Arthur let out a soft, melodious sigh, stepping forward with measured, unhurried grace. With an apologetic nod toward the petrified attendants, he reached into his breast pocket, produced two twists of butter caramel, and tossed them cleanly into Celeste's lap.
The spinning water matrix dissolved instantly into mist. Celeste snatched the candies from the ticking with a delighted squeak, entirely forgetting the boy pinned beneath her. Arthur caught Cyril under the armpits, heaving him free of the damp horsehair in one smooth, effortless pull.
Water squelched in Cyril's boots with every step down the gallery wing. Arthur guided the shivering boy through the arched limestone entry of his own quarters, the heavy oak door swinging shut behind them to seal out the corridor's echoing chatter.
Arthur crossed the sterile, unadorned room to a cedar wardrobe, retrieving a neatly folded, dry first-year uniform. He set it across the back of the solitary desk chair.
"Get out of those soaked threads before the draft takes your chest," Arthur said gently, handing him a linen drying towel. "You can change behind the partition."
Cyril took the fabric with both hands, bowing his head in earnest, soaking-wet gratitude. "Thank you, mentor."
"No worries," Arthur said, the corner of his lips curling in an indulgent, elder-brother smile. "Just be a little more mindful with your words around Lady Devreux. Noble decorum has its own... peculiar boundaries."
"I most certainly will be!" Cyril wrung out the hem of his tunic, sending a puddle onto the limestone floor, his crimson eyes burning with absolute, wide-eyed resolve. "Being scolded twice for the same mistake is enough—I won't do it again!"
As he vigorously scrubbed the towel through his dripping white hair, Cyril's gaze drifted past Arthur's shoulder, taking in the sparse quarters. The chamber remained almost entirely stripped. A travel trunk lay open on a pair of wooden sawhorses near the narrow cot, and a scattering of inkpots, measuring calipers, and half-bound ledgers still rested loose on the bare desk surface.
Cyril paused, lowering the cloth. "Should I help you pack your stuff after I finish changing?"
Arthur raised a hand in polite decline, his voice a soothing cadence of pure consideration. "No need. With so few items, I can easily handle them myself. Besides, you've had a hard day; I wouldn't want to trouble you any further."
Behind the warm, unblinking mask of his amber eyes, Arthur's internal clockwork turned with cold, surgical detachment.
My initial diagnostic on you is already filed, Arthur thought, his pulse resting at a rhythmic, flat baseline. Predictable moral compass, zero latent hostility, erratic divine stigmata that bypasses standard vessel mechanics. Spending another redundant hour managing your pastoral awe yields zero return.
Sinclair is out in Sector Six consulting with the Academic Board today, which leaves his office vacant. That gives me a two-hour window to force another circuit-dilation cycle with the Constructual Arts.
The prospect of tearing his right arm's immaterial pathways through attribute-less ring strain sent a phantom pang of agonizing heat down his brachial nerves.
Every minute you linger here burns daylight. I need you out of this room.
Cyril, however, merely beamed, completely blind to the calculation running inches from his face.
"Don't be so modest, mentor—I'm happy to help!" Cyril scooped up the dry woolens and darted behind the wash partition. "Just give me a minute to finish changing!"
The partition door clicked shut.
I just have to finish packing before he finishes changing.
Arthur moved.
The gentle, leisurely gait vanished. Operating with the chilling, frictionless economy of the Nameless Arts, Arthur became a blur of silent kinetic efficiency. His hands swept across the desk. Calipers, ink bottles, and charcoal slates were secured into velvet-lined slots without a single clatter of wood or glass. In three strides, he folded the sparse garments from the foot of the cot, slotted them into the interior compartment of the trunk, and drew the brass latches down with twin, muted snaps.
Seven seconds.
He pivoted to the desk, sliding open the left-hand drawer to ensure nothing had slipped into the joinery. Empty. He pulled the bottom right cabinet door open.
Arthur went motionless.
Resting alone on the dark grain of the shelf floor was a small, crudely whittled wooden amulet, strung on a frayed hemp cord.
The air seized in Arthur's chest.
His eyes locked onto the rough, unpolished cedar carving. It was an artifact from a dead life. He had shoved it into the back of this drawer during the blur of his first week back in society and forgotten it entirely.
For one hollow, suspended breath, the synthetic fortress cracked. The phantom scent of ozone, crushed limestone, and his brother's cooling blood seemed to bleed out from the wood.
A sharp latch clicked from the wash partition.
"I'm done!"
The door swung open. Cyril stepped out, the black uniform trousers slightly loose at his ankles, sleeves rolled cleanly at the wrists as he tugged the high collar straight.
In the span of a heartbeat—smooth, fluid, and utterly devoid of erratic movement—Arthur's scarred right hand closed over the wooden pendant, sliding it deep into his trousers pocket.
Cyril stepped into the center of the chamber, looking around in open-mouthed astonishment.
The desk was bare. The cot was stripped. The trunk stood upright on the flagstones, sealed and strapped, Arthur's hand resting lightly upon its leather grip.
Cyril blinked, his jaw dropping as he pointed an index finger at the vacant surface. "You're… also done."
Arthur turned, the tranquil, saintly smile settling seamlessly across his face like pristine silk.
"Yep!"
A crisp mid-afternoon wind swept across the First Sector's grand promenade, rustling the high ornamental hedges that lined the limestone path. In the distance, rising like an impenetrable precipice against the sky, loomed the quarter-hectometer wall of dark volcanic ashlar dividing the student sectors from the restricted staff grounds of Sector Six. The massive iron portcullises of the checkpoint gleamed under the pale sunlight.
Arthur walked at an easy, leisurely pace, his single leather suitcase carried effortlessly in his left hand, leaving his dominant right hand loose and unencumbered.
He glanced sideways at the boy walking beside him, observing the way Cyril's gaze flickered between the soaring spires, the distant aqueducts arcing across the sky, and the uniformed students passing them by.
"So, what do you think about the Academy?" Arthur asked casually, pitching his voice to invite confidences. "Pretty vibrant, right?"
"Yeah," Cyril answered softly. His eyes followed a pair of second-year wind mages gliding across a low stone balustrade. "Everything's really colorful and fun—nothing like Grenfell Village."
Then, the easy bounce in Cyril's step slowed. The bright, cheerful warmth that usually anchored his face faltered, slipping into a quiet, shadowed stillness that looked unnatural on a boy his age.
"But it's a bit lonely, isn't it?" Cyril murmured, his fingers curling lightly around the hem of his new black coat. "Miss Agellid said that I won't be able to return for five years. Five years without Old Man Ward."
Arthur's stride never broke, but his internal diagnostic immediately flagged the remark.
Old Man Ward.
That is the second time he mentioned that name.
Arthur filed the name deep into his mind palace, cross-referencing it against the missing dossiers of the Holy Kingdom's rogue ascetics.
A person of extreme interest. I'll have to investigate him in the future.
Cyril looked up, his crimson eyes clear, vulnerable, and completely unguarded as he sought his mentor's counsel.
"Is it normal to feel this way?"