The world moved as if nothing had changed.
As the morning sun filtered through arched windows decorated with gently glowing glyphs, students streamed into the academy halls with drowsy eyelids and whispered welcomes. Like the buzz of a living heartbeat inside the academy, spells hummed low in the walls, silent yet steady. Cassian Vale walked those halls again, but he didn't belong to that rhythm anymore.
No one greeted him.
But they saw him.
Eyes flicked in his direction and quickly away. Whispers chased him like shadows on the stone.
"Is that him?"
"Didn't he vanish for days?"
"I thought he was dead—no, someone said he transferred."
The lies stacked quickly, unchallenged. No one asked him directly. No one wanted to.
The three that should have spoken—Vex, Reina, and Kael—sat stiffly in their usual spots during morning assembly, eyes flicking to him with the wide, glassy stare of prey cornered by something they didn't understand.
Cassian passed them without a glance.
He didn't need to say a word.
They remembered what happened by the fountain, even if the world refused to.
The air felt wrong around him.
Small things—hard to explain. The magic-powered bracelet every student wore refused to light up when he tried logging into the attendance terminal. A passing professor glanced at the device with a puzzled look.
"Hm. Must be a minor link-sync delay," the man muttered before typing Cassian's name manually and moving on.
The moment passed.
Just like that.
But Cassian noticed it. The magic rune on the screen had flickered. Then died.
And when he walked past enchanted lamps lining the hallway, they dimmed. Barely noticeable. A soft flicker, like a candle shy of wind. When other students passed by, the light returned.
It doesn't touch me, he thought. Or maybe I don't let it.
His first class was Elemental Theory.
Professor Vannis droned at the front of the lecture hall, her voice smooth and monotonous, the way most students liked it—just enough to take notes, not enough to stay interested.
Cassian sat at the edge, isolated as always.
He opened his textbook, though he wasn't reading.
He could feel them staring.
Not the students. Something deeper.
The glyphs etched in the desk in front of him—the same universal runes every academy student had, keyed to enhance absorption and focus—they didn't activate.
For anyone else, the rune glowed faintly when touched, pulsing in rhythm with the student's aura. Cassian's stayed cold.
Dead.
A minute passed. Then two.
Then—
"Blood remembers what flesh forgets..."
The whisper again. Like a memory with no origin. Like a voice submerged in ink.
His vision blurred slightly, and just for a second, the chalkboard in front of him looked… different. Covered in symbols he couldn't read. Symbols he instinctively understood.
When he blinked, it was gone.
The scanner came next.
At the end of class, Professor Vannis motioned for each student to approach the podium and place their hand on a crystal sphere—the standard aura signature test, used weekly for tracking growth and classification. Most saw it as routine. Boring, even.
Cassian hadn't done one since before… that day.
He waited for his turn. One by one, the students went. The crystal lit up with various colors—red for fire affinity, blue for water, and green for wind. The scanner read the fluctuations and recorded the data instantly.
Cassian stepped up when called.
The moment his hand touched the crystal—
Silence.
The orb dimmed.
Not to gray, not to white. It turned black.
Then the light snapped off completely. The podium buzzed, glitched, and powered down.
Professor Vannis raised an eyebrow, mildly annoyed.
"Hm. Power drain? That's unusual. Cassian, try again."
He lifted his hand.
The podium didn't restart.
Vannis waved it off.
"No matter. We'll reset it later. Next."
Cassian stepped aside.
The student behind him placed their hand down, and the orb immediately flickered back to life, glowing bright blue.
He said nothing.
No one said anything to him.
But a few students glanced at him, uneasy.
At lunch, the cafeteria felt colder. Not in temperature, but in energy.
Cassian sat at his old spot. Alone.
The trio of bullies—his murderers—sat across the hall, their conversation halted whenever his eyes wandered near. Reina wouldn't even eat. Kael tapped his leg nervously.
Vex stared at him. He hadn't spoken a word since Cassian's return.
It was only a matter of time.
Later that day, Cassian stood in front of his dorm room mirror again.
Same, boy. Same face.
But not the same eyes.
They hadn't changed color. Not really. But the depth—they looked bottomless, like wells that led somewhere far beneath flesh and bone. If anyone looked too long, they'd feel pulled in.
Devoured.
"Cassian Vale…"
His voice didn't tremble. It sounded distant, like an echo from behind the mirror.
"…Wasn't I supposed to be dead?"
The silence answered.
And somewhere deep inside him, something did stir. Something vast. Something old.
"You are the hollow. The space between magic. The blood that devours it."
His fingertips brushed the surface of the mirror.
Not cold.
Not warm.
Just empty.