I could still feel the phantom itch in my palm where the quill had pressed hard, months ago, during the admission trial. My solution—a spell unraveled and rebuilt without a single drop of magic—had left Professors gaping and earned me the academy’s last scholarship. My name, once a whisper among nobodies, echoed now in the lecture towers and the shadowed corners of Archive Hall. Still, every step I took in the marbled corridors reminded me: here, invention was currency, but blood and backing bought immunity.
Today, the chill was not from the stone beneath my feet but from the crackling air around Blue-Gold Lecture Tower. News buzzed through the student body: Orrin Calwyn, top-ranked, politically untouchable, was about to attempt a forbidden trial before the entire faculty panel. They said he’d found the blueprint to a spell no one had solved in a decade. But I knew that spell. I’d solved it. The work was mine.
Last night, I crept into Archive Hall, heart hammering as I searched the exam files. My answer wasn’t there. Not even a whisper of my distinct script or the ink-stamped proof of authorship. I’d stared at the empty slot between pale folders, nausea rising, as the realization set in: someone had erased me. And now, Orrin—always watching, always smiling as if he owned every secret—was about to cast my logic before the world.
I reached the edge of the demonstration square, jostled by clusters of students. My knuckles whitened around the spiral notebook tucked under my arm. If Orrin succeeded with my solution, both of us could be ruined by the spell’s authorship trace. But if I waited, the true thief might slip away in the confusion, and my future would evaporate as surely as my vanished record.
The bell tolled, echoing through the tower. Orrin stepped onto the dais, flanked by his coterie of assistants and the trial’s proctor. The air shimmered as he raised his wand. A forbidden trial. My work, dangled like a predator’s lure. I drew a ragged breath and slipped to the edge of the crowd, heart thumping in my throat, mind racing through possibilities. Time was running out.
No matter what I did next, the truth could burn me—or save me. But it had to be my choice.