The bell signaling the end of class was shrill in the silence that had fallen around Henry. The other students packed up quickly, shooting furtive, curious glances his way before filing out. The whispers followed them down the hall, leaving Henry, Helia, and Master Kael alone in the vast room.
Master Kael floated down from the stage, his smoke-hands swirling slowly as he approached. His expression wasn't one of disappointment, but of a deep, almost feverish academic curiosity. "Mr. Henry, Master Helia, please, stay a moment," he said, his voice low and thoughtful. He glanced at the dark, inactive mana gauge on Henry's desk. "Extraordinary. In all my centuries of teaching and research, I have never encountered such a phenomenon."
He fixed his gaze on Henry, eyes that seemed to see more than just a boy in a uniform. "Mana theory postulates that the soul is a vessel. Some souls are jars, others are oceans, but all of them contain and expend energy to influence the world. You… you have no vessel."
"He is the source itself," Helia said, her voice clear and factual. She wasn't adding a theory; she was stating a fact she already knew.
Master Kael nodded slowly, his smoky form rippling. "Precisely. You don't *use* light and dark. You *are* light and dark. The primordial forces of your ancestral clans. You are not drawing upon a reservoir of power; you are manifesting your very essence. It's why there's no mana drain. Asking you to use mana would be like asking a star to burn firewood."
The professor's words solidified Henry's terrifying realization. He wasn't just different. He was fundamentally *other*. The rules that governed every other mage in the world simply didn't apply to him. His struggle wasn't about control and capacity; it was about his own existence.
"So what does this mean for his training?" Master Kael asked, turning to Helia. "How do you teach a man to control his own soul when his soul is a cosmic civil war?"
"With a different focus," Helia answered. "His path is not that of the mage. It is not about mastering spells or managing resources. It is that of balance. The path of the monk and the arbiter. He must learn to mediate the peace between the gods within himself."
Master Kael looked both fascinated and terrified. "A path no one has walked before. The Academy will provide any resources you require. Our library—"
"We are grateful, Master," Helia cut him off, rising to her feet. "But the lesson for today is complete."
Henry stood, feeling hollowed out. He followed Helia out of the room, his mind spinning with the implications of everything he'd heard. He wasn't a student. He was a living experiment, a paradox to be studied.
As soon as they stepped into the hallway, they found a figure waiting, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed. Lyra. Her smile was as sharp as broken glass.
"So, the great mystery is revealed," she said, her voice dripping with contempt as she pushed off the wall and approached them. "The prodigy boy doesn't even have any mana. He's just an empty shell that happens to throw sparks when he gets scared. How impressive."
"Lyra, that's enough," Henry said, his voice more tired than angry.
She ignored him, circling him like a vulture sizing up its prey. Her cold gaze scanned him from head to toe, and for the first time, it wasn't just hostility he saw in her eyes, but a kind of dismissive disappointment.
"You know, it's a shame," she said, stopping in front of him. Her tone turned falsely conversational, which only made it cut deeper. "You're actually handsome, in a tragic, exotic sort of way."
Henry tensed, caught off guard by the sudden shift.
Lyra stepped closer, her voice dropping to a cruel whisper that was meant only for him. "But it doesn't matter what a man looks like if he's weak. And you," she looked him dead in the eye, "are the weakest of them all."
With that final barb, she turned and strode down the hall, the sound of her laughter echoing behind her.
Henry just stood there, her words hitting him harder than any lightning bolt she could have ever thrown. Humiliated in front of his class, redefined as an anomaly by his teacher, and now, dismissed as a useless pretty face by his rival.
The truth about his nature hadn't brought him clarity. It had only given him new and more profound ways to fail.