Dusk Over Aetherion
The sky burned golden as the sun dipped beneath the endless sea of clouds that cushioned Aetherion Academy like divine pillows. The floating fortress—vast, radiant, impossibly beautiful—glimmered like a dream carved from starlight and ambition. But for Artha, sitting alone on a weathered stone bench beneath the towering statue of the Founding Archmage, that dream felt as distant as his brother's voice.
The aftermath of the Battle Showcase still echoed around him in waves of celebration and whispered gossip. Victory banners snapped in the ethereal breeze, drums thundered from the celebration halls, and clusters of new students compared their rankings with the gleeful cruelty that only adolescents could master.
Yet Artha heard none of it.
He sat hunched over like a question mark made of guilt and exhaustion, his hands gripping his knees as if afraid his own body might simply scatter like ash on the wind. His eyes stared at the ancient stones beneath his feet—stones that had witnessed countless students pass through these halls, most of whom had never accidentally terrorized their opponents with cosmic forces beyond mortal comprehension.
"I could've killed him..." he whispered to the gathering dusk, his voice cracking like thin ice. "I didn't mean to. I swear I didn't mean to lose control like that."
The memory of Karnis's broken sobs echoed in his mind, mixing with older nightmares of sulfur smoke and screaming. What if he was becoming the very thing that had destroyed his family? What if the power that lived in his bones wasn't a gift to be mastered, but a curse that would eventually consume everything he touched?
Maybe being alone really is safer, he thought, his chest tightening with familiar despair. For everyone.
"I should have stayed on that windmill," he murmured. "Should have stayed where I couldn't hurt anyone."
A soft rustling sound made him look up—and immediately do a double-take that would have been comical under different circumstances.
An elderly man was approaching with the casual grace of someone who'd learned that dignity was optional but comfort was essential. He wore what appeared to be an entire bedding set masquerading as formal robes—layers of pale cloth that looked suspiciously like they'd been borrowed from the Academy's laundry and artfully arranged to suggest profound wisdom rather than chronic sleepiness.
His face was deeply lined but kindly, marked by age and what looked like the aftermath of several spectacular magical accidents. Most remarkably, he moved with the particular unhurried pace of someone for whom time was merely a suggestion rather than a binding contract.
Dean Mael Atravan settled onto the bench beside Artha with the careful movements of someone whose joints had been protesting gravity for the better part of a century. For several minutes, they sat in companionable silence, watching the Academy's floating gardens drift past like lazy thoughts made manifest.
Then the old man spoke, his voice carrying the rough honesty of someone who'd long since given up on diplomatic niceties:
"You're not the first student to be afraid of your own strength, boy. Though I'll admit, most of them don't usually make their opponents question the fundamental nature of reality."
Artha turned his head slightly, studying this peculiar figure who seemed completely unbothered by sitting next to someone who'd just demonstrated the ability to rewrite cause and effect.
"You should probably keep your distance, sir," Artha said quietly. "I might hurt you. Or worse. Apparently, I'm not very good at controlling... whatever that was."
The Dean's response was not what he expected.
The old man laughed—not the polite chuckle of someone trying to be reassuring, but a genuine belly laugh that spoke of profound amusement at the universe's ongoing absurdity.
"If you could kill me, boy, I'd probably thank you," he wheezed between chuckles. "Been waiting for a properly dramatic death for decades now. The closest I've come lately was choking on enchanted porridge that my assistant insisted would 'enhance my cognitive clarity.' Turns out it just made me speak in limericks for three days."
Artha blinked, completely derailed from his spiral of self-recrimination. "...Limericks?"
"Terrible ones," the Dean confirmed with obvious pride. "The faculty still hasn't recovered. Professor Thorne actually requested a transfer to the combat division just to avoid my poetry."
Despite everything, Artha felt his lips twitch toward something that might become a smile.
"But here's the thing," the Dean continued, his tone growing more serious without losing its underlying warmth. "I've seen magical beasts with a fraction of your power tear entire cities apart for the simple joy of destruction. But they had no fear, no hesitation, no moment of horror when they realized what they'd done."
He leaned back against the bench, his eyes finding the first stars beginning to appear in the darkening sky.
"You? You're still human enough to be terrified of your own capabilities. That's not a weakness, boy—that's the only thing standing between you and becoming a cosmic horror story."
"That's why you'll not only live, but learn to live with yourself."
Artha turned to study this strange old man more carefully. "Why are you talking to me like you've seen this before? Like you know what's going to happen?"
The Dean smiled—a expression that held depths Artha was only beginning to suspect—and produced something from the impossible folds of his robe-blanket hybrid. It was a scroll sealed with wax that bore a crescent sigil still warm to the touch.
"Because, my dear temporally-gifted disaster," he said cheerfully, "I've been doing this job for longer than most mountains have been standing. You pick up a few insights along the way."
Artha unrolled the scroll with trembling fingers, certain it was going to be a polite rejection letter explaining why the Academy couldn't risk having a reality-warping anomaly wandering their halls.
Instead, he found something far more complicated:
"Artha — Provisional Admission: Class D-Rank
Status: Under Supervised Observation
All Standard Privileges Revoked Pending Demonstration of Stability
Entry Permitted by Special Order of High Councilor Virelya
Note: 'The most dangerous students are often the most necessary ones.' - Founding Archmage"
Artha read the document three times, his mind struggling to process what he was seeing.
"I... I passed?" he asked, his voice small and wondering. "But I failed. I lost control. I could have—"
"You were chosen," the Dean corrected gently. "That's infinitely more dangerous than merely passing some arbitrary test. Passing means you fit into categories we understand. Being chosen means you're exactly the kind of impossible that the world occasionally requires."
He stood with the careful movements of someone whose joints required negotiation rather than simple commands.
"So don't waste it, boy. And try not to accidentally traumatize any more of your classmates. The Academy's therapy budget is already strained from last semester's incident with the possessed training dummies."
And with that cheerfully ominous observation, he wandered away, his robe-blankets flowing behind him like the world's most dignified homeless person.
Dormitory Sorting
The Academy's central plaza blazed with magical illumination as the evening's grand finale approached. Four towering dormitory wings stretched toward the star-filled sky, each crowned with a massive glowing rune that pulsed with the accumulated pride of generations: A, B, C, and D.
The sorting ceremony proceeded with all the pomp and circumstance the Academy could muster, which was considerable. Names were called with dramatic flourish, students stepped forward to receive their assignments, and the crowds responded with varying degrees of enthusiasm based on the rankings achieved.
"Koroan Thalbek — Rank B, West Wing!"
The mountain giant's acceptance was greeted with cheers from students who appreciated straightforward violence well-executed. Koroan himself looked somewhat embarrassed by the attention, scratching his head as he ambled toward his assigned tower.
"Liraya Dorthain — Rank B, West Wing!"
Respectful applause followed the sword prodigy's name, tinged with the wariness that came from witnessing her casual dismantling of supposedly skilled opponents.
"Sayen Ashworth — Rank B, West Wing!"
The quiet artist's assignment received more subdued but genuine appreciation from those who recognized the terrifying precision of his temporal displacement techniques.
Artha watched his new friends—friends, what a strange and wonderful concept—receive their well-deserved recognition with emotions that mixed pride and melancholy. They belonged in the gleaming towers where windows sparkled with enhancement enchantments and the halls smelled of success and unlimited potential.
"Artha — Rank D, East Wing, Room 9."
The announcement fell into relative silence, broken only by a few scattered snickers and one particularly theatrical fake-cough that sounded suspiciously like "charity case."
Artha didn't react to the mockery. He'd expected worse, honestly. His footsteps were quiet as he made his way toward the tower that perched on the far edge of campus like an architectural afterthought—weathered, slightly tilted, and generally giving the impression that it was held together by stubbornness and strategic applications of duct tape.
The Tower of Chronic Disappointment
The D-Rank dormitory looked like it had been designed by someone whose only architectural philosophy was "good enough, probably." The front doors groaned when opened, suggesting they'd prefer to remain closed. The walls creaked in harmonies that spoke of structural compromises made decades ago. One third-floor window had what appeared to be a small ecosystem developing around a persistent leak, complete with a pigeon that had apparently decided to take up permanent residence.
Room 9 smelled faintly of dust, old rain, burnt toast, and something that might have been optimism if you squinted hard enough. A ceiling fan spun overhead with the determination of machinery that had long since given up on efficiency but retained a stubborn dedication to appearing busy. The furniture looked like it had been assembled by someone following instructions written in a dead language.
Most entertainingly, a wall calendar proudly displayed the year 1241.
It was currently 1246.
Artha stepped into this monument to academic afterthoughts, too emotionally exhausted to do anything but appreciate the honest mediocrity of his surroundings. At least here, nobody would expect miracles or worry about reality-warping accidents during breakfast.
"Yo. You must be the new tragedy."
A voice drifted from the direction of what was presumably a bedroom, followed by the sound of several heavy objects hitting the floor in sequence. Moments later, a figure emerged carrying an impressive stack of books with titles like "Advanced Mana Circuits for Lazy Geniuses," "The Art of Strategic Napping," and "Why Excellence is Overrated: A Philosophical Approach."
The newcomer was tall and lean in the way that suggested good genetics rather than actual effort. His dark green hair looked like it had been styled by a particularly artistic hurricane, and his golden eyes held the sleepy awareness of a cat that was always watching but couldn't be bothered to act on most of what it observed.
"Name's Reyan Thorne," he announced, allowing his book collection to cascade onto the floor with theatrical carelessness. "Former noble prodigy, current professional disappointment, and future master of doing absolutely nothing with maximum efficiency."
He gestured vaguely at the chaos he'd just created. "Those are my research materials. I'm working on my thesis: 'Optimal Laziness: How to Achieve Minimal Results with Even Less Effort.'"
Artha stared at this peculiar roommate, his brain struggling to process someone who seemed to wear failure like a comfortable sweater.
"You... seem proud of being here," he observed.
"Oh, incredibly proud," Reyan confirmed, flopping onto what was apparently his bed with the boneless grace of someone who'd perfected the art of falling down. "Took me three years of carefully calculated underachievement to get demoted from A-Rank to this paradise of lowered expectations."
He pointed at a moldy corner near the kitchen area. "Don't touch the bread in that cabinet, by the way. It's developing what I'm pretty sure is sentience. Last week I caught it rearranging the other food items. I'm conducting an experiment to see if it'll eventually achieve political consciousness and demand voting rights."
Despite everything—the humiliation, the fear, the cosmic horror of nearly breaking reality—Artha found himself snorting with surprised laughter. A real laugh, small and accidental, slipping out before he could remember that he was supposed to be brooding dramatically about his terrible fate.
Reyan's grin was infectious, carrying the particular satisfaction of someone who'd just scored an unexpected victory.
"There we go," he said approvingly. "For a minute there you looked like you were going to start monologuing about the darkness in your soul or something equally exhausting. Trust me, nobody has time for that level of drama. This is D-Rank—we specialize in aggressively mundane problems like figuring out which dining hall serves edible food and whether the shower actually produces hot water or just water that's given up on being cold."
For the first time in days, the crushing weight of cosmic responsibility lifted slightly from Artha's shoulders. Maybe there was something to be said for a place where the biggest concerns were practical rather than metaphysical.
The Next Morning
The Academy's outer plaza buzzed with its usual morning energy as students gathered around the announcement board like particularly well-dressed vultures. News of house assignments, combat simulations, and various academic opportunities drew crowds eager to see their names associated with prestigious activities.
Predictably, the D-Rank section of the announcements was sparse enough to be depressing.
"Why would they bother listing activities for the charity cases?" someone observed with casual cruelty.
"I heard they don't even get real classes," another voice added. "Just remedial magic theory and 'Introduction to Not Being a Disappointment.'"
But then something remarkable happened.
The air above the announcement board shimmered with high-level enchantment magic, and a second scroll materialized from thin air. It attached itself to the board with the kind of authoritative presence that made everyone in the plaza take a step back.
The heading blazed in letters that seemed to burn themselves into observers' retinas:
"EXPERIMENTAL COMBAT PILOT PROGRAM
AUTHORIZED BY HIGH COUNCILOR VIRELYA
CLASSIFICATION: RESTRICTED ACCESS"
Below that, a list of names that made absolutely no sense according to traditional Academy hierarchies:
"Participants: Artha, Reyan Thorne, Koroan Thalbek, Nyssa Vale, Sayen Ashworth... and Subject Unknown."
The crowd stared in collective confusion. A program that mixed D-Rank disasters with B-Rank elites? Authorized by the High Councilor herself? What kind of experiment required that particular combination of talent and catastrophic potential?
"This has to be a mistake," someone whispered.
"Or," came another voice, tinged with nervous excitement, "it's exactly the kind of thing that makes legends."
Training Field Six – The Glass Crater
The designated meeting location turned out to be one of the Academy's more unusual facilities—a dome-shaped structure that looked like someone had captured a soap bubble and convinced it to become permanent architecture. The transparent walls rose toward a crystalline apex that reflected the sky like a second world floating above their heads.
Inside, the floor was a single piece of ancient stone that bore the scars of countless magical experiments. Geometric patterns had been carved into its surface over the centuries, creating a mandala of accumulated knowledge and controlled destruction.
Six students stood in somewhat awkward formation, each processing their inclusion in this mysterious program differently.
Koroan approached Artha with his characteristic easy grin, though his expression held notes of genuine concern.
"Heard about what happened in the arena, kid," he said, his voice carrying the particular gentleness that large, dangerous people reserved for those they considered worth protecting. "That kind of power... it's scary as hell, but it's also incredible. Just maybe aim it away from your friends next time, yeah?"
His massive hand landed on Artha's shoulder with carefully controlled force—enough to be reassuring, not enough to accidentally relocate bones.
Near the edge of the platform, a girl with silver hair and violet eyes observed the group with the analytical calm of someone cataloguing potential threats and opportunities. Nyssa Vale had the particular stillness that came from magical training focused on precision rather than power, and her presence suggested depths that casual observation wouldn't reveal.
Sayen materialized beside Artha with his characteristic silent grace, offering a small piece of parchment. His latest sketch showed all six of them standing together, but rendered in a style that made them look like heroes from an epic saga rather than confused students in an experimental program.
Below the image, in his precise handwriting: "Don't be nervous. Everyone here is strange in their own way. That's what makes it interesting."
Reyan stretched with theatrical languor, examining their surroundings with the careful eye of someone assessing nap potential.
"Alright," he announced to the group at large, "let's get this mysterious experimental program over with so I can get back to my very important research into optimal sleeping positions. I've recently discovered that the library's third-floor reading nooks have acoustics specifically designed for power napping."
The sixth member of their group remained a mystery—a figure in academy robes whose face was hidden beneath a featureless mask. They stood apart from the others, radiating an aura of deliberate anonymity that made them easy to overlook until you realized how much effort that level of invisibility actually required.
Then the world shifted.
Trial: When Magic Fails
Reality folded like origami made of crystallized possibility.
The gravity that had been reliably pointing downward suddenly developed opinions about perpendicular directions. Floating ruins materialized in the air above them—not illusions, but actual stone structures that had been borrowed from elsewhere and convinced to exist in defiance of physical law.
Most remarkably, every student's magical abilities simply... stopped working properly.
Koroan's attempts to activate his Vajra Hide resulted in him briefly turning bright purple instead of stone-hard. Nyssa's precision spells went haywire, creating small explosions of glitter rather than controlled energy bursts. Even Sayen's temporal abilities flickered inconsistently, making him appear to stutter between moments rather than flow smoothly through them.
Except for Artha, who had no conventional magic to malfunction.
While his companions struggled with their suddenly unreliable abilities, he found himself adapting with the fluid instincts of someone who'd spent years surviving without magical advantages. He read the patterns in the chaos, moved when others hesitated, chose stillness when movement would have been fatal.
When a chunk of floating debris threatened to crush Koroan, Artha tackled him clear with perfectly timed precision. When Nyssa's malfunctioning spells created a feedback loop that could have seriously injured her, he guided her hands to break the pattern safely.
"You know," Koroan observed from his position flat on his back after being saved from architectural assault, "you might actually not just survive this place—you might thrive in it."
Reyan, meanwhile, had found a comfortable spot to sit and was taking notes on the experience with academic interest.
"Fascinating," he murmured, sketching the chaotic magical fields in his notebook. "It's like watching everyone else suddenly experience what D-Rank feels like all the time. Very educational. Also, slightly hilarious, but I'm trying to be supportive."
The Black Sun
Then time stopped.
Not the controlled temporal manipulation that Sayen practiced, or the cosmic authority that Artha had accidentally wielded in the arena. This was something else entirely—absolute cessation that left him suspended in a bubble of perfect silence while the world around him froze like a painting of motion.
Above them, the crystal dome cracked.
Not from physical stress, but from something pressing against reality from the outside. The fissures spread in patterns that hurt to perceive directly, and through them, something impossible began to emerge.
A black sun rose in the space above the Academy.
It wasn't absence of light—it was anti-light, an illumination that made shadows brighter and turned brilliance into something that ate at the edges of vision. And suspended in its dark radiance, chained with bonds that seemed to be made of crystallized suffering, was a figure that made Artha's heart stop.
Older than he remembered. Paler, thinner, marked by experiences that belonged to nightmares rather than human memory. But unmistakably, impossibly, heartbreakingly familiar.
"Brother?" The word escaped Artha's lips as a whisper that carried nine years of desperate hope.
The chained figure turned toward him, and when he spoke, his voice carried harmonics that belonged to forces far older and more terrible than human speech:
"Don't come for me, Artha." Each word fell like a stone into still water, creating ripples that extended far beyond their immediate meaning. "He'll erase you. The answers you seek... they all lead to the same ending. Death. Destruction. The unmaking of everything you've learned to love."
The chains that held him pulsed with malevolent energy, and for just a moment, something vast and hungry turned its attention toward the frozen scene below.
"ARTHA!" His brother's voice cracked with desperation as the dark sun began to withdraw. "Remember what I taught you about being kind! Remember—"
Artha screamed.
The sound tore through the temporal stillness like a blade through silk, and the world shattered around him in fragments of possibility and terror.
🪞 Somewhere Else
In a chamber that existed adjacent to normal space, Dean Mael Atravan stood before a crystal mirror whose surface reflected more than light. The images that moved within its depths showed fragments of past, present, and future woven together in patterns that would drive lesser minds to madness.
He said nothing.
He simply watched as the surface shimmered and began to whisper in voices that belonged to the spaces between heartbeats:
"What is worth saving... when all must perish in the end?"
The Dean's expression remained carefully neutral, but his hands trembled slightly as he reached out to touch the mirror's surface.
"Perhaps," he murmured to the watching darkness, "the question isn't what's worth saving, but what's worth the risk of trying."
In the depths of the Academy's most secure vaults, ancient warning systems pulsed with increasing urgency.
One seal remained unbroken.
But the key to its destruction had just seen what waited in the darkness between worlds.
And somewhere in that darkness, something that had been patient for millennia smiled with anticipation that tasted of endings and beginnings alike.