The sun never truly rose over Aetherion, it simply brightened the void between towers, turning the air to glass and the sky to silver. Morning was a concept here, not a certainty.
The bells tolled through the mist, calling students to their respective lectures. Each tone was tuned to a different frequency of aether, low for Umbral, bright for Solar, pulsing for Storm, deep for Crimson. The entire academy sang every dawn, a choir of controlled energy.
Iblis walked the bridgeway alone.
Below him, the ley currents coiled like veins beneath translucent marble. Above, scholars drifted by on floating discs, robes catching the light. He ignored their stares, admiration, suspicion, fear. It all blurred into the same texture of irrelevance.
Ahead, the Hall of Transmutative Theory opened like a maw, vast columns sculpted from interlocking sigils. Inside waited Professor Vathriel Caelorn, a man rumored to have once disassembled his own heart just to understand its rhythm.
The air smelled faintly of ozone and iron dust.
As Iblis entered, Vathriel's mismatched eyes fixed on him with predatory amusement. "Ah, the prodigy. House Veyrahl sends its shadow among us."
"I prefer lightless precision to theatrical introductions," Iblis said flatly.
Laughter rippled faintly through the room.
Vathriel grinned. "Sharp. Very well, Lord Iblis. Let's test the precision you claim to possess."
He gestured toward the center platform, where a containment ring pulsed with restrained power. Within floated a shard of crystallized aether, alive, unstable.
"Assignment: stabilize this resonance and alter its nature. Create equilibrium from chaos."
Around the room, students murmured nervously. Aether crystals could explode, or worse, invert and drain energy from everything nearby.
Iblis stepped forward without hesitation.
He raised his hand.
The crystal's surface rippled, resisting. The currents surged like waves, hungry, eager to devour control.
He didn't fight them. He listened.
The chaos hummed in frequencies that whispered of dissonance, of imperfection. He aligned his pulse with the hum, found the rhythm between fractures, and then pressed.
The crystal stilled.
The light dimmed to calm transparency, its heartbeat merging with his own.
Vathriel's grin faltered into stunned silence. "That—was not suppression. You changed its harmonic pattern entirely."
Iblis lowered his hand. "Chaos is merely structure in motion."
Vathriel let out a soft laugh. "House Veyrahl breeds philosophers as much as monsters."
"I see no distinction."
The professor studied him. "You will."
---
When the session ended, the corridors were thick with whispering voices. Iblis ignored them, cutting through the crowd with precise, unhurried steps.
Lyra waited by the atrium balcony, where spirals of silver ivy climbed the transparent walls. She'd been there since class ended, holding two steaming cups from the academy's canteen.
"You drink?" she asked when he approached.
"Occasionally."
She handed him one. "It's not poison, I promise."
He sipped. "You assume I'd care."
"True." She smiled faintly. "Still. You looked like you might implode another laboratory today."
"I was teaching."
"You were showing off."
He looked at her, expression unreadable. "If efficiency appears as arrogance, then arrogance is the natural face of perfection."
She rolled her eyes. "Do you ever say anything like a normal person?"
"I haven't met one worth imitating."
She laughed, shaking her head. "You're infuriating."
He considered that, then nodded slightly. "Yes."
The simplicity of his agreement startled her. There was no irony, no mockery — just an acknowledgement, like gravity accepting its pull.
They stood in silence a moment, watching the students drifting between the towers below.
Lyra spoke first. "Back there, in the courtyard… you really didn't have to help me."
"I didn't."
"You keep saying that."
"Because it's true."
"So why did you?"
He looked at her then, the faintest glint of curiosity crossing his eyes — the kind that made her feel like a subject under study.
"I wanted to see what gratitude looks like when it isn't earned," he said.
She frowned. "That's cruel."
He shrugged. "It's observation."
"Observation of what?"
"Human behavior under delusion."
She sighed, half-smiling despite herself. "You make cruelty sound academic."
"It is."
She looked away, down toward the shimmering city beneath them. "You're going to break something one day, Iblis. Something important."
"Then I'll study the fragments."
Her voice softened. "And what if it's not an object?"
He didn't answer.
The silence between them deepened, not empty, but heavy with unspoken things neither understood yet.
---
That evening, the Grand Lecture of Aether History filled the main auditorium — a structure so immense it seemed to exist inside its own horizon. Stained-glass depictions of ancient ley wars cast shifting colors over the seated students.
At the podium stood Professor Merien Thal, brother to the Headmaster himself, and chronicler of Khthonia's divine epochs. His robes shimmered faintly, his eyes distant with memory.
He began without preamble.
"Before the ley veins, before the first resonance was harnessed, the gods were not above us — they were us. Fragments of the same will, scattered into consciousness. And one of them," his tone darkened, "refused division."
The room fell silent.
Merien's gaze swept across them. "Zha'thik — the Sleeper. The god of recursion. It saw flaw in creation, and sought to undo it. Scholars call it myth. The academy knows better."
A murmur of unease rippled through the hall.
Lyra glanced toward Iblis. He sat motionless, eyes half-lidded, as though listening to something beneath the professor's words.
"The Aetherscourge," Merien continued, "was born of its dreaming — fragments of divine will seeking coherence. They linger still, buried beneath our cities, whispering to those who listen too closely."
The hall darkened as the murals dimmed, leaving only the glow of ley veins coursing through the floor.
Iblis's eyes opened fully.
For an instant, he thought he heard a whisper, not from Merien, not from any student, but from the stone itself.
"You listen too well".
He blinked, the sound gone.
Lyra leaned closer. "Did you—"
"I heard nothing," he said evenly.
But his pulse betrayed him, thudding once, sharp as a fracture through calm water.
---
Later, alone in his dormitory, he stood before the mirror. The light from the leyline outside painted his reflection in alternating shadows.
His features were striking, unnervingly symmetrical, The mark of his lineage, the faint Veyrahl sigil — pulsed behind his right ear, glowing dimly when he touched it.
He studied his face the way a scientist might study a specimen. Every angle precise, every flaw intentional.
"Still too human," he murmured.
The mirror rippled.
For a moment, his reflection smiled when he didn't.
Then the surface stilled, and only silence remained.
---