Marcus snapped his fingers. A faint pop echoed, followed by a flicker of orange—a small fla dancing at his fingertip like a living creature drawn from the depths of hell.
"What are you..." Cecil started, but didn’t finish.
A sudden, sharp burst of pain jolted through his hand. The fla may have been no bigger than a candle’s flicker, but its heat was scorching, unnatural—like the concentrated rage of a wildfire compressed into a single point.
"You...!" Cecil shouted, eyes wide with disbelief as Marcus calmly pressed the fla against the center of his palm, the searing heat causing the skin to bubble and darken with a sickening hiss.
Marcus stared, unblinking.
"Think I didn’t get my fair share of fire magic back in the day?" Cecil growled, voice low. "This is nothing—"
Cecil didn’t get to finish.
Marcus cut him off, this ti not with words, but with laughter.
It wasn’t the boisterous, warm kind that filled a room.
It was sharp.
Deliberate.
A laugh laced with amusent—and a haunting, undeniable sadism.
In a swift, fluid motion, Marcus grabbed a handful of Cecil’s ssy hair, yanked his head backward, and held the fla just beneath his nose. The heat curled upward, and with it, smoke—thin, acrid, and unrelenting.
Cecil’s body tensed as the smoke forced its way into his nostrils, the stinging heat assaulting his sinuses and crawling into his lungs.
"The hell is this..." he coughed, voice cracking as if it had aged decades in seconds.
Marcus tilted his head to the side, his expression alight with twisted mirth. "Oh, think of it as a countdown."
The smile never left his lips, even as the smoke thickened, clinging to the air like a living thing, crawling deeper into Cecil’s lungs with every involuntary breath.
"You think this’ll break ?" Cecil wheezed, trying to smirk, even as tears streaked down his cheeks and his eyes turned bloodshot. "Think I don’t smoke?"
But Marcus just grinned wider. The fla grew hotter—not by touch, but by proximity alone it singed the skin, releasing more smoke, more pressure, more discomfort.
’I don’t even need to beat him senseless.’
Marcus mused silently, watching with cold calculation.
’He may be a delinquent, but he’s still a student. Students break easier... especially when they think they’ve known pain.’
’And I’m being generous. Permanent damage? Not really my style.’
’Well, other than the potential lung cancer.’
He snorted ntally, barely suppressing a chuckle as he fed a little more energy into the fla.
Cecil’s breathing grew shallow, ragged. His eyes stread, his nose was a ss, and his mouth hung open in desperation. But Marcus wasn’t done—not yet. His hand tightened in Cecil’s hair, locking him in place, ensuring every breath dragged in more smoke than air.
From the sidelines, Cynthia and Aveline watched in uneasy silence.
"This... this feels more cruel than just breaking his bones," Aveline muttered, arms folded, her brow furrowed in mild disgust.
Cynthia gave an awkward chuckle, rubbing the back of her neck. "It’s Marcus. He always has a plan. He won’t go too far." She hesitated. "Probably."
Seconds passed, heavy and suffocating.
Cecil’s lips cracked, his skin beginning to char around the edges of his nose and mouth, and his once-arrogant gaze now looked haunted, desperate.
His chest burned like it had turned to ash. His body scread for relief, but his mind clung to scraps of bravado—training, pride, anything.
’Don’t give him the satisfaction... don’t—’
But the smoke wouldn’t let go. It slithered down his throat with every breath, robbing him of even defiance.
"I—I give up..."
Each word rasped from his throat like sandpaper on bone.
Marcus leaned in slightly and exhaled a short breath. The fla winked out with a flicker, vanishing as suddenly as it had co.
Cecil now resembled a shattered shell of his forr self—skin dry and cracked, eyes a deep, inflad red, his posture hunched and broken. He looked less like a young spy and more like a withered addict dragged from the underbelly of a city gutter.
Marcus reached out again, this ti gently, and clasped Cecil’s throat—not to choke, but to steady.
A faint golden glow lit up his hand, warm and healing, as runes flickered to life along his palm.
"You did well to break early," Marcus said, his tone businesslike now. "I’ll heal your throat. Just enough to talk."
Cecil swallowed, wincing slightly as his voice returned with the golden warmth. His lips trembled, but the words ca more clearly.
"I... I wanted to join..."
His voice hitched, struggling through the aftermath.
"A society called..."
But he never got to finish.
The air stilled—as if the room itself were holding its breath. Even the smoke seed to hesitate.
Then ca a shift. A weight.
A figure stepped out from the shadows.
Even the shadows seed to recoil from him, drawn inward like smoke curling toward a void.
His presence like a void swallowing the tension in the room.
He wore a pristine three-piece suit, the fabric unnaturally crisp. A black-and-white mask obscured his face, leaving only slicked-back dark hair and slightly pointed ears visible.
"How disappointing..." the figure said, voice smooth and amused. "I knew that brat didn’t have potential."
He gave a theatrical sigh, shaking his head. "But for him to break under such diocre torture thods..."
He chuckled, low and condescending.
"He could have extinguished the fla himself. Fire magic isn’t that complicated."
Marcus tensed—but before he could react, Aveline moved first, as always.
Her foot pivoted, posture low and predatory—a dancer taught by war, not rhythm.
Dust curled at her feet as she launched forward, all precision and fury.
A blur of motion, her body a coiled spring as she lunged forward with a spinning kick aid directly at the masked figure’s head.
The air shifted again.
The night had taken a turn.
And sohow, everything—the fla, the spy, the strange figure in a mask—was connected to the myth.
A spark had been lit. And it wasn’t going out.
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