Aster and Lena make it to Spellcraft early—not out of excitement, but because the Synphri wing is mercifully close to the lunch hall, and Lena’s planner doesn’t recognize the concept of casual pacing.

  The classroom, however, earns his attention.

  Forty-two glowing posters line the walls in perfect symmetry, each one in dense alien script, radiating a low hum of aether. Their symbols flicker with elemental intensity—heat shimmers from one chart, mist drifts around another, and wind pulses like a heartbeat in the next, times forty-two. The room practically breathes.

  “The foundational rune structures for the elemental types,” Lena explains.

  Aster mutters under his breath, scanning them. “Neon signs with a superiority complex.”

  Lena elbows him. “Don’t get distracted. This class is important. Spellcraft governs almost everything—combat, alchemy, enchanting, everything that makes up the Astral Plane. It’s the skeleton of cultivation. Without it, you’re just a sack of meat flinging sticks.”

  “Charming visual as always.”

  They make their way down the rows toward a teacher deep in conversation with a girl who looks like she stepped out of a prestige perfume ad. The teacher—probably mid-thirties, overalls and massive glasses—gestures animatedly while the girl responds with a voice that rings with easy confidence.

  And then it happens.

  The teacher says her name.

  “…Miss Mesha…”

  Mesha.

  Aster’s stomach drops like someone kicked the floor out from beneath him.

  No. No way. Not that name. Not here.

  Mesha—the family that butchered his bloodline. The family that stuffed a Void Wyrm into his chest like a party favor. The reason he spends half his life digging through garbage and the other half digging through trauma.

  His vision tunnels.

  He steps forward without realizing it, mouth already moving.

  “Are you part of the Mesha family?”

  His voice doesn’t shake, but it cracks like a whip.

  The girl glances at him, eyes a shade of burning amber that would be beautiful if they weren’t attached to a name that makes his skin crawl.

  Lena freezes. “Aster—wait—”

  “Answer me!” he snaps. “Are you a Mesha?!”

  That gets the teacher’s attention. The girl turns fully now, her amusement flickering like candlelight across her face.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  And gods help him—she is beautiful.

  Full lips, sharp cheekbones, long dark curls tumbling down her back—freckles scattered like stardust across the bridge of her nose. She looks like a desert storm personified. Beautiful, yes—but like a tectonic plate is beautiful. Like a volcano. Like something that reshapes the world and doesn’t care who gets caught beneath it.

  “What if I am?” she asks, tilting her head like she’s observing a cracked painting. “What does my family have to do with you?”

  Aster steps forward, his hand shaking.

  “Your family,” he says, “implanted a Void Wyrm into me. Your family wiped out my bloodline. You’re the reason I spend every day of my life clawing to survive. The reason people like Anathi—”

  “Oh gods,” Ziya interrupts, rolling her eyes, “you’re that one.”

  Her smile turns sharp.

  “My father told me about you. The orphan with a chip on his shoulder and a martyr complex the size of a mountain range. The one who thinks the world revolves around what was done to him.”

  “You murdered my family.”

  “No. Your family failed your family,” she says, her voice suddenly hard. “Three times in my life, we’ve had to deal with Wyrm infection. Three family members. You know what we did?”

  She steps forward, eyes locked with his.

  “We ended them. Quickly. Painlessly. Cleanly. Because we had the strength to make hard choices.”

  Aster’s pulse roars in his ears.

  “You think that makes you strong?” he hisses. “You think killing your own people is noble?”

  “I think letting a Wyrm grow in a child,” Ziya snaps, “then doing nothing—letting it fester, letting it twist fate until it devours everyone you love—and then blaming the people who had the spine to do what yours couldn’t? That’s weak.”

  His staff hisses into his hand.

  “I was a baby,” he growls. “And they tried everything—”

  “They should’ve tried a knife,” Ziya says, and her voice isn’t mocking anymore. It’s clinical. Cold. “But they didn’t. And now you—what? You walk around with a void curse and dare point fingers? You think the aftermath of their cowardice is somehow our crime?”

  Aster’s hands tighten on the staff. The Point Burst Scripture surges through his bones, crying for release. The world around him blurs as his Will spikes, tethering to space, to movement, to her—

  “I’m not the monster here,” he snarls.

  Ziya’s lips curl.

  “No,” she says. “You’re the mistake they were too weak to erase.”

  And that is it.

  Something inside Aster cracks in half. His body moves before his mind does, the scripture screaming to life through his spine.

  And in that infinitesimal sliver of time—between decision and action—Ziya moves.

  There is no burst of energy. No scream. No flash.

  Just absence.

  And then—

  His perspective changes.

  The floor is... above him?

  Oh.

  His body.

  That is his body.

  It drops to its knees, staff clattering beside it, then slumps, stump first, with all the tragic dignity of a sack of wet laundry.

  His head hits the stone with a soft thunk.

  So this is what it feels like to be decapitated. He expects more... drama. Instead, there is only the dull pressure of everything going very still.

  Aster blinks. Once.

  Twice.

  And then darkness sweeps in, silent and absolute.

  A beat of silence. Then the familiar voice of Blenskop in his head, half-impressed, half-wistful:

  ?? [Well, that escalated predictably. Next time, use your words. She radiates Size Queen energy, and your training staff is coming up a little short.]