Chapter 100
Professor Finch Larenthanil was a name known mostly in passing among the student body of the Royal Academy, spoken more out of obligation than respect. At first glance, he looked like a shadow of a man literally and figuratively.
Standing at five foot two, he had a slim, hunched frame, his back slightly curved from years of leaning over ancient tomes and drawing chalk glyphs onto stone floors. His skin was pale, almost grayish in poor lighting, and often gave off a faint shimmer of blackened mana residue, a side effect of decades spent in the study and instruction of dark arts and forbidden incantations. His fingers were long and bony, often stained with ink and ritual soot, and his nails were chipped and darkened from handling cursed materials without gloves—either out of negligence or stubbornness.
being the Head of Dark Magic Defense and Forbidden Arts Regulation made him a guardian against everything dangerous, unstable, or unknown.
His face was sunken, with high cheekbones and deep lines creasing his forehead and under his eyes. His eyes, however, were the most striking—piercing violet, almost glowing in dim conditions, and always holding a strange balance of melancholy and sharp observation. He wore round-rimmed glasses low on the bridge of his crooked nose and often looked over them rather than through them, as though constantly unimpressed.
He kept his shoulder-length, wispy silver hair tied loosely at the nape, though it always seemed to find a way to fall into his face. His robes, always clean but visibly aged, were midnight black with etched runes in subtle embroidery—mostly defensive warding spells and passive nullification glyphs. They had the slight smell of incense, dust, and burnt parchment.
Despite his grim appearance, Professor Larenthanil was not cruel. He was, in fact, deeply principled. A stoic intellectual and a man of discipline, he believed that knowledge of darkness was necessary not to embrace evil, but to understand and resist it. He was known for his monotone lectures, rarely raising his voice, and for never spoon-feeding answers—he preferred to pose riddles or scenarios that forced his students to think. Sadly, few did.
His greatest frustration was not with the subject matter but with the students themselves—entitled heirs and lazy aristocrats who took his class only to fulfill curriculum requirements, not to understand the nuance and danger of the arcane paths he taught.
Beneath the quiet and weary exterior, however, burned a deep longing: to see a student rise above mediocrity and use what he taught to protect others, to hunt the monstrous, to face horrors and prevail because they studied his lessons. He was a teacher forged by war and hardened by years of seeing death magic misused, and he knew better than anyone the cost of ignorance.
born close to the former Gehinnom clan stronghold on the outer reaches of Obrelin. After the blood massacre that destroyed the Gehinnom nobility's ruling dynasty, he was born and raised in the desolate village of Velthara, which was rife with supernatural creatures and wild magic storms. Seeing the last remaining blood line of this fallen clan made him a bit curious, but knowing the current generation, he slowly lost interest.
Finch Larenthanil was the son of a gravebinder, a mage who specialized in laying the dead to rest and warding the living from restless spirits. He grew up among cursed grounds, plague towns, and corrupted forests, seeing firsthand what happened when people lacked proper magical defense.
In his youth, he joined the Order of the Veiled Flame, a secretive arcane faction dedicated to the ethical use of necromancy and shadow magic. There, he earned his title as "Ashmantle," a name given to mages who survived battlefields by commanding darkness to shield the dying and strike down monsters. He fought during the Threefold Eclipse Conflict, where demonic beasts from the Umbral Veins broke into the material plane.
But the war ended, and the world moved on. Finch, scarred in more ways than one, accepted a post at the Royal Academy in hopes of passing on his knowledge. Instead, he was met with shrugs, yawns, and noble brats more concerned about mana rings and fashion trends than learning how to banish a soul flayer or disrupt a blood pact.
Still, he endured lecturing on forgotten incantations, teaching proper sigil alignment, and maintaining the academy's black archives, a restricted vault of grimoires and cursed relics few dared approach.
Three days had passed, and yet Professor Finch Larenthanil still hadn't slept properly. The image haunted him the final instant before the Harmonizing Crystal shattered burned into his mind like a cursed glyph he couldn't unseen.
It was supposed to be routine. The arrival of Daniel Rothchester, heir of House Rothchester, was scheduled, albeit late, half a semester into the academic year, and yet the academy bent its rules as it always did for nobles. Finch had expected another overprivileged brat with more jewelry than intellect, someone to nod off during lectures and scribble crude mana sigils with an enchanted feather.
But then, the Crystal happened. The Harmonizing Crystal, one of the twelve relics forged in the Silver Reformation Era, was designed to scan and harmonize with a student's mana, reading its essence, frequency, capacity, and alignment. It was a tool every first-year touched on their first day, a necessary ritual for assessment and proper class placement.
The moment Daniel Rothchester placed his hand on the crystal, the world had… shifted.
Finch had been watching from the shadows of the chamber, leaning silently against the wall as he always did during the evaluations. He didn't speak. He didn't interfere. But this time, he felt a violent tug, something primal in his stomach. It wasn't fear. It was something rarer—disbelief.
The crystal, which normally glowed soft white and pulsed gently, began to twist. Its inner light became unstable; flashes of black, violet, crimson, and pure white warred inside it, spiraling in a dance that no arcane theory accounted for. Symbols that were never etched into its surface began to appear, ancient runes that predated the Academy itself rune language, Finch had only ever seen in forbidden tomes sealed within the Black Archives.
Then, just before the shattering, he saw it.
For a sliver of a second, the crystal produced its readout:
Mana Capacity: Unknown
Mana Type: Unaligned. Unstable. Raw Chaos
Threat Level: Cannot Be Harmonized / calamity level unknown
Result: Incompatible With Order
Then crack, then exploded.
The crystal didn't just break—it exploded inward, like a dying star collapsing upon itself. Shards of hardened light and glass flew outward, yet not a single one struck Daniel. The chamber's ambient mana shrieked, recoiled, and died. All light vanished for half a breath.
Then the silence.
Students had screamed. The faculty had rushed forward. Alarms echoed through the halls. But Finch… he had simply stood there, unmoving, wide-eyed. His thoughts raced.
"Why unknown…? Unknown… but unharmonizable? Chaos incarnate… in a human form?"
Such a reading should have been impossible. Chaos mana wasn't a naturally occurring phenomenon in humanoid life. It existed in rifts, void aberrations, and malformed beasts that had no soul and no will—only destruction. But Daniel Rothchester was very much a boy. Or at least… looked like one.
Finch had spent the next hours in quiet study, rifling through records, dusting off scrolls sealed in his private collection, and pulling books banned even within the Academy. The more he searched, the more uneasy fascination took root in his chest.
"This isn't just some prodigy with raw power… This is an anomaly. A tear in the very classification of arcana. He doesn't possess chaos energy. He is chaos, barely clothed in mortal form."
His mind buzzed with questions. Was Daniel born this way? Was it artificial? A curse? A gift? A weapon? Could he even control it, or worse, was that control an illusion waiting to crack?
For the first time in years, Professor Finch Larenthanil felt alive because of the uncertainty he felt, it was fear of what can happen.
He had long endured aristocratic dullards mocking his lectures, yawning through spell theory, and dismissing the grim warnings he taught about mana corruption, the fragility of order, and the existence of unbound forces.
And now… here was a boy who shattered an artifact older than most kingdoms—a living contradiction to every thesis in the Academy's spellcraft doctrine.
Finch's long, pale fingers clutched the fragment of the Harmonizing Crystal he had recovered after the incident. It still pulsed faintly, its glow not white, but a deep violet-black.
"I must study him…" he whispered in his dim office chamber, breath fogging the air.
"I must understand what he is. Whether salvation or calamity, Daniel Rothchester may be the last true mage this academy ever sees."
And so, behind every lesson, every neutral look, every quiet correction he offered the young lord in the days after, there burned a subtle, dangerous spark:
Curiosity.
Not the harmless academic kind, but the curiosity of a man who had spent his entire life mastering darkness and had just found something deeper.
Darker. And far more powerful.
As the Academy's grand bell tolled, its resonant chime rippling through the ancient spires like a heartbeat of order, Professor Finch Larenthanil slowly rose from his desk. The vibrations of the bell hummed through the stone walls of his study, but his mind drifted elsewhere, to things far less grounded than architecture and schedules.
His long fingers, ink-stained and twitching slightly, brushed over the ancient scrolls he had laid out over the night. The soft, almost reverent hum of enchantments that protected them whispered through the air like warnings only he could hear.
"Two of them. At once."
He muttered it aloud, as though saying it would make the absurdity clearer.
Daniel Rothchester, the heir who vanished nearly two decades ago—gone without a trace, declared legally dead by many, his case used in political arguments for reforming noble protections. And now here he stood, fully grown, polite, eerily composed, untouched by time or trauma. His mana signature, if one could call it that, was chaotic, violent, and elemental—more akin to a sealed cataclysm than any trained mage.
And the other…
Melgil Veara Gehinnom was beyond beauty, her presence radiating an otherworldly grace that seemed to draw the eye towards her. Her aura was also heavy, controlled, and powerful, a stark contrast to the chaotic energy of Daniel Rothchester. The two of them together created an unsettling harmony that left those around them feeling both awed and uneasy. unassuming on the surface but has that regal attitude that nobles poses .
But Finch had read between the lines of her admission report. She had come bearing a sigil of acceptance sealed with the Rothchester Crest , an outdated approval method that hadn't been used since the Purge Wars. No faculty had seen it before. Only the Archon himself had "verified" her legitimacy, and that was enough for the others. But not Finch.
She carried herself like a whisper from a forgotten bloodline, her aura threaded with what Finch could only describe as binding scars—ancient, protective hexes that masked something... monstrous underneath. Something once locked away. Something old.
"A blood descendant of Gehinnom," he whispered again, this time with measured disbelief.
The name Gehinnom wasn't spoken lightly, not in the Archives, not in taverns, not even in dreams and nightmares.
The Gehinnom were once whispered about only in ancient libraries and warlock dens, spoken of in the same breath as forbidden rituals and the deep, unspeakable pacts of the Abyss-Kin. A lineage of warlocks and soulbinders, they were infamous not merely for their practices, but for their audacity to violate the sacred balance between the mortal realm and the Outer Abyss.
Unlike the necromancers who raised the dead with remorse or the shadow mages who channeled darkness for defense, the Gehinnom sought dominion over the very essence of life, hunger, and memory. They did not simply summon creatures, they merged with them. They bound their souls with monstrosities, gaining power, immortality, and madness in equal measure.
Their fate was sealed over two centuries ago, during the Year of Withered Suns, when one among them, Melgerith Vearan Gehinnom, performed the Devourer's Covenant, a forbidden rite meant to grant her unquenchable arcane hunger and the ability to consume other mages and spirits alike. It worked.
But too well. Melgerith was twisted into an abomination a being of two fused forms: the upper body of a towering woman, with a head and face of a goddess, white long silk like hair that has a life of its own, ribcage split open and lined with tongues and fangs, and a monstrous spider-like lower body, its limbs endless and shifting, dragging through dimensions like webbed roots through soil. Her mouth could open wide enough to swallow a wagon whole, and his hunger was eternal, not for food, but for souls, memories, names, anything that made someone human.
she became known in modern scripture as "Calamity-Class: The Spider Demon Queen Melgerith, or the Ravenous white Death, "
Cities fell. Forests rotted. Magic itself bent around her. She didn't speak in words, but in whispers inside minds, each voice sounding like someone the victim had once loved.
It took a lesser primordial dragon, twelve high tier binding artifacts , and two Dominions to finally trap her in the Webbed Vault beneath the Shatterdeep twin mountain, where know she remains until this very day, chained and dreaming in silence, her appetite only somewhat muted.
In the aftermath, the entire Gehinnom bloodline was branded accursed. Their family was deemed an existential threat. Every child, every cousin, and every servant bearing even diluted blood was executed or banished. The very name Gehinnom was stricken from records.
Or so the world believed.
And here was one of their line, sitting in his classroom, accepted like she was no different than a merchant's daughter or an aspiring alchemist from a river town.
No resistance. No protests. No concern.
It was too clean. Too easy.
The entire staff had waved it off with bureaucratic indifference—"The headmaster knows," they said. "It's handled." But Finch had been at this academy longer than any of them. He knew what handling truly meant.
It meant burying.
He paced slowly across his stone chamber, the runes on the walls responding faintly to his growing agitation. Shadows shifted unnaturally. He hadn't taught a class like this in years—a class where fate moved its pawns directly into place.
"This isn't coincidence," he said to himself. "This was orchestrated." Finch's mind raced as he considered the implications of such an obviously orchestrated plan. The pieces were falling into place too perfectly for it to be mere chance.
Two impossibilities enrolled in his classroom within the same week, during the same lunar phase, both shielded by layers of institutional silence.
Daniel, with his impossibly stable demeanor and unstable energy, and Melgil, with buried blood curses, whispered heritage, and a haunting calm that unnerved even the familiars.
And yet… the Academy an institution built to detect the unusual, the unstable, the heretical welcomed them like it was an ordinary year.
Professor Larenthanil narrowed his eyes as he looked out the stained-glass window of his office, overlooking the southern courtyard where students began to gather for morning practice. Daniel stood under the shade of a crystal-bark tree, quietly flipping through a transmutation textbook. Melgil sat beside him, weaving strands of wind into curious shapes between her fingers.
They didn't talk. Not yet. But even their distance felt… synchronized, like two pieces of a spell circle waiting to be connected.
Finch's mind raced with possibilities. What were they truly here for? Who sent them? Who protected them?
"No prodigy emerges from nowhere," he muttered, almost angrily. "Not like this. Not both."
He felt it again, a familiar chill, the kind that crept up your spine when reading from a grimoire he secretly possessed.
You weren't supposed to open it. Something was being set in motion carefully, deliberately and somehow, his classroom had become the crucible.
And though he wouldn't say it aloud, not even to the headmaster or the Archmagi, he felt something stir in the back of his mind:
Dread.
But beneath it, curiosity.
"If this is a game," he whispered as the second bell chimed, "then I'll play my role well."
"Let the others sleep. I'll be the first to see what they really are."
And with that, Professor Finch Larenthanil adjusted his black rune-threaded robes, gathered his notes, and stepped out into the light, his thoughts sharper than his words had been in years.
Because something had returned with Daniel Rothchester.
And something else had never left in Melgil Veara Gehinnom.
The Royal Academy of Solnara Cererindu had once stood as a pillar of magical scholarship and martial brilliance, its spires gleaming against the sunlit sky, its halls echoing with the footsteps of future archmagi, grand tacticians, and elemental scholars. In centuries past, to study within its walls was an honor not granted lightly—it required aptitude, discipline, and most importantly, purpose. The Academy served not only as a crucible for honing talent but also as the moral compass and protective vanguard of the entire kingdom.
But those days were long past.
Now, the Academy had become a gilded shell a prestigious name wrapped around a decaying institution, rotting from the inside with the quiet arrogance of inherited wealth and generational entitlement.
Most students now came from the Great Houses, noble bloodlines rich in gold, titles, and ancient names but poor in character. Sons and daughters of barons, dukes, and merchant lords filled the once-sacred classrooms, not to learn, but to simply exist until graduation. Their presence wasn't earned through entrance trials or magical merit. It was bought or negotiated by political favor or ancestral ties.
They sat in lectures with glazed eyes, their enchanted notebooks scribbling automatically while they whispered about fashion enchantments, ballroom galas, and inheritance disputes. They dueled only for show, never for mastery. They brewed potions only to pass, not to understand. And they treated the faculty with either bored condescension or performative politeness. Discipline was a formality; punishments were often reduced or reversed with a well-placed signature from a noble house.
There was an unspoken rule among the upper-class students: "Don't question, don't care." Curiosity was seen as lowborn. Passion was uncouth. Excellence, if not easy, was unnecessary. The very spark of arcane inquiry and scholarly pursuit had been replaced by a culture of superficiality. They learned spells the way one learns to recite poetry empty words without power or soul. Worse still, they actively mocked those who tried.
Among the student body, there remained a scattered few commoners, scholarship recipients, or lesser nobility who had earned their place through raw potential and dedication. These students attended every class, stayed late in the practice yards, and hungered for real knowledge. They asked questions, challenged teachings, and genuinely sought to understand why a soul seal worked, how a temporal glyph rewrote perception, or what the philosophical boundaries of necromantic ethics should be.
And for their diligence, they were scorned. Labeled as "scrubs," "dustborn," or "the professor's pets," these few were harassed, excluded, and even hexed in secret. Class projects became traps for embarrassment. Group assignments deliberately left them behind. Their quarters were vandalized with illusionary vermin or cursed ink stains.
Some dropped out. Others stayed quiet, surviving quietly under the weight of aristocratic pressure. The Academy faculty, many of them worn thin or bound by bureaucratic obligation, could do little. Most professors simply looked the other way, fearing retaliation from noble houses who threatened to withdraw funding or prestige if their children were reprimanded too harshly.
The few instructors who still cared like Professor Finch Larenthanil , were either ignored or sidelined, their lectures seen as dark, difficult, or "unnecessary" compared to more glamorous studies like arcane fencing or elemental artistry.
Administratively, the Academy had turned into a machine of prestige. Decisions were made not based on education but on political balancing acts favoring noble interests, maintaining image, and preserving ancient traditions that no longer served the students. Funding was diverted to cosmetic renovations instead of expanding the Archives or updating the Field Simulation Chambers. The library's Forbidden Wing, once patrolled by elite magical wardens, now sat unguarded and dusty, as no one bothered to read the tomes within.
Ceremonies became theater. Rankings were falsified. Magic itself, once a sacred discipline, was treated like a status accessory.
Even the regional Arcane Tournament of Houses, once a grand celebration of magical skill and tactical brilliance, had become a pageant of enchanted costumes, rigged duels, and scripted results to favor political alliances.
Outside the Academy, in the hinterlands of Solnara, whispers had begun to stir of monsters growing bolder, of mana storms no longer dissolving, of relic corruption spreading unchecked. The graduates of the Academy, once protectors of the kingdom, were now little more than pampered spellcasters ill-prepared for actual crisis.
But now something had changed. With the arrival of two unusual students, the status quo had been cracked. The two were different, especially Daniel, who actually participated in learning, while Melgil was interested in learning different dishes and her own mana control.
Within a week of their arrival, Daniel Rothchester and Melgil Veara Gehinnom had become a silent disruption to the Academy's carefully preserved stagnation. They made no speeches. No grand gestures. No public defiance. But their existence, their quiet, disciplined presence had begun to shift something in the air, like the first tremor before an avalanche.
Daniel's routine was almost mechanical in its consistency, yet not once did it feel forced. He woke before sunrise, long before any noble heir would dare step onto the cold training stones. By first bell, he was already in the courtyard, practicing stances and movement drills not flashy, but practical, refined, and deadly in efficiency.
His hands were often wrapped in bandages, lightly scorched from testing other elemental spells that are not part of his main skill. It was troblesome but its something he wanted to experience,
When the others went to the market square to lounge or gossip, Daniel found a corner in the library, a dim alcove behind stacks of forgotten grimoires, and devoured books like they were war rations. Elemental logic. Curse-breaking theory. Monster physiology. Warfare tactics. Old-world languages. It didn't matter the subject. If it could be learned, Daniel wanted it.
Even during meals, Daniel ate with one hand and flipped pages with the other, eyes flicking through paragraphs at an unnerving pace.
His hunger wasn't for food, it was for understanding, mastery, and clarity. And as he read, he would sometimes mutter corrections, cross-reference chapters, or scribble alternative theories in his personal journal , already thick with notes and diagrams.
And always, without fail, Melgil was near.
She rarely read what he read. Instead, she often sat beside him with a small, hand-bound notebook, watching with serene fascination as he immersed himself in the written word. Her interest was not in magical power but in his world—how he moved, how he spoke, and what he valued. She watched not as a student but as a companion studying the man she had quietly claimed her place beside.
When Daniel sparred in the training grounds on the second day, Melgil didn't cheer like other girls might have. She stood silently at the edge of the marble-ringed arena, her hands folded neatly, a bottle of water held in one, and a glowing glyph swirling faintly around the other. Sometimes, she cast minor restorative spells into his gauntlets, not strong enough to mend broken bone, but enough to reinforce torn leather and muscle strain. Other times, she passed him water with that still, neutral smile the kind of expression that carried something older than affection, older than even loyalty.
She watched with unnerving intensity.
Every form, every feint. Every parry.
Her eyes locked on him, as if memorizing each fragment of his movement, as Daniel clashed with one of the Academy's Arcane War Golems, a magical construct built not just to mimic an opponent but to analyze, adapt, and respond based on the fighter's choices. Tall and broad-shouldered, the golem's frame shimmered with active enchantments, its core pulsating like a false heart of runic light. Instructors could tailor them to mimic any style or issue specific instructions to test reflexes, stamina, or technique.
And today, Daniel had set it to evolve, not merely fight back, but to understand his burden.
Because sparring with Melgil? That wasn't training. That was a disaster. Their last match had left the stone floor cracked, the ceiling sigils flickering, and a quarter of the training hall in need of repairs. They'd learned their lesson. Melgil was too dangerous to spar with seriously.
When asked once by a curious lower-class student why she didn't train herself more, Melgil had simply answered in a soft voice:
"He already carries so much weight. I must become someone he never has to protect, only trust."
And she meant it. She studied etiquette, household wards, political history, heirloom cooking enchantments, and even emotional mana tempering, an ancient form of emotional resonance binding between bonded partners. Not because someone told her to, but because in her own quiet way, she wanted to be worthy of Daniel's future, whatever shape that future might take.
Many assumed they were lovers, though the two never said a word about it. They never held hands in public, never exchanged romantic declarations. But their silence together was louder than most declarations of love. Daniel never objected to her presence. In fact, his eyes would subtly track where she was whenever she moved. And Melgil, for all her reserved expressions, would soften only when he looked her way.
To the other students, it was unnerving. To the nobles, it was insulting.
Why were these two taking everything so seriously? Why weren't they lounging like everyone else, coasting through with just enough effort to pass? Why were they… studying like the Academy actually mattered?
The day always ended with the two talking. Daniel wasn't complaining about the bruises and wounds he was getting, as the war training golems were set to their highest difficulty level.
It made some nobles sneer and scoff. Others whispered that it was all an act. The other students couldn't understand their dedication; many of them continued to do what they were normally doing, and that is nothing, but some students were watching them, like Galen Althus, Lora Sithe, and Ormin Vos. But these few outcast students began to imitate them.
Within the ten days since Daniel's fighting sessions gained attention, an odd development had emerged within the Royal Academy. This change was the result of silent observation and individual decision rather than being mandated by law or edict. Students watching Daniel practice as Melgil stood calmly nearby had begun with simple curiosity, but it had developed into real interest, respect, and now engagement.
Those who once avoided eye contact but now brought tea and recipe books to Melgil during breaks. Then others followed. Some were commoners. Others were minor nobles who'd grown tired of pretending. A few were outcast sons and daughters of important families, assigned here not to learn, but to stay out of the way.
Soon, the quiet spot where Daniel and Melgil used to relax, became filled with more and more students. The two didn't mind; it was something Daniel had expected. Over time, social status and barriers started to fade as people bonded over shared goals and interests. What was once an isolated hill at the far corner of the training stadium, with only a few trees, slowly turned into a gathering place for students who genuinely wanted to learn without the fear of being mocked or insulted by the academy's elites.
Even with this change, not everyone felt comfortable joining Daniel and Melgil directly. Most students formed their own small groups, often sticking with people they already knew. Without meaning to, they created a sort of group hierarchy, with Daniel and Melgil naturally at the center. But this was never something Daniel intended or encouraged. Many believed the two preferred to keep to themselves, so even friends like Galen Althus, Lora Sithe, and Daniel's cousin, Ormin Vos Sithe, gave them space. Sometimes, Melgil would walk over to chat with the three, sharing stories or training tips, while Daniel stayed a few steps away, quietly meditating, focused on his own growth.