The Vow She Swore to Break

Chapter 1 - Calix

The night is wrapped in a curtain of winter fog. No wind at all, but a faint train whistle grows sharper as it gets closer to the station — “Whooo—”

— thin at first, then closer, threading through the air so still my father’s cigarette smoke goes straight up instead of sideways. He doesn’t actually smoke. He bought a pack at the station kiosk twenty minutes ago and has been turning it over in his coat pocket without lighting one, which is its own kind of tell.

“Eat something before you fall asleep on that train.”

Not what he means. He reaches over and straightens my collar, which was already straight — has been straight since I put the coat on this morning — and I let him do it anyway, because it’s easier than telling him to stop. “No skipping meals. No bunking classes. I don’t want a single word out of that school, Calix. Not one.”

“You’ve said that four times.”

“I’ll say it a fifth if it makes you actually listen.”

He checks his watch again. Third time in six minutes. I don’t say anything about that either.

A sharp screech rings out as the train finally arrives; it’s time to hop inside. He hugs me — too hard, the kind of hug that’s really about not doing something else — and when he steps back there’s a new weight in my coat pocket that wasn’t there before. I don’t check what it is. I already know, from the shape of it against my ribs, and from the fact that he can’t quite meet my eyes now.

“Go on,” he says, rough. “Before I say something stupid.”

I go. I watch him get smaller through a window already fogging with my own breath, and I lift my hand because he’s lifted his, and somewhere behind us the platform curves out of sight and that’s it. That’s the whole goodbye. Twenty years and it came down to a straightened collar and a pack of cigarettes he never smoked.

A long, shrill whistle pierces the fog, and here begins my journey to Osint Academia.

* * *

Now it's time to find my seat, “C2, Seat 14” - after looking around for a bit, I finally spot seat 14. It’s beside the window. I place my bag above the rack and then sit down.

A silver-haired boy with emerald, green eyes is sitting next to me and across from me, a brunette girl is lost in her book, her eyes almost hidden behind the pages. She’s holding “Anne of Green Gables”.

I look out the window – tall silhouettes of trees rush by behind us and the sky is covered with a smoky, silver haze. I lean my head against the seat and close my eyes to fall asleep and the dream begins –

I am walking into a library; rows of tall shelves stand like silent giants, stacked with books that seem to hum with secrets. “But why does the room look like it’s glowing a bit—wait… is it?” I look up. There’s no concrete ceiling — only glass — and through it, the night sky is crystal clear. Stars twinkle, the moon pours its pale light down, and beneath it all, I stand between these giant shelves. I start walking aimlessly between these rows of shelves. My eyes drift along the carved labels on the shelves — History, Fiction, Science, Magic, Wisdom, Phytology, Zoology, Geography, Philosophy, Paleontology…Forbidden – “Did I read it right?” From that same shelf, a book glimmers with a purple light — subtle, but impossible to ignore. I take a step closer, drawn to it. The book shivers—hsss—and begins to rise, slow and deliberate. Then pages start fluttering with a quiet whisper, like a spell breathing into life. It stops at page 174, glowing faintly at the edges. There, blooming out of the paper itself, is a magical tree woven from stardust and moonlight. Its leaves shimmer in shades of soft lavender and pale blue, glowing as if each one carries its own secret constellation. Tiny lights drift around it—spark-like motes of magic, floating gently through the air like they’re choosing where to land next. Some settle on the branches, others dance upward toward the night sky printed across the page.

Butterflies made of luminescent light flap their delicate wings around the tree, leaving trails of glittering dust behind them. The trunk is old and graceful, carved with faint runes that pulse softly—as though the tree is breathing. And from its roots, the magic spills back into the book, curling along the open pages like vines of living light.

I have never seen anything like this before. “Gosh, that’s beautiful” …but it doesn’t last long. The glow begins to thin, the butterflies blur, and the stardust trembles—as if the whole scene is dissolving back into the page. A faint, sharp voice starts ringing in my ear, cutting through the magic like a stray beam of daylight.

“Hey—hey! Wake up…wake up! We are at Osint! It’s time to get off.” –

The boy with silver hair had been calling me this whole time.

“Thanks,” I managed, my voice cracking as I pulled myself out of the long, heavy sleep.

Two hazel eyes with gray flecks watch me closely from the doorway—it’s the same girl who sat across from me the whole ride. I stand up and grab my bag.

“Hi, I am Calix. Thanks for waking me up.” I start up the conversation with the boy.

“I’m Rune. No big deal. Let’s go.”

As we’re about to leave the cabin, the girl speaks up, “You dropped your arcane pen—the one with the glowing blue core and the metal spirals around it—under the seat.”

I turn back and pick up the pen. ‘Thanks, it means a lo—’

She’s gone.

“That’s Ivara,” Rune says, like this explains something. “She does that.”

* * *

Osint isn’t like any school I’ve ever been to.

It rises out of the Cliffside like something ancient and alive, as if the mountain itself pushed it upward over centuries. Towering spires pierce the fog-drenched sky, their slate roofs slick with rain. Warm yellow lights glow through the tall windows, flickering like lanterns guiding travelers’ home—though this place doesn’t feel like home. Not yet.

Thick vines twist across the stone walls, giving the whole structure the appearance of abandoned age. Parts of the building stretch out over the edge of the cliff, and waterfalls spill beneath it into a deep ravine swallowed in mist. The whole school feels suspended between worlds—too old to be modern, too alive to be ruins.

“It has three waterfalls,” Rune says, appearing at my shoulder. “Wait till you smell the plumbing in spring.”

I laugh before I mean to, which surprises both of us a little. A narrow stone bridge winds toward the main entrance, half hidden by overgrown trees and shifting shadows. Every gust of wind makes it creak, like the place is whispering something I’m not close enough to hear.

This is Osint. The place my father called safe in the voice of someone convincing himself. Standing at the foot of that bridge with two dozen other soaked, silent first-years, I think — not for the first time today — that I have absolutely no evidence that’s true.

* * *

House assignments get read out two nights later by a woman who says each word like it costs her something. Goldenleaf.

Silverbrook.

Emberthorn.

Frostwillow.

Rune and I both end up in Goldenleaf. Ivara’s name doesn’t get called to any house at all, which I notice, and then spend a full minute telling myself it doesn’t mean anything, and then notice that I’m still thinking about it.

Our dorm has an enormous arched window and a third bed belonging to a boy named Aldridge, who arrives at a dead sprint past curfew looking like he’s about to either faint or start laughing.

“Fight,” he gasps. “Main hallway. Sylas has some third-year pinned—” and he’s gone again, off to deliver the same four words to someone else.

Rune and I don’t discuss it. We just run.

* * *

Here’s what I remember thinking, the first time I actually saw him: he was not fighting anyone.

Sylas is floating a few feet off the stone, arms folded, eyes shut, like the entire hallway happening beneath him is a minor scheduling inconvenience. Half his face is ordinary — pale, freckled, human. The other half isn’t. Black, armored, threaded through with a dull red pulse, like something under the skin that hasn’t finished deciding what it wants to be.

On the floor below him, a boy — Orlo, somebody whispers — is shaking, sweat-soaked, eyes moving fast behind closed lids.

“What’s wrong with him?” My voice comes out smaller than I want it to.

Rune: He’s having nightmares.

“Why? -”

Rune: Sylas is an expert in Efialtiskinesis, the ability to manipulate and generate nightmares. Orlo is now trapped inside his worst fears and nightmares. If it goes on for more than ten minutes, his mind will blur so deeply between reality and nightmare that he may lose all sense of himself, his soul may start shattering as well.

“Should’ve known it before touching Sylas’s palantíri. He doesn’t let anyone touch it.”

Someone standing behind me on my right side speaks up.

“Palantíri?” I ask, glancing back.

“Sylas uses it to communicate across vast distances, can see and speak with others using a linked stone. Why are you surprised —”

“I haven’t seen anything like this before. I thought they were just myths. ”

“Well, there are more things here that are inoubliable —.”

Nobody’s moving to help. That’s the part that gets me — not the magic, not the boy shaking on the floor, but the specific, practiced way an entire hallway has decided, without discussing it, that watching is the safest available option.

A voice, close behind my shoulder, low: “Don’t get involved. Not unless you want to be next.”

I turn. She isn’t looking at me at all. She’s looking at him, hands curled loosely at her sides, and there’s something in her face I don’t have a name for yet — not fear, or not only fear.

I think she’s warning me off.

I’ll spend most of the next year finding out how wrong that guess was.