The corridor was already a crime scene when I walked in.
Blue academy robes ringed the vaulted hallway like a cult mid-ritual—silent, breath held, waiting for the punchline. Kael stood over the kid he was working on, boots planted like he owned the stone beneath them.
I stayed where I was.
Not because I liked the show—because stepping in was the fastest way to become part of it.
My father would've intervened.
But I'm not him.
I don't rescue people. I barely rescue myself.
Kael turned, eyes sweeping until they found me. He put on that borrowed nobility the Ten Houses drooled over.
"What are you staring at, short-sprout?"
I bit my tongue until iron spread across my teeth.
The kid on the floor—Jayden—saw Kael's attention shift and panicked.
"I—I will become an Imperial Hero!" he blurted. "I swear it by the Emperor!"
The corridor exhaled.
Kael didn't.
The first slap cracked against the vault doors, sharp enough to make the sconces tremble.
"Your father said that too," Kael murmured. "Monsters picked their teeth with his ribs."
Another slap.
Another flinch from the crowd.
I lifted my tablet out of reflex, some useless shield between me and reality.
I should've walked away.
But then Robin, of all people, charged forward—skinny arms, bad aim, full courage.
Kael shoved Jayden aside, met Robin mid-swing, and folded him with a single hit to the ribs. Robin dropped, gasping like he was trying to breathe glass.
Jayden froze. Robin whimpered. The circle tightened.
And me?
I watched.
Because stepping in fixes nothing. Just shifts whose bones get tested.
Kael grabbed Jayden by the hair. "Try something else. Be someone else. Better that than dying in a crater three months after graduation."
By the time he let go, Jayden's face looked like wet clay someone had stepped on.
That was when the door slammed open.
Warden Marwen filled the threshold like judgment incarnate—tall, braided silver hair, cobalt collar stitched with the Ten-House sigil that meant "don't screw with me."
"ENOUGH!"
Even Kael twitched.
Her voice could've frozen lava.
"Children—children of the devil—can't I walk ten steps in this academy without someone bleeding?" Her gaze scanned the carnage, then locked on me.
"Aiden Holt. How could you let this happen? Your father is the greatest—"
"The greatest what?" I asked.
Calm. Neutral. A blade laid flat.
Marwen's jaw flexed.
"They were bullying him," I said. "So what? He's bullied weaker kids. The food chain finally turned on him."
A hush spread.
Even the walls held still.
Marwen stared long enough for regret to consider forming inside me—but it didn't.
Class happened. Technically.
Instructor Relda droned about the Ten-House treaties and mana control advances like she was auditioning for "Most Boring Human Alive." Half the class slept with their eyes open.
I lasted ten minutes.
Then I stood up.
Walked out.
Relda didn't even pause.
The hallway of portraits watched me leave.
The 11th Emperor.
Ten-House founders.
Cerin Holt—my father—frozen mid-smile in his glory days, before the Dominion bled him dry for his research.
Under his painting someone had carved:
Visionary. Martyr.
I kept walking.
Dragged a stool under the cracked ceiling plate. Climbed. Pushed the panel aside. The crawlspace above the alchemy room breathed heat and dust at me.
Perfect.
Quiet.
No witnesses.
I crawled in and pulled my stash closer: blanket, lantern, scattered scrolls. A single safe place in a world obsessed with heroism and honor—two things I had no use for.
I sat. Exhaled.
Then pulled out the watch.
Cold. Too cold.
Small, but heavier than it should be.
Its glass was lined with scratches that didn't look random—they looked like something trying to get out.
The straps were ugly enough to be intentional.
Dad had mailed it to me on my last birthday. No visit.
Just a note:
Make it useful.
Typical.
I turned the watch over in my hand. The dials seemed to shift when I blinked, like they didn't want to be witnessed.
I reached for the rune-sealed jar under the blanket.
Set the watch beside it.
My fingers hesitated.
Then I whispered the words I wasn't supposed to know.
The jar hummed faintly.
A spark.
A twitch from the watch—like something stirring in its sleep.
I froze.
And then—
I opened the jar.
The moment the jar opened, the watch felt heavier.
As if gravity had chosen only this object to care about.
A faint breath—cold and wrong—slid along the back of my neck.
Then a voice, quiet as smoke:
"Feed me souls."
My hand jerked.
Lantern-light wavered.
Silence swallowed everything.
And then the rune went dark.
I snapped the jar shut. My pulse hammered in my throat, each beat shouting the same thing:
Not possible.
Not real.
Not happening.
But the watch sat on the blanket, heavier than before.
Waiting.
Before I could breathe, the Academy itself answered.
Footsteps thundered through the stone. Doors slammed. Voices rose in overlapping panic.
A shout cut through the ceiling:
"TERION IS IN AURELLIA!"
My stomach dropped.
Not a rumor.
Not a drill.
Terion.
The Dominion's living myth. The man who made monsters afraid of the dark.
The most decorated Hero of the Seventh Generation—and the one my father worked with more than any sane man would.
Heroes visited the Academy sometimes.
But Terion?
Never.
Not unless something was already dying.
And the execution grounds hadn't been opened in fifty years.
My hands were shaking before I noticed.
I strapped the watch to my wrist, tightening the ugly band until the leather bit skin. Grabbed my journal. Closed it without writing a word.
Then I crawled out of the duct and ran.
The Academy gates were already overflowing.
Bells tolled—one, two, three—rolling through the air like metal waves. Students poured down the roads in clusters, robes whipping in the cold breeze.
I joined the current.
The path to Tyburn Hill cut between frostbitten moor and low stone fences. Dust spun with every footstep. The air tasted thin, like the world was holding its breath.
Ahead, the crowd thickened.
I slowed only once—passing the old stone chapel. Its doors were open, candles spilling weak gold light around two kneeling boys with chains around their wrists.
Burn boys.
The Dominion's tradition.
They stood at either side of every "honored" execution to make sure the condemned spirit didn't linger.
Respect, they called it.
I kept moving.
The hill rose before me, bare and merciless.
A wooden platform sat at the crest, its beams fresh-cut, creaking under the hands of soldiers making last adjustments. Two carpenters tightened bindings. A scribe checked seals. The air shimmered with the heat of too many bodies gathered too close.
Then the crowd parted.
And I wished it hadn't.
The triple gallows loomed, three ropes swinging slow as pendulums—measuring the end of a life in seconds.
Behind them lay something worse.
A broken warhead the size of a carriage, half-sunken into the soil like a dead god's skull.
The condemned man stood beneath the center rope.
Head bowed.
Clothes torn.
Blood dried around a fractured cheekbone.
Still smiling.
Despite the cuts.
Despite the murmurs twisting the air around him.
Despite everything.
I stumbled to a stop.
My throat closed.
I knew that smile.
I'd memorized the lines of that face long before the Dominion etched them into textbooks.
White streaks threaded through his dark hair—the same streaks I'd seen in old diagrams, old photos, old arguments.
The world thinned.
My lips moved before I could stop them.
"…Dad?"
A hand gripped my shoulder.
My mother's.
Her breath trembled beside me. Her eyes glistened.
She didn't speak.
Neither did I.
We just stood there, watching the Dominion prepare to kill the greatest scientist it ever produced.