The bell stopped mid-chime, freeze in the air like hanged man's whisper.
High in his obsidian observatory, the principal's quill splintered in his grip. Ink bled across the star-like charts like a wound as he halted the quill to stillness..
He didn't need to look outside to know. The mana itself shrieked in terror, a tremor beyond imagination that only the damned can felt. The crack has been formed as the abyss itself crawls up to the surface.
He turned his head, looking beneath the horizon—blue yet indifferent.
"Just like she said," he whispered to the cracked windows.
His reflection smiled back, fractured—a boy's face yet corpse's eyes.
"The knight has returned."
The wind blew, leaving only a whisper of something unknown within.
Far below, in the infirmary, Kian's breath hitches—as though a cold had reached his spine.
The world was grey to his eyes, not the soft, forgiving grey of morning fog. But the hollow grey of the empty stage remained after the audience left. A colourless world where he alone stands still, stagnant like a puddle of water.
They called him a genius.
The word clung to him like gilded chains that each link was forged from another effortless victory.
The runes glowed crimson under his fingertips, their ancient secrets unfurling like a flower seeking the warmth of the sun as if the magic had been waiting for him.
Mastery came without effort to the one who will someday become the pinnacle of the Magic Tower.
Praise naturally came to him, a life without effort that everyone envies. Yet a shackle to his own feet.
As he opened his eyes, an unfamiliar roof greeted him. The air was filled with the stench of mint and alcohol. Stinging the senses of the person who just opened his eyes.
Sunlight fell in thin, listless stripes through the veil, painting the rows in cots of lining gold and shadow.
His body ached in a dull, distant way as if his entire bones had been borrowed and poorly returned.
Then the sound, a crisp rhythmic click, came beside him.
He turned his head, looking at the person who was sitting beside him. On her hand small knife shimmering from the sunlight, in her other hand, a half-peeled apple occupying her hand. The blade flashed as she carved another slice, the fruit's flesh pale as a moonrise.
"Edna,..."
A sound escape from his mouth as a sigh.
"You awake?" she said, her eyes still glued to the apple.
The infirmary air was thick with the cloying scent of mint and something sharper, something sterile that clung to the back of his throat. Kian shifted, looking at the person beside him as his bones protested like a poorly solved puzzle.
"How long?" His voice was rough, hoarse, and unfamiliar to his own ears.
Edna considered the apple, tilting towards the thin stripes of sunlight, "Long enough," she said at last. "The lesson ended early. Thanks to you. And Erik."
The blade flashes, severing another slice as though cutting through butter. She held it between two fingers, examining it as though it held some secrets.
"You shouldn't have pushed it," she said, finally meeting his gaze. Her amber eyes were still as the sky—hard, translucent, hiding nothing and everything at once.
The scene that unfolded during the sparring was something foreign, yet familiar at the same time. The mana was trembling as the tension rose, as if nature itself was screaming to the future that gnawed on its edge. The moment Erik swung his swords, the world itself went silent—flinched. The mana had not just vanished—it had devoured.
"I know you're curious, ...." She halted; the only thing that moved in that instance was her nimble hand. "But that curiosity is the first thing that will kill you."
Kian smiled, though it felt more like a grimace. "Since when do you care?"
She turned the knife idly in her hand. "I don't," She said as she placed the slice of apple on the tray, untouched. "But even a genius should know—there's always a higher sky."
The word hung between them, heavy as a tombstone.
Outside, the wind sighed, brushing the windows as the curtain fluttered in the silent room.
And Kian, for the first time, wondered if the chains of genius are not gilded after all—but rusted, brittle, and far too easy to break.
"Anyway, it is just curiosity that drove you to challenge him? or is there something else?" She said, her voice light as a feather, as her finger carved another moon-slice apple.
Kian's finger twitched against the sheet. Something else coiled to his ribs—a thing with too many legs and unnamed. His gaze fell to the window, looking to the outside in silence as the sound of slices clung into the air as a lullaby.
'.... Something else, huh?' He thought.
He was always the main character, the centre of attention whenever he went. Yet, when he saw Edna close to Erik, his chest tightened as though wrapped by a rope.
It was the evening after the second day of the class. He strolled to the library to pass the time, reading something worth reading as he continued his development of his spell. A levels, where a mere cadet of the academy can't fathom. Until Edna came, pointing out the flaw as if it were the back of her hand.
For him, her presence was intriguing as she stood on the same wavelength as him. When she spoke about magic, her words carved a pathway in his mind he hadn't known existed. It was effortless, an intellectual communication, as though they shared a language written in the marrow of their bones.
Until he saw her with Erik together.
Her expression varied, leaving Kian alienated. Looking at the scene from afar, as though looking at the moving projector of an old film. An expression that she never shows in front of him.
It was almost spontaneous; he approached them, interrupting their atmosphere as he came.
It was his first, his body moved on its own before he thought of anything else.
His challenge hadn't been about Erik; it had been the unbearable revelation that Edna contained rooms he couldn't enter, and that someone insignificant held the key.
".....No," he lied naturally as he breathed. "Just a mere curiosity."
Edna's eyelids lowered—not a blink, but a slow descent. "Is that so?"
The chair scraped back as she stood. He braced for the sound of retreating footsteps, a click sound that sealed his solitude in the infirmary.
Instead—
Cold sweetness burst against his lips. Her small finger pressed the slices of apple into his mouth with deliberate force.
"Here," she said, her voice a blade wrapped in silk. "A reward for your bravery."
Her thumb brushed his lower lips as she withdrew, leaving behind lonely feelings on his lips as she walked away.
And Kian sat with Apple's corpse, which she leaves behind on the tray, wondering when hunger had become synonymous with her name.
"...So I lost," the words escaped like a sigh from his mouth.