At night, the Obsidian Academy's infirmary felt far more suffocating and smelled much more sterile than during the day. The blue light from the aether lamps outside bled through the window, deepening the cracks in the white stone walls. The sharp stench of aether salve dominating the room burned Vane's lungs.
Vane sat up in his infirmary bed. Two beds down, behind heavy white curtains, Caelum's wheezing breaths could be heard. Elian had fallen asleep in the chair next to the bed, his head drooping against his chest; the brass pocket watch in his relaxed grip looked like it would slip through his fingers at any second.
Vane slowly unwrapped the coarse linen bandages on his right arm. The greenish salve the healers applied had numbed his skin, but the bruises still spread up to his elbow like a sickly web. Biting down on a clean strip of cloth, he tightly re-wrapped his arm. Physical pain was the only thing keeping his mind sharp.
Lyra Corvus... Vane thought. The faint scent of chamomile—his mother's scent—left behind after that emerald-eyed girl departed was clouding his mind. Vane couldn't understand why she helped him. That familiar intonation when she called him "sweetie" wasn't affection; it was a surgical strike aimed right at his weakest point. Did Lyra truly see him as an ally, or was she just watching him like a lab rat to see if he could survive in the dark?
This could absolutely be a trap, his rational inner voice whispered. But the secrets I might find on that Censored Floor could be the only weapon that keeps me alive in this academy. Rather than waiting to be hunted in ignorance, it's worth taking the risk to learn the truth.
Vane slipped out of bed silently. He threw on the academy's black night cloak. Turning the doorknob without letting the mechanism make a single click, he melted into the shadows.
At night, the academy felt like the internal organs of a massive metal beast. The brass pipes in the corridors throbbed with hot steam. As Vane crossed the bridge cutting over the courtyard, he spotted the mechanical hounds patrolling below; the red beams from their lens-eyes tore through the dark like blades. Relying on his hunter instincts, he held his breath, freezing like a statue, and didn't move a muscle until the hounds had moved on.
After a tense half-hour, he reached the Underground Archive. When he descended to the very bottom floor, that dead zone where even the hum of the ventilation cut off, he was met by a massive slab of black metal. There was no handle; only a circular recess bearing the emblem of the Ten Pillars.
Vane looked at his pale hand. A bitter smile crept onto his lips. "It only opens with the blood of the Ten Pillars," Lyra had said. He might be the bastard of the palace, the "aetherless" mud-rat of the Academy, but the ancient blood of the First Pillar, King Vorian's cursed legacy, flowed through his veins.
He summoned his rusted dagger and sliced open his right palm. He pressed his bleeding hand against the metal recess. The moment the door sensed the noble resonance in his blood, the blue light shifted into a blinding golden-yellow. The heavy mechanical bolts unlocked with a loud clank.
Vane slipped inside and shut the door. This was the Censored Floor. Every atrocity the Pillars had erased from history to protect their image of "perfection" was kept here. His eyes caught a pale, leather-bound book resting inside a black glass display case. The symbol on its cover was identical to the one on his dagger: Three interlocking crescents.
He turned the pages of the book with trembling fingers. The text wasn't in the standard language, but his mind translated it automatically:
"The Daughters of Nocturne are the dark voids created by the universe as a counter to the glory of aether. They do not merely devour energy; they convert it into the primary fuel for the dark craft coursing through their veins (Nocturne Arts). Aether, in the hands of a witch, is a source of devastating magic."
Vane's breath hitched as he read the warning that followed:
"However, the human body is a finite vessel. If a witch absorbs aether beyond her soul's capacity and fails to expel it by weaving it into magic, the absorbed power accumulates within. This unchecked energy causes a horrific explosion that tears apart the host's body and mind from the inside out. Witches are doomed to drown in their own power."
Vane saw a final note scribbled beneath those lines:
"The only way to delay this madness and the detonation is for the biological mother to place a seal on the soul weapon using her own blood. Oxidized Blood (Rust) acts as a plug that chokes the weapon's stomach. If the rust breaks, the black hole awakens. This seal will only crack if repeatedly hammered by the pure aether attacks of the Pillars."
The book slipped from Vane's hands and hit the floor. He remembered his mother's burning hands as she grabbed his blade on the night of his awakening, and her whispering, "I'm sorry, my son."
Mom didn't seal my weapon with rust because she hated me, but to stop the monster inside from blowing me to pieces, Vane realized, filled with sheer horror. Caelum's attack was the first crack in that seal. If he absorbed any more Pillar energy without learning how to use it, he would literally explode from the inside out in his next fight.
Under the flickering light of the gas lamp, Vane stared at his hands. Now, he needed the energy of those Pillar heirs not just for revenge, but to survive. He had to feed on them like a parasite—but he also had to learn how to vomit that energy back out before he detonated.