The gates of Grand Magnus Academy loomed behind Eryk like the iron jaws of a beast that had devoured him whole and spat out the remains. Even with their ornate arches and sigils glowing faintly in the fading daylight, they looked monstrous now. Unforgiving.
It was like staring into the past and realizing the past no longer wanted you.
He did not walk away.
He stumbled. Each step away from the towering gate was a betrayal of everything he had once believed in. His feet dragged, half-dead things that had marched across cobbled practice fields and midnight corridors, now moving without command, as if in mourning. His vision swam, not from tears, but from the unreality of it all. He had dreamt of this moment, but not like this. In his dreams, he graduated. In his dreams, he walked out the gates with honors and applause and the respect of the Arcanum etched into his future. Not this silence.
Not this... exile.
A cold wind sliced through the threadbare tunic that barely clung to his shivering frame, carrying the sour stench of rotting produce, damp stone, and something fouler... A failure. The fabric, once crisp and starched with pride, now hung in tatters like ceremonial rags stripped of meaning. His knees met the gravel like a broken hinge collapsing under weight. He barely registered the sting as sharp edges bit into his palms. It grounded him. Anchored him to a moment that felt too cruel to accept. The fall had sound. A crunch. A gasp. A sigh.
His fingers curled, gathering dirt and blood in trembling fists.
Six years. Six grueling years of incantations, sleepless nights, aching limbs, and bleeding hands. Reduced now to the acrid taste of ash and humiliation.
His name—Eryk Thorn—had been struck from the rolls like an error in ink.
Erased.
Discarded.
A sound broke from his throat. Half-laugh, half-choke. A dry, rasping thing. The sound of a man whose soul had been hollowed out, who stood on the precipice of nothingness. The echoes of that sound clung to the stone walls around him, a symphony for no one.
This isn't fair.
But fairness? That was a fairytale they fed children before throwing them into the crucible of magic. Magic didn't care how much you wanted it. Didn't weep for sacrifice. It only bent to power. Raw, relentless power.
And Eryk had none.
He rose unsteadily, as if even the wind protested his presence now. The cobbled streets of Chishiro sprawled before him like the gaping veins of a dying city. Buildings leaned like tired sentinels, wooden frames creaking beneath years of neglect. Smoke clung to the rooftops like soot-stained ghosts. Lamps flickered as if unsure they wanted to shine for such a figure.
He'd heard whispers about the Ashen District. Where the discarded went. The untouchables. The broken ones.
A perfect graveyard for a failure.
~○~
The first blow came like a memory. A sudden, jarring, and far too familiar memory.
A hand twisted into the collar of his tunic, yanking him backward into a narrow throat of an alley that reeked of piss and wet stone. His back slammed against brick. Pain lit up his spine like lightning. For a second, he thought he might vomit. Not from pain, but from sheer exhaustion and from the injustice curling in his stomach like a coiled serpent.
"Look who it is."
That voice... Eryk knew it. He'd heard it a hundred times echoing through lecture halls and training yards. That confident, cruel voice.
Mael.
Eryk's vision swam. Brick and shadow and smug smirks coalesced into the towering figure of Mael, arms folded like a judge awaiting execution. Two others flanked him to initiate, but barely worth remembering. Their smirks mirrored Mael's. Parasitic and predatory. Feeding off the vulnerability of others like crows picking at corpses.
"Didn't think you'd slink away so quietly, Thorn," Mael said, tilting his head, his voice syrupy with mock sympathy. "Thought you'd whimper for another chance. Like a good little dog."
Eryk said nothing. His silence wasn't defiance. It was fatigue.
It was understanding.
That some fights aren't meant to be fought.
Some beatings are rehearsals in inevitability.
He already knew what this was. Not a scolding. Not even vengeance. This was ritual. A message carved in bruises and broken bones.
The Academy didn't tolerate failure.
And neither did its golden sons.
The punch to his ribs was swift and surgical, like Mael had memorized the anatomy of pain. It stole Eryk's breath, and it folded him. Stars burst behind his eyes as his body crumpled.
Another hand seized his hair, jerking him upright.
"You were a mistake," Mael spat with his nose wrinkling. "A parasite clinging to prestige you didn't earn. You were never one of us. Just a charity case playing sorcerer."
A fist drove into his gut, deep and hard. The world around him tilted as if it was playing with him hard. Black dots swarmed his vision. His knees gave out again, but there was no mercy in the fall.
Laughter. Three voices—discordant, sharp, echoing like stones thrown into a dry well.
"Can't even stand."
"Should've stayed a stable boy."
"Maybe the sewers'll welcome him."
Eryk's hands clawed at the dirt, nails snapping against gravel. The pain in his body was nothing compared to the ache swelling inside his chest.
Shame.
It spread like poison. Hot. Suffocating. It filled his lungs more than air. It threaded into every thought like a rot that wouldn't leave.
But beneath the shame, something else stirred.
Anger.
Not a fire. But an ember. Tiny. Not ready to burn, but not willing to die either.
He had given everything. He had scraped magic from the marrow of his bones. Had spent nights bleeding from the nose, burning candles down to smoke, whispering ancient words to a void that never answered.
And still... still, he had been found wanting.
A boot crashed into his side, rolling him onto his back. A scream died in his throat. His mouth tasted of iron and dust.
Mael's shadow swallowed the dim alley light. He crouched, conjuring a flame in his hand—a dancing flicker no larger than a child's toy. Yet it felt like the sun itself hovered above Eryk's skin.
Mael's grin widened. "Let's make sure you don't forget where you belong."
Then... pain.
The flame kissed his flesh, and his body arched involuntarily. A raw scream tearing from his lungs, like the world was fragmented into light and sound and fire. He could smell his own skin, burning.
And Mael held it there. Savoring it.
When the flame finally died, Eryk was a ruin, trembling, and weeping silently, arm a seared mess of red and blistered flesh. His mind retreated somewhere deep and cold, a cavern where pain had no dominion but memory reigned.
Mael leaned in, his breath hot and intimate. "Welcome to the Ashen District, Thorn."
And just like that, they were gone.
The laughter around him faded like a jusy wind brushed through his ear.
Only Eryk remained, curled in on himself like a corpse that had forgotten how to die.
~○~
He didn't know how long he lay there.
Time became irrelevant. Only the rhythm of pain and breath marked its passage.
Until he heard some footsteps again.
But this time, they are light and careful footsteps.
He forced his swollen eyes to open. A figure stood at the mouth of the alley, framed by streetlamp glow.
A girl.
A tattered hood concealed most of her face, but her eyes gleamed, not with pity, but with recognition. Like she knew exactly how far a person could fall. Like she had done it herself.
She approached him slowly, the silence between them louder than screams. Her presence wasn't kind. It was practical. Like a person who had learned not to waste emotion where none would be returned.
Eryk flinched when her fingers brushed his arm.
But the touch was gentle and cooling.
She reached into her cloak and produced a small vial. Its contents glimmered dull and green. She uncorked it and poured the mixture onto his burn.
The relief was instant. Magic. Not powerful, but intentional. The throbbing dulled. His jaw unclenched but he could breathe again.
She watched him a moment, then turned to go.
"Wait," he rasped.
The girl paused, but didn't try to look at him.
"Why?"
Her voice was barely audible, but it carried more weight than anything he'd heard in days.
"Because no one helped me."
And then she vanished into the wind.
Eryk sat there, watching the space she had occupied.
Not hope. Not quite.
But something like warmth.
Something like human.
He hauled himself upright, inch by painful inch, as though rebelling against gravity itself. Every ache in his bones protested. But he moved.
The Ashen District loomed ahead, pulsing with distant fires, shouting, crying, and the music of survival. Buildings leaned like drunks in the dark. Rats scurried underfoot. The smell of desperation clung to every wall.
His new home.
Not a place of rest. But a place to endure.
He limped forward.
Then, a shadow moved.
A glint of metal.
Eryk turned too late.
A blade pressed against the hollow of his throat, cold and steady.
"Give me one reason I shouldn't slit your pretty throat right now," came the voice. Low, raspy, and venomous voice.
Eryk's body tensed. His breath caught.
The knife bit deeper.
Something pulsed in his mind.
A hum.
A whisper beneath the noise.
Something stirred inside him that he couldn't even understand what it was.