Chapter 18: Ashes and Eyes

The alarm was pulsing now—low, rhythmic, like a heartbeat warning of something ancient waking.

The Circle moved fast through the dim corridor, Lina held between Mara and Julian. Talwyn was ahead, wandless but sharp-eyed, whispering silencing charms that barely flickered—minor things, enough to dampen sound.

They were almost at the service stairwell when the shadows shifted.

A figure stepped out of the darkness. Cloaked. Armed.

Staff Enforcer.

His voice was calm, clipped. "Return the girl."

Talwyn raised a hand, shielding the others. "We're not going back."

"No. You're going down."

The enforcer flicked his wand—and Talwyn was hurled against the stone wall, his shoulder cracking with a sickening crunch.

Caelum didn't hesitate.

"Run!" he shouted, stepping between the enforcer and the group.

The others moved, dragging Talwyn now, blood trailing from his hairline.

Caelum faced the man alone.

No wand.

No plan.

Just instinct.

After a year of constant supply of magical knowledge from blood elixir and his obsession with reading in the Greystone library, Caelum was confident in his spell repertoire—at least in theory.

But theory was not enough.

To confront another wizard—trained, armed, focused—without a wand to channel his power was another challenge entirely.

He could cast wandlessly, yes, but the spells barely sparked. The control was unstable. The power, minimal.

He was only six.

So, he turned to the only thing he could truly grasp.

His fire.

The enforcer raised his wand again.

"Stupe—"

Caelum's hand lifted.

The fire came.

Not thrown. Not conjured.

It ignited.

A low, humming orb of white-blue heat swelled in his palm. It shimmered like molten glass, silent and terrible.

He had shaped this flame in solitude, night after night.

Tempered it like steel, carved it like song.

A spell born not from a book, but from will.

He called it "Luxardent."

Light that burns.

Not fire for destruction.

But fire for freedom.

The enforcer blinked.

Then he screamed.

The magic detonated like a pulse, a wave of searing light knocking the man backward as flames licked the corridor walls in narrow tongues. Not wild. Controlled. Focused.

The spell died almost as quickly as it came, but the scorch marks remained—burned into stone, into memory.

Caelum stood in the center of it all, panting, hands shaking.

So much for secrets, he thought. So much for shadows.

Behind him, the others had stopped.

They stared.

Not in fear.

In awe.

…

The corridor was filled with smoke and the fading echo of fire.

The enforcer lay sprawled across the stone floor, groaning faintly. His uniform was scorched, sleeves burnt away, one arm twisted unnaturally beneath him. His wand, once gripped in precision, now lay beside him — cracked, blackened, and useless.

Julian crouched beside the fallen man, checking quickly. "Wand's fried," he said. "Dead wood."

Mara tried to pry the badge from his belt, but the clasp had melted into the leather.

"Do we leave him?" Talwyn asked, leaning heavily on the wall, clutching his side.

"He's breathing," Mara replied. "He'll live. Probably." Her voice was cold, clinical.

"Then we keep moving." Talwyn winced as he stood straighter. "He'll raise the alarm fully once he comes to. If he remembers anything."

They were already turning away when Julian glanced over his shoulder.

"Caelum?" he asked.

Caelum hadn't moved.

He stood a few steps behind, eyes fixed not on the enforcer—but just beside him.

The blood.

It had pooled around the man's ribs, thick and slow, the scent sharp and heady.

Caelum's fingers twitched.

This was different.

Not like the elixir—processed, cooled, artificial.

This was alive. Charged with magic. It pulsed in his senses.

Knowledge. Power. Raw and unfiltered.

It called to him.

He swallowed hard.

His feet felt planted in stone. His throat ached—not with thirst, but with a hunger that lived behind his teeth, behind his ribs.

He knew—knew—that if he took just a drop of it, not only would the fire return stronger, but so would understanding. Spells. Experience. Power far beyond his years.

But he didn't move.

Not because he couldn't.

But because he shouldn't.

Not now.

Not like this.

They're watching. They trust you.

Don't become the thing they already fear.

"Caelum," Mara called gently.

He blinked.

Nodded.

And turned away.

…

They slipped into the dark, vanishing through back corridors and side passages, winding their way to the surface like shadows dissolving from stone.

They didn't speak again until they were aboveground, cloaked by Mara's fog spell and shielded by night. The building shrank behind them like a haunted tomb.

Talwyn limped, but alive.

Lina stirred faintly, safe.

And Caelum...

Caelum walked with his hood up and his eyes low, the faint heat of that fire still flickering in his bones.

The secret was out.

And soon, so would the truth.

…

in the staff quarters, alarms flared fully. Doors slammed. Emergency protocols initiated. Fire suppression glyphs crackled to life around the medical block.

And in the secured communications chamber below Level 3, Rosier read the alert scroll with an unreadable expression.

"Subject Lina Avenleigh—extracted."

"Stasis containment breached."

"Enforcer down. Unknown spell. Fire-type."

"Suspected group: Greystone Inner Circle."

He tapped the paper with a gloved hand.

Then slowly smiled.

"So," he murmured. "The boy burns after all."

He reached into his coat and pulled out a sealed dossier. The name stamped on the cover:

Caelum Sanguine.

He placed it on the desk beside the alert parchment and rang the bell for containment deployment.