A chill, like grave-dust, clung to Kaelen Vane’s skin.
He jolted awake, heart hammering against his ribs, a visceral terror still a coiled serpent in his gut. The familiar, sterile scent of arcane inks and aged parchment filled his nostrils, a stark contrast to the acrid tang of decay that had permeated his dream.
“Vane!”
Professor Valerius’s voice, sharp as a whetted blade, cut through the hazy remnants of his slumber. Kaelen’s head snapped up, eyes still wide, a film of confusion clouding them.
Valerius, a gaunt man with spectacles perched precariously on his aquiline nose, glared from the raised lectern. His disapproval hung in the air, heavy as a funeral pall.
“Scarcely two hundred cycles remain until the Grand Collegiate Trials, and you choose to court the Sandman, Vane?” he snapped, a vein throbbing at his temple. “Your academic standing barely merits entry to the Exhumation Corps. With your current Aetheric Resonance, even they might reject you.”
“Do you comprehend the baseline Aetheric Resonance for a simple Bone-Gatherer, Vane? A paltry 8.0! Has your own tally even grazed that figure lately?”
Kaelen bowed his head, his hand rising to rub temples that throbbed with a dull ache. The professor’s words, though delivered with habitual scorn, felt like pebbles striking a bruised fruit.
Elara, his friend, leaned closer from her desk to his left. Her voice was a low murmur, a worried whisper.
“Another visitation, Kaelen?”
He nodded, unable to articulate the suffocating weight of the dream. His eyes, however, conveyed a profound weariness, an age beyond his years.
The same recurring vision had plagued him for three consecutive nights, each more vivid, more harrowing than the last. He could never grasp its full scope upon waking, only fragmented impressions: a desolate, ruined world, lightless skies choked with ash, and monstrous silhouettes roaming a broken landscape.
It was a nightmare, undeniably. A raw, howling terror that left him hollowed out.
Each awakening was a plunge from one abyssal dreamscape into another. Despite nearly a dozen hours spent in restless sleep, his body felt as if it had endured a week of sleepless nights. His muscles ached, his mind was leaden, and his very essence felt diminished.
This relentless psychic drain manifested in his Aetheric Resonance. Over the past three days, it had plummeted by 0.02. A minute fraction, perhaps, but a devastating loss. Such a decrease would require countless attunement draughts and weeks of grueling Esoteric Body Arts practice to reclaim. The thought twisted his gut.
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Sunlight, pale and wan, bled through the high, gothic windows of the Aethelgard Scholarium. Kaelen moved like a ghost amidst the tide of students, his satchel feeling impossibly heavy on his shoulder.
“Kaelen! Hold a moment!”
Elara’s voice, light but insistent, called from behind. She quickly caught up, blocking his path, her expression a mix of concern and eager anticipation.
“An Aetherium Parlour awaits, Kaelen. Projections of the First Veilfall, a fresh viewing. My treat.”
Her eyes, usually bright with curiosity, held a hint of hopeful distraction. He shook his head slowly.
“Not tonight, Elara. I go home.”
“Home so soon? Unheard of. Come, it’s not often I’m flush enough for such extravagance. We could spend hours lost in the historical currents.”
She patted her own breastplate, a small, genuine smile gracing her lips. But Kaelen remained unyielding.
“Truly, I have no inclination. I crave naught but the dubious solace of my own cot. This exhaustion… it saps my very will.”
“Exhaustion? You dozed through half of Valerius’s lecture today, Vane. What greater sleep do you seek?”
Elara’s brows arched, a flicker of exasperation joining her concern. Kaelen offered no explanation. He simply waved a hand, a gesture of quiet dismissal, and resumed his slow, deliberate pace.
Elara hesitated, as if to argue further, but a group of boisterous students, clad in the Scholarium’s dark blue and grey uniforms, surged past.
“Elara! Are you joining us for the parlour? They’re showing the Dread Engines of Old Aethelgard!”
“Coming! Coming now!” Elara called back, a blush rising to her cheeks. She glanced at Kaelen one last time, a silent apology in her gaze, before turning to follow the others. His presence, or lack thereof, seemed to drain the boisterousness from her step.
Kaelen watched her go, a hollow ache settling in his chest. The other students, a vibrant river of youthful energy, flowed around him, eager to escape the school’s confines. They scattered like quicksilver once they reached the ornate iron gates, their laughter echoing briefly in the gaslamp-lit street.
A long, shuddering sigh escaped Kaelen’s lips. Thoughts, dark and tangled, began to uncoil in his mind. He often forgot the eighteen cycles he had lived in this world, this decaying, Veil-scourged Aethelgard.
Memories of his *previous* existence, of the world he had left behind, were fragmented now, like shards of stained glass. Sometimes, he questioned if they were even real, if that entire life was merely a prolonged, exquisite dream from which he had finally woken.
A dream, perhaps, similar to the relentless nightmare that now haunted his sleep.
“No hearth… no carriages of steel… alone… garments of white… climbing a peak… falling… waking…”
Kaelen murmured the words, each a whisper torn from a forgotten language. His eyes grew distant, lost in the echoing void of memory. He reached the last, most potent word.
“Traversed.”
Indeed, he had traversed. He had crossed from one reality to another. That world, his first world, held no martial arts, no encroaching horrors that bled from tears in the Veil. Its news broadcasts spoke not of monster incursions or duels of Esoteric Body Arts masters.
Students there grappled with the endless conundrums of natural philosophy and the study of forgotten tongues, not the agonizing progression of Aetheric Resonance or the stark realities of Practical Combat Drills.
He often yearned for that distant realm. At least, there, life had been…
Quiet. Tranquil. Predictable.
Kaelen pushed open the heavy oak door of his own meager abode. The familiar scents of simmering broth and stale lamp oil greeted him. His father, Caspian Vane, lay sprawled on the worn divan, his tunic discarded. The faint glow of a spirit-lamp revealed the intricate patterns of dark bruises blossoming across his broad back. His mother, Seraphina, was gently applying a poultice, her brow furrowed with a familiar weariness.
His eyes stung at the sight of his father’s bruised form. Caspian, a veteran of the Perimeter Watch, often returned bearing the harsh marks of the Veil’s proximity. Kaelen’s voice, a little hoarse, broke the quiet tension.
“I’ve returned.”
“Hungry, dearest? There are spiced plums on the counter. I’ll ready the stew shortly.” Seraphina’s voice was soft, soothing, even as she pressed the herbal poultice firmly into Caspian’s skin.
Kaelen shook his head, dropping his satchel with a soft thud. He moved towards his small room but paused, turning back towards the divan.
“Perhaps we could acquire an Aetheric Vibrator? A journeyman scholar at the Scholarium spoke of them. They claim it stimulates elemental flow, eases bruised muscle, even hastens the mending of deeper wounds. His family possesses one…” Kaelen trailed off, his voice hopeful.
“Bah! Injured? A mere scratch! I’ll be hale as a young griffin in a few cycles.” Caspian dismissed the suggestion with a gruff wave, wincing slightly as he tried to crane his neck to meet Kaelen’s gaze. “Better to hoard those coin-sparks for your own attunement draughts.”
“What of your Aetheric Resonance, son? Have you exceeded 8.5 yet? The gazettes reported this morn that the baseline for the Collegiate Undergraduate Registry has ascended by 0.01 this cycle.”
Kaelen’s heart clenched, a cold fist of dread closing around it. He nodded curtly, a lie already forming on his tongue.
“I know. I shall… begin my practice at once.” He fled into the relative sanctuary of his room, the unspoken truth a crushing weight upon him.
His heart, or rather, his resolve, felt too frail. If Caspian knew that his Aetheric Resonance had not only stagnated but *decreased*, he would surely leap from that divan, pain forgotten, and unleash a torrent of parental fury. The thought alone was a sharper sting than any bruise. He was meant to be the hope of the Vane lineage, yet all he felt was the terrifying echo of ruin within him.
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