Thorne stepped out of the portal and into the crystal tower's main chamber, boots echoing on the glassy floor. The familiar coolness of the structure was a balm after the Red Waste's punishing heat, but his blood still burned.

He couldn't stop moving.

He paced, back and forth, shoulders loose and twitching with residual energy. His fingers sparked with invisible threads of aether, coiling and uncoiling as if unwilling to sleep.

He was grinning. Maybe even smiling too wide.

Marian stood in the middle of the chamber, silent, arms crossed, her expression unreadable. Her eyes hadn't left him since they arrived, not in awe now, but in consideration.

He could feel her trying to piece him together, and he didn't blame her. He couldn't piece himself together either.

"How do you feel?" she asked finally. "After all that?"

"Good," Thorne said, turning with a half-laugh. "Better than good. No fatigue. Not even a flicker."

That surprised even him. He should've been drained. The fight, the aether output, he should be on his knees.

He narrowed his eyes, calling up his status. Notifications blinked into his aether-vision, one after the other.

Primal Aether Manipulation: 42 → 43 Aether Burst: 20 → 22 Aether Surge: 29 → 31 Aether Lance: 5 → 8 Aether Barrage: 2 → 7 Aetheric Explosion: 3 → 5

"Ah," he said softly. "That explains it."

Marian tilted her head. "What?"

He shrugged, waving a hand. "Just leveled up a bunch of things. I put some points in Spirit when I leveled. Guess it helped."

Her expression didn't shift, but her silence grew heavier. She wasn't just watching, she was studying him. Maybe even trying to measure if he was still within reach, or already too far gone.

Thorne broke the moment, dropping into one of the chairs near the window and tossing his legs over the armrest.

"You've got that look again," he said. "Like you want to ask about my childhood trauma."

"I was going to ask," Marian said slowly, "if you ever feel overwhelmed. Like the aether wants to consume you."

Thorne met her gaze.

And deflected, with the easy arrogance that had kept him alive all these years.

"Only when I'm bored."

Marian didn't respond at first. She just stood there, arms still folded, face carved into something unreadable. Thorne knew that look. He'd seen it on assassins and spies alike, the expression of someone quietly recalculating the threat in the room.

He leaned back further in the chair, lacing his fingers behind his head. "You gonna keep staring, or should I strip so you can inspect me properly?"

"I'm serious, Thorne."

"So am I." He flashed her a grin, all teeth and nonchalance. "I've got nothing to hide."

She didn't smile back.

Instead, she moved to the window, gazing down into the tower's aetheric core. Pale, crackling light flowed in spirals through the structure, pulsing like a heartbeat. Her reflection in the crystal shimmered, thin, stretched, fragile.

"I don't think you understand what just happened out there," she said.

"I fought some monsters. I won. That's usually the part where people throw me a feast."

"You didn't just win." Her voice rose, sharp. "You dominated. You manipulated fire-aspected motes without filtering. You bent raw aether into forms I've never seen, and you converted ambient aspected energy just by being near it. That's not winning. That's rewriting the rules."

Thorne's grin faded, just a little.

Marian turned toward him.

"You've grown up hiding what you are. I get that. But you need to understand, whatever you are now, it's not just powerful. It's dangerous. You think you're in control because it feels easy. But it isn't. It's only pretending to be."

Thorne looked away, eyes trailing to the window. The Red Waste still flickered beyond the veil, endless and empty. He didn't want this conversation. Not now. Not after feeling so alive.

He stood and crossed the room, just to create some distance between him and Marian, he brushed his fingers along the aetherglass wall that shimmered beneath his touch, as if coming alive just by being near it.

"I don't need you to warn me," he said softly.

Marian raised a brow. "Then what do you need?"

"I need to breathe." He turned back to her, and for a flicker of a moment, the boy vanished and something older stared back. "I've spent most of my life crawling through shadows, pretending I was less. I'm not going back to that. Not after today."

Marian didn't flinch. But she did lower her voice.

"And if breathing burns the world?"

He said nothing.

She didn't press further. Instead, she sighed and crossed to the portal arch, tracing a sigil that lit up with her touch.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

"We're done for today," she said. "Rest. Eat. I'll find you again so that we can start your training properly."

Thorne watched her go, the excitement in his veins still simmering, unspent.

He wasn't tired.

He was alive.

The crystal tower shimmered, folding reality around itself as it anchored once more in the heart of Aetherhold. With a low hum and a ripple of displaced aether, the structure melded into the landscape, invisible to all but those who knew to look.

Thorne stepped out into the courtyard, the night cool and still around him. The skies above the academy were a blanket of aether-laced stars, casting a subtle glow across the flagstones.

He slipped his pendant back around his neck.

The transformation was immediate. The sharp, angular features of his Elderborn form faded, skin darkened slightly, hair lost its pale shimmer. To any observer, he was just another student, another noble-born mage in training.

He exhaled slowly.

No matter how many times he wore the disguise, it never felt like his face.

Still humming to himself, he wandered across the courtyard, hands in his pockets, eyes half-lidded with satisfaction. The thrill of the Red Waste still crackled under his skin. His fingers twitched with phantom echoes of power. He wanted to laugh again, to run, to challenge the nearest professor to a duel just for the hell of it.

It was intoxicating.

The courtyard was massive, sprawling like the open heart of Aetherhold. From here, one could glimpse the entire breadth of the floating fortress, the great halls and towers above, the shimmering rivers of aether threading through the air, and the dozens of gates that led to every facet of the citadel.

He was turning toward the central spire when he froze.

Movement.

Not a guard. Not a student sneaking to or from the archives.

A group.

Dozens, moving like a single body, fast, quiet, with military precision. Cloaks drawn high. Their boots didn't clack against stone. They were trained.

He vanished instantly.

Veil of Light and Shadow blurred his presence, bending light and sense around him, while Shadow Meld anchored him into the deeper folds of darkness, beyond sight or sound.

He crouched low behind a statue of Vaerlin the Stormbinder and watched.

They came from the southern gate, not the main entrance to the academy, but the one that led to the researcher's quarter. A second city, a fortress perched high above the cliffs where scholars, faculty, and their aides lived apart from the rest of the student body.

Thorne's eyes narrowed.

This wasn't a patrol. Not a student detachment or a campus warden shift.

These were battle mages.

Veterans, by the way they moved. Hardened by years in the field, their formations honed by repetition and urgency. Each one carried themselves like a weapon barely sheathed, robes reinforced with light armor, spell-bands glowing faintly across gauntlets and belts. Not a step was wasted. They moved like soldiers on a mission.

And they weren't alone.

They formed a tight ring, shoulder to shoulder, all facing outward. Protective. Defensive. There was something in the center of their formation. Someone. Hidden under layers of enchantment and spell-weaves, invisible to Thorne's eyes but unmistakable in how deliberately they were guarded.

Whoever it was, they didn't want anyone to see them. Not even for a heartbeat.

The lead mage, a tall woman with runes etched into the side of her shaved head, gestured sharply, and the group picked up speed. Their path veered away from the academy proper, toward the western fringe of the courtyard.

Thorne's gaze tracked them.

That wasn't the main entrance. Nor the bridge to the student dormitories. Nor the eastern gate that led to the stables, conservatories, and magical beast holdings. This gate was something else entirely, set into a low-arched wall of grey stone, barely visible unless you knew where to look.

A part of Aetherhold Thorne had never visited. Most students hadn't. It was whispered about, a private compound of towering halls, strange spires, and deeper laboratories, where experiments were conducted and discoveries kept under lock and key. It was not open to wandering eyes. Not even noble ones.

He narrowed his eyes and let his senses expand, softly, carefully, like threading a needle in the dark.

"…I told you this was a mistake," a woman hissed. "We should've waited for the upper passage. What if someone sees?"

"It's too late for regrets," another snapped. "The matrix was corrupted. We had no choice."

A third voice followed, younger and breathless. "Are you sure it was it? Maybe it was just a surge..."

"Surges don't whisper," a man growled. "They don't look at you with eyes that burn silver. That thing did something. I could feel it. In my bones."

A pause followed.

Then the venom hissed out like poison.

"Foul creature. Dustbone. They should never have been allowed to walk free. It's an abomination."

Thorne's heart lurched.

Dustbone.

The word carved through his thoughts like a jagged blade.

He hadn't heard it in years, not since he was a boy, hidden inside a noble's house, eavesdropping on drunken men sharing tales. One of them, a merchant, had whispered the tale of an elderborn, dragged in chains to Aetherhold, to be studied. Poked. Dissected.

He hadn't understood then.

But he did now.

He was staring at it, at them.

Not just researchers. Not scholars. Hunters. Agents of the deeper workings of Aetherhold. The ones who went out into the world to drag things back, beings too dangerous or too unique to be left alone. Beings like him.

And tonight, they had brought something home.

Something that had fought back.

Something they didn't fully control.

Thorne stayed perfectly still as the procession veered off, disappearing into the lesser paths of the courtyard, headed for the cliffs and chambers carved deep into the mountain's heart, where guests and monsters were kept out of sight.

They didn't want to be seen.

Because whatever they had recovered…

They weren't afraid of what it was.

They were afraid someone might find out.

And the word they had used, Dustbone, clung to him like a curse half-remembered.

Thorne remained crouched in shadow long after the battlemages disappeared down the side path. His heart was steady, but his thoughts churned.

He should go back.

He should turn around, climb the stairs to his dormitory, and let the mystery die in the dark. Get some rest. Maybe even gloat to Elias about the "practical demonstration" Marian had put him through.

That would be the smart thing to do.

The safe thing.

But Thorne wasn't known for either.

The word Dustbone still echoed in his ears, low and hateful. That wasn't a term you used for something random. That wasn't a slur you hurled in passing. It was pointed. It was personal.

And it was aimed at something, or someone, those mages were so desperate to conceal they'd risk sneaking through Aetherhold's heart in the dead of night.

He glanced toward the student quarters. Aetherhold's towers gleamed softly under the starlit aether flows, serene, unaware. Just a few minutes and he could be inside, safe, surrounded by stone and spells and the illusion of security.

Thorne sighed.

And then he turned in the opposite direction.

Of course he was going to follow.

He melted into the darkness, shadows wrapping around him like old friends. Veil of Light and Shadow shifted his outline, while Shadow Meld bent the world around his presence. He moved fast but silent, his footfalls feather-light against the cold flagstones.

Let's see what you're hiding, he thought.

And more importantly…

Let's see if you're one of mine.

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