The sound of soft, measured footsteps on gravel made him freeze. He looked up, his heart a frantic bird trapped in the cage of his ribs, expecting Leo's concerned face, or worse, the precise, talon-tapped steps of Magister Valerius coming to formally unmask him and deliver him to the Empress's justice.

It was Fenrir.

The massive Beastkin stood a few paces away, a monolith of dark fur and simmering power against the backdrop of the serene courtyard. His arms were crossed over his broad chest, the corded muscle visible even beneath his academy robes. His tail, a thick brush of darkest grey, swished slowly behind him in a rhythm that was both lazy and predatory. He looked down at Liam, his golden eyes, luminescent and unreadable, taking in every detail: the tremble in the hands still clenched in the gravel, the pallor of his face, the utter dejection in his posture.

"Rough first day?" Fenrir asked. His voice was the same low rumble Liam remembered from the orientation yard, but here, in the silence, it felt more intimate, a vibration felt in the bones rather than heard. It was devoid of the mockery he'd shown Alistair, stripped of any discernible emotion. It was simply a question, and its sheer, stark normalcy, after the soul-crushing weirdness of the last few hours, was what finally broke Liam.

A hollow, weary sound escaped him, something between a sigh and a sob. He was too exhausted, too scraped raw from the constant cycle of hope and catastrophic failure, to even muster the energy for fear. What more could they do to him? What worse humiliation was left?

He simply nodded, dropping his gaze back to the crack in the stone between his feet, a world of misery in that single, silent gesture.

Fenrir was silent for a long moment, his presence a heavy, patient weight in the courtyard. The distant shouts of students from a far-off training field seemed to come from another world entirely. When he spoke again, his words were not an accusation, not a threat, but a quiet, undeniable observation, spoken with the flat certainty of someone stating that the sky was above them.

"Your magic," he said, each syllable precise and measured. "It doesn't work like ours, does it?"

The air left Liam's lungs in a silent, painful rush. His head snapped up, eyes wide with a shock so pure it was almost physical. How? How could he possibly know? The question was a scream in his mind, etched plainly on his face for Fenrir to see. He hadn't said a word. He'd only failed, quietly and spectacularly, in a classroom of two dozen others. He was a nobody.

Fenrir's ears gave a slight, almost imperceptible twitch, as if tracking the flight of Liam's panicked thoughts. "The duel," he stated, his gaze turning inward, replaying the memory with a strategist's cold eye. "With Alistair. There was an interference. A moment of absolute, perfect stillness in the mana flow right before his fire was extinguished. It wasn't a counterspell. There was no clash of elements, no diversion of energy." His golden eyes locked back onto Liam, pinning him in place. "It was a nullification. An erasure. And you were the only one close enough, the only one with a reason and the opportunity to do it. The timing was exact. It had to be you."

The logic was air-tight, a cold, analytical assessment that left no room for argument. Liam had been so consumed by his own panic, the visceral terror of the flames and the subsequent, bizarre cold that had erupted from him, that he hadn't considered the event from an outsider's perspective. He hadn't thought about the flow of mana, the observable laws of magic that he had seemingly broken. Fenrir had. He had watched, he had analyzed, and he had deduced.

The walls of his secret, so painfully maintained, crumbled to dust. There was no point in denial. The truth was a poison he had to spit out, or it would kill him from the inside.

"It's... different," Liam admitted, the words feeling like a confession of treason against the very fabric of this world.

A flicker of something—intense interest—crossed Fenrir's features. "How?" he asked, his head tilting in that characteristically avian, predatory gesture. "How could you tell it was me? No one else noticed. Not even the Proctor."

"A born trait of my clan," Fenrir stated, as if explaining a fundamental law of physics. "We Beastkin are attuned to the flows of the world. The life in the soil, the current of the wind, the pulse of mana in a stone. It is a sense, as innate as sight or smell. It is the world's song, and we hear every note." His gaze intensified, the gold of his irises seeming to deepen. "But when I look at you, especially when your power stirs... the flow doesn't just stutter or part around you. It stops. It is nullified. Severed at the source. It feels like..." He paused, searching for the right word, his lip curling slightly as if tasting something foul. "...like nothing. A void where a law of existence should be."

The description was chillingly, horrifyingly accurate. It was the very void he felt in his own core, the hungry emptiness that refused to be filled, that only knew how to take. To have it described back to him by an outsider, to know that his internal wrongness was externally, perceptibly unsettling, was a validation of his deepest fears.

"So, what now?" Liam asked, his voice barely a whisper, raw with a despair he could no longer conceal. "Are you going to tell the whole school? That I'm a freak? A broken mage who shouldn't be here?"

Fenrir considered this, his tail giving another slow, thoughtful swish. The sneer that finally touched his lips was faint but unmistakable, a flash of genuine contempt. "That is a coward's action. Spreading secrets to gain a fleeting advantage or to curry favor. I despise cowardice." The sneer faded, replaced by his usual neutral mask. "And there is no benefit for me. Your secret is your own to keep, or to lose. I have no use for it."

The relief was so profound it left Liam dizzy, light-headed. He hadn't realized the immense, crushing weight of expectation—the certainty of betrayal—that he had been carrying until it was suddenly, inexplicably, lifted. This formidable, intimidating figure, who had every reason to expose him, had simply... dismissed the idea as beneath him.

"How does it work, then?" Fenrir asked, his curiosity evidently genuine now that the preliminaries were settled. "This different magic of yours. What are its rules?"

"I... I don't know," Liam confessed, the frustration of a lifetime of confusion and failure bubbling to the surface. He gestured helplessly. "I've been trying to figure it out my whole life. I can't cycle mana. I can't channel it. When I try, when I focus with everything I have, nothing happens. It's like trying to breathe with lungs made of stone." He hugged his knees to his chest, the memory of the rune class a fresh wound. "But when I was in the duel, when I was scared for my life... it happened. And in rune class, when I was terrified of failing, of being exposed... it happened again. It only seems to work when I'm... threatened. When my emotions are high. When I feel... cornered."

He let the words hang in the air, considering them himself. It was a pattern, the only one he had ever been able to discern. Fear. Panic. A desperate, reflexive, wordless need for something to stop. It wasn't a spell. It wasn't a conscious act of will. It was a reaction. A spasm. Maybe his power wasn't something he could command, but something that reacted to the extremes of his own psyche, a defense mechanism of a soul that was fundamentally incompatible with the world it inhabited.

Before Fenrir could respond, a new voice, light and melodic, yet carrying a sharp, inquisitive edge, cut through the courtyard's silence.

"Fenrir? There you are."

A female Beastkin stood at the archway. She had the elegant, sharp features and lush, russet-red fur of a fox, with a pair of intelligent, amber eyes that missed nothing. A matching pair of alert, black-tipped ears twitched atop her head, swiveling slightly as she took in the scene. She was beautiful in a sharp, striking way, her gaze lingering on Liam with open, unabashed curiosity for a moment—assessing the human huddled on the ground in the presence of her clan-mate—before returning to Fenrir.

"We're going to be late," she said, her tone implying this was a recurring issue.

Fenrir gave a short, acknowledging grunt, a sound of pure dismissal. He looked back at Liam, that intense, analytical gleam returning to his eyes, as if Liam were a complex runic equation he was determined to solve.

"We should battle sometime," he said. The statement sounded less like a friendly invitation and more like a scientist proposing a live-field experiment, a test to observe a phenomenon under controlled stress. Without waiting for a reply, he turned and followed the fox-eared girl, his large form moving with a silent, fluid grace that belied his size.

Liam was left alone once more, the silence of the courtyard rushing back in. But it was a different silence now. It was no longer filled solely with his despair, but with the echoes of Fenrir's words. A void. A nullification. It only works when I'm threatened. They were terrifying concepts, but they were a framework. They were the first, fragile threads of understanding anyone had ever offered him about the curse that was his existence.

Fenrir walked in silence beside the fox-kin, Lyra, his mind elsewhere, the image of the desolate human boy sharp in his mind's eye.

"Who was that?" Lyra asked after a moment, her curiosity, as always, getting the better of her. She glanced back over her shoulder towards the courtyard. "The human looked... utterly stressed. More than first-day jitters. Did you threaten him?"

Fenrir didn't answer immediately. The feeling of Liam's magic—or rather, the absolute lack of it—was stuck in his mind, an irritating, impossible puzzle. That sensation of the world's song being abruptly censored, the flow of reality hitting a wall of absolute nothingness. It was wrong. It was an offense to the natural order. And it reminded him of something, a ghost of a story from his earliest days as a cub, huddled by the crackling fire in his clan's ancestral mountain halls. The elders, their voices grave and their eyes shadowed with a superstitious fear he had always dismissed, would speak in hushed, solemn tones of a time before time, of a primordial darkness that was the antithesis of creation itself. A force that did not create or destroy in the cyclical, natural way of fire and decay, but simply unmade. They called it the 'World-Devouring Silence,' the 'Endless Starvation,' a void that would one day awaken and swallow the world, leaving not even dust in its wake, for dust was still a thing, and this hunger accepted only nothing. It consumed magic, life, light, and hope, leaving behind a perfect, eternal stillness.

The feeling he got from Liam... for a fleeting, unsettling second, it aligned with the visceral terror of that old, mythic warning. A null point in a universe of flow. A potential end.

He shook his massive head, a low growl rumbling in his chest. It was nonsense. Children's tales to scare cubs into obedience. The human was just an anomaly, a magical defective. A fascinating one, a puzzle he felt compelled to understand, but a defective nonetheless. Attributing ancient prophecies to a scared boy was the height of irrationality.

I need to get stronger, Fenrir thought, his focus turning violently inward. The distractions of this place, the petty rivalries, the political games, they were meaningless. His goal was singular, forged in the fires of his clan's expectations and his own burning ambition. He needed to unlock his birthright, to shatter the chains that bound his true potential and prove himself worthy of the blood that ran in his veins.

He closed his eyes as he walked, a practiced, deep meditation that allowed his consciousness to slip its mortal bonds and journey inward.

Around him, the polished stone of the academy corridor dissolved, the chatter of other students fading into a profound silence. He stood now in a vast, misty plain under a perpetual twilight sky, the air thick with the scent of ozone and ancient power. This was his soulscape, the reflection of his inner self. And before him, it loomed: a colossal seal, a massive, rotating wheel of intricate, glowing runes that pulsed with a light that was both beautiful and oppressive. Interlocking chains of pure energy, each link a masterwork of arcane script, bound the seal together, radiating a power that felt both immense and stifling. It was a prison, meticulously crafted by generations of his ancestors.

And behind it, shrouded in the swirling mists of potential, was the prisoner. A giant wolf, its fur the color of moonlight on fresh snow, larger than any mountain in the physical world. It was bound by the chains of light, its colossal head bowed as if in eternal slumber, each slow, measured breath a low rumble that vibrated through the very fabric of Fenrir's soul. This was the source of his clan's strength, the ancestral spirit bound within their bloodline—the Great Wolf, Argent.

Fenrir looked upon the slumbering giant with a familiar, simmering fury. This power was his by right of birth, the legacy of his name, yet it was kept from him, locked away behind seals of spirit and will that he had spent his entire life trying to break. The sight of it filled him with both a yearning so deep it was an ache, and a rage that it was being withheld.

"One day," he whispered, the sound a mere breath in the immense silence of his soul. "I will free you. And we will howl together, and the world will hear us."

He turned, his spiritual form beginning to dissipate, preparing to leave this inner world and return to the mundane reality of the academy.

But as he turned, from within the deep mists, two slits of piercing, silver light snapped open.

The Great Wolf had opened its eyes.

It did not move, its immense body still held fast by the runic chains. But its gaze, ancient and infinitely intelligent, was now fully, terrifyingly awake. It stared intently at the spot where Fenrir's consciousness had just been, its silent, judging stare seeming to bore through the veil between soul and reality, following the heir to its power back into the world of the living, a silent sentinel now roused from its long sleep

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.