They didn't call it magic.
Not aloud.
Not even when the guards carried the scorched stones from the labyrinth floor. Not even when the Duchess herself stepped into the chamber the next day and found the walls still warm to the touch, humming faintly with something she didn't understand.
But the word hung in the silence. It thickened the air like smoke.
Magic.
Forbidden. Ancient. Extinct.
And now, born again in the hands of a boy too young to hold a title and too dangerous to ignore.
---
Caelum sat in the small chamber off the library, his injured shoulder wrapped tightly in bandages, his hands raw from the fire. His palms still felt hot. Not burning, exactly—more like something under the skin wanted out.
They wouldn't let him speak to anyone. Not even Seraphina.
Not even Eren.
The guards who brought him meals didn't meet his eyes. One crossed himself every time he entered the room. Another kept his hand near his sword.
He hadn't meant to show them. He hadn't even known he could.
But something in the labyrinth had forced its way out of him. Something older than his name. Something real.
He'd thought—naively, maybe—that when he emerged, they would see him as strong.
Instead, they saw him as other.
---
The Duchess summoned him at dusk.
The hall was quiet when he entered. No crowd. No ceremony. Just her, standing beneath the stained glass window that threw crimson light across the floor.
He bowed stiffly, his shoulder aching. "You asked for me."
She turned. Her face was unreadable. "You should not be alive."
Caelum flinched.
"No one defeats their own fear in that chamber," she said. "Not without losing a piece of themselves. But you... destroyed yours."
"I didn't mean to," he said. "I didn't know what I was doing."
"That is the most dangerous thing a person can say."
She walked toward him slowly, each step echoing like judgment.
"The magic you used," she said, voice quiet, "is not a gift. It is a curse. A remnant from the old bloodlines—washed out of this house generations ago. Your father purged the last of it. Or so we thought."
"I didn't ask for it."
"No. But it answered you anyway."
Caelum's hands clenched. "What if I can control it? What if it could be used—to protect Thornmoor? To rebuild it?"
Her eyes hardened. "People do not follow fire, Caelum. They run from it."
A long silence.
Then she said it—clearly, coldly.
"You are exiled. Effective immediately."
The words struck like stone. "What?"
"You will leave the castle tonight. You will not return until your power is gone—or mastered beyond threat."
He took a step forward. "You're casting me out for something I didn't choose?"
"I'm saving this house from what you might become."
His voice cracked. "And what if I'm the only one who can save it someday?"
She said nothing.
He turned toward the door, his breath tight in his chest.
"Where will I go?" he asked, not looking back.
She didn't answer that either.
---
He left through the back gates an hour later, his cloak heavy with rain, his satchel thin. One guard accompanied him to the forest's edge, then turned back without a word.
He didn't cry. Not then. He walked until the lights of the castle were swallowed by trees.
The path ahead was dark.
But within him, the fire burned steady.
And somewhere—beyond exile, beyond shame—Caelum Thornmoor would make them regret sending him away.
Not for revenge.
But because one day, they would need the boy with fire in his blood.
And they would find he no longer needed them at all.