Isolde didn't stop running until she slammed into the heavy oak door of the ladies' retiring room. She locked the stall door, her back sliding down the wood until she hit the floor. Her silver hair was coming undone, and her breath was a series of jagged, humid hitches.
"How... how dare he?" she hissed, her fingers clenching into white-knuckled fists.
She was angry—not just at Caelum, but at the treacherous wetness between her thighs and the way her silver Aether was still vibrating like a struck tuning fork. She had spent years perfecting her image as the "Impenetrable Glacier," and in one morning, a commoner with golden eyes had turned her into a puddle of leaking, desperate impulses. She punched the door softly, her face burning with a mix of noble fury and a dark, shameful craving for the very "heat" she claimed to despise.
Back in the lecture hall, the remaining students were gathering their books, whispering and casting side-long glances at the boy who had just turned a solid crystal into a boiling lake of gold.
**Kaelen**, still pale and sweating from the intensity of the resonance, approached Caelum. His hands were shaking, but his eyes were wide with a new, fanatical light.
"That... that was incredible," Kaelen stammered, bowing slightly. "I've studied Earth-structuring for five years, and I've never felt a core move like yours. It wasn't just magic... it was *perfection*."
He looked up, his expression desperate. "Caelum, please. I don't care about my rank. Let me be your apprentice. Teach me how to handle that kind of pressure without breaking."
Caelum looked at the boy, his golden eyes analytical. Having a male follower with an Earth-affinity could be a useful "buffer" for future large-scale experiments. "Persistence is the first step in alchemy, Kaelen," Caelum said smoothly. "Clean up the workbench. If you can stabilize the residue without me, we'll talk."
Overjoyed, Kaelen immediately set to work, treating the spilled golden liquid like a holy relic.
As the last of the students filed out, the heavy brass doors of the lecture hall groaned shut, leaving Caelum and **Professor Vespera** in the sudden, ringing silence of the stone chamber.
Vespera stood behind her podium, her hands gripped so tight the wood creaked. She didn't look like a professor anymore. Her indigo Aether was swirling in thick, messy clouds, and the top button of her robe had somehow come undone during the demonstration, revealing the frantic pulse at the base of her throat.
"The class is dismissed, Caelum," she whispered, her voice a low, resonant hum. "But the demonstration... was incomplete."
She stepped down from the podium, her heels clicking slowly on the stone as she approached the workbench where the bowl of liquid gold still sat, steaming and radiant. She stopped inches from him, the scent of her jasmine and the ozone of his power mixing in the small space between them.
"You pushed that crystal to its limit," she murmured, her eyes locked onto the glowing liquid. "You made it liquid. You made it *surrender* its structure."
She reached out, her fingers hovering just over the surface of the golden liquid, the heat of it making her breath hitch. She looked up at him, her indigo eyes pleading and dark. "I am the head of this department, yet I find myself... unable to stabilize my own core after witnessing your work. I believe a more... *direct* synthesis is required to restore order to my Aether."
She didn't wait for his permission. Vespera turned around and leaned over the workbench, her silk robes tightening over the generous, trembling curve of her backside, putting herself directly in his path.
"The lab is sealed, Caelum," she panted, her face turned back toward him, her lips parted. "Finish the experiment."