The legend of the East Wing Ghost, as they were now calling it, was getting out of hand. Whispers followed me as I mopped, though they never actually landed on me. They floated around me, tales of a spectral entity that humbled the arrogant and protected the meek. Some students even started leaving small offerings—a shiny coin, a fresh apple—on windowsills, hoping to curry favor with the unseen spirit.
It was amusing, for the most part. But amusement is a fragile thing, easily shattered by the weight of a intelligent, probing gaze.
The problem arrived in the form of Professor Alaric, a man who taught "Theoretical Arcane Applications," a subject most students considered one step above watching paint dry. He was a tall, lean man with a hawk-like nose and eyes that missed nothing. His robes were always impeccably clean, and he moved with a quiet, precise grace that set him apart from the more flamboyant faculty.
I first felt his gaze during one of my morning cleaning sessions outside his lecture hall. I was re-spooling a cobweb into a neat little ball for my own amusement when I looked up and found him standing there, watching me. It wasn't a casual glance. It was a dissection.
"You are the null from Oakhaven," he stated. It wasn't a question.
I immediately slumped my posture, letting the cobweb drift from my fingers. "Yes, sir. Leo, sir. Just cleaning, sir."
He didn't respond immediately. His eyes, a cool, analytical grey, scanned me from my worn boots to my black hair. "Interesting," he murmured, a word that carried more threat than a shouted curse. "The epicenter of so many... statistical anomalies, and yet you remain at the absolute zero of magical potential."
My heart didn't race. I'd had a century and a half of life, in a way, to learn to control such physiological responses. I simply looked confused. "Anomalies, sir? You mean the ghost stories? Kids' talk, sir."
A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched his lips. "Indeed. Children's talk." He turned and walked into his classroom, leaving me with a cold knot in my stomach. This man was not like the others. He didn't believe in ghosts. He believed in data. And the data, it seemed, was pointing in my direction.
The next day, I was summoned to his office. The message was delivered by a nervous-looking second-year, as if I were being called to the principal's office for execution. In a way, I was.
His office was a testament to organized chaos. Scrolls and books were piled high, but in a system only he understood. Astronomical charts decorated the walls, and strange, crystalline devices hummed softly on his desk. In the center of the room, suspended from the ceiling by a thin, almost invisible wire, was a complex brass pendulum. It swung back and forth with a hypnotic, perfect rhythm.
"Leo," Professor Alaric said, gesturing for me to sit. "I have a proposition for you. I need a research assistant for a... delicate project. The pay is better than scrubbing floors."
I remained in character. "I'm not very smart, sir. And I have no magic. I'd be useless."
"On the contrary," he said, steepling his fingers. "Your complete lack of magical signature is the precise qualification I need. You see, I am studying ambient temporal fluctuations. Minuscule ripples in the fabric of time itself. Most mages, brimming with their own power, create too much 'noise.' You... you are a silent canvas. You would be the perfect control subject."
He was laying a trap. A brilliant one. He was inviting the fox into the henhouse and asking it to count the chickens.
"I... I don't know what that means, sir," I mumbled, looking at my feet.
"It means I want you to sit in this chair," he pointed to a high-backed chair positioned directly under the swinging pendulum, "and do nothing. Simply exist. My instruments will do the rest."
I had two choices. Refuse, which would be suspicious for a simpleton offered easy money. Or accept, and walk directly into his web. The second option was far more dangerous, and therefore, far more interesting.
"Okay," I said with a shrug. "If the pay is good."
I sat in the chair. The pendulum swung. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. The devices on his desk glowed and whirred. Professor Alaric moved around me, making notes, adjusting dials. I could feel the subtle probes of the enchantments, like psychic fingertips brushing against my consciousness. They were searching for any sign of temporal manipulation, any scar in the local timeline.
I became a void. I let my mind go as blank as the orb's surface had been. I thought of nothing but the mopping I had to do later. I was Leo, the null, the janitor. I was a rock in a river, and the sophisticated scans were just water, flowing around me.
For an hour, nothing happened. The pendulum swung. The machines hummed. Professor Alaric's frown deepened.
Then, he decided to raise the stakes.
"A fascinating null-read across all spectrums," he mused, loud enough for me to hear. "Almost too perfect. It's as if any anomalous energy is being... absorbed. Or perhaps, consciously suppressed."
He walked over to a large, covered object in the corner and pulled off the cloth. It was a massive, ornate mirror in a frame of black iron. The glass didn't show my reflection. It showed a swirling, silver mist.
"This is a Chronos Mirror," he explained, his eyes glued to my face, watching for any flicker of reaction. "It doesn't reflect light. It reflects time. It shows not what is, but what was a few moments ago. Watch."
He waved his hand in front of the mirror. The mist swirled and resolved, showing an image of him waving his hand, a few seconds in the past.
"Now," he said, his voice dropping to a whisper. "Let's see what it shows while you sit there, doing... nothing."
This was a problem. A serious one. I couldn't control what the mirror showed. It was a passive recorder. If I so much as twitched a finger to stop time, the mirror would show a version of me that hadn't twitched, creating a glaring paradox that his instruments would surely detect.
I had to stay perfectly, physically still. But my mind raced. I had to maintain the void, not just magically, but temporally. I had to be a perfect, un-edited recording for the duration of this test.
The pendulum swung. Tick. Tock.
I felt a bead of sweat start to form on my temple. A normal, human reaction to stress. I let it happen.
The mirror's mist swirled. It showed me, sitting perfectly still, the sweat bead tracing a path down my skin.
Professor Alaric watched, his expression unreadable.
Then, the unexpected happened. A young woman, a senior student, burst into the office without knocking, her face panicked.
"Professor! It's the Alchemy lab—a containment breach! The Fume Vipers are loose!"
In that moment of chaos, as Alaric's head snapped towards the door, his concentration broke. The sophisticated field generated by his machines flickered.
It was the opening I needed. I didn't stop time for the whole room. I didn't rewind. That would be too broad. Instead, I performed the most delicate temporal surgery of my life.
I isolated a single object: the pendulum bob.
And I stopped it.
Just the bob. Not the air around it. Not the wire it hung from. Just that one, specific piece of brass.
In the real world, less than a second had passed. Professor Alaric was turning back to me, his eyes sharp, ready to dismiss the student and continue his experiment.
His gaze fell on the pendulum.
It was motionless. Hanging at a perfect, impossible 45-degree angle in its swing, utterly still, as if frozen in amber.
The machines, which had been humming steadily, let out a shrill, confused whine. The Chronos Mirror flickered violently, the image of me from seconds ago distorting into static.
Professor Alaric's eyes widened. He stared at the unmoving pendulum, then at his shrieking instruments, and finally, at me.
I looked back at him, my face a masterpiece of confusion and fear, the sweat on my brow now completely justified. "Is... is it supposed to do that, sir?" I asked, my voice trembling.
He didn't answer. He moved to his machines, frantically checking readings. He waved a hand in front of the pendulum, but it wasn't encased in a time-stop field. The air moved around it freely. Only the bob itself was frozen, a perfect violation of physics and magic.
The student was still standing there, horrified. "The Vipers, Professor!"
"Get out!" Alaric snapped, his composure shattered. The student fled.
He turned back to me, his earlier calm replaced by a feverish intensity. "What did you do?" he whispered.
"I didn't do anything, sir! I swear! I just sat here!" I pleaded, shrinking back in the chair. "It must be the ghost! The East Wing Ghost!"
I saw the conflict in his eyes. The evidence of a massive temporal anomaly was staring him in the face, literally frozen in time. But his instruments had recorded nothing from me. I was still a perfect null. And his logical mind rebelled against the "ghost" theory.
The pendulum began to swing again, as suddenly as it had stopped. The machines quieted.
"Go," Professor Alaric said, his voice hoarse. He wouldn't look at me. "Get out."
I didn't need to be told twice. I scrambled out of the chair and hurried towards the door.
"Leo," he called out just as I reached for the handle.
I stopped, but didn't turn.
"This isn't over," he said. It was a promise, and a threat.
I left his office, the image of a scared janitor. But inside, I was calculating. I had won that round by the narrowest of margins. I had shown him a power he couldn't comprehend, while simultaneously convincing him I couldn't possibly be its source.
I had thrown him a paradox he couldn't solve. And in doing so, I had made myself more fascinating to him than ever.
The game with Professor Alaric had just begun. And for the first time, I was facing an opponent who might actually be clever enough to force my hand.