Ezril hated tomes, and now that she's starting in the Academy of Magical Arts, she was beyond horrified. Just the notion of bustling through endless corridors bearing armloads of those heavy leather-bounds was enough to steal sleep from her. So, when she finally arrived at the Academy's front doors, she craned her neck up at the glass windows, the white marble walls, and the stairway to Calaris, and had one thought—I want to go home.

But her friends waited for her by the topmost step, waving frantically and screaming her name. She glanced at the stream of uniformed students glancing her way before flicking their judging looks at the row of children silhouetted by the morning sun.

"Hey, Ez!" Airese's voice was loudest of all. Together with her two sisters, Airene and Airlene, they composed most of the circle. "Over here!"

Ezril glanced at the manicured streets peeling off the Academy's stairs. The bustle of a usual morning in Carcalet was scarier than the ornate grandeur waiting for her. "Coming!" she yelled at the top of her lungs, which wasn't much. Her fingers bunched up her skirts, and she tramped up. By the time she reached the spot where Airese stood, she huffed and sweat pooled at the base of her neck. Strands of blue hair poofed out of her rigid bun, making her shadow have a million, tiny horns.

She whirled to the three brownie sisters. "You don't need to shout that loud," she chided. "I can find you on my own."

Airese clapped her hands and circled an arm around hers. She didn't appear to have heard what Ezril just said. "Let's check out the dorms!" she said. "I just arrived too, but I bet I'm going to love it!"

Ezril let herself be dragged into the building which would become her cage for the next years of her life. She missed Carleon and the cozy trappings of the Temple. If she thought of her mother's face, she might start crying. Why would people choose to send their children into schools so far away from home? They were doing well with Ezril's education without these needless traditions.

Her first day was spent touring the lush campus, its endless facilities, both for learning and leisure, and arranging the things in her room. The brownie sisters were slotted into one room—thank the gods—and Ezril was lumped together with a varichria named Phiaris and a shard fairy called Anahel.

And without her noticing it, the months flew by. Ezril befriended Phiaris despite their awkward few weeks, and Anahel was able to warm up to her despite their shaky beginnings. The shard fairy was that particular about her morning and nightly routines, and they were all adjusting to this new set up.

Their friend group got larger too. Soon, the boys from the opposite dormitory hall joined them for lunch. Friends of friends, but it was mostly Airese bringing more people in. Compared to her, her two sisters were tamer and with less energy to give at striking conversations with random souls. If not for Airese, Ezril would never even consider going to the Academy for her senturas. She could take her studies back to the Temple, and it'd be the same thing.

But Airese never stopped talking about going to the Academy, so Ezril eventually gave in.

It shouldn't be a surprise for Airese to be that way, though. As the eldest daughter of an Alkaran noble, she was expected to take over her mother's reins the moment she came of age. Maybe she was buying time for herself and her siblings for them to be children for as long as they were able inside the Academy.

Ezril could forgive that, if that's the case.

Before she knew it, they moved to the next trench. And the next. And the next. In just a few months, they'd be moving on to Sedentura, where they would be expected to take up courses specific to their race and synnavaim. More studying, and incidentally, more tomes to carry. It's a nightmare.

But Ezril enjoyed most of her classes, especially magic theory. So, she opted to join a circle related to the study of magic and spells. If she could find the faculty room to file her interest, that was.

She had been walking around the campus and buildings for a long while now. The directions her seniors and some trenchmates gave muddled together in her head. Should she turn left at this bend? Right? Straight ahead? Should she go back? Where would those stairs lead?

Stairs?

That's right. Stairs.

Ezril knitted her eyebrows, looking behind her. She expected to see a crowd of Tresentura witches jeering. Nothing of the sort happened. The students wearing uniforms with various embellishments strolled by without care about her predicament. Perhaps the stairs could shed some light into where she needed to go. If it turned out to not be the right way, she could just go back.

So, she descended towards the darkness, clutching the leather tome she brought with her for the next class to her chest. The hallways changed from marble to crude bricks the farther she got. The air turned colder, and the smell of petrichor mixed with the sharp tang of rust assaulted her nose. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling, and at some point in the corridor, the bright Academy lights snuffed out completely.

Ezril summoned her magic to the surface and conjured a small ball of flame. It's one of the nifty tricks she learned in her rysteme spells elective. Good thing there's a real-life application for it, else she had just wasted her time.

She continued on, her boots splashing against random puddles of water. Were the walls crying? Maybe. Was the Academy aware of these tunnels? Why didn't they warn their students from wandering down here? This was the perfect dating spot; no one could see them or look for them.

Which was scarier for Ezril, now that she thought about it. If she got trapped here...

No. She steeled her nerves and squared her shoulders. This didn't look like the faculty lounge nor the circle's designated room, but it was interesting. Was there something in these tunnels? She's about to find out.

However, when she took her next step, instead of finding solid ground, her foot slipped through a dark void. A scream died in her throat as she tumbled head-first into a sizable hole. The darkness gobbled her, bones and all. Her weightlessness was short-lived. She slammed into what looked like a pile of bricks that caved in, driving pain to her elbows. Ow. Did she land in them?

Why, in Pidmena's name, was it so dark?

Relief flooded into her system when her magic answered her call. She didn't fall into a no-magic zone, then. Good. The ball of flame flashed back to her palm, but it sparked in front of an eerie face. A shriek lashed out of her lips, her hands swinging her leather tome in a wild but wide arc. The pages thumped against flesh, and a masculine grunt followed suit.

"S-stay away!" she screamed into the darkness, swishing her flaming hands here and there. What witch lived in this place? Wait. It had a face. A face...

It's someone, then.

A string of gibberish ripped from the darkness, and Ezril swung her hand in that direction. Her flames cast an eerie blue glow over a boy with strange ears, deep blue hair, and the darkest eyes she had ever seen.

"Who are you?" Ezril demanded, stepping forward to assert her ground.

Evident fear muddled the boy's features. He said something again, but the words didn't make sense to her. Some syllables clicked, but she didn't take enough of the language electives for her to make something out of them.

"I do not understand," Ezril said, switching to Ylanenla in case it helped.

It didn't. The boy continued speaking, gesticulating wildly with his hands. He appeared to be saying something about the walls, but Ezril just shook her head. It's no use. What language was he using, even? It's not Keijula, nor the Ancient version of it. Wasn't the common tongue, either. If anything, this boy was a former student who wandered in the wrong place at the wrong time, got stuck, and now developed a new system of communication to pass the time on their journey to insanity.

Oh, dear. Was that Ezril's fate as well?

So, she cast one last look at the boy and scrambled out of the hole in the ceiling with a well-timed air manipulation spell. Bonus points for her rysteme elective yet again.

And she ought to live her life in peace after that encounter. She owed it to herself. But she found herself thinking of the boy in the forgotten hallways, unable to use magic to get himself out. How in Pidmena's name did he survive all these months? Was he feeling lonely? Hungry? Thirsty?

That's how she caught herself going back to the dark corridors more often than not. Her friends started to notice her disappearance every meal break, but it was only after she succeeded in more than twenty trips down there. Over time, she borrowed language tomes from the archives and showed them to the boy. Through sheer effort and tons of gesticulation, they arrived at the base line of understanding each other.

One night when her sleep eluded her until the wee hours of dawn, she snuck out of bed and visited the boy. She found him awake and hunkered closer to the wall. "What are you doing?" she asked.

"Hiding," the boy answered, fear lacing through his voice. "They come. For me."

Ezril knitted her eyebrows. His Keijula still needed work, but it's enough for her to understand him. "Who will?" she asked. "I'm the only one who has been visiting you, right?"

The boy glanced at the oppressive darkness around them. Even the lantern Ezril had Phiaris weave eternal fire for barely scratched a dent against its thickness. "A...dream?" he scratched the side of his head, and from there, Ezril noticed how much he had grown over the years of visiting him. "That right word?"

"What, you woke up from your sleep?" Ezril asked. "With...images in your head that weren't real?"

The boy nodded. "Scare," he said. "It...scare."

Ezril stuck her lip out and settled next to the boy. "What happened in the dream?" she asked.

And he told her the best way he could with his flimsy grasp of her language. He kept referring to a war that happened aboveground, and upon coming from a faraway land—at least that's what he made it to be—he was sent to the island with the hopes of sealing him away. Ezril racked her head for any wars that might have happened, and they're all hundreds of years away. Collate that to the boy's perceived age, and it wouldn't make sense.

"When you say 'war', are you referring to the Cardinic War?" Ezril asked, thanking her history scholar for running through that part of Umazure's timeline just last week. "It's known as the Human-Fairy War too."

Confusion marred the boy's features. "There more war?" He tilted his head to one side and scratched his head. "Only one war I know."

"Which is?" she prodded. "What events can you remember from it?"

"The andralvin come to island. Peace with keijuen," the boy said, putting the wrong syllable in making a word plural. Again. "I there too. But...andralvin trust wrong. We..."

"Yes?" Ezril bobbed her head with her eyebrows raised. Almost there.

The boy turned to her with a harrowed shadow behind his dark eyes. "Killed," he said. "That right word? For..."

He made screeching noises, imitating stabbing something with an invisible weapon enclosed with his fist. He glanced at Ezril for confirmation.

She tapped a finger to her chin. "Yeah," she said. "Killed."

Then, what he said registered. "Wait, did you say the fairies killed...whatever the andralvin is?" she said. "Because if that's the case, then..."

"What?" the boy said, proud of himself for remembering the word he couldn't the day before.

A shaky breath peeled off Elred's lips. "Then you've been here since the Hundred Years' War?"

"What...hundred year?" the boy frowned. "I know no hundred year. No war so long."

But there was. The Hundred Years' War dragged on for so long that the historians merely called it that to settle the debates. The truth was that nobody knew how long it lasted since time keeping was not universal or consistent in that era. It was only after the barriers enclosed the continents did the individual races start anew and develop most of the tools and systems they enjoy now.

And if the boy was here, then...

"How are you able to survive? How much of your past do you remember?" Elred asked.

If the boy felt cornered, he didn't show it. Instead, he straightened his back and rested his hands on his knees. "Maije strong here. I breathe easy," he circled a hand in the air. "And past...memory. Remember little. It all dark. I wake, and I here."

That didn't tell Ezril anything, but she proceeded to her next question. "You mentioned the andralvin," she said. "What are those? Are they plural for something?"

"Not thing," the boy gestured between him and Ezril in a fluid motion. "People. Andralvin are people."

"A race?" Ezril tucked her wild blue hair behind an ear. She couldn't wait for the day when the strands became gray. "What kind of fairy are they?"

The boy shook his head. "Not keiju," he said. "Andralf."

Andralf. Alf.

Elf.

The realization settled in Ezril's gut and clawed at the edge of her mind. During the Hundred Years' War, the fairies killed some band of elves? How come it wasn't talked about during their lecture on that unit? All it told Ezril was how the Dwarves conquered Uma Siore, and that was it.

This has just gotten more interesting, the smile peeling Ezril's lips telling her enough. Well, she made a decision. If she's going to get to know this boy, might as well learn everything she could from him too. And she couldn't do that without establishing a connection first.

What better way to do that than asking, "What's your name?"

The boy's head snapped up. "Name?" he pursed his lips. "What I called?"

At Ezril's nod, he drew his legs to his chest until his knees almost touched his chin. "My name Ardien," he said. "Kalael Ardien. You?"

"Ezril Iaro," she said.

Before he could say anything more, the morning bell resounded in the distance, signaling the start of a brand new school day. It sank in them. Ezril didn't sleep at all. And her form wouldn't forgive her for that.

Here's to trying not to nod off in class, then.