Bound to nothingness

Chapter 5:"The first week. "

By her fourth morning at Veylcrest, Nyla had stopped getting lost. Mostly.

She knew the main paths between the dorms and the classrooms now. She still bumped into dead ends, locked doors, and staircases that seemed to change direction when no one was looking, but she could follow the crowd when the big bronze bells rang. The stares and whispers in the hallways hadn't stopped, but she was getting better at looking straight ahead and pretending she didn't hear them.

She walked into Professor Voss’s classroom with Emily and took her usual seat in the third row. Lucien was already sitting two desks over, spinning a heavy silver coin across his knuckles. He gave them a nod and went back to his coin.

Professor Voss walked in right on the hour. She set a wooden box on her desk and flipped the latch open. Inside were a dozen clear glass spheres, each the size of an apple.

"Today, we work on control," Professor Voss said, stepping around her desk.

She flicked her index finger, and three spheres rose into the air. She flicked her hand again, and the rest followed, hovering in a circle above the desk. A faint blue light pulsed inside each one.

"Magic follows your focus," Voss told the class. "If your mind wanders, the spell breaks. Pick a sphere and move it one metre toward you."

A boy in the front row put up his hand. "Just one metre?"

"If you find that simple, Mr. Davies, move it two," Voss replied without breaking stride. "Begin."

Within minutes, the room was noisy. Students leaned forward with screwed-up faces, muttering under their breath. A few spheres wobbled an inch off the desk before dropping hard against the wood. Across the room, a sharp crack echoed off the walls as one girl’s sphere burst into a shower of harmless glass dust.

"Clear it and try again, Miss Vance," Voss called out.

Nyla sat back and watched. Since she couldn't channel magic, Voss hadn't handed her a sphere, but watching the room was surprisingly interesting. Some students tried to muscle their way through, shouting their incantations louder as if that would force the glass to move. The ones who stayed calm were the ones actually getting results.

Voss walked down Nyla’s aisle and stopped at her desk. She raised a hand, sending one of the floating spheres gliding over to hover right in front of Nyla's face.

"Tell me what you see, Miss Vale."

Nyla leaned in to look at the glass. "It’s not glowing from the inside."

Two boys in the row ahead turned around and snickered. Voss didn't even glance at them.

"Go on," the professor said.

"The blue light is wrapped around the outside," Nyla said, watching the faint shimmers in the air. "You're holding it like a net."

Voss gave a short nod. "Correct. Most beginners try to push from within the object. Real control comes from shaping the energy around it."

She lowered her hand, and the sphere settled onto Nyla's desk with a soft tap.

The heavy bell in the hallway chimed for the end of the period.

"Next class, we begin defensive wards," Voss announced over the sound of opening satchels. "Dismissed."

As Nyla packed her notebook, Lucien slung his bag over his shoulder and leaned against her desk. "Look at you, making friends with the scariest teacher in the building."

Nyla looked up at him. "She asked me a question, Lucien."

"She talked to you for a full minute without threatening to turn you into a toad," Lucien said with a grin. "For Voss, that’s practically an adoption."

Emily snorted, zipping up her bag. "He's not wrong, Nyla."

Lucien tapped the side of his head, gave them a quick wave, and headed out the door.

Their second class of the day was Magical History, held in a wide, cold room with floor-to-ceiling windows. Professor Aldren, an older man with wire-rimmed glasses and a thick grey beard, was already standing at the front.

On the slate board behind him, he had written a single word in chalk: VEYLCREST.

Once everyone settled into their seats, Aldren turned around and leaned against his podium. "Most people think this academy was built as a place of learning."

He picked up an eraser and wiped the word away, replacing it with a new phrase: BUILT TO CONTAIN.

A low murmur passed through the rows.

" One thousand years ago, this wasn't a school," Aldren said, his voice carrying easily across the room. "It was a fortress built at the end of the First War. The original Council realized that when magic reaches a certain threshold, you don't teach people how to use more of it—you build walls thick enough to hold it in."

He tapped his wand against the desk. The air in the room rippled, and a large spectral map flared to life above their heads, showing the castle surrounded by thick, dark mountain ranges. To the far east, a region of the map was shaded in heavy black ink.

"And that brings us to the Eastern Territories," Aldren continued. "Or what most of you know as the Dark Realm."

Nyla sat up a little straighter.

"The Draven family has held those lands since before Veylcrest was founded," Aldren said. "They operate under their own laws, their own court, and their own military."

A student near the front raised a hand. "Is Karl Draven actually here as a student, or is he just observing?"

"He is enrolled," Aldren answered simply.

"Is it true he can bypass the castle wards?" another voice called out.

Aldren paused, taking off his glasses to wipe them on his sleeve. "Karl Draven belongs to a bloodline that helped design those wards. Whether he can bypass them or not is a question you shouldn't be asking."

He put his glasses back on and looked around the quiet room.

"The peace between the Council and the Draven house is old, and it is thin," Aldren added, turning back toward the board. "Remember that when you see him in the halls."

Nyla stared at the dark section of the map floating in the air. She thought back to the dark hallway from two nights ago—the silence that had settled over the corridor, the way the shadows had reacted near his boots, and the cold look in Karl's eyes when he realized her presence didn't trigger any magic.

The bell chimed again, breaking her train of thought. The spectral map dissolved into smoke.

"Read chapters four and five for Tuesday," Aldren said, picking up his stack of papers.

The classroom filled with the sound of scraping chairs as students gathered their things and pushed toward the exit. Nyla took her time sliding her books into her satchel, her eyes lingering on the word Draven still faintly visible in the chalk dust on the board.

She stepped out into the crowded hallway, Emily trailing right behind her, ready for whatever the rest of the week had in store.