Belfray’s POV

  “That was…” I muttered, still slightly shaken after that show of a ceremony. “Something. I didn’t think he would plant that many flags on the back of his only disciple. I should inform the Grand Marshal—”

  “Don’t,” Radek said without looking at me, focused solely on the body mirror that reflected a false man’s beauty. It wasn’t realistic at all, and definitely unreasonable that he decided to play a young Archmage as a centuries-old monster. “We’ve agreed that we will only notify her in between the reports if the matter is more than what Young Master could handle. Our Lady has enough on her plate already.”

  “I know, but you’ve seen those looks,” I countered, banging one leg against the side wall again and again, finding the odd cracking noises from my knees a welcoming distraction. “His false cousins won’t tolerate his existence. They will make a move right away.”

  “That was the expectation,” Radek said, sliding an annoying finger down across his new jawline. “Can’t believe I used to look like this. Women were lucky I was too caught up in Empire business to actually give them a glance. It just wouldn’t have been fair at all, eh? The irresistible charm of a Heart Mage, and I sure have wasted it.”

  “He’s not going to do anything to protect him,” I said, ignoring the bastard’s remarks and instead focusing on the real matter at hand. “Masters aren’t allowed to interfere with conflicts between students. Young Master’s going to be all alone against those Dravian falsebloods. What are we going to do?”

  “We’re going to do as planned. Let him handle it,” Radek said. “And I don’t believe those kids will try the bloody path right away. Like many others, they will try to hassle him to their side. They will try to buy him first.”

  “Young Master is as greedy as his Mother, but there’s a steadiness about him that reminds me of the Emperor. After all the things I’ve taught him personally, he wouldn’t be swayed by mere riches,” I said, shaking my head. “Which is precisely why I’m worried.”

  “Or…” Radek finally turned, his eyes shining with a young man’s splendor, his expression as haughty and arrogant as one might expect from a man of his looks. “You’re just feeling cranky because I got all the attention while you’ve only made a momentary spectacle that was met with a muted response. I’ve told you keeping to your old ways would be stupid. And to think you still kept that ugly beard…”

  “There’s nothing wrong with my beard!” I said, stroking my long, gray beard. That was simply an old lesson that had stuck with me from the Brotherhood. When occasion demanded a disguise, you always added more hair instead of relieving yourself of the most basic tool at your disposal. “And stop with this senseless blabbering. I’m telling you that this is a big problem!”

  “It’s not,” Radek said with a shrug. “They don’t allow senior students to meddle with the first years anyway. There’s a code for it. If anyone wants to take a piece from Young Master, they have no other choice but to use their kids for that. I’m confident in our genius’s capabilities. He can take a bunch of Silver Rank fools.”

  “They have the numbers!”

  “And Young Master will find himself a flock, surely,” Radek said. “Don’t you remember how it was when we were young?”

  “What do you mean?” I scowled.

  “We used to dream of a lot of things. Big things,” Radek said, smiling strangely. “And those dreams almost always involved runes in some way. That’s an inevitability, isn’t it? To become the best in the Planar System, you have to have a Runemaster’s favor. How old were you when you first got your runes?”

  “I was…” I frowned deeply as an old memory flickered before my eyes. “Thirty?”

  “Thirty-two, right after you were seen fit to become a Planar Knight’s squire,” Radek said. “I was twenty-seven, and I was the youngest Diamond Mage in the Palace.”

  “So you’re saying…”

  “These kids are sixteen years old,” Radek nodded. “And they will have a real Runemaster sleeping by their side. This will be an unprecedented opportunity for them. A miracle, I daresay, for those who are fortunate enough to be placed in the same dorm as Young Master. If he can make use of his talent, he could gather himself an army against the children of great powers.”

  “That…” I swallowed. “That doesn’t feel enough.”

  Radek sighed loudly. “You’re being too protective of him again. This is supposed to be a teaching experience. Keep pampering him like a baby, and then we’ll have a pompous man-child as a Young Master. He has to learn the real world. We’ll give him space.”

  “But—”

  “No buts,” Radek said. “Do as I say, or I’ll have your ass whipped for insubordination.”

  “You wouldn’t dare.” I glared at him. “And who’s going to kick my ass here? Do you think those academics can—”

  “I have the Headmaster’s ear,” Radek scoffed. “A word from me, and then you’ll find yourself hanging bare-ass by some Dimensional Pit. Keep to your word and stay away from the Young Master. Don’t turn this into a family crisis. I’ve already made some adjustments to ensure he wouldn’t spend his first night alone.”

  “You did?” My eyes widened. “What sort of adjustments?”

  “I’m not going to tell you,” Radek said with a smile, then turned and exited the room.

  I balled my fists, angry at the fact that he had a point, disoriented because I had to leave Young Master alone. Alone! He was a child, even though he didn’t look like it. His training might have had him grow into a fine young man, but still, he was eleven years old, and I couldn’t help but worry about him.

  There was no other way, though. That, I was aware of. I had to suffer the reality of being in the same place as him, separated by what felt like worlds between us.

  …..

  Leo’s POV

  It took some time for me to digest the things I’d just experienced in the Hall of Heralds. Some time and a long walk across the buildings, during which I was handed a key to my dorm room, the official uniform of the Academy, and the badge that belonged to the Hall I was assigned to.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  “Can’t believe it…” Valar muttered, perhaps for the thousandth time beside me. “You’re really a Runemaster?”

  “It appears so,” Keralth said, holding in his arms the folded clothes on which rested a badge looking exactly like the one I was given. “If he’s taken as a disciple by the Twelfth Concordance, then that means he is a Runemaster.”

  “You think I’m a fool? I already know that!” Valar glared at him fiercely. He was, like Keralth, assigned to the Hall of Dreadmares like me. “But how? I always reckoned Runemasters are old people. Never heard of one as young as him.”

  “People grow old in time,” Keralth said. “Before that, however, they are born first. Runemasters are people like us. The fact that you haven’t heard of one as young as him doesn’t change that. I’m sure they exist.”

  “I will have you taste my axe if you keep at it,” Valar grunted through clenched teeth, and was about to rip his weapon free from its sheath when I gave a long sigh.

  “Please,” I said, my head aching as if I had just devoured two icicles in a second. “If you want to kill each other, do it in a room. We already have enough eyes on us.”

  That was true on so many levels. The huge crowd of first years might have already split into different groups after the ceremony, since each Hall had its own dorm, but the ones who were assigned to the Hall of Dreadmares kept giving me looks.

  I could see curiosity in those eyes, which wasn’t all too bad. Some others, though, stared at me with such intensity that you’d think I’d offended them with my mere presence. They hated my guts, just as I had feared. People didn’t like talent. At least, the petty ones didn’t, to my knowledge.

  If that had been the end of it, I could’ve carried on. Except, even the teachers acted oddly toward me. Before I exited the Hall of Heralds with the others, I had a dozen of them jog to my side to ask my name or if there was anything in particular that I wanted from them.

  The hell did they expect? Did they think I’d be grateful for the attention, ignoring the very fact that they were simply caught in a race to curry favor with this little, popped-out-of-nowhere Runemaster from faraway lands? How did that make sense?

  I wasn’t stupid. I wouldn’t let them get anywhere close to me before I actually learned more about them.

  After all, you had to pick your poison, right? Place your bets on the right cards. Not that normal teachers had any influence over a chosen’s life in the Creator’s Academy, but Keralth told me that there were rumors about secret gatherings happening behind the walls, supposedly carried out by these people.

  “Ain’t that a cape, though.” It didn’t take a second for Valar to refocus his gaze on my backside, where my recently delivered cape flapped gently in the wind. “Twelfth Concordance. Never heard much of them, either.”

  “It’s only the biggest Runemaster circle in the Planar System,” Keralth said, having long since grown accustomed to the ignorance of the company he was blessed with. “They mainly keep to themselves and refuse to work with any great powers. For that reason, Empires and Kingdoms hate them. They prove a constant variable they have to take into account during, say, big campaigns.”

  “So, what do they do, exactly? Do they just waltz in whenever they like?” I asked, genuinely curious.

  “Sort of.” Keralth nodded. “But since there are only about a dozen of them—nobody actually knows the true number—they’re mostly seen as absurdly strong hermits. We have one in this Academy. Your Master. They simply call him The Severer.”

  “Severer…” Valar seemed to enjoy the flavor that the word left on his tongue. “There ain’t nothing simple about that name.”

  “It’s because of his signature Rune,” Keralth said. “I’m not sure about the details, but my father told me The Severer has a Quasi-Paragon Rune that tracks the ones who utter his name. It’s something between Dimensional Magic and Chaos trickery. That’s why nobody dares to say his name, because once you do, he’ll know.”

  “Then what?” I found myself asking.

  Keralth shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “That’s a bit anticlimactic,” I muttered. But I guessed it made sense that Keralth wouldn’t know something like that. An info-bank he might be, but he was still a sixteen-year-old Mage, just one with a curious mind.

  “It feels so weird,” I continued as we turned another corner, out into a wide corridor adorned with candelabras hanging from the walls. “Not knowing your Master’s name, I mean.”

  “I barely know any teachers in this place,” Valar said. “You’ll get something of a word soon, I reckon. Don’t worry too much about it.”

  “Yeah. Easy for you to say.” I pinched the bridge of my nose as I looked at him. “Easy for you to do just about anything, I’d believe.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Ask Keralth.” I shrugged. “I’m sure he’s already prepared an answer for you.”

  Off we went, deep into the Hall of Dreadmares, Valar and Keralth bickering back and forth, the former working himself unnecessarily up and down, the latter giving him honest, genuine answers that only further enraged him. I, on the other hand, tried to take in the peculiar sights the Academy kept providing and enjoyed, to a small degree, the novelty of them.

  There was an archaic feeling to the place. That much was to be expected. The walls were worn with age, illuminated by the warm candlelight that flickered gently across the hallways. Up on the ceiling, the frescoes looked too obscure to be made out, stricken by time and worn at the edges. They were colorful, though—you had to give them that.

  “Looks like some sort of beast,” I muttered to myself as our group, easily over a hundred strong, wound across the stretch with our Hall Master in the front. Then I gestured at the paintings. “It has wings and a beak. Is that a bird?”

  “A Dreadmare is not a bird,” Keralth said. “It’s an old Chaos Beast born from the very fabric of the Planar System. It’s said that the last of its kind was exterminated by the Horde centuries ago. During the peak of their power, they could supposedly prove a match for the Paragons in the Depthless Void.”

  “Those bastard bugs,” Valar muttered.

  “Never seen one myself,” I said, perking up at the mention of the mysterious creatures that I kept hearing about. “Are they strong?”

  “Not much, if you can catch them alone,” Valar said. “But that ain’t never going to happen. If there’s a bug, there’s always a swarm behind it. It’s what makes them dangerous.”

  I nodded absently before the main body of our group halted. It seemed as though our journey had finally come to an end.

  “You have the numbers on your keys,” the Hall Master announced with a booming voice. He was a middle-aged man with a towering body, and he didn’t seem too interested in dealing with the first years, judging by how indifferent he appeared toward us. Without Keralth, I wouldn’t even have learned his name, but at least I knew he was strong. “Go to your rooms. Take a rest. Tomorrow at dawn, you’ll have the first semester’s schedule delivered to your doorsteps.”

  “That’s it?” I asked in a low voice. “He doesn’t even give an introductory speech?”

  “We can find our way on our own,” Valar said with a shrug. He seemed, all things considered, pretty adamant about keeping his confident attitude. “We have the whole day ahead of us.”

  “I have the number 17,” Keralth said, looking down at the key clutched in his hand.

  I checked mine. “It says… Wow. It’s 17 for me, too…”

  “Ain’t that a coincidence!” Valar said suddenly, and showed me his key. Carved on top of the bronze thing was the number “17” as well, which meant that somehow all three of us had been put into the same room.

  It was strange.

  Each room was for three students, and I’d just met these guys. I didn’t know anything about them before today, and now I was supposed to live with these two? It wasn’t that I didn’t like them. True, Keralth probably had something wrong with his brain, considering he took everything we said quite literally, and Valar wasn’t the most level-headed person I’d ever met, either. He seemed to have a thing for aggression, not to mention his whole obsession with being someone like my Mother.

  What about me?

  Well, I was a former shut-in recently turned into a Runemaster of sorts. I had social anxiety. I experienced mild claustrophobic attacks now and then, and I hated people with passion back in my first life. Even though I made a promise to myself that I’d change for the better with this second chance, this was simply… a lot to process for me.

  Then again, change was never supposed to be an easy thing.

  “We should go,” Keralth said, gesturing at the slowly dispersing crowd. “Our room should be in the west wing of the building.”

  We looked at each other for a long second. Then, under Keralth’s guidance, we made for what would be our home in this Academy.

  …..