Sunlight didn't quite reach the corners of Amberine's workshop. It tried—filtered in through stained, dust-fogged windows high up the stone walls of the arcane tower—but mostly failed. The room seed to absorb it, swallow it whole into the tangle of parchnt rolls, floating crystal shards, half-ford constructs, and scattered teacups.
Amberine sat cross-legged on a stool, a small screwdriver pinched between her teeth. In her hands, the Orb of Emotion pulsed faintly—a gentle bluish glow that shimred each ti she exhaled. Her eyes narrowed.
"No," she muttered, turning the sphere in her palm. "You're still syncing just a hair too slowly on low-end resonance." She reached for a new runeplate and etched in a secondary feedback circuit.
The orb was already finished, technically. It worked. It pulsed in harmony with her mood, responded to ambient energies, and could be tuned to reflect emotional states for diagnostic or artistic use. It was everything the Arcane Symposium committee could want.
But she couldn't stop tweaking it. Not because it needed refinent—but because she needed sothing to do. Sothing other than thinking.
She paused, staring blankly at the half-finished runeplate. Her gaze drifted around the workshop, skipping across the cluttered desk, the scattered notes with half-legible formulas, and the teacups stained dark at the bottom from too many refills. Amberine liked the controlled chaos of her space; it felt like her. But today it didn't comfort her.
The screwdriver clattered onto the workbench, rolling across its surface and bumping gently against an abandoned crystal shard. Amberine leaned back with a sigh, spinning the orb lazily in her fingers, watching its gentle light reflect off her fingertips.
Her mind betrayed her, slipping quietly into an unbidden mory.
Draven.
Walking into class the week after the Knight Sharon rumors.
She rembered that day vividly—students whispering in hushed clusters by the corridors, exchanging furtive glances with every sound of approaching footsteps. Gossip clung to their words, sharper than usual, heavy with speculation. Amberine had leaned against the back wall, arms folded, projecting disinterest she didn't truly feel. Her heart had thumped strangely at the sound of Draven's precise footsteps echoing down the hallway, utterly unhurried, rhythmic like a trono counting down to sothing inevitable.
He had entered exactly as always: coat ticulously buttoned, collar sharp, gaze so frigid and composed that it seed utterly alien to the whispers that filled the room. Draven's cold eyes, a chilling shade of steel-blue, had swept across the class as if cataloging each of them without judgnt or acknowledgnt. It was like the swirling gossip in the air didn't exist for him, like the rumor—that he'd killed a Blackthorn Knight with a spell so refined it left no evidence—ant less to him than a misplaced comma in a student's essay.
He had walked silently to the front, placing his notes down with quiet precision. And then he'd started the lecture, as though nothing had ever changed:
"Today we continue our derivation of sequential mana layering from contradictory affinities."
Every word had fallen crisp and exact, every formula razor-sharp. His voice had cut through the thick air effortlessly, forcing students to focus. The explanation had been staggering in its complexity, leaving Amberine feeling like a novice fumbling in the dark. And yet, at the sa ti, his teaching had carried a strange clarity, as though he held a lantern high above the labyrinth, guiding each student through with gentle inevitability. The puzzle was impossible, yet so intuitive that once solved, the answer seed painfully obvious.
Amberine recalled thinking, How does he do that?
But what had unsettled her most was not Draven's brilliant teaching. It was how seamlessly he ignored everything else. He never cracked. Never addressed the whispers. Never showed annoyance or anger or even mild discomfort. Just calm, ruthless professionalism.
Eventually, the buzz had faded. Students shrugged off the unanswered questions, moving on to fresher gossip. The class had adjusted, normalized, accepted Draven's silent assertion that whatever had happened—or hadn't—was not their concern.
But Amberine hadn't moved on.
The thoughts still echoed in her mind, weeks later. They nagged at her, tugged at the corner of her concentration like a persistent itch she couldn't reach. Amberine growled softly, twisting the orb in her hand a little too harshly, its glow flickering in protest.
"Am I the only idiot still bothered by this?"
A sudden puff of warmth blood beneath her robes. Fla curled upward in a playful twist of golden smoke, catching the workshop's dim air and illuminating it briefly. Ignis, her fire spirit, slid smoothly into view, coiling around her forearm like a lazy ember snake. His eyes glittered—tiny flickers of fla, amused, mocking.
he said dryly. His voice sounded like the crackle of a campfire, pleasant but sarcastic.
Amberine scowled sharply, her lips pursing. "You always show up when I'm talking to myself. You creepy ash ghost."
Ignis flickered brighter, a little smug, as he yawned theatrically.
Reviews
All reviews (0)