Moros forced himself to look away from the suffocating clouds of black smoke. He pushed the nausea down, locking it away behind the same wall that held his scream. He stepped out from behind the podium, his boots clicking sharply against the stone floor as he began to pace the length of the stage.
He did not look like a savior. He looked like an undertaker sizing up a row of coffins.
He stopped directly in front of Valerius, looking through the spectral crown of thorns at the young man's arrogant face.
"You have been told that you are the future," Moros said, his voice carrying to the back row without raising in volume. "You have been sent here because you are the elite. The prodigies. The chosen."
He turned his back on them, walking toward the blackboard.
"I see you for what you are, dead bodies."
A ripple of unease spread through the room. The Coward shifted in his seat, the velvet of his doublet rustling. Valerius let out a short, derisive huff of air, but Moros whipped around, his coat flaring.
"You think Aethos is a school," Moros continued, his eyes hard. "It is not. A school nurtures. Aethos filter. It is to separate the useful from the dead."
He walked back to the edge of the stage, leaning forward until he was looming over the front row. The Vow of Silence tightened around his throat, a warning pressure, but he skirted the edge of the prohibition carefully.
"I cannot save you," he said, speaking the absolute truth. "I cannot warn you. I can only teach you the way. Whether you fall into it is your choice."
He let the words settle, heavy as lead. The black smoke swirled around their ankles, agitated by his proximity.
"To begin," Moros said, straightening up. "A simple question."
He scanned the room.
"What is the most important rule of magic?"
The silence stretched for a beat. Then, in the back row, the Spy raised a hand. She didn't wait to be called on.
"Control," she said. Her voice was cool, calculated. "Magic is chaotic energy. The mage's will binds it. Without control, you die."
Moros's expression didn't change. "A textbook answer. Ideally suited for a scribe."
"Power," a voice barked from the middle row. It was The Zealot, Kaelen. The flames of smoke around him licked higher. "Magic is dominion. It is the ability to enforce your reality over the world. If you have enough power, control is irrelevant."
Moros looked at the boy. He saw the fire that would eventually burn him to ash.
"Wrong," Moros said softly.
He walked back to the podium and picked up the shards of the chalk he had crushed earlier. He held his hand out, opening his palm. The white dust drifted down, catching the cold-fire light before disappearing into the gloom.
"Control fails," Moros said, watching the dust fall. "Power runs out."
He looked up, meeting their eyes with a gaze that felt ancient.
"The only constant is Consequence."
He dusted his hands off, the white powder staining his black gloves.
"Magic is not a gift. It is a transaction. You take from the void, and the void takes from you. Every spell has a price. Every cast leaves a scar." He gestured to the empty air around them, seeing the death flags they were blind to. "And most of you have already overdrawn your accounts."
"Class dismissed," Moros said, the words cutting through the tension like a guillotine blade. "Do not be late tomorrow. The void does not wait for stragglers."
The release of tension was palpable. The students stood, gathered their bags and cloaks with hurried movements, eager to escape the pressure of the lecture hall. They filed out in silence, giving wary glances at the man in the black coat.
Moros watched them go.The black smoke that clung to them trailed in their wake, pooling in the aisles and swirling around the doorframe. As they crowded the exit, the individual plumes merged, forming a single, turbulent storm front of oily vapor that tumbled out into the corridor. It looked less like a class departing and more like a plague being released into the Academy.
The heavy iron doors groaned shut. The silence returned. The clock continued its tick.
Tick.
Moros exhaled, his shoulders slumping slightly. The mask of the imperious professor dropped, revealing the exhausted curator beneath. He looked down at the Ledger.
He ran his finger down the list of names, counting the ink stains he had made.
"One... seven... twelve."
Twelve names. Twelve files. Twelve walking corpses.
He closed the book, preparing to extinguish the cold-fire sconces. He looked up to scan the room one last time, a habit born out of paranoia.
His hand froze halfway to the light switch.
The room was empty. The tiered seats were bare stone. But his Sight, still throbbing behind his eyes, caught a movement.
In the third row, in a seat that had been empty the entire hour—a seat between the Coward and the Zealot—a thin, serpentine wisp of black smoke was curling upward.
Moros blinked, thinking it was a residual hallucination, a stain left on his retina from the overload of death energy. He rubbed his eyes and looked again.
The wisp remained. It was faint, ghostly, but undeniable. It coiled lazily in the stagnant air, tethered to... nothing. There was nobody in the chair. No flesh to anchor the curse.
Moros felt a different kind of cold settle in his chest. This wasn't the familiar dread of death; this was the sharp, electric shock of the unknown.
He looked back at the Ledger. Twelve checks.
He looked at the empty seat. A thirteenth flag.
There was an invisible variable in the room. A stowaway? A possession? Or something that didn't have a body yet, but was already marked for destruction?
Moros walked slowly to the blackboard. He picked up a fresh stick of chalk. His hand didn't cramp this time. The Vow didn't restrict him, because this wasn't a warning—it was a calculation.
He wrote the number 12. Then, with a slash of white dust, he crossed it out.
Next to it, he wrote 13. He circled it heavily.
Moros stared at the number. For ninety-nine cycles, he had watched tragedies play out with clockwork precision. The students came, they made mistakes, they died. It was natural law.
But an invisible death? A flag without a target?
"This isn't a tragedy," Moros whispered to the empty room, the realization turning the ozone air sour in his mouth.
"This is sabotage."