Gio pulled back from the window, the image of the exotic dog and the courtyard students snapping back into the quiet room. His gaze fell upon the scene of his arrival: the ruined, charred ritual circle and the basin of coagulated blood.
His mind immediately seized on the threat. Failure to contain the scene. Wyatt had attempted this forbidden act, and if the mess was found, the consequences wouldn't be a simple detention. Surely Messing with this shit wouldn't be a a slap on the wrist.
God I hate field days.
He set to work. The disassembly of the circle and cleaning of the room would take forever. He carefully collected the withered husks of the consumed materials. The central basin held the thick, black jelly of human blood. Around it lay dried, crumbling strands of hair or fur, a pair of eyes, two small ears, and a tongue. Two other ingredients were equally withered and unrecognizable, but they did confirm his guess: this wasn't an animal from earth. He packed the entire repulsive collection into the deepest pocket of the student tunic.
The difficult task was the circle itself. The powerful energies had not just drawn on the stone; they had charred the glyphs into the floor.
He scavenged a piece of the high-tower window curtain—a thick, gray woolen material—and began to scrub.
It took a grueling two hours of intense, back-breaking labor. The weak muscles of the young body protested every minute, but Gio forced the labor to continue, driven by the absolute imperative of concealment. When he was finally done, the area wasn't spotless, but it was suspiciously clean—a pale area of stone where black char should have been. It would pass a casual glance in the room, which appeared to be unused storage.
He was safe, for now. But now came the immediate problem. He didn't know where to go. He didn't know which part of the Arcturus Academy sprawling campus housed the first-year rooms. Asking for directions was a glaring flag of suspicion, proving that "Wyatt" had suffered a severe mental break.
Classes, after all, he recalled from the fragmented mental inventory, had been running for a month now. He hoped.
He backed into his cleaned-out corner, bracing himself. He focused, not on what he wanted to remember, but what the residual mind of the previous wyatt knew.
He reached deep into the assimilated fragments of Wyatt's memories, forcing his will to access the spatial data. It wasn't a memory that surfaced, but a faint, visceral feeling of orientation. A simple, compelling pull.
His destination was to the East.
Gio straightened the messy Academy tunic. The weakness in his limbs was now a dull, manageable ache, and he moved with a disciplined, rhythmic cadence that utterly belied the frailty of the body. He strode out of the storage room, the empty space now secured behind him.
His movements were not tentative; they were a bluff, confidence is key, act like you belong and no one will question you. He marched down multiple flights of cold stone stairs, his eyes sweeping across the austere, marble hallways of Arcturus Academy. Every step was intended to convey the confidence of someone entirely where they were supposed to be and had no time to waste.
He emerged into the central courtyard. The low position of the sun and the persistent dew on the sparse grass confirmed his desperate assessment: it was early morning, likely Sunday at the latest. Wyatt, the idiot, had probably timed his ritual for Friday or Saturday night.
This gifted Gio a single, invaluable day.
He set off East, maintaining a steady pace and a wide berth around the few students present. Near the center, beneath a towering, oddly geometric tree, were the students he'd seen from the window, now lying on the grass and resting. He looked over the striped beast lounging nearby. He kept his head forward, his eyes noting every architectural detail and every movement of his peers. Praying no one would want to talk to Wyatt, he certainly didn't.
As he walked, his mind rapidly imposed a schedule onto the chaos:
Time Constraint: One day
Information Gap: No class schedule or exact dorm location. Asking anyone would be immediate, catastrophic confirmation of a mental break.
The solution was clear: He had to find his room first, then spend every waking moment cramming the host's fragmented memories and assigned textbooks. He couldn't just learn the theory; he had to master the application well enough to pass the next day's tasks.
A single day. Fail to prepare, prepare to fail.
Oh God magic is real and there are cat girls. now I just need to not die, or get caught... Or get kicked out of here... Or a million other things.
Rikkia Stone-Pelt, resting in a patch of morning sunlight, her lynx ears flicked back. She was half-dozing, conserving energy, when a sudden, sickening smell arrived on the cool morning breeze.
She opened her intense, golden eyes, turning them toward the retreating figure of Wyatt. The smell was sharp, metallic, and deeply wrong: a pungent mix of vomit, stale sweat, and a distinctive tinge of blood. It was a scent that spoke of extreme magical exhaustion and physical distress.
What in the hell happened to that liability? she thought. The sheer magnitude of the failure implied by that stench was staggering.
But the figure—Wyatt—was already turning the corner of the administration wing, heading toward the residential district. Rikkia's debt-ridden, pragmatic mind won the internal debate. It was her precious Sunday morning rest. Wyatt was a liability, but he was another problem for Monday. She allowed herself a small, guilty sigh of laziness and settled back down.