CHAPTER 79— Morality(4)
Inside a bright, sun-drenched campus cafe, Sarina sat with a relaxed and elegant posture, slowly taking a sip from her ceramic coffee cup.
Rowan sat directly across from her. He stared down into his untouched cup, his expression sullen and vacant, looking entirely like a boy who had just encountered a ghost.
"So... last night, you talked to someone," Sarina prompted softly, lowering her cup.
Rowan slowly nodded, not daring to meet her eyes. "Yeah."
"And when you got out of your room this morning to go meet him... nobody was there?"
"Yeah..."
Sigh...
Sarina let out a long breath, briefly averting her gaze to watch the students milling about outside through the large glass window. But her attention quickly snapped back to Rowan and his haunted demeanor. She placed her hands flat on the table and stood up.
"Wanna go for a walk?"
Rowan looked up at her, hesitated for a second, and then stood up as well.
Minutes later, the two of them were strolling down the quiet stone pathways of the central school grounds. The cool morning breeze brushed through Rowan's messy hair, offering a mild, refreshing chill.
"Take a few deep breaths," Sarina instructed gently, keeping pace beside him.
Rowan closed his eyes, drawing in a long, slow breath through his nose and releasing it steadily.
"Feeling any better?"
"Yeah... much better."
Rowan admitted, his shoulders finally losing some of their rigid tension. A faint sense of peace began to settle over him, pushing back the lingering dread of the morning.
As they walked, their path crossed with a familiar open courtyard, causing them both to halt.
A short distance away, Ritvik was awkwardly hoisting and rearranging a series of heavy stone flower pots. Hearing footsteps, his eyes flickered up, widening in surprise when he spotted them.
"Oh! Hey, guys," he called out, quickly standing up and wiping his palms on his uniform trousers.
"What are you doing out here?" Sarina asked, crossing her arm.
"Oh, this? Well..."
Ritvik let out a groan, launching into an animated explanation. Apparently, the chaotic rampage Seraphine had gone on yesterday—scorching half the corridor in her blind fury to hunt him down—hadn't gone entirely unnoticed by the faculty. Several upperclassmen had filed official complaints about the property damage.
Instructor Valeria had hauled them both into her office that morning, slapping them with mandatory disciplinary detention. Part of their punishment was manual labor: repairing and rearranging all the campus decorations and flora they had accidentally (or intentionally) turned to ash.
"So you're stuck on detention duty," Sarina summarized with a dry expression.
Ritvik slumped his shoulders dramatically, covering his face with his hands.
"Ugh... I still don't understand why I'm the one being punished when I was just running for my life!"
Sarina glanced around the courtyard, eyeing the neatly lined flower pots. "Where is she, anyway? Didn't you both get assigned the same punishment?"
"Oh, she went to the storage shed to haul more soil."
Ritvik whispered, casting a paranoid look around the empty courtyard as if expecting a pillar of fire to erupt from the ground at any second. He leaned in closer to Rowan and Sarina, lowering his voice.
"Honestly, working with her is terrifying. Even though she promised not to burn me on sight, every time she looks at my direction, it feels like I'm about to spontaneously combust into fine ash."
Rowan and Sarina stared at him in total, unblinking silence.
"What? I'm not even exaggerating!"
When neither of them reacted, Ritvik sighed heavily. But as his eyes drifted back to Rowan, his theatrical panic instantly vanished, replaced by genuine confusion.
"Wait, what's wrong with you now? You looked a little more human yesterday, but today you look like a walking corpse again. Ouch—"
Sarina promptly delivered a sharp, warning strike to Ritvik's ribs with her fist.
"What'd I say?!" Ritvik hissed, doubling over.
"Ah..." Rowan rubbed the back of his neck, feeling a fresh wave of embarrassment wash over him.
Hesitantly, piece by piece, Rowan began to explain what had happened the previous night—how he had spent hours unable to sleep, and how a random voice from beyond the wall had talked him down, argued philosophy with him, and convinced him that surviving a battle wasn't a sin.
"Wait. You were talking to someone in the middle of the night? Through a solid wall?"
Ritvik asked, blinking hard.
Rowan nodded slowly.
"And he said he couldn't sleep because you were shouting all night?"
"Hah?" Ritvik's jaw dropped in absolute bewilderment. "What are you talking about? You weren't shouting at all yesterday!"
"Huh? No, you were sleeping in the lower bunk, so you wouldn't—"
"Hey, if your shout was loud enough to wake up a guy in another room, there is zero chance I—sleeping literally two feet below you—wouldn't have heard it!"
Ritvik argued, waving his hands.
"Besides, what are you even talking about? There's nothing beyond the left wall of our beds except the open hallway!"
The remaining color drained entirely from Rowan's face.
"Who... who was I talking to last night, then?"
"I mean... are you sure you weren't just fast asleep and having a weird dream? Because I swear on my life, you didn't make a peep all night. You were completely out cold."
Hearing Ritvik's matter-of-fact tone, Rowan felt the ground drop out from under him.
He replayed the crystal-clear memories of the night before—the gruff voice, the harsh wisdom, the comforting reassurance that he hadn't done anything wrong. But Ritvik was right. There was no room on the left side of their dorm.
"Rowan,"
Sarina said softly, stepping forward and placing a reassuring hand on his shoulder.
Before she could finish, Rowan grabbed his head with both hands, stumbling backward before dropping heavily into a crouch against the ground.
"Hey! What's happening to him now?!" Ritvik panicked, jumping back from the flower pots.
Rowan dug his fingers into his hair, his mind fracturing under a fresh wave of panic.
'Why? Why is all of this happening to me? Why did I ever choose to come to a cursed, messed-up place like this?'
"Rowan," Sarina repeated, her voice firm.
:I should have just stayed in the forest with my parents. I should have stuck to chopping wood. Why... why... why?!'
Thwack.
Suddenly, a sharp, clean flick snapped against his forehead.
"Ouch!" Rowan winced, lifting his head.
Sarina stood over him, her index finger still extended from the flick. Her dark eyes were burning with a fierce, unwavering intensity.
"Get up, Rowan."
Rowan looked up at her, rubbing his stinging forehead.
"Are you really going to fall apart and give up just because of one weird hallucination?"
Sarina demanded, her voice cutting cleanly through the frantic noise echoing inside his head.
"Don't forget why you came to this academy."
Sarina's words hung heavily in the crisp morning air, slicing through the swirling panic like a blade.
Rowan blinked, his hand dropping slowly from his forehead. The chaotic, spiraling noise in his brain suddenly ground to a halt.
He looked up, meeting her unyielding gaze, and then glanced past her to see Ritvik watching him with an unusual, expression of genuine worry.
'Why did I come here?'
The question echoed in the quiet chambers of his mind, instantly washing away the ghost voices, the blood-soaked memories of Rune Island, and the overwhelming weight of the academy.
It brought forward a single, sharp image: the heavy, worn leather bag slung over his shoulder back in his dorm, packed to the brim with old, fading letters.
Letters written by an older brother who had smiled, trained, and walked these exact same corridors—before vanishing into a dark mystery that no one else cared to solve.
He hadn't come to Aetheria for luxury, or prestige, or even to enjoy the bright, idyllic promises of an elite education.
He came to find out what happened to his brother.
If he broke down right here, letting a phantom voice in the night or the lingering guilt of a battlefield break his spirit, he would never uncover the truth.
Sarina stood tall above him, offering no overly sweet coddling or fragile pity. Instead, she provided the exact anchor he desperately needed.
"You're a lot stronger than you give yourself credit for,"
Sarina added, her tone softening just a fraction as she extended a firm hand toward him.
"A weird trick of a sleep-deprived mind or a strange dormitory layout isn't going to break you. Don't lose sight of what actually matters."
Rowan stared at her outstretched hand for a long moment.
Slowly, the crushing tension melted out of his shoulders. The sickly pallor on his face faded, replaced by a quiet, resolute determination.
He reached up and grasped her hand. Sarina pulled him firmly to his feet, helping him dust off his uniform jacket.
Rowan took a deep, steady breath—a real one, filling his lungs completely.
"Yeah," Rowan whispered, his voice steady and clear for the first time in days. "You're right. I haven't forgotten."
A faint, approving smile touched the corner of Sarina's lips, though she quickly masked it behind her usual cool composure.
"Good. Because if you pass out on me, I am not carrying you back to the dorms."
Nearby, Ritvik let out a loud, theatrical sigh of relief, leaning heavily against a freshly arranged flower pot.
"Oh, thank goodness," Ritvik muttered, quickly grabbing another pot before an instructor could spot him slacking.
"Because if you collapsed here, I was fully prepared to use your unconscious body as a physical barricade against Seraphine."
A genuine, quiet chuckle escaped Rowan's lips. The heavy, suffocating fog that had choked his mind all morning finally parted, leaving behind a sharp, clear sky.
Sarina rolled her eyes, though a small, amused smile lingered on her face.
"Get back to your punishment, Ritvik. We're heading out."
As Sarina and Rowan turned and began walking back down the stone pathway together, the cool morning breeze washed over them once more.
Rowan glanced sideways one last time at the quiet brick walls of the dormitory block behind them.
Whether the voice last night had been the trick of an exhausted mind, a bizarre acoustic echo, or something far stranger, Rowan knew one thing for certain: it wouldn't paralyze him anymore.
'Whether that voice last night was real, a dream, or something else entirely... it doesn't matter,' Rowan thought, clenching his hands into steady fists at his sides.
'I survived. I made it through the worst. And I'm going to keep moving forward.'
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CHAPTER ENDS