Ares stepped out of the pantry with a full stomach and loose shoulders. For a moment he felt the kind of good you get on a porch under kind sunlight—warm bones, quiet breath, the world set a little back from the edge. The smell of baked bread still clung to his hands.
Then the hallway took it away.
Light from the burning sea poured in through a far arch and cast white bars across the floor. It was too bright to look at, bright enough to bleach the gray walls and drain the color from his thoughts. The air felt heavier here, as if the hallway remembered something he didn't.
He turned to find his room—and stopped. Every door looked the same: same metal, same hinge, same handle. Only the numbers differed, and they made no map in his mind.
He frowned at himself. He had just been here. How could it vanish in his head?
He chose a door and opened it.
Wet stone breathed out at him. Rust. Old sweat. Chains clinked once and went still. The thin strip of light from the hall cut across a dungeon, showing bodies pinned to walls and pillars. Not human—dragon-kin. Their horns had been hacked down to broken stubs that leaked black crust. Some had no arms. Some had no legs. One had been cut at the waist and strapped upright anyway, as if ordered to watch a blank wall forever. Eye sockets were packed with ash. Pale smoke curled out and drifted up like weak prayers. The chains threaded through them pulsed faintly, as if they were the ones breathing now.
Ares's stomach turned. The good feeling from the pantry withered. He shut the door hard and leaned on it until the clink of metal sank back into the dark.
He walked on. A new number greeted him on each door; each held a new horror.
He opened another door.
Children laughed. Relief touched him—and slid off. The gray yard beyond was empty: no swings, no toys, no small shoes in the dust. The laughter was eerie and horrifying, circling his ankles and shoulders like a wind that knew his shape. It thinned, tightened, and bent into a pitch that frightened him.
"Hello?" he tried.
The laughter stopped. Silence pressed against his ears like a thumb.
He closed the door carefully, as if noise might make something see him.
He opened a door to a banquet where porcelain masks nodded politely while the wearers chewed raw meat that bled through the cloth and dripped to the floor. He opened one to a field of fallen soldiers whose chests rose and fell but whose eyes did not blink. He opened a schoolroom with neat chalk lines on slate—no desks, only cuffs bolted to the floor. He opened a stairwell that climbed and climbed into nothingness.
With each door, fear learned a new face. Laughter became a blade. Breath became a secret. Stone felt like a waiting hand.
He stopped at a door with no sound behind it. No smell. No draft. Just a stillness that did not push or pull.
He opened it.
Color met him. Warm light. A garden lay beyond a low stone arch. Leaves shone with morning dew. Water ran in a narrow channel and chimed as it moved. Flowers seemed to breathe in time with his chest. The air touched his skin with a softness that felt like kindness.
The fear in him loosened and dissolved, sweet and quiet. He stepped forward without meaning to. He wanted to belong here. He wanted to go in and be part of it.
His foot crossed the threshold.
"I wouldn't recommend it, my lord."
The voice was calm, clear. It drew a straight line through his thoughts, and everything on one side of the line fell away.
Ares stopped. The garden wavered. For a heartbeat the flowers showed smooth, pale faces with no eyes; then they were flowers again. The water kept singing. The light stayed warm. But now he could feel the hook inside the beauty, thin and sharp.
He turned. Emma stood in the bleached hall, hands behind her back, expression still as stone. Her eyes gave nothing away. If she noticed the burning sea—or the two suns—she didn't say.
"I—" His mouth had gone dry. "It felt…"
"I know," she said.
He stepped back over the threshold. The warmth slipped from his skin like a glove coming off. The garden stayed lovely. It also stayed wrong.
He closed the door, gently.
They stood a moment with the burning sea's light painting the floor at their feet.
"I have enrolled you in the First Moon. You will start the semester in three months. The Master has informed me that you will need to be taught everything from the basics. You will be studying with the children."
"Children?" Ares asked, confused.
"Yes, my lord. Before anything, it is necessary that you get a mana lens. We will be visiting Barlow," Emma said. "The tricky part is that the Master said it is up to you to convince him."
"Convince how? I don't even know anything about him." He was confused. Wasn't he the apprentice of the First Sun, who could tame even stars? He had to convince a healer?
"It is up to you. Regardless of whether you do it or not, you will attend the first semester in three months," Emma said. "Master Ares, I would suggest you not ask any further questions. I will not be able to answer them. I do not dare to question the will of our Lord and can only do as he wishes."
Ares had a million questions in his mind. Why three months? Why did he have to convince this Barlow fellow? Why? Why? Why? But one look at Emma told him what the answer would be.
"Which way?" Ares said, exasperated.
Emma tilted her head down the corridor. "Not that way."
He almost smiled at that. Almost.
"All right," he said. "Lead on."
They walked together, the pantry's comfort far behind him now, the hallway long as a thought that would not end, the light from the raging sun casting pale bars that they crossed and crossed again.