Rhyka staggered through his front door just past dusk, muscles screaming, lungs scraped raw with every breath. He didn't even bother kicking off his shoes. Mud tracked in behind him, each step leaving a broken imprint on the warped wooden floor. The door creaked and clattered shut behind him, the frame swollen from years of rain and rot, the latch barely catching.
He stood there, swaying in the dark.
The silence was total. Heavy. The kind of silence that presses against the ribs and creeps into the teeth. A dead silence. No fire, no lantern, no familiar hum of magical energy like in the dorm halls. Just his own ragged breathing, echoing off stone and timber like a stranger's voice in a hollow house.
His forehead touched the door. The wood was cold. Real. Solid. Something to ground himself on. His shoulder pressed into it, his weight leaning hard as if he might fall forward otherwise. He didn't cry. He was past that. There were no tears left. Just the steady, deep throb of shame and pain moving through him like a second heartbeat.
His thoughts weren't words—they were pulses. Echoes. Emmet's voice, Rinnte's voice, laughing somewhere in the back of his skull.
"You're not a mage."
"You'll never be one."
"This is your ceiling."
He pushed off the door with a grunt and stumbled to the cot in the corner. The old thing creaked as he collapsed into it, bones jarred by the contact, breath knocked from his lungs. The mattress was thin, the frame bent from too many nights spent lying awake on it, just like this.
He lay there unmoving, staring up at the ceiling. Watching cracks that branched across plaster like dead branches. Watching them shift with the flicker of his own pulse behind his eyes. The pain was everywhere now not sharp, but deep. A sickness. A heaviness. His ribs ached, his joints burned, and his muscles spasmed every so often with phantom memories of the classroom wall.
The humiliation lingered worst of all.
The laughter.
The looks.
The silence from Eto, who didn't speak. Didn't stand.
His pride was shredded, piece by piece, and left scattered across the classroom floor like scraps of discarded cloth.
Sleep didn't come. Of course it didn't. The thoughts were too loud.
They're right.
The words pressed against his skull. They're right. No matter how hard he pushed. No matter how far he dragged his broken body. He'd always be behind. Always be chasing something he could never reach. The only thing he was good at was enduring, and even that didn't win him respect—only pity.
Something inside him twisted. A low, awful tension.
He sat up. Slow. Labored. His shoulder flared white-hot as he moved, but he didn't care. The storm inside was growing. He needed to let it out. Needed to spit it out. Anything to feel like he still had some say in what happened to him.
So he tried to curse.
Not a spell. Just a word. An act of rebellion, no matter how meaningless.
He opened his mouth.
And nothing came out.
His throat tightened. His lungs stuttered. Something invisible pressed against his chest—hard—like a hand made of stone. His breath caught halfway and stopped.
He blinked, eyes adjusting to the dark, confused.
He tried again.
Still nothing.
It was like the words had been yanked out of his throat before they could form. Like something knew what he was about to say and clamped down to stop it.
And then he felt it.
Not a sound. Not a whisper in the room.
A pressure. Just behind his eyes.
A thought. A question.
Who are you cursing?
His blood went cold.
He looked around instinctively, but the house hadn't changed. Not yet. The shadows stayed where they belonged, the cracked walls remained silent. But something was different. He could feel it. Not in the air—but in him.
The question echoed. Who was he cursing?
His teeth clenched.
He knew.
He didn't want to admit it—not even to himself—but deep down, under all the pain and frustration and bitterness… he knew exactly who.
The Goddess.
The radiant figure on every shrine. The source of magic. The matron of fate and power and purity. The one who, for reasons no one ever explained, had passed over him.
He'd been told his whole life it was his fault. That her silence was a lesson. That he wasn't worthy.
But the more he suffered, the more he broke, the harder that story was to believe.
Others didn't work half as hard and still shone like suns. Even the monsters in his class had magic. Even those who mocked her name had power she gave them.
And him?
Nothing. Not a flicker. Not a whisper. Not a single gift.
She had abandoned him from birth. No explanation. No apology.
Just absence.
And they had dared to tell him to be grateful.
He looked to the corner of the room. There, barely visible in the dark, was the tapestry. Faded with age, its once-golden threads dull and flaking. It bore the glyph of the Threads the holy symbol. Her symbol. Her mark of divine presence.
He stared at it, teeth grinding.
And then his lips curled.
"Grateful…?"
His voice was hoarse. Dry. Something bubbled up from deep inside, bitter and hot. He leaned forward, eyes locked on the tapestry. His breath trembled.
"This Goddess of magic and sorcery…" he hissed, "...kind of a—"
The word caught in his throat again.
Something resisted. Something inside him recoiled.
But then he felt it.
Encouragement. Not his own. Something else. Something ancient and subtle and not entirely safe.
Say it.
He didn't know where the voice came from. It didn't matter. He let it push him.
And in a breathless rasp, the word fell from his lips:
"…bitch."
The moment shattered.
The air snapped. Not with sound but with sensation.
The temperature didn't drop. But the warmth in the room vanished. The walls pulled away from him not physically, but spiritually, like the space itself had warped to make room for something.
From the corner of the room, where the shadows gathered thickest, the world began to ripple.
The distortion wasn't light or sound. It was wrongness. A warp in the pattern. Like something had been sleeping under the skin of the world and now opened an eye.
The ripple twisted. Deepened. Space itself seemed to breathe.
Rhyka's limbs froze.
A pressure pushed down on the room, slow and suffocating. His skin prickled with a cold sweat. Every instinct in his body screamed to run, but he couldn't move. Couldn't blink. Couldn't even turn his head.
He was being watched.
Not from above. Not from some far divine plane.
From here.
Something ancient.
Something interested.
It wasn't cruel
But it was curious.
Excited even