The lecture hall emptied with military precision the moment the clock struck one. Ambition drove the students out; the desperate need to excel tomorrow dictated their movements today.
Vigo departed soon after, his cape swirling in his wake. Arthur followed, masking a starving, predatory eagerness behind a measured, saintly gait.
They claimed the same chairs as the previous day, recreating the tableau of their earlier confrontation within the silence of the office.
"You have done well today," Vigo said, his voice heavy with an uncharacteristic softness. "No one, except your brother, has ever pierced the veil of my words to find their true meaning."
Arthur drank the syllables like fine wine, delighting in the enunciation.
"The accuracy. The precision," Vigo continued, leaning forward. "It is almost as if you have spent tens of hours in research, and hundreds in practice."
The phantom sensation of an interrogation lamp blinded Arthur. Careless, he hissed internally. No novice produces that on a first attempt. Not even a prodigy. He had painted a target on his back with his own competence. There was no logic that could explain away the mastery he had just displayed.
He raised his defenses—the gentle, porcelain mask of the Hero-Saint.
"Haha, thank you for such kind words, Instructor," Arthur said, offering a practiced, sheepish smile. "Truly, I just hold a deep love for the subje—"
"Stop."
The command was absolute. It wasn't a request; it was a wall of wind.
Arthur's mind went blank. Against an 8th-Circle King-Rank Wind Mage, resistance was not a concept; it was a suicide note. He froze, waiting for the strike.
"You do not have to pretend," Vigo murmured.
Arthur blinked. What?
"You must hate me, do you not?"
The question hung in the air, heavy and suffocating.
"While you and your brother were fighting for your lives," Vigo whispered, his gaze dropping to the floor, "I was down in Varethal. I was savoring aged wine while children died."
Arthur watched, stunned, as the Instructor's composure fractured. The icy grip of terror in Arthur's chest began to thaw, replaced by a slow, creeping warmth.
"And Arthur died. If only I had been there…" Vigo's hands, hands capable of leveling cities, shook visibly in his lap. "I have grieved. I have tried to make amends—assisting you in any way I could—but nothing could quell my rage. Nothing could silence the guilt."
Vigo looked up, his eyes rimmed with raw, unfiltered emotion.
"In this room, on the day you barged in, I had been rotting in my own wrecked quarters, just as I had for weeks since the incident. But when I saw you? I felt a joy so profound I could not express it if given all the ink in the world. I had not functioned with conscious thought since your arrival, and seeing you alive… it was the greatest bliss."
Vigo exhaled, a ragged sound. "I could not even begin to comprehend the grief you must be in."
Arthur remained silent, the machinery of his mind whirring. The tension left his shoulders. The air in the room, once stifling, now tasted sweet.
"I take full responsibility," Vigo said, his voice firming with resolve. "Direct all of your hate toward me if you wish. But please… do not suppress your pain. Do not ruin yourself for my mistake."
Arthur stared at the broken man.
You have got it all wrong, Vigo, Arthur thought, the realization blooming like a dark flower in his chest. This is an act. There is nothing to be suppressed.
He watched the tears well in the Instructor's eyes.
But to hear that I—that Arthur, the failure—meant so much to you? That an 8th-Circle Mage would break himself over my memory?
Arthur felt a vibration in his fingertips, a rush of blood to his head that had nothing to do with fear.
You have given me the greatest joy.
"Do not blame yourself, Instructor; I have always held you in the highest respect, and the expression of your actions previously unbeknownst to me has but elevated my opinion of you. I take blame wholly; but I assure you it will not ruin me. My weakness in that moment only serves as motivation to drive me further.
"The suppression of my pain does not cause so much torment that I cannot control. I attempt to fool others, for their sakes, an act I do seek repentance for, but I do not fool myself."
If anyone can understand me, Arthur thought, watching the instructor, it is Vigo.
Arthur let the mask of the grieving brother slip, just enough to reveal the steel resolve beneath.
"My brother will not be dead for long."
Comprehension didn't dawn on Sivan Ruarc Vigo; it struck him instantly. The atmosphere in the office shifted violently. The air grew heavy and thick, the pressure plummeting until it mimicked the crushing, lightless trenches of the Water God's own domain.
"I have a plan to return him to this plane," Arthur continued, his voice steady against the crushing weight in the room. "To bring him back. To right all of our wrongs."
"You mean to resurrect him?"
The word hung in the humid air—Resurrection. It was a concept that referred to a single, forbidden field: Black Magic. Yet, Vigo inquired without a flicker of shock, his tone as flat and clinical as if he were discussing the weather.
"It is my obligation," Arthur stated, the words tasting of iron and duty. "As the one who lived."
"And is that the extent of your plan?" Vigo asked.
Arthur faltered. The question knocked him off balance, forcing a retreat behind his polite facade. "Apologies. I don't quite follow."
"What of the perpetrators of the murder?" Vigo pressed, his silver monocle catching the lamplight. "What of the safety of your family? What of your own future?"
The questions hit Arthur like physical blows. It felt as if the gravitational constant of the universe had shifted, placing its entire mass solely upon his shoulders in the form of sheer exhaustion. His mind began to race, seeking answers to variables that he, for some inexplicable reason, had not calculated sooner. Halt. Stop.
Vigo stood abruptly.
"Follow me."
The Head Instructor moved to the stone brick wall. He placed his hand against the masonry, right beside the refined, organized bookshelf that now stood where a chaotic pile of wood had been just the day before.
Moments passed in silence. Then, a viridian light began to bleed through the mortar of the bricks. It pulsed, each vein of magic moving at its own pace, spreading until every fissure glowed.
The masonry groaned, the stones shifting and retracting, the entire wall rising upward like a hidden portcullis.
It revealed a space that defied the geometry of the building. It was not merely a room; it was a cavernous laboratory several times the size of the office. It was crowded with the cold, brass instruments of science, sitting uncomfortably beside the grotesque paraphernalia of horror and the heretical.
Vigo turned, his silhouette framed by the dim light of the forbidden lab.
"I made a mistake in our last conversation," he said, his voice echoing slightly. "I am not simply interested in this field. I practice it."
He stepped aside, gesturing to the abyss of knowledge before them.
"When I said I wanted to do anything I could to help, I meant it. I want you to continue the legacy your brother left behind. Be my apprentice in these uncharted fields.