Chapter Text
Arlanta Academy is a veritable maze of sprawling flower gardens and wide cobblestone paths. Visitors probably wander aimlessly for hours trying to figure out where to go since, for some infernal reason, whoever built this campus must have never heard of either maps or signs. Cale himself has been walking around for what felt like hours, the midday sun incessantly bearing down on the crown of his head.
Meanwhile, the students and teachers around seem to have no such directional challenges, simply striding off, confidently, knowingly—seemingly, to Cale’s ironclad, vexed opinion, rubbing it in. Worse, he might have to ask one of them where to find the place he needs. The thought is not a new one—has been buzzing around in his head since he first opened his eyes in this unfamiliar world—but rather risky.
After all, Cale knows next to nothing about the face he’s wearing. People—friends, classmates—might recognise him, interact with him. A disastrous prospect. He doesn’t even know the classes Robane attends here, which is typically among the first icebreaker of all conversations at a school.
He has no idea what to expect, and while Cale does not like not knowing what to expect… well, he hates being in the dark more. The only lead of substance he currently has on Raziel is a prescription for some alarmingly potent narcotics that he found on the man’s side-table. Classes are rather useless information in comparison to that. As usual, Cale’s left to prioritise.
Who to ask? he muses, looking around, assessing.
The grounds are bright green with cheery sunlight, as if taunting him for his incongruous bad mood. Most students are either lying on the grass, perched on benches, or studying in groups at picnic tables, enjoying the vestiges of mild springtime weather. Predictably, they stick to people their own age, but it’s surprising to see the age range across the board. When he’d first seen Raziel Robane in the mirror back in his dorm and guessed him to be around twenty years old, Cale had mistakenly thought Arlanta Academy was a university—but it seems to enrol adolescents and young adults alike.
In the end, he walks to a distracted, younger-looking student on a bench a few dozen steps away. “Excuse me,” he says mildly, as if commenting on the weather, “where can I find the Medicine Department?”
The girl doesn’t even bother looking up from the book in her lap, and that’s when he knows he chose the right person. He clears his throat, just loud enough to remind her she’s been addressed, not to attract attention, and she hums in absent-minded acknowledgement, eyes still glued to her book.
Excellent.
“Keep left,” she tells him—completely absorbed in the text. “White building. With the pillars.”
“Thank you.”
Cale goes left, ignoring the students that keep glancing at him and doing double takes, ignoring them even as they crane their heads and urgently jostle their friends beside them in open-mouthed disbelief. He thinks nothing of the attention—in all honesty, Raziel Robane has the rare sort of strikingly good looks that don’t diminish even with the gaunt jut of his cheeks and pallid complexion. In fact, he looks so much like Cale Henituse that he hadn’t even clocked the change until he’d looked in the mirror more closely; at the wine-red hair that fell not straight but in unruly curls; the eyes that were grey and heavy-lidded, rather than upturned reddish-brown.
It had been the loss of his eyes—his Record with them—that had sent him into a panic spiral. Not a whisper of his Ancient Powers had been heard since he first opened his eyes here—but losing his innate abilities too? It had been an unbearable thought.
On the spot, he’d tried retrieving an old memory and Raziel’s eyes took on a distinctly rainbowy glass sheen, like light reflecting off a camera lens. Everything had come back to him with picture-perfect clarity. Cale has been Recording non-stop ever since.
His cold eyes scan the Medicine Department before him in all its pale, glowing glory, somewhat blinding in the strong afternoon sun. He spares a moment to be grateful that there’s not many people in this part of campus before taking the stairs in twos and striding towards the reception desk. Someone with a monocle is there, busily shuffling papers. He’s smartly dressed, a no-nonsense look about him that probably intimidates most people with ease.
“I’m here to see Dr Ian Galliper,” Cale says, without further ado.
The absence of niceties doesn’t seem to bother the man in the least. He briskly opens a cabinet drawer of patient files. “Name?” he asks without so much as a glance, instead waiting with an expectant, impatient air. Customer service is, patently, the same everywhere.
“Raziel Robane.”
At this, he unfortunately does look up. Cale can’t place the exact emotion in his eyes, but if he had to guess it’d be nothing less than unadulterated shock. Out of nowhere, he was on the receiving end of a rather scrutinising once-over.
“It’s been so long,” the man finally says, and Cale is downright alarmed to find his eyes misty, voice choked up. “I—we all thought that… Well, nevermind. It’s so good to see you up and walking, Raziel.”
How utterly ominous and foreboding… Raziel’s even known by name here. Cale thinks, wryly, half a mind on the overlong list of drugs currently sitting in his pocket, that he should have seen it coming.
“I’ll let Dr Galliper know you’re waiting in the lobby,” the man says, closing his eyes and taking a steadying breath before pulling out a sheet of paper and penning a quick message. “I will reschedule his other appointments; he’s been urgently wanting to talk to you.”
Cale, not bothering to respond without prompting, watches as the missive is quickly folded, sealed, and placed on some kind of etched metal tablet, where it proceeds to completely vanish with a white flash. Cale blinks.
Well, then. Magic.
A tiny, tentative bud of hope takes root in his chest, offsetting some of the bleakness that had set in after Cale found himself stranded alone. His chances of getting back have abruptly, drastically increased, moving from the realm of impossible to improbable.
Cale has beaten worse odds.
The paper rematerialises within seconds with what can only be an affirmative, seeing as the man nods at the sofa next to the counter in a wordless message to wait. Cale obliges.
***
Several hours of magical probing later, Cale numbly steps out of the building. Raziel’s body aches more than usual, and his ears still ring from the long-winded scolding he’d been subjected to for apparently dodging a whole month’s worth of health appointments. He stumbles onto a bench gracelessly, staring at the sun steadily dipping beyond the tree line in the horizon, a vacant backdrop to his busy thoughts.
“You were on the verge of death, Raziel,” Dr Galliper had said in a voice firm with professional candour. “The fact that you’re able not just to stand but to walk all the way here—it’s nothing short of a medical miracle. I was prepared to go to your family with dreadful news if we did not hear back from you by the end of this week.”
Apparently, it’d been a year since Raziel Robane was diagnosed with a debilitating illness. Terminal illness. He’d suffered so much from it that Cale would now have to be weaned off addictive painkillers over the course of two entire months. It’d set his plans back a bit, needing to constantly return for new prescriptions.
But even as he thinks about that inconvenience, Cale is occupied with something else entirely—the fact that Raziel Robane had suffered for a year and not told his family anything about it.
For the man did have a family—Dr Galliper had mentioned a father and an older brother. Perhaps estranged, or, worse, close enough to want to spare them the heartbreak. Cale doesn’t let himself think too hard on that point. It’s hard enough having to wonder how long Raziel’s body had been dead for, lying right there in his stuffy, stale-aired dormitory… with no one the wiser.
Surely a friend or a concerned classmate would have checked on him, after noticing his absence? Or else the servants would have discovered the body on their cleaning rounds. No, Cale reasons with himself, Raziel’s death was very recent. A day ago, at most.
If there’s one ray of optimism in all the doom and gloom, it’s that his miraculous recovery is owed to the Vitality of the Heart. The Ancient Powers may not be speaking, but he thinks he can sense them now, dormant and nestled in his soul, like stolid, load-bearing pillars. During the God of Despair’s test, his offensive arsenal had been greatly constrained, just as it must be now. To what extent, Cale can only wonder. He’ll test it tomorrow.
For now, he staggers to his feet and traces his steps back to Room 105, trying—and failing—to discard the leaden thought that darted for an instant across his brain, the one telling him he’s bound for Raziel Robane’s tomb.
***
Cale wakes at noon, probably having missed all of Raziel’s classes—whatever those were. It’s the fact that he still doesn’t know what Raziel Robane used to study, and that he must find out since he’s stranded in this Academy, that has him climbing out of bed and dressing himself in the uniform again.
Then, he makes a beeline for the mahogany desk standing by the window. Books and pen-cases are ferreted away in its wooden nooks, the surface covered in all kinds of clutter that he’d had no interest in yesterday, too preoccupied tearing the place upside down looking for the Mirror. He takes his time browsing through them now, hoping for an academic transcript, or maybe some kind of diary or planner.
The next piece of paper he picks up is… a timetable, he realises, eyes sparking. Eureka.
His eyes skim over the whole week, committing it to memory. He’d already missed the lectures on Advanced Syncansian and Geography; the only other class today was for Ledger Work & Correspondence at three. Cale agonises over it for around two seconds before summarily deciding not to go. He could finagle a medical exemption if push comes to shove.
The priority now is finding his missing Mirror to resume his trip to Aipotu. The whereabouts of one hundred people and a massive castle are also, absurdly, unaccounted for. Cale can only assume that either they are all stuck somewhere or—more likely—that only he is.
Cale suspects the space-time fluctuations will turn the days he spends here into nothing but a blip in his actual timeline. He Records every second of his lived experience and clocking minor time inconsistencies is rather like a sixth sense to him—so there’s no way to miss this niggling feeling that what used to be a second has now burgeoned to a minute. Like the rubber band of time is being stretched taught, winded and winding up with pent-up energy.
If the time difference is real, he’s grateful for it—Cale has no confidence in what those overpowered lunatics will resort to doing in his absence. Probably something insane, like finding the God of Death and beating him into putty. Considering who he picked to fill his quota for overthrowing a government of dragons, that wouldn’t even be hard to imagine.
To his own shock, Cale doesn’t actually think the God of Death is to blame, for once. No, the Mirror had been working exactly as intended—as it had when they travelled to Central Plains. But in the course of interstellar travel, he’d felt a sudden, nauseating jerk, like something had plucked him out of his starry trajectory and dropped him like a stone into uncharted waters.
The only thing that could interfere with a divine item in that higher plane of existence was, without a doubt, another god. The God of Balance, perhaps? Cale’s proven tendencies to turn molehills into mountains had not exactly endeared him to her.
He sets his musings aside for a moment in favour of pushing Raziel’s brass-trimmed suitcase out of the closet, throwing it open where there was room on the floor to peruse its contents.
He finds clothes, first. For all their obvious good quality, what he pulls out are simple and practical garments, as if Raziel had been waging a one-man rebellion against the customary ostentatiousness of aristocratic dress.
Soon after, an odd assortment of trinkets follows the clothes piles strewn about the floor. A brooch with the Robane family insignia along with a matching, gold stamp ring… a palm-sized painted portrait of a grinning woman that could be Raziel’s mirror image, save for her brown hair and gracefully lined face… a scrapbook of carefully pressed daisies and hastily-scrawled notes, the sort that might have been discreetly passed under desks in class… a fraying, rolled-up newspaper…
…And, at the very end, tucked away in a pocket he'd have easily missed if Cale hadn’t been searching carefully, an unsent envelope. Yellow with age, addressed to “Leon Thalessian”, and the writing on it uncertain and shaky, like a child’s—probably because it was written by a child, Cale thinks, mentally calculating how old Raziel would have been at the time.
He stands to view the entire mess of things from above; all in all, it was an interesting trove for the young master of a high-ranking noble family. Cale may not have discovered all of Raziel Robane’s hidden depths, but he suspects it’s only a matter of time. Even now his mind whirs, holding up puzzle pieces up to the metaphorical light for inspection, starting to notice the ways they might slot together.
For now, Cale thinks as he carefully toes a walking path around the chaos to the front door, time for lunch. And then, the library.
***
Raziel’s copy of the comically long Academy Regulations is brand new and untouched, the smell of the printing press still lingering and satin ribbon bookmark wrinkled along a single line. Cale is taking absentminded bites of a sandwich every time his arm droops down from the effort of holding it aloft. His tie is loose around his neck, the shirt’s top buttons undone. If he didn’t know any better Cale would find it unusual how warm the mess hall feels right now.
His brain is on a hike. A steady, agonising hike to temperature ranges thought to exist only in the Seventh Circle of Hell.
Regulation 20.505 – Leaving Academy grounds
Students over the age of 18 are allowed to leave the grounds to visit the Hub at their own risk and responsibility, provided they return before the 8:00pm curfew.
His mind snags on that passage, parsing out the implications. He can hear whispers and muffled laughter too, and they blend with the words before him—all of it cogs for the plans he’s slowly piecing together with methodical, machine-like diligence.
“…Think that’s the first time he’s ever cracked open that book…” he hears someone say faintly.
By the end of lunch, Cale has learned a new fact about Raziel Robane, and one too many about the Academy’s administrative infrastructure.
***
“I haven’t seen him at the library in years,” Cabel mutters at their table, trying in vain to read the book in his hands; his incredulous eyes keep helplessly dragging themselves back to where Raziel Robane is sprawled in an armchair, reading.
Yes, reading, Ijekiel confirms, double- and quadruple-checking, disbelieving his own eyesight in the face of such a jarring picture. He’s been in all the same classes as Robane for eight straight years now—something he’s resigned himself to for the rest of his time at the Academy—and he can’t even remember the last time he saw the man holding a book.
He tries to wrest his attention back to homework, reminding himself that Raziel Robane’s study habits are none of his business (no matter how loud they’re screaming for help). Ijekiel’s Commerce exam, on the other hand…
“How long has it been again, Rich?”
Gods, Cabel still hasn’t let it go.
“Four years,” Enrich replies instantly. Always honest with himself about the paper-thinness of his willpower, he’d abandoned his textbook the instant Robane walked in an hour ago—and hadn’t looked away from him once. Then again, perhaps it’s not surprising for another reason: he’s always been oddly fixated on Robane.
Siodonnan lippe tea exports to Obelia have increased by 20.4% over the years, Ijekiel jots down, more focused on the act of writing than the content and growing more aware of it every second that passes. He shakes his pen, trying to get the ink to flow better, and imagines it’s his brain to get his fracturing attention back on track.
“What do you think he’s reading?” Hari asks with a note of apprehension, and Ijekiel loses his internal battle, looking up to see her paranoidly glancing back over her shoulder. She acts as if Robane had come to the library to pounce on the unsuspecting and she was determined not to fall victim.
Giving it up as a bad job, he sighs, throwing his pen down and pushing back from the table in defeat. “I’m surrounded by gossips and busybodies,” Ijekiel complains at them, and scoffs at the expressions of outrage around the table. “Yes, it’s a bit out of the ordinary,” he continues, because it really was, “but why do you all care so much?”
“Because we’re bored,” they chorus.
Of course they were. “Gossips and busybodies,” Ijekiel repeats, even as fond smile tugs at his mouth.
It’s then that Eugene breaks his silent vigil, sounding completely and uncharacteristically bewildered, abandoning his own book. “Guys, is he… is he even reading?”
Everyone—including Ijekiel, to his own embarrassment—twists fully in their chairs to unabashedly stare. Nice and discreet, he thinks, closing his eyes, cursing at himself and his friends in equal turns.
But it’s already too late for subtlety—and as it turns out, Eugene was right to be surprised, because what Raziel Robane is doing simply can’t be reading. He’s combing his way through the text in his lap, spending barely a second on each page before he moves to the next. Perhaps trying to find something specific, which wouldn’t be strange in itself; but when he reaches the end, Robane carelessly discards it on the side-table, grabs for another one, and repeats the process. Again, and again, until the stack of tomes on the table has grown to impractical proportions.
“Maybe he doesn’t know how to research?” Hari offers, uncertain.
“He can’t find the proper books, you mean?”
“I mean, yes? Look at him, he’s not even taking notes.”
Ijekiel ignores the byplay, watching with relentless confusion, and makes a split-second decision. A decision driven entirely by impulse—by that part of him most people don’t know about, the one that so often has him at odds with his father.
Ijekiel Alpheus has never been able to reign in his own boundless curiosity.
The same urge to figure it out that had thrummed through him when he walked (read: trespassed) into Crown Princess Athanasia’s personal library; now, it pulls his feet towards Raziel Robane before his higher faculties can add their input. His friends fall silent at once, watching him go with bright-eyed, eager interest.
Closer, now, Ijekiel peers down at Robane and immediately notices the sweat collecting at his temples and the flush redness of his face—the dark, purple shadows beneath his lowered lashes. He doesn’t seem okay at all, mechanically going through books in this state.
“Good evening, Robane,” Ijekiel starts, falling back on social niceties to smooth the way but already gearing up to ask after his wellbeing.
One thing Ijekiel failed to take into account, however, is that Raziel Robane is famously and decidedly not fond of social niceties. His brave conversational starter hits a solid brick wall, bouncing clean off and leaving nothing but awkward silence in its wake.
Years of oratory classes strangle the instinctive “Um,” that tries to form in Ijekiel’s mouth. “Are you alright?” he asks instead. The strictures governing polite conversation would have seen Robane offering him a seat by now; he feels much like a spare piece of furniture while he shifts on his feet next to his classmate.
Finally, Robane looks up, the curly hair shielding his eyes brushed aside—and the awkwardness in the air suddenly falls away, lost somewhere between the frigid stalactites of Robane’s grey-eyed scrutiny. Ijekiel nearly gapes, feeling—all at once—inexplicably, thoroughly seen, as if Robane took a magnifying glass to the intricacies of his very existence and catalogued them for later review.
In the seconds between Ijekiel’s suddenly hammering heartbeats, that unfathomable gaze returns to the book to turn yet another page. “I’m fine,” Robane says, voice rasp from disuse.
Or maybe… sickness?
“I really don’t know if that’s the case,” Ijekiel mutters, fascination growing when the suspicion dawns on him that Robane might be impossibly, actually reading; his eyes are flitting left to right, not missing a single area of the page, scouring every word.
It should be impossible. It has Ijekiel stumped, uncomprehending—has him pushing, more than he usually would. “Would you like some help?”
He doesn’t even know what help he’s offering. Help with the books—or, better yet, with getting him to the medical wing as soon as possible?
“I don’t need it,” Robane clips. “Go away.”
Ijekiel would feel offended, but instead there’s a heavy, insistent feeling in his stomach that he thinks is worry; Robane sounded like every syllable was a laborious effort.
There’s a sigh. “You’re not leaving.”
“No.” Ijekiel pounces on the implied defeat instantly, planting himself in the armchair adjacent to Robane’s, etiquette be damned. “You weren’t in class, today,” he continues, apropos of nothing.
Or any of the classes, actually. Not that people expect him to be.
“Lecture attendance isn’t assessed.” Robane’s reply has the uncanny speed of someone who has the Academy Regulations printed directly behind the eyelids for easy reference.
“No,” Ijekiel concedes. “Merely expected.”
At this, Robane actually snorts, as if following expectations is the funniest joke in the world to him. It probably is. Ijekiel is trying not to laugh, himself, even as that tense knot in him loosens at the rare sound of Robane’s laughter.
Four years ago, Raziel Robane began the greatest tug-of-war with the administration in the Academy’s hundred-year-old history. It was as if he was experimenting, seeing how many absences, late penalties, detentions, and suspensions he could receive without actually getting expelled. After such rule-breaking, perfected to an art form, the Academy Regulations had seen their first series of amendments since their very creation. All the professors and even the Headmaster recognise Robane by name—an impressive feat of infamy, considering the Academy has upwards of seven hundred students.
Ijekiel is pulled out of his thoughts by the great maverick himself. “Is there a purpose behind this discussion?” he says, fingering the edge of another page with impatience.
“Curiosity,” Ijekiel answers easily, even as his eyes linger on his classmate’s eyebags and his sallow yet feverish skin. Somehow, he doubts concern will be well-received, no matter how genuine. “You haven’t been in the library for years, you know. And people haven’t seen hide nor hair of you for around a week now, not even at the Rusty Key in the Hub.”
An odd emotion ripples across Robane’s face, then, too complicated and impersonal to be sadness but shaded similarly blue. Ijekiel instantly gets the sense that he’s said something he shouldn’t have, but before he can scramble for a way to apologise, Robane wordlessly stands and—
Calmly begins putting all his books away.
There’s no yelling, no swearing, no insults thrown at Ijekiel despite how clearly unpleasant Robane has been finding their conversation. He’s single-mindedly focused on returning all his tomes. He doesn’t even pause to remember where he got them from, just places them at random on the shelves.
“I’m leaving,” he says, eyes averted, when he finally slots the final book in a gap.
For a split second, Ijekiel has a full view of his face and the expression there before he turns away—the kind of tired that digs past skin-deep and into the very soul—and then it’s gone. He walks out of the library without so much as a backwards glance.
Eugene, Cabel, Hari and Enrich gape at him from the table.
“Ijekiel,” Cabel calls out, too loud for the library, clearly beyond caring, “what on earth did you say to him?”
Ijekiel can only blink back. Admits, “I think I messed up.”
He thumbs at the spine of two books Robane had returned, checking the section and the author names with half a mind to fix them and put them to rights…
Only to find they’re all correct. He rushes to the other sections, eyes roaming over all the shelves he could remember Robane had stopped at, spotting some of the books he’d returned.
All of them correct.
“Gods,” Ijekiel breathes, the realisation driving itself home in his chest with all the gentleness of a carriage, leaving him winded. “He was reading.”