Chapter 4: The Child Within the Silence
The moment Alicia's name was spoken, every whisper in the classroom abruptly died.
The silence was more unsettling than noise.
Alicia slowly rose to her feet.
Her legs felt like jelly, yet she did not let her posture break. She wore the expressionless mask she had trained herself to perfect for years.
As she walked toward the circle, the stillness of the room gave way to low chuckles and murmurs.
"Here she comes... the last representative of the cursed bloodline," a voice whispered from the left.
"The witch's daughter," another added, chewing on the word as if it left a foul taste in his mouth.
"I bet she won't summon anything. Her mana channels are clogged with her mother's sins."
"Or she'll summon a demon that goes out of control and tries to kill us all. Just like her mother," a mocking voice said. "This will be fun to watch."
Alicia heard every poisonous word.
But she gave no reaction.
Her eyes remained fixed only on her goal, the ancient runes carved into the floor.
Still, as she passed by Seraphina, she could not help but hesitate for the briefest moment.
Seraphina sat like a queen in her flawless uniform.
Curled lazily in her lap was the S Rank spiritual fox she had just summoned. Its fur shimmered like moonlight, and its two tails swayed slowly, almost arrogantly.
As Seraphina stroked the fox's ears, she lifted her head slightly. A cruel and disdainful smile hung at the corner of her lips.
Her eyes did not speak, yet her gaze screamed.
Go on, Alicia. Entertain me. Give me a show worth watching as you disgrace yourself.
Alicia took a deep breath and continued forward.
She reached the center of the circle, that cold and fate deciding point.
The obsidian floor beneath her feet felt like ice.
The professor standing at the lectern did not give her the fatherly, encouraging look he had offered the other students.
Instead, there was a particular exhaustion in his eyes reserved only for her, and perhaps even a trace of disgust.
Tapping his fingers rhythmically against the wooden desk, he signaled impatiently with his head for her to begin.
Alicia picked up the black obsidian dagger resting upon the altar.
Her hand trembled against her will, betraying her.
Stay calm, she told herself.
Dark crimson, warm drops of blood slid down from her palm and fell onto the silvery runes carved into the floor.
Drop. Drop. Drop.
Alicia squeezed her eyes shut.
She focused with every ounce of her mind.
Come. Please come. Hear me. Anyone... You do not have to be strong. Just come.
One second passed.
Two seconds.
Five seconds.
There was no buzzing.
No eruption of light.
No wind.
No scent of ozone.
The silence in the classroom began to shift into uneasy murmuring.
"What is happening?"
"Is it broken?"
"I told you. There is no talent in that cursed blood."
Alicia waited for the light behind her closed eyes.
But there was nothing.
Only darkness.
A full minute passed.
For a summoning ritual, that was eternity.
Her heart tightened in fear.
No... It cannot be... nothing? Not even F Rank?
With growing panic, she opened her eyes.
Her blue gaze trembled, filled with fear and confusion, as she looked directly at Professor Valerius.
Even the professor seemed unsettled. His brows were drawn together, his pen slightly raised, as if he suspected something had gone terribly wrong.
"Professor, I..." Alicia's voice came out shaking.
"Wait," Valerius said suddenly, his eyes locked on the center of the circle.
Alicia turned her head and looked down.
Her breath caught in her throat.
There had been no beam of light, no smoke, no sound.
Only... something was there.
As if it had always been there, and Alicia simply had not noticed.
Right in front of Alicia, at the very heart of the rune circle, sitting cross legged where the blood drops had fallen, was a figure.
It was not a scaled monster.
Not a flame spitting demon.
Not a majestic spirit beast.
It was a human child.
A boy, perhaps eight or nine years old.
Alicia froze where she stood.
The mocking whispers in the classroom died instantly.
In their place came a deep silence.
Even Seraphina stopped stroking the fox in her lap, leaning forward with wide eyes.
The fox hissed uneasily, its fur bristling.
The boy wore faded black rags, torn in places, stained with strange dark patches of mud, and belonging to an era impossible to recognize.
His clothes looked ancient and exhausted, as though they had waited beneath a grave for centuries.
His skin was as pale as Alicia's, perhaps even paler.
Smooth like marble, yet lifeless like a corpse, a dead shade of white.
Beneath his skin, faint purple veins formed delicate webs.
His thick hair fell to his shoulders, black as midnight, messy and filthy, veiling part of his face.
But the most unsettling thing was his expression.
Or rather, the absolute absence of one.
The child lifted his head slowly, in a movement that was neither mechanical nor truly human, but something disturbingly fluid.
His hair slid back from his face.
And the moment Alicia met his eyes, she felt a primal chill sink into her bones, deep into her very marrow.
Her legs nearly gave out.
The boy's eyes were completely black.
No iris.
No whites.
No reflection of light.
Only endless, bottomless darkness.
A pit.
An abyss.
A void that no one could ever climb out of once they fell in.
There was no anger in those eyes.
No sadness.
No curiosity.
No fear.
There was nothing.
And that nothingness was far more terrifying than any emotion could ever be.
The boy stared at Alicia's face with that dreadful emptiness, as if Alicia did not exist, as if this classroom, this academy, this world, even this universe had never existed at all.
His gaze pierced through her skin, touching her soul directly.
The air in the room suddenly turned to ice.
But it was not the physical cold of an ice spell.
It was the chill of graveyards, abandoned temples, and death itself.
A tremor born from existential dread.
Professor Valerius stepped back, the tip of his staff shaking.
No one in the class could speak.
No one could move.
It was as if time itself had stopped.
Alicia's lips trembled uncontrollably.
Her voice slipped out in a whisper that sounded foreign even to her own ears.
"You... what are you?"
The child did not answer.
His lips did not even move.
He only tilted his head slowly to the right, never taking those dark, bottomless eyes away from Alicia for even a single second.