# Prologue
Professor David Griffin adjusted his wire-rimmed spectacles and cleared his throat, the sound echoing dully in the half-empty lecture hall. Steam hissed softly from the brass pipes that ran along the walls, carrying eldritch energy to power the gas lamps that cast their familiar purple glow over rows of drowsy students.
"The Third Demonic Incursion," he began in his characteristic monotone, "occurred in the year 1247. Please make note of this date, as it will appear on your examination."
A few students dutifully scratched notes with their mechanical pens, the tiny bound sprites within the ink chambers glowing faintly as they worked. Most simply stared out the tall windows at the city beyond, where steam carriages chugged along cobblestone streets and the great clockwork spires of the Royal Institute pierced the grey London sky.
Griffin turned to the blackboard, his grey wool jacket straining slightly across his broad shoulders as he wrote dates in perfectly uniform script. At six-foot-five, he should have commanded the room's attention, but somehow he seemed to fold in on himself, becoming smaller, forgettable. Just another dreary professor in an institution full of them.
"The Incursion lasted seventeen days," he continued, not bothering to face his audience. "Casualties numbered approximately forty-three thousand. The binding ritual that ended the conflict was performed by Archmage Valdris the Bold, utilizing principles of—"
A student's head hit his desk with a soft thud, followed by gentle snoring. Griffin didn't pause in his recitation.
He'd given this same lecture for fifteen years, watching waves of bright young minds learn to despise magical history under his careful tutelage. They memorized dates and names without understanding the elegant brutality behind each "conflict resolution." They studied the rise and fall of magical dynasties without grasping the intricate politics of power that had shaped their world.
It was perfect.
Through the window, a minor demon fluttered past on bat-like wings, carrying dispatches between the university departments. An angel's golden radiance flickered briefly from the Theology building's spire. The great analytical engines in the basement hummed their constant rhythm, their demonic components bound in brass and steel, calculating everything from weather patterns to optimal binding circles.
Griffin finished writing the date of the Fourth Incursion and allowed himself the smallest of smiles. His students saw only a boring academic reciting dry facts about ancient history. They had no idea they were being taught by the very catastrophe their textbooks warned them about.
Somewhere in the depths of time and space, ancient things stirred in their slumber. Old debts waited to be collected, old scores to be settled. But for now, David Griffin was content to teach Introduction to Magical Chronology to a room full of half-asleep undergraduates, his true nature hidden behind decades of cultivated mediocrity.
After all, the best place to hide from history was to become the one who taught it.
The bell tower chimed the hour, its mechanism powered by a bound air elemental that had been serving the university for over two centuries. Students shuffled out, already forgetting what little they'd managed to absorb.
Griffin gathered his papers with methodical precision, adjusted his spectacles once more, and prepared for his next lecture. Tomorrow he would teach them about the Great Binding Wars of the 14th century, carefully omitting any mention of tactics, strategy, or the innovative soul-rending techniques that had made those conflicts so memorable.
Some lessons, after all, were better left unlearned.