They turned a corner into a quieter residential wing, stopping before a solid oak door identical to the others, though its surface bore no heraldic markers, nameplates, or decorative flourishes.
Arthur slipped a hand into his pocket, retrieved a small brass key, and inserted it into the lock. With a clean, metallic turn, the bolt slid free. He pushed the heavy panel inward, swinging it wide to allow the younger boy entry.
The chamber that greeted them was vast, high-ceilinged, and utterly devoid of life.
Where Celeste's quarters had been a chaotic sea of velvet, severed canvases, and ducal treasures, Arthur's room held virtually nothing. The floorboards were bare and swept clean, unmarred by rugs or trailing fabrics. Along the far wall stood a solitary, plain wardrobe of dark-stained pine, its doors shut tight. Beside it sat a simple rectangular desk, cleared of clutter save for an unlit brass oil lamp and an inkwell aligned perfectly parallel to the edge of the wood. Above the desk hung a single narrow shelf supporting five books, their leather spines standing at rigid, uniform attention.
In the corner near the lancet window, an unadorned iron bedframe held a single thin mattress, draped in a taut, hospital-cornered woolen blanket. There were no banners, no family crests, no landscape tapestries, and not a solitary trinket resting on any surface.
Standing just beyond the threshold, Cyril took three steps inside. His soft crimson eyes widened as he swept his gaze across the cavernous emptiness, taking in the naked stone, the vacant corners, and the immaculate, clinical silence of the space.
So monastic— Cyril thought, a thrill of profound, reverent awe washing over him. It's even more barren than my room in the cave!
Cyril turned back toward Arthur, his face flushed with open, radiant admiration. He pressed his palms flat against each other, inclining his head with unvarnished solemnity.
"I admire you, mentor—you'll make a great deacon!"
Arthur stood motionless in the open doorway, his hand resting casually against the frame. Behind his warm amber eyes, the gears of his mind stalled for a fraction of a second.
What kind of trick is he playing at?
His lips curved naturally into an easy, disarming grin, accompanied by a soft, self-deprecating chuckle.
"Thanks for the compliment, but I'm not quite ready to settle down yet," Arthur joked smoothly.
Crossing the bare room with unhurried grace, Arthur unlatched the pine wardrobe and swung the door open. Inside, hung with mechanical precision, were a handful of Academy garments. Reaching toward the lower shelf, he retrieved a neatly folded bundle of dark fabric and turned back to the boy.
It was a standard Academy uniform from his first semester—a crisp, high-collared navy-blue tunic and matching trousers, tailored slightly smaller than his current measurements.
"Here, it's clean," Arthur said, extending the folded cloth with an encouraging nod. "You can change in the bathroom through that door to your right. I'll be out here if you need anything."
Cyril received the uniform with both hands, cradling the dark cloth against his white robes.
"Thank you, mentor," he said softly.
Pivoting on his heel, Cyril carried the bundle through the adjoining door and drew the heavy wood shut behind him.
The latch snapped home into the strike plate.
He stood alone in the center of the dark oak boards, slowly casting his eyes across the hollow chamber.
I haven't inhabited this room in months.
The air carried only the dry scent of cured pine and chilled mortar, scrubbed of any trace of living routine. When his eyes lingered on the narrow cot in the corner, with its blanket stretched tight enough to bounce a coin, it sparked no recognition. The space felt entirely foreign.
Back when the Sivanamine was still running through my veins, sleep didn't exist.
During those first months, the room had served as little more than a clandestine laboratory and an intermittent staging ground. Flooded by the caustic, chemical overdrive of the muddy sludge, the biological necessity of rest had simply dissolved. Day and night had merged into an unbroken, artificial continuum of memorization, arcana formulas, and grueling physical drills practiced in the dark.
These past two months, though...
Arthur turned toward the lancet window beside the iron bedframe. The brass latch glistened faintly, freshly greased to glide open without a whisper.
I only ever step inside at curfew to slip straight out the sill.
That had been the nightly cadence. He would cross the flagstone courtyards beneath the incurious gaze of the night wardens, ink his name into the dormitory ledger, enter this sterile box, and bolt the door. Within ten seconds, the window sash was up, and he was slipping across the sheer limestone buttresses into the shadows of the campus—hunting every phantom trace of the Ash Mage before scaling back over the ledge in the pre-dawn mist, just to exit through the main entrance.
Ever since the recess began, I've kept Sector Five under a microscope.
He had prioritized the upper grounds with systematic ruthlessness. Sector Five housed the graduating class. Soon, their tenure on the floating citadel would terminate, scattering them across the four corners of Geenna—swallowed by provincial courts, knight orders, and municipal ministries. Given his limited reach and fragile web of informants, if any one of them harbored a link to the masked spearman who had butchered him, that thread would snap forever the moment their boots touched the lowlands.
My operational window is bleeding dry.
Without the alchemical crutch of the stimulant, his body demanded payment. He could no longer burn through twenty-four continuous hours on raw spite.
Three hours. That's all.
A suffocating sliver of time: the brief window between the evening bells and the mandatory retreat—either slipping into the subterranean silence of the Inferior Archives where Alaric kept his guilty vigil, or collapsing onto the narrow cot in Sinclair's clinic to feed his nervous system whatever scrap of recovery it required.
Yet within those strict parameters, he had combed Sector Five with exhaustive precision.
The upper sector had emptied considerably during the inter-term break. Fewer than a hundred students had lingered in the dormitories and research quadrangles; the overwhelming bulk of the senior class had already departed for apprenticeships across the Viera Kingdom and the Manderjik Federation. With so few subjects confined to a predictable grid, he had methodically dismantled the area. He had audited class rosters, picked through abandoned research wings, tracked late-night movements across the courtyards, and monitored every irregular ripple of mana radiating along the sector's perimeter.
Arthur fixed his eyes on the cold brass lamp resting on the desk. Beneath the skin of his jaw, the muscle twitched taut.
Nothing.
From behind the washroom door, the crisp rustle of wool broke the room's silence, punctuated by the metallic snap of an Academy belt buckle.