A faint tremor ran through the floorboards. Elian stirred, a low groan escaping his lips. Sunlight, weak and diffused by Veridian’s ever-present haze, painted the rain-slicked windowpanes in muted silver. He blinked, the soft fabric of his pillow a comforting press against his cheek.
His hand rose, fingers tracing the line of his jaw. The swelling had receded, a miracle or perhaps the meticulously prepared poultice finally working its quiet magic. Only a bruised patch of dusky blue remained, the kind one might dismiss as a clumsy encounter with a low-hanging gear.
Manageable. The thought brought a fragile lightness to his chest.
With a quiet resolve, he prepared for the day. Each item placed with careful precision, a small act of control in a world that often felt chaotic. His satchel, filled with his finest quills and parchment, felt heavier than usual.
He entered the Scholarium’s main hall, the air immediately pressing in. Not the usual academic hush of parchment and ink, but a thick, unspoken tension. It hung like the perpetual industrial smog outside, coating the polished brass and arcane conduits. A glance into the Scriptorium confirmed his unease. Every student sat stiffly, gazes downcast, avoiding eye contact.
Kaelen Thorne was already there. His presence, even seated, commanded the room, a cold anchor of power.
Elian’s eyes sought out Finnian. He arrived just as the first bell chimed, sliding into the Scriptorium with a hesitant, almost furtive step. He barely cleared the threshold, narrowly escaping a late mark.
“...”
Elian froze. A gasp caught in his throat, unspoken. He’d indulged in a fleeting, childish thought yesterday—a bitter, shameful wish for Kaelen’s cruelty to turn back on itself. But seeing Finnian now, guilt clawed at his stomach with talons of ice.
Finnian’s face was a ruin. A split lip bled a thin, dark line down his chin. One eye was swollen shut, a grotesque, purplish knot where gentle skin should have been. It looked far worse than Elian’s own injury. A suffocating wave of self-loathing washed over him. He despised his own fleeting vindictiveness.
“Impossible…” The whisper was lost in the low hum of the arcane ventilation system.
Finnian navigated the rows, shoulders hunched, eyes darting like a snared pigeon. His gaze, as if drawn by a magnetic pull, flickered to Elian. For a long, agonizing moment, their eyes locked. Then, Finnian flinched, a startled grimace contorting his battered features. He wrenched his head away, shuffling quickly to his seat, a clear avoidance.
What did that mean? The strange reaction left Elian with a fresh pang of unease. He scanned the room, a sickening realization dawning. Kaelen Thorne met his gaze, his eyes narrowed, a silent, deadly promise of retribution.
“Ah, blast it all.” Regret, sharp and acidic, flooded Elian. He should have feigned illness. He should have stayed home.
After that, Finnian, who had previously sought Elian out with an almost desperate eagerness, vanished into Kaelen’s shadow. He avoided Elian during the brief pauses between lessons. At the mid-day meal, Finnian disappeared, led away by Kaelen to some undisclosed corner of the Scholarium, or perhaps beyond its guarded gates entirely.
Left alone, Elian found himself at a quiet table with Lysander. A part of him, a furious, frightened part, yearned to follow, to find out what fresh torment Kaelen inflicted. But another part, the larger, more pragmatic part, held him back. He hated admitting it, but he was terrified of what he might witness.
Surely, Kaelen wouldn’t beat Finnian again. Not after last night. But Finnian’s ruined face haunted his thoughts, making it impossible to truly dismiss the possibility.
Lysander, oblivious to the storm churning within Elian, chewed thoughtfully on a dried ration bar. “Still tense in there, wasn’t it? I nearly choked on my own nerves.”
“You seemed perfectly fine yesterday, devouring that glacial confection.” Elian watched a bead of condensation roll down his cup.
“Give me some credit, Elian. I sucked it up like a seasoned veteran.” Lysander winked, a playful glint in his eye.
“Hard to suck up nerves, easy to suck a confection.” Elian nudged Lysander’s calf with his foot under the table, a brief, annoyed gesture. Lysander rubbed his chin, a faintly sheepish expression flashing across his face. Or perhaps Elian imagined it.
---
Life possessed a peculiar, circuitous logic. From their very first meeting, Elian had harbored no intention of befriending Lysander. He hadn't even liked him, finding his casual disregard for decorum grating. Yet, here they were, Lysander often the only solace in the Scholarium’s oppressive halls.
Lysander’s lighthearted demeanor, his flippant remarks, served as a strange counterweight. They prevented Elian from sinking too deeply into the suffocating weight of Kaelen’s manipulations and his own anxieties.
In the past, Elian had disdained these very qualities, dismissing Lysander as shallow and unserious. Now, he found himself relying on that levity, a precarious lifeline keeping him grounded. If Kaelen and he had remained close, if their paths hadn’t veered into this twisted confrontation, Elian doubted he would have ever realized how much he needed Lysander’s presence.
After that day, Kaelen began to detach himself, slowly, deliberately, from the wider student cohort. Sometimes, he vanished with Finnian. Other times, he drew a few additional students into his orbit. There were moments, though, when some flat-out refused, shaking their heads with an uneasy set to their features.
He encountered Joran, a burly student, clambering over a low wall in the Scholarium’s outer precinct. Joran, apparently evading a junior instructor, paused. He recounted, with a mix of amusement and genuine unease, that Kaelen had been ordering the others to strike Finnian, one cruel blow at a time. Elian’s face must have betrayed his disbelief. Joran, sensing his reaction, quickly added he’d been avoiding Kaelen’s group lately. He was on his way to the steam-arcades with another student, Ren, and asked Elian not to misinterpret his absence.
Ren had once been close to Kaelen in their first year. After being assigned to different Scriptoriums, their paths had slowly diverged.
During their mid-day break, Elian and Lysander ventured to the small, grimy purveyor near the Scholarium gates. They bought glacial confections, cold sucrose cubes that melted on the tongue. The fleeting sweetness offered a momentary balm, a cool whisper against the bitter knot of unease tightening in Elian’s chest. He held his ground, though, determined not to let his turmoil show.
“Is that good?” Lysander, his own brightly colored confection dripping down his fingers, eyed Elian’s with a hunger that was half-jest.
“Want to try?” Elian, a playful challenge in his own quiet way, brought his confection, sticky with his own saliva, close to Lysander’s mouth. Without hesitation, Lysander smirked. He lifted one corner of his lip and took a large, deliberate bite.
“Hey! Did you actually do that?” Elian pulled back, feigning disgust.
“You invited me.” Lysander shrugged, a wide grin spreading across his face.
“That’s… unsanitary. And why such a huge bite?”
“It was just one bite.” Lysander’s grin widened. It was a rare, peaceful moment, bathed in the crisp autumn air. The sky above Veridian, usually a leaden gray, held a surprising clarity. A stark contrast to the storm raging within Elian.
Where were Kaelen and Finnian now? Several dark corners of the Scholarium, or beyond, came to mind. But Elian didn't seek them out. He was afraid of what he might find.
He tried his best to banish Kaelen Thorne from his thoughts. But the harder he tried, the more he realized the vast, insidious space Kaelen occupied in his mind. Like trying to erase a meticulously drawn, yet flawed, line from a masterwork map. The faint impression remained.
How long would it take to stop caring about someone like Kaelen? How much mental effort, how many internal revisions, would it demand? He didn’t know. It felt like being lost in a vast, barren desert, not just sad and suffocating, but terrifying, an unbearable desolation.
Sometimes, he retreated into his own mind, tracing the intricate patterns of imagined mechanisms, mapping unseen currents of arcane power. When the emotional currents became too overwhelming, he would occasionally speak with Lysander. And that, for now, was all he had.
“Lysander,” Elian said suddenly, the question escaping before he could second-guess it.
“What is it?”
“Do you… do you think anything will ever bloom in a barren desert?” The words felt embarrassingly emotional, childish even, as they left his mouth. He scratched his head awkwardly, but Lysander didn’t mock him.
“They will.” Lysander’s voice was uncharacteristically sober.
“...”
“They have to. Life’s already a raw mess without that sliver of hope.”
Hearing those words from Lysander, a person Elian never imagined capable of such a profound, yet practical, sentiment, made him realize the fragility of his own desperate hope. How much time would it truly take to relinquish these meaningless, thorny feelings?
“Yes. Life’s a mess.” Elian’s voice was a whisper.
Kaelen Thorne. That useless bastard. Why did he seem so intent on crushing every ounce of loyalty, every flicker of affection Elian had ever offered? Kaelen, who seemed to have abandoned all the basic tenets of academic responsibility, now drifted in and out of the Scholarium as he pleased. And always, a silent, trembling shadow at his side, was Finnian.
The situation grew increasingly suspicious. The Scriptorium buzzed with hushed whispers, a mix of unease and morbid intrigue. Kaelen’s cruelty, it became clear, was escalating. And so was the cold fog of resentment towards him, slowly spreading throughout the class. None of it felt right.
So, when Elian saw Kaelen dragging Finnian by the wrist down a narrow, shadowy corridor, he stopped. His eyes darted between their faces, Kaelen’s stony resolve, Finnian’s tear-streaked fear. He spoke, the words tasting like ash.
“Your progenitor worries for you, Kaelen.” It wasn't an apology, nor flattery. It was a lie, a carefully constructed fabrication. Such was the extent of Elian’s pride, his internal resistance. But Kaelen, notoriously estranged from his powerful, distant father, likely wouldn’t recognize the falsehood. And even if he did, Elian could always argue that, at this rate, Kaelen’s progenitor would soon have ample cause for worry.
He always ensured an escape route, a logical fallback, a hidden path on the map.
“If someone must bear the impact, ensure it’s only you. What wrong has Finnian ever committed?”
“Move.” The moment Elian uttered Finnian’s name, Kaelen’s gaze snapped to him. It felt like daggers, cold and sharp, piercing Elian’s chest. His heart hammered, threatening to burst. He despised Kaelen. And yet, Finnian, pitiful and pathetic, stood glued to Kaelen’s side, his eyes brimming with tears, looking as if he might crumble at any moment.
“Unless you wish for another lesson, like last time, move aside.” Kaelen’s voice was a low growl.
“K-Kaelen, please,” Finnian stammered, his voice trembling, reaching for Kaelen’s arm. Only then did Kaelen’s focus shift. His gaze fixed solely on Finnian. Elian only saw the rigid line of Kaelen’s back as he turned away.
“As I stated, your progenitor will be concerned—” Elian tried again, a desperate gambit.
Finnian, on the verge of tears, clung to Kaelen, trying to physically restrain him. Watching that pitiful, desperate scene unfold was unbearable. It was so excruciating, Elian closed his eyes, unable to witness Finnian’s agony.
After a long moment, Kaelen looked at Finnian. Then, with a curt turn, he led Finnian back into the Scriptorium. For the remainder of the day, Kaelen stayed there—just as he had a few weeks prior.
---
The long-anticipated day of the Archival Excursion had arrived. An arcane-powered coach, its brass fittings gleaming under the weak morning light, had been requisitioned to transport them to the grand Historical Archives. A few students grumbled, questioning the utility of dragging advanced cartography students away from their complex schematics. But most were electrified by the chance to escape the routine of the Scholarium, if only for a single day.
There was no need for elaborate packing. They would return shortly after. The instructors offered only a few half-hearted admonishments before waving them aboard.
They were no longer fresh initiates. There was no giddy excitement keeping Elian awake the night before. He viewed it as just another day—depart without a heavy satchel, return without one. He had no premonition that today would be the day his carefully bottled frustrations would finally burst. He had always anticipated its eventual arrival, but never so abruptly, so cruelly.
He had always sat beside Kaelen whenever they left the confines of the Scriptorium. He was, after all, Kaelen’s closest associate. The thought of Lysander’s seating hadn't even crossed his mind. He’d never shared a transport with him before.
At first, Elian felt a flicker of wariness, a brief fear that Lysander might claim the seat nearest Kaelen. Thinking back now, it seemed pathetic. Neither Elian nor Lysander would occupy that particular spot.
Elian stepped aboard the coach, the rhythmic hiss of arcane steam and the low thrum of the engine filling the air. He scanned for their designated seats. The five rear benches were already claimed by a noisy group of classmates, including Joran, who waved a greeting. Joran then hesitated, his hand pointing towards Kaelen’s usual seat.
“Elian! A spot here!”
“Oh. Right.” Of course. He had always been the one beside Kaelen. But today, a strange hesitancy slowed his steps as he approached Kaelen’s bench. A quiet sigh of relief escaped him when he saw the space beside Kaelen remained empty. He swallowed hard, a tiny, defiant spark igniting within him.
It was his spot. His pride—that singular, stubborn core of himself—compelled him to sit there. Even after the impact, even after the ache, even after Finnian.
His hand hovered, trembling almost imperceptibly, above the seat’s coarse fabric. He glanced around the bustling coach, then quietly, tentatively, asked,
“Kaelen… This seat…”
Before Elian could finish, Kaelen cut him off. His gaze remained fixed on the coach’s entrance, unwavering. “It is not yours. Find another place.”
Following Kaelen’s line of sight, Elian saw Finnian. He entered timidly, shoulders slumped, making his way down the aisle towards them. Elian clenched his fists, the words he had swallowed tasting like bitter ash.
“Fine. Whatever.” He tried to infuse his voice with indifference, but his heart felt like it had been meticulously shredded into countless tiny pieces.
He swiftly moved away from the bench, his eyes sweeping the coach’s interior. He spotted an empty space near Lysander’s group, directly across the aisle from where Lysander was already seated. A faint relief washed over him. He rushed over, dropped into the uncomfortable seat, and spoke without waiting for a response.
“Lysander. Sit here with me.”
There was no answer. He looked closer, realizing Lysander had already succumbed to slumber. He always seemed to doze in the mornings, and this journey was no exception. Lysander’s head rested against the glass of the window, bouncing gently with every rumble and shudder of the arcane coach. Shaking his head at Lysander’s ridiculous sleeping posture, Elian slid his personal data-slate between Lysander’s head and the window, cushioning it slightly. He leaned back into the unyielding seat.
Across the narrow aisle, he caught a glimpse of dark, neatly cut hair. Kaelen’s. He was taller than most of their classmates, easily discernible. Elian couldn’t see clearly, but he knew. Kaelen sat beside Finnian, the space between them a gulf of unspoken tension, yet filled with the crushing weight of Kaelen’s possessive claim.