Hermes was conflicted.
He didn't want to run. Running felt wrong in a way he couldn't fully articulate — cowardly, wasteful, a quiet surrender to circumstances he hadn't exhausted every option against yet. But wanting to stay and being able to stay were two very different things and no matter how he arranged the facts they kept arriving at the same conclusion.
He had tried the headmaster. He had delivered the vision with as much gravity as he could manage and Roland had filed it away under unlikely and moved on. He had no combat training. He had a fist sized fireball that took him three minutes to prepare. Tomorrow thirty three monsters were going to attack a castle full of people and he genuinely could not see what he was supposed to do about any of it.
Run, he decided. Tonight. But until then — learn everything I can.
He looked at the professor writing runes in the air across the room, moving between students with quiet efficiency, and thought about what he had felt watching that demonstration earlier. The certainty that he should be able to do the same thing. Not someday — now. Ars Scriptoria was the Art of Writing and writing runes in the air with soul essence was, at its core, exactly that.
He should attempt it.
He closed his eyes and turned his attention inward, feeling for his soul essence the way the book had described — and felt something else activate instead.
Ars Homuncularis.
He paused.
Then, slowly, it made sense. Ars Homuncularis allowed him to create souls from his own soul. Of course it would also allow him to perceive and manipulate soul essence — you could not shape something you could not first feel. The attribute had simply responded to what he was looking for before he consciously knew he was looking for it.
He followed the feeling inward.
It was there, filling his body like water fills a vessel — present everywhere, warm in a way that wasn't quite physical. But some of it was missing. A third, roughly. Depleted by the spells he had cast earlier. Which meant at full capacity he had enough for perhaps twelve spells of this complexity before running dry. Currently seven or eight. Not ideal.
Two runes combined into a moving ball of water was not going to save anyone tomorrow. These were exercises. Warming up. The magical equivalent of learning to hold a pen before anyone had mentioned the existence of sentences.
Enough, he thought. Attempt it.
He concentrated his soul essence and began drawing it toward his fingertip — not pouring it outward but coaxing it, gathering it to a point the way you might squeeze ketchup from the neck of a bottle, slow and deliberate.
A tingling sensation built at his fingertip.
He held it there for a moment, then opened his eyes.
His fingertip was glowing. A bright, steady green, with small motes of light breaking off the edges and dissolving into nothing before they could fall.
The scratching of styluses on clay tablets stopped.
He didn't look up. He was wasting soul essence with every second he held this and he needed to move quickly. He raised his finger and began to trace the first stroke of the water rune in the air.
A gaze landed on him.
It was not like being looked at. It was heavier than that — a focused, probing attention that seemed less interested in his face than in something considerably deeper. It lasted only a moment before it withdrew. Hermes continued without breaking his concentration.
"STOP!"
He stopped. His frustration was immediate and genuine — he had been so close.
The professor crossed the room in four strides and stood over him with an expression that had abandoned sternness entirely in favour of something closer to alarm.
"Mr. Gaemond." His voice was lower than usual, controlled in the way that voices get when someone is actively preventing themselves from shouting. "I don't know how you managed that. But do not do it again. Do you understand me?"
Hermes looked up at him. "I—"
"You have a nascent soul core." The professor crouched to his level, which somehow made it worse. "What you just attempted — channelling soul essence directly through your body at that level of concentration — you could have damaged your soul foundations. Irreparably. At worst your soul core could have ruptured and you would have died." He held Hermes's gaze to make sure that last word landed properly. "I understand your frustrations. I do. But please. Trust that I will not let your talent go to waste. I will design a curriculum specifically for you — proper materials, proper guidance. Just don't do that again."
"I won't," Hermes said. "I promise. I'm sorry, I didn't realise—"
"That is fine." The professor straightened, some of his composure returning. He studied Hermes for a moment with an expression that had moved from alarm back toward something resembling reluctant awe. "The fact that you were able to attempt it at all and come that close to success — with a nascent soul core, no formal training in essence manipulation — is frankly extraordinary… and deeply irresponsible but extraordinary nonetheless. You should be proud."
"I see," Hermes said. "Thank you, professor."
The professor held his gaze for one more moment, then nodded and moved away.
Hermes sat with the information.
Nascent soul core.
He turned it over carefully. According to everything he knew, no one in their first nightmare should be capable of consciously manipulating their soul essence. The nightmare spell provided an imitation of awakening — enough to enhance the physical body, perhaps enough to cast spells through external means like carved runes, but not a true soul core. Conscious essence manipulation at this level required something real.
And yet every student in this room was casting spells. He had just watched one successfully materialise a fireball across the room. They all had soul cores — nascent ones, the professor had called them, which implied natural formation rather than anything the nightmare spell had provided.
This scenario predates the nightmare spell.
Of course it did. The spell sent dreamers into historical events — moments from the age of gods and daemons, eras long before the spell itself existed. The people here had developed their souls through the Sorcery of Names, the old way, the way Hope had intended when she gifted humanity with writing. Natural cultivation. Not the accelerated process by fire of the nightmare spell.
Which meant the body he had inherited in this scenario had a naturally formed nascent soul core. It made sense — there was no other explanation for how his attributes had functioned at all. Ars Scriptoria and Ars Homuncularis both required intricate soul essence manipulation. Without a real core they would have been completely inert.
The nightmare spell was fair after all. In its own deeply unhelpful way.
Though that still left the question of how he was supposed to defeat thirty three monsters with the capacity of a nascent core and two beginner runes.
He looked at his clay tablet.
Tonight, he reminded himself. Run tonight.