They always said the Academy was where greatness began , where the blessed and
the brilliant were shaped into the pillars of the realm. Its towers, pale as bone, reached
so high they seemed to scrape the stars, and its courtyards bloomed with flowers
enchanted to never wilt. Songs were sung of its splendor. Children dreamed of walking
its halls. Parents wept with pride the day their offspring crossed its threshold. But not
Kaelen's parents. He had none to see him off, no hands to wave goodbye, no warm
embrace promising he'd be missed. Only the cold hush of the orphanage matron's
disinterest as she signed his name away.
Kaelen remembered his first steps through the wrought-iron gates , how the air itself felt
different, almost charged, as if every stone in that place breathed magic. He'd clutched
his satchel tight, the contents pitiful: one spare tunic, a spellbook already secondhand
and annotated in someone else's scrawl, and a folded parchment that named him one
of the "Accepted." It should have felt like a dream. But from the beginning, Kaelen
noticed things the others didn't , the sideways glances when he spoke, the small, quiet
way instructors passed over his raised hand. He thought it was nerves at first, or some
fault of his voice. But weeks turned into months, and the cold remained. He was always
the last picked for spell duels, the last invited to study groups, the one who never quite
belonged.
The instructors praised precision. They demanded elegance. And Kaelen's magic was
neither. It fought him , strange, slow to answer, often misfiring or producing effects not
written in any of the sanctioned tomes. A simple levitation spell would make objects float
upside-down or twist into unfamiliar shapes. An attempt at a fire rune once produced a
sickly green flame that hissed in pain. The others laughed. Sometimes, they recoiled.
By his third year, he was known more for his failures than his efforts. Rumors spread
that he carried a curse , or worse, that he was drawing from forbidden wells. Of course,
no one said this to his face. They simply stopped speaking to him at all.
But Kaelen endured. He studied when others partied. He reread every text until the
pages blurred in his vision. He practiced alone, bleeding his fingers raw in the
frost-bitten training yards because the indoor chambers were "too full." He convinced
himself that hard work would win respect. That if he just proved himself, if he could
finally get one spell right , not just right, but perfect , then they would see him. Truly see
him.
And then came the Trials.
Every Academy student underwent them. Ritualized tests of arcane skill, discipline, and
potential. The first was the Trial of Binding , a test of elemental connection and magical
control. Kaelen failed twice. On the third attempt, he succeeded, barely, binding a wind
spirit that bucked and shrieked so violently it shattered the glass dome above the arena.
It left him winded, but the evaluators passed him with curt nods. He hadn't won their
awe, only their tolerance. But even tolerance, in that place, felt like gold.
The second trial, the Ritual of Ascendance, was different. It required the student to
channel energy through their own sigil, a unique magical mark designed by the caster. It
was a culmination , a public declaration of one's identity as a mage. Most designed
sigils are shaped from family heritage, regional glyphs, or traditional elements. Kaelen,
with no bloodline to draw from, crafted his from instinct. His dreams had shown him
fragments , spirals etched in bone, lines twisting into a shape that made little sense in
the waking world. He memorized it. It felt right.
When the day came, Kaelen stood in the ritual chamber, his sigil glowing faintly at his
feet. He felt calm. For the first time in years, he believed this would be the moment that
changed everything.
And it was.
But not the way he hoped.
The ritual chamber was a circular room of polished obsidian, set deep within the earth
beneath the Academy. Its black walls shimmered with the faint glow of containment
runes, humming softly with latent power. Torches lined the perimeter, casting long
shadows that seemed to lean inward, as if eager to witness what would unfold. High
above, instructors and students watched from a viewing gallery, their murmurs muffled
behind enchanted glass.
Kaelen stood at the center, the sigil he had drawn glowing faintly beneath his feet , a
curling, complex shape unlike any in the Academy's sanctioned glyphbooks. It pulsed a
dull silver, its lines breathing in rhythm with his heartbeat. The Master Examiner gave
the nod to proceed. Kaelen closed his eyes, took a slow breath, and began the
incantation.
At first, all was quiet. The energy rose like it should , slowly, carefully. He could feel the
leyline threading through him, tugging at the base of his spine, coiling into his hands.
For a moment, he smiled. This was working. This was right.
Then, something shifted.
The sigil brightened , too fast, too intensely. The dull silver flared into white-hot light.
The lines pulsed, then twisted, rearranging themselves with a mind of their own.
Kaelen's breath caught in his throat. He tried to pull back, to stop the flow, but the magic
surged, no longer obeying his will. It flooded through him, deeper and darker than
anything he had ever touched.
He heard screaming. At first, he thought it was his own. But then came a terrible,
cracking noise , like bones shattering under pressure , followed by shrill, agonizing
wails. The air thickened, hot and stinking of copper. Kaelen's eyes snapped open just in
time to see the first student collapse in the gallery above, his body withering like
parchment touched by flame. Another followed, then another , their forms shriveling as
though life itself was being siphoned from their veins.
The sigil beneath Kaelen burned like a brand, molten and alive. Tendrils of energy
writhed from it like vines, searching, grasping , hungry. He tried to scream for help, but
the words disintegrated on his tongue. The Master Examiner was shouting, casting
warding spells, calling for containment. The lights overhead exploded in a cascade of
sparks. Glass cracked. The containment runes on the walls flickered , not failing, but
recoiling, as if rejecting what had entered the chamber.
Then, as abruptly as it had begun, it stopped.
The light winked out. The sigil was gone, scorched into the floor. Smoke clung to
Kaelen's clothes, and his knees buckled. He fell forward, catching himself on trembling
hands. All around him, silence reigned , broken only by the distant sobbing of one of the
instructors in the gallery above.
Three students were dead.
One instructor, unconscious, his mind shattered from exposure to the raw magic.
And Kaelen, at the center of it all, blinking through the haze, could only whisper, "I didn't
mean to…"
But no one listened.
Security mages seized him before he could even rise. He didn't fight. His thoughts were
still catching up, looping over what had happened , over what shouldn't have happened.
He was taken to a sealed infirmary chamber, but no one came to treat him. For two
days, he waited in silence, watching through reinforced crystal.
On the third day, the Headmaster arrived. He did not sit. He did not speak at first. He
simply studied Kaelen with a gaze devoid of warmth. When he finally spoke, his words
were brief and hollow.
"There will be no trial. There will be no appeal. You are to leave Halemir. Now."
Kaelen opened his mouth to protest , to explain, to beg , but something in the
Headmaster's eyes told him the words would never matter. Not here. Not anymore.
He was escorted from the grounds before dawn, stripped of his robes and sigil ring, his
name erased from the student registry as if he had never existed. The gates of Halemir
closed behind him with a thunderous finality. No one looked back. Not one.
He was sixteen.
The road beyond Halemir was not made for the cast-out.
Kaelen wandered with blistered feet and hollow lungs, clutching the thin cloak they'd
allowed him to keep. The forests were still in the early days of frost, the leaves brittle
with morning ice, and the sun seemed to rise less for him now , pale, indifferent, hidden
behind gray clouds. Hunger gnawed at him, but no village would take him in. The name
Kaelen had already spread, whispered from frightened mouths and trembling lips: The
boy who killed three with a glance. The one with cursed blood. A vessel for something
not of this world.
He slept in root hollows and ruined chapels. When he passed through old waystations
or crumbling watchposts, travelers moved away from him. Children cried when they saw
his face. No one asked what had really happened. No one offered food or fire. They
looked at him the same way the instructors had , with suspicion first, fear second. Pity
had long since vanished.
On the seventh day of exile, his legs finally gave out. He collapsed beside the broken
remains of a statue, some forgotten deity whose name time had stolen, and let the cold
embrace him. Snow had begun to fall in delicate spirals. It looked almost beautiful.
Kaelen thought, distantly, that this might be the end.
But the silence around him was not empty.
There was a pressure in the air, like the world had inhaled and forgotten to exhale. The
wind stilled. The snow stopped in mid-air. And then, softly, inside his mind, not spoken,
but felt, came a voice.
"They feared you because they did not understand you. They cast you out, not because
you were weak… but because you were becoming strong."
Kaelen's breath caught. The voice wasn't male or female, old or young. It was. It
resonated through the marrow of his bones, ancient and intimate. He didn't move.
Couldn't. His limbs had gone numb, but he was listening with something deeper than his
ears.
"You were shaped in their image, and now you are broken from it. This is not a curse.
This is freedom."
The broken statue beside him cracked. A single piece of stone fell away, revealing a
dark symbol carved beneath: sharp, spiraled lines that matched the sigil from the ritual.
His sigil. But… older. Primordial. As if he hadn't created it at all. As if it had always been
there, waiting for someone to remember it.
Something inside Kaelen shifted , not healed, not soothed, but aligned. The sorrow that
had crushed him for days twisted into resolve. The ache of betrayal became clarity. The
pain did not leave him, but it no longer owned him. He reached out with a trembling
hand, placed it against the exposed sigil on the statue, and felt a pulse , not unlike the
rush of leyline magic, but wilder, deeper. Older.
Power surged through him.
It didn't scream. It was welcomed.
The snow resumed falling. The wind returned. Kaelen stood slowly, stronger than he
had been in days. He looked to the north, toward the land beyond Halemir, ungoverned,
forgotten, wild. There were ruins there, and secrets older than any Academy. Magic the
elite had buried and feared. It was calling to him now, not to destroy, but to become.
They had cast him out thinking they were ending his story.
But Kaelen knew better now.
They hadn't ended it. They had freed it.
He would learn. He would grow. And one day, when the towers of Halemir no longer
looked so tall, and when their gates opened to beg for salvation, they would not find a
prodigal son.
They would find the consequence of their cowardice. And they would welcome him as a
savior… never realizing the monster they themselves had made.