Drop Three: The Friend Who Disappeared

The door to the past wasn't locked.

It never was.

Cassian stepped out of the rift and into the old observatory tower on the east end of the University of Arcane Sciences once their sanctuary. Where minds sparked like kindling and brilliance didn't need permission.

Now, it was just dust and silence.

And Arlen Drex.

Cassian's oldest friend.

Sitting at the window with a drink in one hand, legs kicked up on the desk they once carved formulas into. The lenses of his glasses caught the moonlight just enough to keep his expression unreadable.

"You finally came," Arlen said without turning. "Took longer than I thought."

Cassian said nothing.

"You want an apology?" Arlen took a sip. "You want me on my knees? Or do you want a reason?"

Cassian stepped forward, each footfall deliberate. Not threatening. Not yet.

"I want to know why you didn't come to my trial," he said.

Arlen laughed softly. "There was no trial, Cass."

"Exactly."

Cassian circled the room slowly. Everything here was the same cracked lenses, same chalk dust, even the faded scrawl on the wall from the night they discovered how to mimic noble glyph signatures.

Your name was still there. Next to mine.

Arlen finally turned.

He looked older now. Not by years. By guilt.

"I wasn't brave," he said. "I wasn't loyal. I was just scared. They told me if I showed up, I'd be next."

Cassian stared at him. "You were next to me for a decade."

"I was next to Cassian Vale," Arlen said. "Not the ghost they said you'd become."

Cassian's voice was ice.

"I didn't become anything. They just stopped looking."

Arlen stood now.

His hands trembled slightly.

"I came to your cell the night they dragged you down the spire. But you were gone."

Cassian's eyes narrowed. "You came too late."

"I know."

Another silence stretched. This one heavier.

Cassian pulled something from his coat pocket and tossed it onto the desk.

A glass lens scorched at the edges.

Arlen picked it up, frowning. "This is from the prototype?"

"Thorne said it was yours," Cassian lied.

Arlen's face drained of color.

"I never—"

Cassian's voice sliced through. "I know. I made it up."

Arlen looked confused.

Cassian stepped closer.

"I wanted to see if you'd beg. If you'd panic. If you'd admit something you never did just to survive."

Arlen's throat moved, but no words came.

"You didn't," Cassian said. "That's something, I suppose."

"So what now?" Arlen asked. "You kill me to make the math clean?"

Cassian tilted his head. "No. I do what you did."

Arlen blinked. "What?"

"I walk away."

Cassian turned toward the rift, which opened behind him with a sound like folding paper.

"No blood. No vengeance. Just silence."

Cassian turned halfway toward the rift but stopped.

His gaze drifted across the room. The shelves. The artifacts. The memories.

His voice was quiet now. Controlled.

"You still have them," he said. "The gifts I gave you."

Arlen's eyes followed his.

The brass astrolabe on the upper shelf custom-tuned to detect aether flares.

The self-writing quill on the desk, still in its original case.

And in the corner, asleep in a woven nest of blanket and gears: a small automaton-hound, breathing softly. A gift from Cassian's sixteenth birthday. Its name had been Tessell, short for "Tessellation," because it used to follow paths based on complex hex-grid patterns.

Cassian walked to the shelf. Took the astrolabe.

"You never understood this," he murmured, tucking it into his coat. "You used it to chart lightning storms. It was built to detect lies."

He took the quill next. Snapped it in half.

"It only wrote truth. You wasted it."

Arlen's voice caught in his throat. "Cass… please don't—"

But Cassian was already at the nest.

Tessell stirred.

Its eyes lit up dimly at the sight of him recognition coded into its copper skull. It made a soft, chirping whine. Rolled over like it used to when they were boys begging for attention, for play.

Cassian knelt beside it.

Stroked its worn frame once, like saying goodbye.

Then drove the shock blade clean through its core.

FZZZAKK.

The little body spasmed; legs twitching once—then went still.

Arlen cried out, rushing forward, but Cassian was already standing, stepping back.

"No blood," Cassian repeated, voice colder now. "No vengeance."

He turned fully to the rift as its light began to hum.

"Just silence," he said again, "and the slow removal of everything I ever gave you."

He didn't look back.

Didn't need to.

The sound of Arlen falling to his knees behind him said enough.

Cassian paused at the rift's edge.

But he didn't step through.

Not yet.

He turned back slowly mask lowered, eyes sharp.

"You know what I've always admired about you, Arlen?" he said, tone almost amused. "You never had the stomach to do anything outright evil. You just hid behind people who did."

Arlen didn't respond. He was too busy staring at the smoking corpse of the little automaton, hands trembling.

Cassian took a single step forward.

"You thought this was the punishment?" he asked, gesturing to the burned quill, the shattered machine, the empty shelf. "No, Arlen. This is foreplay."

He knelt so they were eye to eye.

"I know about your mother," Cassian whispered.

Arlen flinched.

"The quiet little illness she keeps hidden. The one you've been paying to suppress with off-grid aether treatments. Expensive ones. I traced the glyph payments through four proxies. Clever routing. Impressive, really. But not clever enough."

He smiled.

"Your father's campaign would collapse if anyone found out. Can't have the family heir tied to unsanctioned aether medicine. Black-market arcana? The horror."

Arlen's mouth opened, but no sound came.

Cassian went on.

"I know about your sister, too. Elidra. The one at the Royal Academy? Who's actually studying forgery and aether mimicry under a false name. Another lie you paid for. With my inventions, no less."

His smile widened, but his eyes went dead.

"I could release it all tonight. Drop the ledgers, the payment logs, the falsified exam passcodes, the mind-wipe receipt she signed under a fake surname."

Arlen shook his head. "Don't."

Cassian leaned in close, his voice a soft dagger.

"I won't destroy them today, Arlen. Not because you deserve mercy. Because you deserve hope. I want you to wake up every morning wondering if this is the day it all falls. If this is the morning she's expelled, or your father resigns, or your mother's clinic is shut down and she dies."

Arlen's eyes welled with tears.

Cassian stood.

"You didn't betray me with action," he said. "You betrayed me with cowardice. With silence. With standing still while the fire spread."

He turned again toward the rift.

"And now I'll return the favor."

The rift opened; white light on cold tile.

Cassian stepped into it.

And before it closed, he looked back one last time.

"Consider this a kindness," he said.

"Because the next time I come back, I won't take your things."

He let the words linger.

"I'll take your name."

Then he was gone.

And in his wake, Arlen Drex knelt alone in a ruined tower—surrounded not by flames, but by the unbearable weight of what hadn't yet happened.