Somehow — by some minor miracle, or perhaps a temporary lapse in the universe's sense of humor — Magnus actually managed to get work done before lunch.
Not all of it, not even close, but enough to feel like he hadn't completely lost control of his life. Notes were reviewed, his parts of the group paper written and edited for consistency with his colleagues' sections, and his Psych readings… well, skimmed, aggressively, but still counted.
Now he was eating lunch and preparing for the next battle.
Alex was with her cheer squad, something about them complaining — loudly, apparently — that she'd been spending too much time with him lately. Between bites, he'd gotten Alex's updates over text about how annoying her squad was being.
If he was being completely honest, Magnus was conflicted. On one hand, Alex's presence right now would help calm his nerves. On the other, he understood fully well that being a couple didn't mean they had to be glued together every second of the day. That would be too codependent. And that alone would be unhealthy under normal circumstances. With his luck, any kind of dependency, as he was learning more and more, was just another way to die when the System decided to get creative.
Besides, Alex had her world, her people. He had his, even if his world didn't contain anywhere near as many people as hers. And, for once, his problems were… normal.
Assignments. Deadlines. Office hours.
Normal!
…Mostly.
Because the office hours in question were Professor Marquez's.
Magnus glanced at the time, exhaled, and stood up. It was almost time. As much as he dreaded this, it was always something he'd have to face alone.
"Everything is fine! Everything is normal!" Magnus said the words quietly to himself like a mantra as he walked the familiar route to Elena Marquez's office.
It worked. Or at least, he'd almost convinced himself it did for a while. And that illusion held all the way until he found himself standing outside Professor Marquez's office.
Where, just like that, the normalcy cracked.
Magnus paused in the hallway, staring at the closed door like it might bite him if he got too close. His grip tightened slightly around his notebook, knuckles whitening for just a second before he forced himself to relax.
This was fine. This was academic!
Just office hours. Just questions. Just a student talking to his professor.
Not—
His chest tightened, sharp and sudden.
Not a week of spiraling decisions. Not late-night planning sessions with Alex, trying to thread a needle between survival and ethics. Not the quiet, creeping dread of a ticking deadline he couldn't meet. Not—
Pain flickered along his spine. Phantom. Brief. Gone before it could fully register.
Magnus exhaled slowly.
Yeah. That!
Because that was still a thing.
Nearly a month later, and his body still occasionally remembered dying.
It wasn't as bad as the first week after it had happened. But it had never really gone away, either. And almost every time Elena Marquez was around, his brain decided to bring back memories of that week.
It always happened randomly. It was always unexpected.
One moment he was fine, the next he was drenched in cold sweat, feeling phantom pain coursing through his veins.
PTSD.
And panic attack.
They would come and go. He'd be shaken, then try to cope. Then things would go back to normal — or as normal as they could be — and he would let himself believe for a moment that they could really be normal.
And then the cycle would repeat.
He closed his eyes, shifted his weight, and tried to breathe.
"Everything is fine! Everything is normal!" he recited the mantra again.
Normal…
After he had died and come back, in that first week — when the memory was still raw enough to make his hands shake — he had called in sick and avoided Professor Marquez entirely.
But after that, he and Alex had agreed — carefully, deliberately — that avoidance would only make things worse.
Suspicion thrived in absence. If he suddenly started dodging a professor he'd previously engaged with, that raised questions. Questions led to attention. Attention, in Magnus's experience, tended to spiral into very bad outcomes.
So: maintain normalcy!
Attend lectures. Go to office hours. Ask real questions. Be a student.
It was simple. In theory.
In practice… it wasn't easy. At all!
The PTSD had been the worst of it, but even without it, it was still awkward around her.
Not because of anything she did, no. Professor Marquez had remained professional, composed, and indifferent — not much different from that disastrous week, actually.
But that was precisely the problem!
Now that the System was no longer holding his life hostage and forcing him toward her, now that he was calm enough — or as calm as he could be — to treat her as nothing more than his professor, everything from that week felt even more unreal.
The desperation. The lines he'd danced along. The things he'd considered doing — almost done — just to survive. Standing here now, in a brightly lit academic building with students chatting and doors half-open, it was hard to reconcile that version of himself with this one.
And to make everything even worse, he had an inkling that the failed quest hadn't come without other lasting repercussions. Near the end of that week, when tension was high and he was desperate to stay alive, there were things he had done that succeeded in making her notice him. He just wasn't entirely sure it had been in a good way.
She wasn't suspicious. At least, not yet.
But for the past month, Professor Marquez had been watching him.
Subtly. Professionally. Never anything he could point to and say, that! But it was there. In the way her gaze lingered a fraction too long. In the brief, thoughtful pauses when he spoke in class. In the quiet, almost clinical focus that sometimes brushed against his awareness.
After getting Affective Discernment last week during Riley's Conquest, he had used it on her just to see if what he felt was real, or if he was just paranoid.
What he got back was unmistakable!
Scrutiny.
Not hostile. Not yet suspicious.
But… attentive. And curious.
Like he was a project. Like she was trying to figure him out. To understand why he had behaved the way he had during that week, and why he was behaving the way he was now.
Magnus resisted the urge to turn around and walk the other way.
Avoidance would only make things worse. And, inconveniently, he did actually have questions for her. Real ones. About his homework. Which meant there was no getting out of this.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath again. Then loosened his grip on his notebook, and knocked.
A brief pause.
"Come in!"
Magnus stepped inside.
Professor Elena Marquez sat behind her desk, a neat spread of papers arranged in front of her, pen in hand. She looked up as he entered, her expression settling into that familiar, composed neutrality he'd come to associate with her.
"Afternoon, Mr. Chane," she said. "What brings you to my office?"
Her tone was even. Professional. No hint of anything unusual.
Magnus nodded, forcing himself to match it. "Yeah—uh, I have a question about the cognitive dissonance section from last lecture. Specifically, how it ties into long-term belief reinforcement?"
Clean. Academic. Safe.
"Sit," she said, gesturing to the chair across from her.
He did.
For the next fifteen minutes, it was… normal. She walked him through the concept with practiced clarity, building from fundamentals into application. Cognitive dissonance not just as a momentary discomfort, but as a driver for belief adjustment over time — how people didn't just resolve contradictions, they often reshaped their worldview to prevent future ones.
Magnus followed, asked a couple of follow-ups, took notes.
On the surface, it was exactly what it was supposed to be: a student asking questions, a professor answering them.
But underneath…
Her gaze lingered.
Not constantly. Not enough to break the rhythm of the conversation. But enough that Magnus noticed. Enough that, once or twice, when he focused his power, he felt that faint, intangible pressure again.
That sense of being looked at — not just seen. Of being evaluated, whether he liked it or not.
"…So in cases where the belief is core to identity," Magnus said carefully, keeping his tone steady, "people are more likely to reject new information rather than adjust the belief?"
Professor Marquez nodded. "Correct. The more central a belief is to someone's self-concept, the more resistance you'll see. Change becomes… costly."
Her pen tapped lightly once against the desk.
"And yet," she added, almost idly, "people do change. Eventually."
Magnus's grip tightened slightly on his notebook. "…Right."
A beat.
Her eyes rested on him for just a moment longer than necessary. Then she looked back down at her notes.
"If that's all, Mr. Chane," she said, her tone returning fully to neutral, "you're on the right track. Keep pushing your analysis a bit further in your written response."
Magnus nodded quickly, maybe a little too quickly. "Yeah—thank you! I will."
He stood, gathering his things. For a second — just a second — he thought she might say something else. But all she said was:
"Have a good weekend, Mr. Chane."
"You too," he replied, already halfway to the door.
He stepped out into the hallway, the door clicking softly shut behind him. And only then did he let out the breath he'd been holding.
…That could have gone worse.
Which, admittedly, was not a very high bar anymore. Still, that had been normal. He'd asked his question. He hadn't done anything stupid.
And that already counted as a win.
***
That night.
Alex sat at her desk in her pajamas, hair still slightly damp from her shower, a towel draped lazily over the back of her chair. Her earbuds were in, some soft pop song playing just loud enough to blur the edges of everything else as she hummed along under her breath, fingers tapping idly against the edge of her laptop.
On the screen, the shared group document sat open — bullet points, highlighted sections, comments stacked neatly along the margins. She'd been staring at the same paragraph for the past three minutes.
Reading it. But not processing a single word.
Her phone buzzed. She reached for it without thinking, eyes still half on the screen — until she saw the name. Her hand stilled.
The music kept playing, tinny and distant now.
Slowly, she pulled one earbud out.
Katherine Hale: Thanks for calling me the other day! You're right. This is long overdue!
Alex stared at the message.
Silence stretched.
Her thumb hovered over the screen, like she might type something back — something casual, something reassuring, something that made this feel smaller than it was.
She didn't.
Instead, she leaned back slightly in her chair and looked out the window.
Campus lights flickered in the distance. A few students passed by below, laughing about something she couldn't hear.
Everything looked… normal.
Alex exhaled.
"…This is what's best for everyone," she said quietly.
The words came out steady. Practiced. Like she'd already said them to herself a dozen times before.
Her gaze drifted back to her phone.
The message was still there. Waiting.
She stared at it again.
Long overdue.
Her grip tightened just slightly.
"…Yeah," she added, softer this time. "It is!"
But she didn't type a reply. Didn't move.
She just sat there, staring at the screen as the music was still playing faintly in one ear — something upbeat, something light, something that didn't match the way her expression had gone just a little too still. A little too uncertain.
Like she wasn't entirely sure whether she'd done the right thing…
…Or set in motion something that would blow up in everyone's face?