Kaelan's words struck Kairen as a blow to the body.
"Did your father's name get you placed where you didn't deserve it, Zephyrwind?"
The air in Kairen's lungs faded to ice and escaped his mouth. The universe that just moments ago had been a racket of sky-islands and unimaginable sorcery, shrunk to an almost palpable point: Kaelan's taunting countenance and the sadistically delighted glimmer in his eyes.
The buzzing jubilance of the classroom, the magnificent spectacle, the comfortably solid warmth of Dain, and Ilya supporting him on each side, faded to a dull black and white background.
There was Kaelan, alone, and the disgusting, squirmy feeling of his words slipping on Kairen's skin, the poison that seeped into the fragile hope he had just begun to light.
His face was hot with red. He could feel it rising up the back of his neck and out around the backs of his ears, a searing tide of shame so strong and torrential that he might as well have been blushing in and out.
His fists were so tightly wrapped around the wood that the cherry's grain was biting into his palms. He wanted to tell him something, to yell something, to tell him to shut up, he was wrong.
But his mind was a blank, cold trap of white noise, a rolling interference that nullified the very possibility of cognitive participation. The words hung stuck in his throat, gagged by the same cold, sterile fear which had dogged him like a specter for years. He fixated on the whirling grain of the wood in his desk, fantasizing himself blending into the grainy pattern of wood, becoming invisible.
SCRRRAPE.
The sound was rough and harsh in the quiet room, a deliberate, angry sound that shattered the tension. Dain. He had pushed his chair away from the table and risen, his movement abrupt for a man of such bulk.
One moment he was seated, the next standing, his shadow looming over Kaelan like a thundercloud, his naked height and weight a sudden, menacing presence.
Kairen was shocked. He had thought to be alone in this. He was always alone in this. But he wasn't. The realization was a tiny, shattering jolt amidst his embarrassment.
"Keep away from him, Brightblade," Dain snarled. The warm, boisterous voice was forgotten, replaced by a low, menacing growl devoid of laughter. It was the rumble of a mountain ready to move.
Kaelan, to his credit, did not even appear to care. He just eyed Dain up and down, his face set in an air of bored disdain. "Or what, Ragnor?" he sneered. "You'll strike me? How very primitive. You're nothing more than a clumsy beast with a good back and a poor head. You don't deserve to be in Class A any more than he does."
"Are you really as insecure as you seem, Kaelan?"
Ilya's voice. It cut through the uncomfortable atmosphere like a blade of silver, soft but sharp like cold steel. She had yet to stand. She still sat in her chair, back straight like a solder, looking at Kaelan like a scholar would an insect in a jar, with a clinical and disinterested wonder. "You have the highest aptitude score of any first-year," she continued, her tone flat and even, each word selected and delivered excruciatingly surgical.
"Everybody here already knows how much power you have. So why this near pathetic desire to intimidate another student? Does crushing someone whom you think is weaker make you more powerful? Do you have to stand on somebody's neck in order for you to swell up your own chest?"
Kaelan's smirk at last cracked. A rush of honest, hot fury swept across his face. He realized she was correct. She had stripped away his bluster and revealed the ugly insecurity beneath. He glared at her with pure venom. "Stay out of this, Veyne," he spit venomously. "This is not your business."
"That is enough."
The voice was not boisterous. It wasn't a shout. But it contained so much raw, packed power that it seemed to be physical. The atmosphere in the room became dense, heavy, stifling the air from moving freely. All the students were motionless. Even Kaelan. All the heads turned to the front of the room.
There was a tall man there, having slipped in so quietly that no one had seen him. He was thin-faced and graying, with neatly trimmed beard and black eyes that seemed to take in everything simultaneously. Dressed in the plain, dark professor's robes, he moved with an ancient, imposing quietness.
His eyes scanned the room. He glanced at Kaelan's furious, red face. He glanced at Dain's brooding, half-ov'rstandig stance. And then he glanced at Kairen.
And he just. glared. It seemed like those black eyes were glowering right through his skin, through his bones, and staring straight at the hidden mark on his back. Kairen was certain he knew. He was certain he was going to get kicked out for being a troublemaker on the first day. His heart pounded against his ribs, a wild beat of raw fear.
"Sit down," the man ordered.
Dain and Kaelan sat. At once. The battle was just. finished. The man strode up to the front of the room, his boots clanking silently on the stone floor.
"Welcome to Class A," his voice growled, deep and resonant and filling every corner of the huge classroom.
"My name is Professor Valerius. And here in this classroom, your surname is nothing. Your fortune is nothing. The mark a radiant stone awarded you this morning is nothing." His gaze swung to Kaelan for an instant, a wordless, emphatic dismissal. "Here, you will learn magic. Actual magic."
He slapped his hands together once. CRACK. A fireball erupted between them, spinning and whirling in colors of orange, red, and yellow. It was lovely, and for Kairen, agony. A bright, living reminder of what he was unable to do.
"There are several routes to power," Valerius replied. "The most popular is Elemental Magic." He snapped his wrist, and the flame flowed effortlessly into a spinning ball of water, and then solidified into a shard of frosted ice. He made it seem effortless, as if he were simply choosing what the world should be. Fire. Water. Ice. And Kairen was just. him.
He clenched his hand, and the ice was gone. "And then, of course, there is Runic Magic." He swept his other hand before him, and blue letters suspended in the air glowed there, burning in mid-air. They coalesced into a knotted, interlocking sign that vibrated with a quiet, low power.
The symbols… they seemed familiar to Kairen. Unnervingly so. They reminded him of the bizarre, geometric shapes he doodled in his notebooks when he was lying awake at night, the tongue his hands could speak even when his brain couldn't. But the professor's runes were not. They were meaningful. They vibrated with power. Kairen's were simply… empty marks.
The runes disappeared. "And finally," he said, "there is the illusion of magic." He took up an ordinary piece of white chalk from his desk.
He spoke to it in a whisper, a sound so low Kairen couldn't quite make it out, and the chalk started to shine with a little, soft white light. It wasn't a huge, booming spell like Kaelan's. This one was quiet. Unassuming. Kairen approved of this one. But it was still magic. Still something he couldn't reach.
The previous struggle, the humiliation. it was all forgotten. Kairen was utterly enthralled. He had always believed that magic was one thing: something you had or didn't have. But this wasn't that. This was something else. This was knowledge. A framework. A vocabulary. And perhaps, perhaps, there was more than one path to learning to speak.
"These are the ways you will start to learn here," said the Professor. "But you must understand, this separation of magic into tidy boxes is a new, narrow form of thinking. The earliest writings, the scrolls that were composed when the world was young, mention other, older kinds of magic. Forgotten arts."
His voice shifted, becoming more somber, more enigmatic. He leaned slightly forward, and the entire class leaned with him, captivated by the weight of his words.
"They talk about a universal force that binds everything together. a basic power that is the foundation of all that exists. They referred to it. as the Essence."
The term struck Kairen not as something he heard, but as something that he felt. A shock. It started on his back, an area of intense heat, and radiated throughout his entire body in a rush of clean, cutting power.
The scar on his back didn't merely grow warm; it throbbed. A slow, resonant drumbeat, as if some mute bell somewhere in him was being struck deep inside. It wasn't a burn; it was a clean, bright warmth that felt like. recognition. As if some part of him that had lain dormant since he was sixteen had wakened at the sound of its own name spoken for the first time in years.
Essence. Essence. Essence. The sound rang in his mind, a silent, potent incantation. He recognized the word. It felt. correct. It felt more correct than his own name. Was this it? The thing his mom was so afraid of? Was 'Essence' what he was?
He glanced at his hands, half hoping they would be radiating. They were still just his hands. They couldn't produce fire or ice.
But for the first time, the cold, hollow place within him where his magic ought to have been did not seem so hollow anymore. It was still quiet.
But now, it seemed as though it was. listening.
Waiting.
It was as if a still, patient predator waiting in the darkness within him, and Kairen felt for the first time that the monster he'd dreaded wasn't merely a figment of his dreams, but the same power he'd been seeking all along.