The room was modest, narrow — but there was something gently haunting in the way morning light slipped through the cracks of the wooden window. That golden hue did not illuminate so much as it lingered, falling like dust across the worn desk pressed to the wall. Two books lay open: the healing grimoire, and beside it, the hardbound notebook Elise had given him — a journal of learning, or perhaps of unraveling.
The walls were of rough stone, cold to the touch yet spotless, cared for with quiet discipline. In the corner, a wooden bed sat low to the ground, its thin, faded blankets still clinging to the warmth of night. Above the desk, wax-dripped candles stood like forgotten sentinels, and empty vials glinted faintly in the dim light — remnants of last night's failed salvation. The air was thick with the scent of steeped herbs and dried ink, like the breath of an ancient library mourning its last reader.
Elian woke slowly, as if emerging from beneath rubble — the weight in his shoulders not merely fatigue, but the unbearable pressure of being. It felt as though he had carried something through the night — something dead, or dying — and that something had been himself.
The memories returned as fragments. No... shards.
The fevered girl.
The failure.
The darkness in his hands.
The spell that had buckled his legs.
He sat up, wincing. The pain in his body came not from muscle alone, but from deeper places — where bones remember and nerves confess. It was not exhaustion; it was erosion. As if every attempt had scraped against something buried inside him, unearthing pieces best left untouched.
His gaze fell to the desk.
The grimoire remained open where he'd left it — Sanare, still etched in ink, still powerless. Beside it, frantic notes, desperate ink scratches across the journal's pages. None of it had saved her. But they remained, like gravestones.
"Maybe the magic isn't broken," he thought. "Maybe it's just me."
The door opened with the soft whisper of old hinges. Elise stepped inside, silent as snowfall, carrying a tray: a steaming cup of bitter tea and a slice of dark bread, charred at the edges.
"Good morning, Elian. Are you feeling any better?" Her voice was gentle, but not weightless. It knew the gravity of the night.
He nodded with a murmur, too tired to lie. The tea was sharp on his tongue — not soothing, but bracing. The kind of bitterness that pulls you back into the world when you'd rather not return.
"How do you feel?"
"Sore. Hollow. But conscious."
His fingers tangled in his unkempt red hair, a subtle tremor betraying more than his words.
Elise drew a chair and sat across from him, legs crossed, hands resting loosely in her lap. She watched him with quiet intensity — not interrogating, not yet, but attentive… like a candle waiting to catch flame.
"You did manage something last night. A beginning. Even if it was crooked. Even if it left scars."
Elian was silent for a moment. Then his voice came — low, rough, honest.
"I couldn't feel the river. Or the earth. Or whatever you said was supposed to guide me. I tried. But there was nothing."
He paused.
"But when I stopped trying to sense it your way… I thought of her body. Of the blood moving beneath the skin. The heat of the fever, the slow fading of her pulse. I pictured where the magic could close, like stitching torn flesh. Not flowing… but fixing."
His fingers moved unconsciously, sketching invisible patterns in the air above the desk. It wasn't a spell — not exactly. It was memory.
Elise leaned in, a shadow crossing her brow. There was something unnatural in his tone — not dark, but precise. The kind of precision you don't find in children.
"Where did he learn this?" she wondered. "Not even the Golden Dawn's most disciplined apprentices speak this way. And he's a farmer's son."
It wasn't suspicion yet. But it was the first time his words made her want to dig deeper.
"You used anatomy," she said at last. "A more clinical approach."
Elian blinked.
That was a thing here? A method?
"Is this kind of thinking common in this world… or is it just me? Just the echo of the world I came from?" Elian thought
"This knowledge… anatomy," he asked, feigning curiosity, though the question carried more weight than it seemed. "What is it? And who studies it?"
He already knew, of course — vaguely. In his past life, he'd learned the basics. Enough to understand the machine of flesh. But he needed to know how deep it ran here. Who wielded it. And to what end.
Elise didn't sense his hidden intent. She simply leaned back and answered, her voice calm but edged with reverence.
"Anatomy is the study of the body's structure — bones, muscles, organs, blood flow. It's vital for those who practice healing magic. The Golden Dawn teaches it with devotion. They treat the body as sacred, and healing as a form of reverence. Knowing the body, they say, is the first act of love."
She paused — then, her tone shifted.
"The mages of the Dark Throne study it too. But not for healing. They study where to cut. Where to break. They know the weak points — to kill with elegance, not mercy."
Elian said nothing, but his mind roared.
"Golden Dawn… Dark Throne… Are they two of the three great Orders she mentioned?"
He didn't ask. Not yet.
The words still echoed through him: Healers and war-mages. Scholars and executioners.
The Golden Dawn felt like priests of light and knowledge — custodians of breath and soul.
The Dark Throne sounded like tacticians of slaughter — spellbound butchers wrapped in cloaks.
Maybe they were two of the three. But there were other questions that burned hotter now.
"Later," he told himself, lowering his eyes to the open pages. "First, I need to make this work."
His fingers traced the edge of his personal grimoire. The ink still fresh in places. His first entries. His first failures.
And then, unbidden, a thought rose from somewhere far beneath language:
"Even here, the body is a map. What changes is who reads it. Some read to heal. Others to tear. The anatomy doesn't change. The hand does."
"Why do you ask?" Elise said, softly.
Elian hesitated — then told the truth, or part of it.
"Because maybe it's the only path I understand. I can't feel this energy like everyone else. But I can imagine the body. I know the organs, the veins… I can see where something clogs, where it snaps. To me, a spell isn't a whisper or a wave — it's a scalpel. And the body… is a machine."
Elise stared for a long moment. Then, finally, she nodded.
"Unorthodox… but valid. If that's how you see, then that's the road we walk. But record everything — what works, what fails, what bleeds. Don't treat the body as mystery. Treat it as a book."
Elian opened his journal once more, fingers gripping the quill.
"If I can't feel like them… then I'll understand it better than any of them ever could."
★★★
While Elian scribbled notes into his personal grimoire, eyes still heavy from the toll of the night before, morning light spilled through the wooden window like blood thinned with gold. There was silence in the room — silence, study… and a fragile hope. But far from the warmth of that newly-formed routine, in another part of the world, the foundations of horror had already begun to stir.
Atop a cliff forever shrouded in mist stood Hoffmann Manor — not a house, but a monument to the arrogance of the living and the patience of the dead. Its towers of pale stone gleamed like sunlit bones — cold, flawless, and utterly sterile. The narrow windows, framed by stained glass dark as clotted blood, allowed just enough light to keep the shadows breathing. The family crest — a burning lion on a field of ash-gray — flapped slowly in the wind, as if even the banner was ashamed of where it flew.
In the map room, Baron Hoffmann stood motionless. He loomed over a massive oak table where the fate of a village lay spread in ink and parchment. His eyes scanned the region of Brumaria like a butcher choosing which animal to bleed first. Behind him, Lucius — his personal knight — held his helm under one arm. His armor, darkened chainmail, whispered of rust, and the stillness in his cold eyes waited only for the command that would turn duty into bloodshed.
"So… she refuses my son," the baron murmured, crushing a carved wooden marker between his fingers — the one that marked Elian's home. "She rejects noble blood… and embraces a bastard stained with soil."
Lucius remained silent. He recognized that voice — not fury, but cultivated wrath. And that was always worse.
"Elise has always been a nuisance, draped in illusions of righteousness. But now… now she spits on my house's crest. Accepting a peasant's son over a Hoffmann…" His gaze narrowed. "That's not just defiance. That's war."
The door opened slowly. No haste. No herald. Just the creak of old wood surrendering to passage.
Kreld entered like an ancient blight. His dark robes dragged behind him, whispering like dry leaves across stone. The runes stitched into the fabric were scorched, blackened in places — marks of a power that refused containment. His skin was thin, jaundiced, veined with withered magic. Arcane tattoos coiled along his arms like worms, and his eyes — sunken, sick, a feverish violet — were a shattered mirror no man should ever look into.
"You summoned me," said Kreld, his voice like a rasp against bone — a whisper that gnawed at the air itself.
"Elise is defying me," the baron said without turning. "She's shaping a bastard as if he were worthy. As if my bloodline could be replaced by peasant filth. I won't allow it to go unanswered."
Kreld tilted his head slightly, interest flickering behind diseased eyes.
"She's no mere sorceress," he said, with a sliver of respect. "Elise reached the second hierarchy of the Tower of Wisdom. She stood a breath away from the summit. Her name still echoes behind closed doors. Do you really think you can strike at her and go unnoticed?"
The baron slowly turned to face him. There was too much disdain in his gaze to allow for doubt.
"She's old. Splintered like a forgotten book. She hides among the sick and the broken. The woman who was Elise? Dead. All that's left is the husk of a weary idealist."
Then, with the precision of an executioner, he pointed at the map.
"Send fire. Send hell. I want that boy's world to turn to smoke. Let every inch of earth that fed him be devoured. Let him bury the pieces with his own hands."
Kreld took one step forward.
"You said you wanted the boy and his family dead," he said, more direct now. Less reverence, more business. "I need clarity — do I consume everything… or leave something behind?"
Lucius spoke then, the question sharp as a drawn blade.
"The boy — should he live?"
The baron looked at him, calm and slow.
"I want him shattered inside. I want him to see everything. To hear the bones break, smell the burning flesh, taste the pain — and be unable to scream. If he dies after that, so be it. If he lives… even better. He'll already be dead where it matters."
Kreld folded his hands. Between his fingernails, black sparks hissed — like worms of fire whispering the promise of ruin. A shiver of pleasure ran down his arms. Destruction was his native tongue.
Lucius shifted the helm against his side.
"And the boy's mother?" he asked with a crooked smile — as human as a clean cut.
"Do as you please with her. Break her. Stain her. Use her." Hoffmann said flatly. "Just bring me the emptiness in that boy's eyes."
The silence that followed wasn't quiet. It was weight. A pact carved in shadow.
"No crests. Nothing that ties it back to my house. I want this to look like tragedy — a robbery gone too far. You two — Kreld and Lucius — go alone. And leave the world believing it was chance."
Kreld nodded. In his gaze, there was something between boredom and hunger. The name Elian was no longer a name — it was a ritual waiting to be performed.
"Elise is not to be touched. Not yet," the baron added. "Strike too soon and you'll draw eyes I'd rather keep blind. Let her watch the boy fall. Let her feel her helplessness. Let her learn she can't protect anyone."
The baron's words echoed — but Kreld heard something else within them.
"Not now?" he thought, his eyes narrowing. "Then there's fear beneath all that pride."
He knew Elise. The mage who once walked among the great — feared not for her power, but for how quietly she carried it. And still, despite Hoffmann's caution, Kreld's fingers itched to ignite.
To profane.
To destroy.
"Destruction," he mused, "is the last joy of those who can no longer create."
Lucius said nothing. Dutiful. Steady. He did not fight for honor. He fought for purpose. And sometimes, that made him far more dangerous.
The baron placed his hand upon the map. His long fingers hovered above Elian's village like claws waiting to tear.
"Leave at nightfall. And don't leave a stone unturned. I want Elian to watch everything he loves be uprooted — like a harvest set aflame down to its roots."
A final silence fell.
And then, in a voice low and almost funereal, the baron sealed the fate of those who dared protect the boy:
"That peasant family will fall."