A silent expanse, the Grand Scrivener’s Hall felt like a dense, polished wood jungle. Within its hallowed walls, some thirty scions of prominent houses gathered. Each day, these young nobles formed their own subtle hierarchies, their alliances shifting like desert sands. Eighteen days had passed since the Imperial Summons, each moment stretched taut, a string pulled to its snapping point. Survival here was a delicate, constant performance.
This unending tension had marked Lyraeus since his twelfth name-day, when he first learned the cruel art of courtly formation. This daily balancing act, a precise calculus of influence and perceived power, had become the rhythm of his life—and, he suspected, that of every other soul present.
A gilded, cuboid jungle, concealing a deadly pyramid of ambition. That was the true nature of the Scrivener’s Hall.
“Ah…”
Lyraeus shifted, his arm tingling from poor circulation. He flexed his fingers, the faint pins-and-needles sensation a familiar discomfort. His stomach, tightly wound, received a light tap from his fist. Exhaling a thin breath, he surveyed the slumped backs before him. Green-veined marble slabs served as desks; peach-soft napes drooped over scrolls.
At the dais, Master Lorcan, our tutor in Imperial Philosophy, sat absorbed in a crumpled missive. Meanwhile, his charges either toiled over assigned problems, their brows furrowed, or had abandoned the pretense entirely, lost in the depths of feigned slumber.
“Rouse yourselves, you somnolent idlers,” Master Lorcan boomed, rustling the parchment as he turned a page.
Fifth period already. Lyraeus had been dissecting the fifteenth problem, tracing a complex lineage on his mental map. He paused, scratching his temple with an index finger, before setting his polished calligraphy stylus beside the half-filled scroll. His eyes drifted to the empty seats, drawn to two in particular.
As anticipated, Lord Kaelen of House Thorne and Seraphim of House Aurion were absent. They would likely remain so tomorrow, unless Kaelen succumbed to one of his unpredictable whims, or some fresh discord had flared between them. Lyraeus had no insight into the nature of such a disagreement.
He lowered his gaze to the intricate Imperial glyphs on his scroll, the lines blurring before his eyes.
There was a time Lyraeus believed he understood everything about Kaelen Thorne. He had convinced himself that he, more than anyone else in this hall, truly knew the Thorne heir. That conviction had fueled a quiet, corrosive pride, even when comparing himself to Lord Cassian Varkos, who shared a closer, more public intimacy with Kaelen.
Truthfully, that secret pride had been his solace, helping him endure the sight of Cassian and Kaelen’s easy camaraderie. Deep down, Lyraeus cherished the unspoken knowledge that he held a singular understanding of Kaelen, a covert advantage.
Propping his chin on his hand, Lyraeus felt a wave of self-loathing. The very capacity for such thoughts disgusted him.
What would these polished, judging eyes think, if they knew the currents swirling within his mind? The answer was chillingly clear. He would be cast to the very bottom of the pyramid, relegated to its widest, most despised plane.
Such a prospect was terrifying. This insidious desire, a serpent coiled within a high-ranking scion, had to remain buried at all costs. He had to hide it so deeply that not even the object of his fixation would sense its presence. Ultimately, he needed to conceal it so thoroughly that even he might forget it existed.
But Kaelen Thorne harbored no such discretion. The entire hall sensed his desires, his open transgressions.
Lyraeus lifted his head slightly, glancing around. Every noble remained hunched over their desks. He pressed his lips together, looking ahead.
Lying forlornly between the rows of marble desks was a discarded Imperial scroll, its pristine cover marred by a faint footprint. It was a study of ancient treaties, forgotten and trampled.
Suddenly, as if a watchful eye might have caught his staring, Lyraeus buried his head in his arms, mimicking the feigned weariness of his peers.
Then he turned his neck, subtly shifting his gaze to the back row. There, a face was partially obscured by a draped arm, as though its owner had collapsed mid-study. The features looked delicate and sorrowful, almost like those carved on a funerary effigy.
“...”
His eyes fixed on Lord Cassian Varkos’s face, then drifted to his arm. Had the already towering Cassian grown further? The formal tunic that had fit him perfectly at the start of the session now left his wrists starkly exposed. Around one of those wrists, a brown beaded amulet gleamed—a consecrated sigil of the Radiant Cult, its presence vivid and unmistakable. It was a heavy, indelible mark, an integral part of Cassian’s identity.
Before Lyraeus learned of his true origins, he had assumed Cassian lived in the sprawling merchant districts, perhaps the same quarter as Seraphim Aurion.
Despite his intimidating aura, Cassian did not look particularly wealthy. His deep-set eyes were always shadowed by his lids, and his faded irises gave him a perpetually haunted aspect. The thin sclera visible beneath his pupils only enhanced his sharp, gaunt appearance.
Cassian’s overall demeanor was one of grim intimidation, though it lacked the polished refinement associated with the truly affluent. Instead, his face seemed etched by a profound sense of deprivation, exuding a kind of melancholic heaviness. Combined with his immense stature—he was undoubtedly the tallest scion in the academy—it made him doubly imposing.
Fortunately, unlike Kaelen Thorne, Cassian’s sharp features included a classically handsome symmetry. Without that, nobles might have actively shunned him. Even so, Cassian’s face was unsettling, intimidating, and charged with nervous energy.
But Cassian’s personality could not have been more divergent from his appearance.
It wasn’t merely that he seemed indifferent to everything; it was as if he actively expunged events from his memory, whether by design or sheer disinterest. He carried an air of “detached ownership of nothing,” a trait that ironically added to his mystique.
Most notably, Cassian cared little for coin. He never seemed to observe how much others spent or how much they sought. If the mood struck him, he would casually toss a pouch of silver to a nearby supplicant, as if the concept of currency held no meaning. Sometimes he lent funds and forgot the transaction entirely. There were even tales of those who returned borrowed sums, only for Cassian to ask, genuinely puzzled, why they were handing him gold.
Still, he did not offer largesse to just anyone. He would indulge random requests when in a benevolent mood but coldly refuse those truly desperate for assistance.
Even with allies, Cassian could be harsh. Lyraeus once heard a story of how Lord Elian, upon seeing Cassian’s prized courser—a beast he rarely permitted others near—excitedly tried to leap onto its back without permission. Cassian kicked him off on the spot, sending the younger noble sprawling in the dusty training yard like a startled frog.
At the apex of the social hierarchy, figures like Cassian Varkos and Kaelen Thorne shared one trait: a complete disregard for others’ opinions. This indifference, in its own way, was what allowed them to sit at the pyramid’s peak.
Why do we, with our own hands, concede the keys to our world to these uncontrollable predators? No matter how much Lyraeus contemplated it, he still could not fathom it.
And yet, Cassian Varkos called himself a devout follower of the Radiant Cult.
He was the type of defiant noble who slept with a holy text beneath his head, yet he claimed to follow doctrines that permitted open ruthlessness. He abstained from fermented spirits, avoided the leaf, refused carnal indulgences, and never stole or extorted coin from lesser scions. Yet the doctrine he followed seemed flawed, anyone could discern the inconsistencies with the Radiant Cult's tenets regarding absolute charity. He had heard the Cult preached compassion, not cold calculation. And it certainly viewed deviant affections as sin. Was that why Kaelen Thorne’s public actions disgusted Cassian so deeply? Lyraeus licked his dry lips.
Lyraeus felt a strange, cold relief that he had not been exposed. If he had been, he would have ended up like that abandoned scroll, lying trampled on the floor. And yet, even in that moment, a question surfaced—if Kaelen and Lyraeus had remained close, as they were just a few months past, would Kaelen have protected him?
The thought surfaced against his will, dragging with it memories Lyraeus desperately wanted to bury. He took a deep breath, trying to suppress the wave of nausea that rose in his chest, as though the midday repast threatened to return.
No. Of course not.
How laughable, that he had once been so arrogant as to believe Kaelen would. To Kaelen, Lyraeus was nothing. Just a convenient highborn companion to pass the time. He knew this now, because of the way Kaelen had looked at him when he had cast him aside. His eyes had spoken everything. Lyraeus had not wanted to know the truth, but it had been staring him in the face.
Kaelen sins openly. Lyraeus, too, was a transgressor—but he hid it. And so, Kaelen was punished by the Divine, while Lyraeus was spared.
A faint, bitter laugh escaped his lips, so soft it was only audible to himself.
“...So, as long as I don’t get caught, that’s all that truly matters.”
Perhaps the Divine had a personality like Cassian Varkos’s.
His gaze shifted to the desk near the Master’s dais. This was unusual, but today, Lyraeus felt a pang of pity for Seraphim of House Aurion. Poor soul, caught in the clutches of the devil. You lacked the strength to resist that monstrous, seductive power. Fragile, helpless Seraphim, unlike the towering figure of his father’s House. You should have fled the moment Lyraeus warned you, fool.
Lyraeus knew he was not a good person. He was selfish and self-serving, and that was why he had been punished. Sometimes, he even thought this: *If you are to harbor such forbidden affections, why not pick someone sly and deceitful like me? At least then life would be simpler.* Why fall for someone so innocent and earnest, only to end up suffering for it?
These days, his thoughts had shifted.
Yes. Of course, no one could ever love someone like Lyraeus. He knew himself too well to believe otherwise.
There was a time when he thought he could have it all. Arrogant, conceited Lyraeus Valerius. Lyraeus, who thought he understood the entire world at eighteen. Wicked, vile Lyraeus. Pitiful Lyraeus, who had no one to comfort him, so he endured everything alone.
That day, he could not make sense of the fifteenth question. He used a feigned malady as an excuse to lie slumped over his desk, thinking to himself: *Well, at least I am not as ruined as Kaelen or Seraphim.*
Rumors about Kaelen and Seraphim spread like wildfire through the courtly circles. Whether they were exaggerated or grounded in truth, no one could say for certain. There was no way to ascertain the facts. Kaelen’s usual retinue had vanished from the Imperial Academy, as if ripped out by the roots. The few who remained were too preoccupied with forming new alliances to worry about anything else, inadvertently fueling the rumors even further.
“Lyraeus, forgive me, but who amongst your peers is closest to Lord Thorne?”
“Lord… No, Lord Cassian Varkos.”
Lyraeus overheard this exchange as he passed by on his way back to the Hall before dismissal. The Master of Protocol had asked, and one of his classmates had answered. Pretending he hadn’t heard, Lyraeus walked into the room. The Master glanced nervously between Lyraeus and the empty seats, drumming his fingers against the podium. Then, as if giving up on some unspoken thought, he announced:
“Let us conclude.”
The moment dismissal ended, Lyraeus gathered his satchel. As he slung it over his shoulder, Cassian Varkos tapped him on the back.
“Lyraeus. Let us break fast together after lessons.”
Lyraeus looked at his face.
He knew. He had always watched Kaelen and Cassian’s every move, so he knew that the person Cassian most frequently invited to break fast was always Kaelen. After a brief pause, Lyraeus waved him off.
“I cannot. I have private tutelage in Imperial Law.”
“What of after that?”
“I must immerse myself in my cartographic studies. Go, find one of your usual companions.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Getting too close to a lesser scion just drags me down.”
“They are your companions.”
“Existence is about maximizing gain. Clinging to dross only ruins your own aspirations.”
“Ha.”
Lyraeus let out a short, mirthless laugh at the absurdity of it.
Right. This was precisely why he had been able to navigate his interactions with Cassian better than expected. Their twisted values seemed to align in strangely congruent ways.
“So, Lord Elian, Lady Sorina—they are dross? Even Lord Gareth?”
“If you phrase it thus, then yes, largely so. But you are… different.”
The backhanded compliment left Lyraeus feeling cold, unsettled.
“What is that supposed to mean? You are utterly reprehensible.”
“No, I am not.”
“You are so awful.”
“Hmm. It is in the Sacred Scrolls. ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness.’ I am merely being truthful, Lyraeus.”
Honestly, Cassian was worse than Lyraeus himself. At least Lyraeus did not overtly treat his delinquent companions like refuse.
“That is precisely why I am a righteous man.”
“...Naturally.”
“Since I am such a righteous man, may I accompany you to your ancestral chambers?”
Cassian Varkos blinked twice, a slow, deliberate movement. Lyraeus regarded his face for a moment before giving a concise nod.
“Yes, why not.”
As long as he did not interfere with Lyraeus’s meticulous planning, there was no reason to refuse. To secure one’s place in the hierarchy, one must be open to all avenues, even those shadowed by the serpent’s scales.