Grey light, filtered by the perpetual mist of Veridian, bled into the Collegium’s Grand Lecture Hall. Tiered benches of dark, polished oak stretched before Elian, each scarred by generations of diligent scribes and less diligent idlers. Before him, thirty backs, draped in the Collegium’s muted grey tunics, formed a human jungle. An echoing quiet settled over the space, broken only by the scratching of stylus on aether-slate and the distant moan of a steam-pipe.
Here, ambition took root like a stubborn weed, twisting into invisible hierarchies. Every student, Elian knew, had navigated these treacherous social currents for the past cycle and a half. Days pulsed with a raw tension, a taut string pulled to snapping. Survival, even in this hallowed place of learning, was a delicate, constant dance.
He learned its steps at twelve, charting the shifting allegiances of his peers, understanding the subtle currents of power. The Collegium, a cubic hall of precise angles and arcane mechanisms, concealed a ruthless pyramid.
“Ah…”
His arm, numb from resting on the cold, damp stone of the desk, tingled as he shook it. He pressed a hand to his stomach, a tight knot of nerves. A weak breath escaped him. Ahead, backs stooped over their work, or slumped in sleep.
At the raised dais, Master Kael, his face a roadmap of ancient Veridian winters, sat. He was not reading, but tracing a coded schematic across a brittle fragment of aether-infused parchment, its edges crinkled.
“Rouse yourselves, you slumbering idlers,” Master Kael’s voice boomed, sharp as a brass retort, as he folded the schematic with a decisive snap.
Fifth period. Elian had stopped at the fifteenth intricate flux-line problem, his mechanical stylus resting beside a half-erased diagram. He scratched his temple with an index finger, his gaze drifting. Two empty seats caught his eye.
Predictably, Kaelen and Theron had not appeared. They would likely remain absent tomorrow, unless Kaelen’s volatile moods shifted, or some unseen rupture occurred between them. Of such events, Elian knew nothing.
He lowered his eyes to the complex charts before him. Intricate symbols, like tiny circuits, filled his vision. A cartographer’s mind, always seeking patterns, always mapping the unseen.
Once, Elian convinced himself he understood Kaelen completely. He prided himself on knowing Kaelen better than anyone in the Collegium, even better than Vorian, who seemed to possess an almost magnetic pull over Kaelen. That quiet, internal knowledge was a perverse comfort.
It sustained him through the chill of watching Vorian and Kaelen in their easy camaraderie. Deep down, he cherished the secret certainty of his superior insight into Kaelen’s true nature.
He propped his chin on his hand. This capacity for such thoughts, so subtle and venomous, sickened him. What would others think if they glimpsed these intricate machinations in his mind? The answer was immediate, chilling. He would be cast down, pushed to the widest, lowest plane of the Collegium’s pyramid.
A terrifying prospect. This insidious desire, this particular brand of high-minded scheming, demanded absolute concealment. It had to be buried so deep that not even its object, Kaelen, could sense it. So deep that, eventually, Elian himself might forget it existed.
Kaelen, however, made no such effort. Everyone in the Collegium knew of his desires.
Elian glanced around, a slight lift of his head. All students remained hunched. He pressed his lips together, turning his gaze forward. Between the rows of benches, forlorn, lay a discarded drafting compass, its brass dull, its needle bent, a scuff mark like a boot print across its arm. A small, silent testament to someone’s failure.
Suddenly, as if sensing an unseen eye, Elian bent his head, burying his face in his arms like the others.
He shifted his neck, directing his gaze to the back row. There, a face lay partially obscured by a raised arm, as though its owner had collapsed mid-study. It looked delicate, sorrowful, almost cadaverous in the dim light.
…
Elian found himself staring at Vorian’s face before his gaze snagged on his wrist. Vorian, already the tallest in their year, seemed to have grown again. His Collegium tunic, once tailored, now exposed his wrists. Around one, a heavy bracelet of polished obsidian beads, strung on braided aether-silk, caught the meager light. It was a stark, unmistakable symbol, an integral part of Vorian’s identity, a ward or a sign of devotion to one of Veridian’s forgotten ancient rites.
Before hearing the rumors, Elian had assumed Vorian lived in the affluent Upper Spire districts, like many of the Noble House heirs. But Vorian possessed no aura of easy wealth. His eyes, often sunken, were shadowed by heavy lids, and his faded irises lent him a perpetually haunted aspect. The thin sclera beneath his pupils enhanced his sharp, gaunt features.
An atmosphere of grim intimidation clung to Vorian, one that lacked the refined polish of inherited fortune. Instead, his face carried the etched marks of profound deprivation, exuding a melancholic heaviness. Combined with his imposing build, it made him doubly formidable.
Fortunately, unlike Kaelen, Vorian’s sharp features aligned with a classically severe symmetry. Without that, he might have been actively shunned. Even so, Vorian’s presence was unsettling, intimidating, and charged with a nervous, unpredictable energy.
His personality, however, contradicted his intimidating exterior in crucial ways. Vorian wasn’t merely indifferent to everything; he actively erased events from memory, whether by will or by some strange neurological quirk. He had an air of “detached ownership of nothing,” a trait that paradoxically added to his mystique.
Most notably, Vorian seemed to care little for coinage or material worth. He never tracked others' spending or their requests for loans. If the whim struck him, he would casually toss a handful of coin-chips to someone nearby, as if the concept of currency held no meaning. Sometimes he lent funds and simply forgot. Tales circulated of students returning borrowed coin, only for Vorian to ask, genuinely puzzled, why they were offering it.
Still, he did not offer indiscriminately. He would indulge random requests when in a pleasant mood but coldly refuse those truly desperate.
Even with his chosen companions, Vorian could be harsh. Elian recalled a story of Cassian, upon seeing Vorian’s prized aether-cycle—a bespoke mechanical wonder Vorian rarely displayed—excitedly attempting to vault onto the passenger seat without permission. Vorian, without a word, kicked him off, sending Cassian sprawling on the slick pavement like a startled frog.
At the apex of the social hierarchy, individuals like Vorian and Kaelen shared one crucial characteristic: a complete disregard for others’ opinions. This indifference, in its own way, was the very mechanism that allowed them to sit at the pyramid’s peak.
Why did they, the others, hand over the keys to their world to these uncontrollable forces? The question echoed, unanswered, in Elian’s mind.
And yet, Vorian professed devotion to the Ancient Rites, a forgotten Veridian creed. He was the type of delinquent who might keep a crumbling scroll of sacred texts beneath his head, yet claimed to follow its teachings. He abstained from intoxicants, from frivolous acts, from theft or extortion. Yet the doctrine he followed seemed flawed, particularly concerning the rigidity of certain ancient laws. Some said the Rites permitted a degree of self-indulgence.
Rumors spoke of the Rites condemning open expressions of… certain affections. Was that why Kaelen’s brazen actions so visibly repulsed Vorian? Elian moistened his dry lips.
He felt a strange, cold relief at not having been caught in Kaelen's orbit. Had he been, he might have ended up like that trampled compass. Yet, even in that moment, a whisper of a question surfaced—if Kaelen and he had remained close, as they were only months ago, would Kaelen have offered protection?
The thought surfaced against his will, dragging with it memories he desperately tried to bury. He took a deep breath, fighting the surge of nausea in his chest, as though the thin gruel he’d eaten threatened to return.
No. Of course not.
How ludicrous, that he had once been arrogant enough to believe such a thing. To Kaelen, Elian was nothing. A mere convenient acquaintance to pass the time. He knew this now, because of the cold amusement in Kaelen's eyes when he had, metaphorically, been beaten to the ground. The truth had stared him in the face.
Kaelen sinned openly. Elian, too, bore the mark of sin, but he hid it. And so, Kaelen faced punishment, while Elian, for now, was spared.
A faint laugh, thin as winter air, escaped his lips, audible only to himself.
“…So, as long as I don’t get caught, that is all that matters.”
Perhaps the Forgotten God of the Ancient Rites had a personality much like Vorian’s.
His gaze drifted to the desk near Master Kael’s dais. Unusually, today, Elian felt a pang of pity for Theron. Poor soul, ensnared in Kaelen's monstrous, seductive power. He lacked the inner resilience to resist. Fragile, helpless Theron, despite his outwardly sturdy build. He should have fled the moment Elian had warned him, fool.
Elian knew he was not a good person. Selfish, self-serving—that was his true cartography. And sometimes, this thought surfaced: *If you must entangle yourself with others, why not choose someone sly and calculating, like me? At least then, life might be simpler. Why fall for someone so innocent and earnest, only to find such suffering?*
These days, his thoughts were different.
Yes. No one, of course, could ever truly care for someone like him. He knew himself too well to believe otherwise.
There was a time when he thought he could possess it all. Arrogant, conceited Elian Vance. Elian, who at eighteen, believed he held the map to the world. Wicked, vile Elian. Pitiful Elian, with no one to offer comfort, enduring everything alone.
That cycle, he could not push past the fifteenth question. He feigned a sudden chill, slumping over his desk, finding a twisted comfort: *At least I am not as ruined as Kaelen or Theron.*
Whispers about Kaelen and Theron spread through the Collegium like aetheric flux through a faulty circuit. Whether embellished or true, none could say. There was no way to discover the truth. Kaelen’s chosen group had vanished from the Collegium’s halls, as if ripped out by the roots. The few remaining were too preoccupied with forming new alliances to bother with their fates, inadvertently fueling the rumors further.
“Master Kael, pardon me, but who was closest to Kaelen?”
“Kaelen… No, Vorian.”
Elian overheard this exchange as he passed on his way back to the lecture hall before dismissal. One of his classmates had answered Master Kael’s query. Feigning disinterest, Elian entered. Master Kael glanced nervously between Elian and the empty seats, his fingers drumming against the dais. Then, as if abandoning an unspoken thought, he announced:
“Conclude your work.”
At the stroke of dismissal, Elian gathered his drafting folio. As he slung it over his shoulder, a heavy hand tapped his back.
“Elian. Come with me after the Collegium.”
He met Vorian’s gaze. Elian knew. He had charted Kaelen and Vorian’s every move, noted that Vorian’s frequent invitations were always extended to Kaelen. After a brief pause, Elian waved him off.
“Cannot. I have archival research.”
“And after that?”
“Mapping. Seek out your other companions.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Proximity to lesser beings only diminishes one’s own standing.”
“Ha.”
Elian let out a short, hollow sound at the sheer audacity. Yes. This was precisely why he had found an unexpected kinship with Vorian. Their twisted values, in strange ways, aligned.
“So, Cassian, Lysander—they are lesser? Even Joric?”
“If you insist on such phrasing, then, yes, largely. But you are… different.”
The backhanded compliment left Elian uneasy.
“What does that signify? You are detestable.”
“No, I am not.”
“You are quite detestable.”
“Hmm. It is in the Ancient Rites. ‘Thou shalt not speak falsehoods.’ I merely speak truth, Elian.”
Honestly, Vorian was worse than Elian. At least Elian didn’t openly dismiss his peers as trash.
“That is why I am a righteous individual.”
“…Indeed.”
“Since I am such a righteous individual, may I accompany you to your lodgings?”
Vorian blinked twice. Elian met his eyes for a long moment before giving a slow nod.
“Very well. Why not.”
As long as Vorian did not interfere with Elian’s own intricate workings, there was no reason to refuse. To secure one’s place in the Collegium’s shifting hierarchy, sometimes one had to accept the strangest alliances. There was no room for sentiment in the cartography of survival.
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