Yes.”
Still, from that moment—Julian realized he quite liked Kael Vane. When had it begun? He wasn't sure. But if he had to pinpoint the moment he finally acknowledged it, it was now.
---
Days later, Julian found himself observing Kael in the Academy’s common hall. A strange pull, an almost magnetic force, seemed to guide Julian’s gaze towards him, as if Kael always manifested where Julian’s thoughts drifted. Not that Julian was the peculiar one. Kael Vane was utterly, delightfully unsettling.
Kael was petty, narrow-minded, with an almost ascetic dedication to dissecting others' flaws. Despite his lineage, his contempt for superficial displays of arcane power or noble privilege was boundless.
“Aetheric sparks are absolutely astounding. My tutor shows me a new invocation every week. You lesser houses wouldn’t understand. Say, a friend told me raw aether is actually beneficial for skin.”
“No wonder the acolytes last time told me to just spray it all over her face.”
“Pretty sure that’s just ’cause she was disgusted by your lack of refinement.”
“That’s your problem, not mine.”
“No, that’s definitely your problem.”
“Bah, the Guild Mages can manifest far greater displays. More experience, more complex forms.”
“Be quiet. A House’s legacy has conviction in it. Conviction.”
“More like inherited incompetence.”
“You insolent whelp, I’ll bind you.”
The students considered promising, or at least well-connected, often showcased their minor arcane achievements, small conjurations or wardings. The less gifted, but boastful, would pool their resources to attend dubious underground gatherings, hoping to witness some forbidden ritual. Truly, most initiates had their 'first significant casting' in some disreputable alley, making Valerius Blackwood’s stories of impromptu duels in the higher echelons seem like fantasy for those who couldn’t manage the feat themselves. That’s why these sycophants hung on every whispered tale.
To these students, the number of successful casts or the prestige of their bloodline was like the number of medals on a soldier’s uniform. Whether it was a trivial cantrip or an ancestral invocation didn’t matter—the display itself was a medal to be collected. Even the most intricate, personal rituals ended up reduced to the grainy, low-resolution arcane scryings you could find online with a quick search. And they discussed it like it was something to be proud of. Fucking moronic braggarts.
By their standards, Kael Vane was just another high-born with insufficient 'medals' for public display. But the difference was, he saw *them* as the idiots.
“By the Serpent’s Scales, what in the Hells. Aren’t all of you just performing parlor tricks?”
Hearing this, Julian could begin to understand Kael’s disdain for Valerius Blackwood. Perhaps, in Kael’s mind, he couldn’t stand letting the parasites of society, those who squandered their arcane potential on vanity, run free. Whether it was superficial parlor magic or empty noble posturing, it was all the same to him.
“Stop reeking of unearned privilege and depart.”
Kael’s tone was always playful, but unmistakably designed to mock and demean. Because of that, people who technically belonged to the same social circle found him infuriating. Another hierarchy revealed itself. The lower-ranked just laughed it off, but the ones on Kael’s level fired back the same way—half-joking, half-serious. Most of the time, Seraphin’s cousin, a boisterous brute named Cassian, was the one leading the charge, and his primary weapon was Kael’s perceived lack of direct, flashy arcane demonstrations.
“What in the Hells, why is an apprentice even talking here? Get lost, spark-boy.”
But Kael merely smirked, slithering like a snake.
“I only butt in ’cause you all sound like total simpletons.”
“Oh yeah? And what in the Hells do *you* know, spark-boy?”
“Look, listen. Since you all can’t seem to shut the Hells up about your ‘impressive’ aetheric sparks, let me educate you poor, clueless initiates.”
Grinning, Kael opened his palm. With a delicate finger, he pressed down on the center of his hand, forming a small, contained glyph.
“This is a simple charm, neatly woven.”
Then, he expanded the glyph, drawing it deeper into his palm, until it pulsed with a more complex, resonant energy before pulling his finger back out.
“That was a binding spell, properly executed. Deeper than a surface scratch.”
This time, he tilted his hand slightly upward, withdrew his finger, and pointed at the space between his thumb and forefinger, where a faint residual shimmer lingered.
“And this is how you unravel a ward’s core, kiddies. If you don’t breach it with intent, you’re not a true sorcerer. But I get it. Your ambitions are the size of pea-pods, so you wouldn’t know anything beyond a simple charm. Seriously, watching you little shits obsess over the same triviality over and over again pains me. Are your aetheric channels so small they only reach your fingers? If your raw power’s the same size it was when your nursemaid changed your swaddling, how the Hells are you going to ascend? Hell, if your matriarch saw you manifesting now, she’d probably get nostalgic and start powdering your little arcane foci again.”
“What the Hells? Where did you learn all this? Don’t tell me you’ve been studying forbidden texts behind our backs?”
“No, dumbass. I read. Try it sometime. Read. Fucking idiot.”
He punctuated each syllable by lightly smacking Cassian’s face with a thin, leather-bound book on obscure theoretical arcana.
“Fuh-uhh-ck—!”
The hoarse laughter of post-initiation voices filled the room.
At the time, Julian had been near the front of the classroom, talking with Seraphin about a particularly challenging arcane theory quiz. Seraphin, despite having a higher rank than Julian academically in some areas, always seemed wary of Julian’s overall performance. That’s why he always asked Julian about his test results after exams. His entire mood soured whenever his grades slipped. And most of the time, he blamed the noise pollution from the back of the classroom.
“Ugh, they’re so damn loud….”
He muttered under his breath, probably not even realizing he said it aloud. Then, suddenly aware of Julian’s presence, he shot him a nervous glance. Because Seraphin knew Julian sometimes associated with that boisterous group.
“It’s fine. Honestly, they are rather loud.” Julian offered a neutral assessment.
“Ah, no, it’s nothing… Oh, wait. How did you solve question twenty-five?”
Seraphin craned his neck to peek at Julian’s test sheet. Julian reached out to point at the question, then bit his lip before responding in an intentionally vague, self-deprecating tone.
“I struggled with that one, Seraphin. Perhaps it’s beyond my grasp.” A subtle falsehood, designed to ease Seraphin's competitive anxieties.
“Really? Oh, well, I think I got it right, but I’m not totally sure.”
So what? You simpleton.
“Then wouldn’t it be better to ask the instructor? I’m not confident in my answer.”
“I just wanted to double-check before I go up to him. You’re quite adept at theoretical studies, Julian.”
Seraphin gave him a cautious smile. Was it the kind of smile that formed naturally during a pleasant conversation? Or was he smiling because he relished the situation, believing he’d bested Julian? Julian had no way of knowing. But Seraphin was shrewd. If Julian let any hint of jealousy or frustration slip here, he’d feel like a hound that had lost a fight. So he pretended to listen to Seraphin’s brilliant, if slightly condescending, explanation even though he didn’t give a damn. Long story short, both were masters of polite deception.
“Player number one, Roric! With a corporeal form as pliable as a new initiate!”
The topic at the back of the hall had shifted again. Their giggles went from quiet snickers to full-blown cackles.
“Alright, Roric, you ready?”
“Yes!”
“Holy Hells, this scoundrel’s lost it! Kael! Look at this! This fellow’s insane!”
“This is Hells-damned hilarious. Kael, hurry up and look at this madman!”
At the ruckus, Julian placed his hand on one of Seraphin’s theory papers and turned around. He heard Seraphin shifting, following his gaze.
“Uugh, ugh—!”
Roric was shoving his fist, or perhaps a small, crude focusing crystal, into his mouth. Lips sealed around it, one hand gripping his own head, he moved it in and out in slow, deliberate strokes. Julian frowned.
“What in the Hells are they doing?” he murmured, a cold knot forming in his stomach.
“No idea.” Seraphin shook his head, a look of profound disgust on his face. But it wasn’t that they didn’t understand what was happening. They were just too stunned to process it.
“Seriously, what in the Hells is going on…?”
The crude crystal slid in and out of Roric’s mouth at an increasingly rapid pace. It went deeper and deeper, the wet slosh of his own saliva against his hand growing more pronounced. The boys surrounding him erupted in louder cheers.
“Roric, you crazy bastard!”
“That fool’s got talent!”
The crystal tilted and curved, sometimes pulling all the way out before being shoved back in. His tongue completely sealed the opening, making it perfectly visible as he demonstrated his technique. The pace quickened. Roric spread his legs apart in the chair, bending at the waist to look down at the floor. Foamy white bubbles streamed from his lips. Not of soda, but a grotesque mix of saliva and raw, uncontrolled aether, fizzing down his chin, dripping onto the worn wooden floorboards beneath him.
“Oh! Oh! Oh!”
The gasping chants grew in rhythm, echoing through the hall. Bent in half, Roric suddenly straightened up. At the same time, he yanked the crystal out of his mouth. As soon as the crude focus parted from his tongue, the trapped foamy aether burst out, spilling freely down his chin.
“He’s coming, he’s coming!”
Roric lowered his arm, positioning the crystal near his crotch, and shook it vigorously. The boys around him recoiled, throwing up their arms in defense, but it was useless. Their uniform sleeves still ended up splattered with sticky, noxious aether-foam.
“Ah, fuck! That’s disgusting!”
“Hahhahah.