William stepped into the professor's office, the heavy wooden door closing behind him with a dull thump. The air was thick with the scent of old parchment, dried ink, and melted wax. Bookshelves curved along the stone walls, and dozens of scrolls, tomes, and fragments lay scattered across the desk in a carefully orchestrated chaos.
Aurus awaited him, seated with his fingers intertwined and a sharp gaze beneath the faint glow of a silver candelabrum.
"I've prepared some material for you," he said, nodding toward a side table. "Take a look."
William approached calmly. On the table rested several strips of yellowed leather—clearly the tanned hides of ancient beasts—engraved with symbols that pulsed faintly with mana, imperceptible to the human eye. Volgaris. The strokes were harsh, aggressive, like open wounds. Beside them lay other scripts, softer, almost melodic. Remika.
He examined them one by one, narrowing his eyes. Letting his fingers hover just above the surface, he showed interest without actually touching them.
"This… is different from what we saw in class," he murmured, feigning effort as he read.
"It is," Aurus replied, rising to his feet. "The first text is in Volgaris. You've already tasted its power. The second is Remika, the common tongue of magic. That is what I'll teach you."
William tilted his head. "I thought we would study Volgaris."
Aurus's voice dropped a tone. "You're not ready yet. Volgaris is dangerous, unstable, fragmented. It reacts. Remika, on the other hand, is stable, structured. You must master it first. From now on, remember—words are not as safe as they seem."
William nodded slowly. "Understood."
He didn't need to pretend ignorance with Remika. Angel was already translating everything directly into his vision. Still, he moved his lips silently, letting his eyes drift over the text as if trying to decipher it with great difficulty.
Aurus seemed satisfied. He leaned forward, took one of the Remika scrolls, and spread it across the table before them.
"This script," he said, "is hardly ever taught. Not even among nobles. What we see in class is a diluted version. Repetition and surface-level understanding. But what we'll do here… will go deeper."
He spoke with a strange reverence, his fingers brushing the parchment as if it were a sacred relic. He began explaining the grammatical structure: prefixes to command elements, suffixes to control direction. William listened, taking notes slowly but steadily. Angel recorded everything.
And then… something changed.
When Aurus unrolled another document—older, darker, written entirely in Remika—he began to recite it, his voice sounding like an ancient song. It was as if a distant Celtic choir echoed faintly, pulling William's mind into a trance. Then, Angel's voice struck sharply in his mind.
"Unknown wave detected. Activating defense protocols."
William blinked.
"Protocols failed." "Alert—"
The message cut off.
He froze, pen suspended in midair. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the parchment ripple.
Not physically. Not visibly.
But something within the text moved—a ripple in the mana. A wave. Silent. Imperceptible. And yet, it reached into his mind like a whisper through bone.
He blinked again.
The room dimmed slightly. The edges of his vision softened. The lines on the parchment seemed to twist, glow, writhe into patterns that weren't written. Shapes that meant something. Symbols that didn't just speak—they commanded.
He held his breath. His hand stopped moving.
Aurus was watching him.
Silent.
Still.
His hands rubbed together slowly, and a faint smile tugged at the corner of his lips.
"Keep reading," he whispered. "You're doing well."
But William couldn't answer.
His mind vibrated. Something had touched him. Not a thought. Not a spell. A presence.
From the parchment.
Inside the ink.
Behind the words.
Aurus no longer hid his smile. His eyes, usually cold and calculating, gleamed with a mix of expectation and almost animalistic anticipation.
And then… it happened.
William's mind was ripped from reality. As if his consciousness had been drawn into the scroll, he was cast into a strange, unreal plane. Dense, gray mist enveloped him entirely, so thick he couldn't even see his hands. There was no sound. No direction. Only the oppressive, silent fog.
For an eternal moment, he floated there, disoriented, searching for something… anything.
Then something shifted.
The mist parted just enough to reveal a strange figure before him. It wasn't a being or a body, but a white mask. Smooth. Expressionless. Floating in the air as if by sheer will. The mask had only two eyes—no mouth, no nose. And yet from those hollow eyes radiated a spectral energy, an overwhelming presence.
William stepped toward it, drawn by a strange impulse. He raised a hand, hesitating… and just before he touched it, the mask jerked sharply and looked at him.
It had no eyes. But it looked at him.
The mask cracked, forming a kind of mouth—a grin not of joy but of mockery, a contorted sneer. A sound emerged, terrifying and otherworldly, as if every sound in the world were being rewound into a cacophony of whispers and wails.
And in that instant—everything shattered.
William was torn from the trance with a choked scream, gasping as if drowning. His body trembled violently, pupils dilated. He fell backward, convulsing, as if his mind were trying to escape something his senses couldn't process.
Aurus stepped back, visibly startled—perhaps even afraid for a moment. His expression tightened. He hadn't expected this.
"William!" he shouted, dropping the scrolls as he rushed forward. "Breathe! Stay with me!"
But William didn't hear him. His body jerked uncontrollably, teeth clenched, hands clenched into claws. He seemed on the verge of a seizure.
Aurus shouted, trying to call William back to consciousness, but there was no response.
William's body was frozen—paralyzed—leaving only the memory of that mask.
That eyeless gaze.
And a voice that was never spoken… but left etched in the deepest part of his soul.