Void Lord: My Revenge Is My Harem

(Chapter Eight: The New Path)

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The guard's hand never left the hilt of his short sword. "Inside," he said, flat and sure, as if the word itself were a door he could push people through. He did not give a name. He did not give a reason.

John stepped past him into the main hall of the academy.

The north hall swallowed him at once. The stone felt cool and old. Light fell through tall windows in long, pale sheets. The floor was gray and honest, scarred by a thousand boots that had learned to walk carefully here. Banners hung between the windows—simple hearts stitched in darker cloth, not the rich crests of great houses. The air smelled like chalk, ink, and the faint sweetness of old paper.

Fizz drifted at John's shoulder, bright as a coal and twice as offended. A soft, glassy glyph still clung to his muzzle like a clear band. It made no sound when he tried to talk. His paws pawed at it. His whiskers sparked around it. The gag spell did what gag spells do. It did not care about speeches.

"Not here," the guard muttered when Fizz's sparks flared. "No noise."

Fizz went still, then floated backward two hand spans so he could perform a full-body, silent tantrum. He clutched his chest with both paws and made the shape of a gasp. He threw his head back like a tragic actor and traced the air with one forepaw: a square, a triangle, a heart, a line. None of it meant anything. All of it meant "Let me speak" in Fizz-language.

"Breathe," John said, quiet. He did not touch Fizz. He did not touch many things in places he did not own.

Two figures waited by the far column. John knew them on sight now: the woman in the blue robe with calm eyes that saw farther than most, and the lean man with chalk on his fingers and humor hidden like a knife.

Master Hale did not waste speech. "John," she said. She could have said "boy" or "candidate." She did not. "With me."

Master Venn gave the small, short nod of someone who had made up his mind hours ago. "Your spirit too," he added, flicking his gaze to the gagged orange glow. "He may hum. He may not sing."

Fizz put both paws to his heart and mouthed a large, wounded How dare. The gag band did not even ripple.

John kept his voice level. "What is this? Where are we going? Why was I called? I failed the written exam."

"So many questions," Master Hale said, and somehow made the words kind instead of sharp. "Walk, and you will have answers. Stand, and you will have nothing."

They set off down the hall.

The academy's days had a way of being louder outside than in. Outside, carts and bells and feet made a river of sound. Inside, the river turned into a lake. The noise sat low under the stone. It did not splash. It breathed.

They passed open doors. In one, a dozen young students copied runes from a board while a thin woman tapped a stick in time to step—left, right, breathe, write. In another, a boy failed to lift a copper coin with a hand-circle. The coin refused to be impressed. The boy's ears turned pink. The teacher smiled without mockery and said, "Again."

They took a turn and climbed a flight of stairs polished by a hundred careful shoes. Fizz tried to shove his small head between the baluster spindles and got it stuck for one silent beat. He did a slow, dignified reverse wriggle, then floated as if nothing had happened at all.

Master Venn watched the maneuver out of the corner of his eye and did not smile. "We could remove the gag," he said to Master Hale, dry as old bread. "He would then cause a new problem."

"We have the problem we need," Master Hale said. "Keep it."

Fizz heard, pointed at the glass band around his muzzle, pressed both paws together in the universal sign for please, then drew an invisible heart in the air and poked it with exaggerated sadness. Hale did not look. Venn's mouth twitched—once.

They passed a long window that looked down into a square court. Younger students in gray coats were standing in a ring with chalk lines on the flagstones. A teacher flicked her wrist and a gust of air tugged three coats at once. No one fell. Everyone breathed. John's own breath matched the ring's pace without being told. Four in. Four out.

"You were called," Master Venn said, not turning his head. "You came. Good. Some try to argue with doors. Doors are not good at arguing."

"I would like to know who called me," John said. "And why."

Master Hale took the next stair without a change in pace. "You will know very soon."

Fizz bumped John's shoulder and acted like a knife was held across his throat. It means be careful. Then he made the sign of a hat with a very tall point and tugged his own invisible beard like a fisherman hauling line. Then he jabbed two paws toward his own eyes and then toward the hall ahead: I am watching. It was a lot of theater. It was also the only language left to him.

They climbed again. The steps grew narrower. The stones grew lighter. The air thinned a little and smelled faintly of dried herbs and smoke.

At a landing between floors, Master Venn paused to catch a breath he had not lost. He tapped the wall with his chalk. The chalk left a mark that was not a mark—a clear, humming curve that dimmed after a second. The hair on John's arms noticed it. He did not ask.

"Wards," Master Venn said, as if he had answered a question John had not risked. "Old and new. We keep both. The old ones remember things the new ones have not learned."

Fizz leaned close to the place where the light had been and crossed his eyes at it. He blew a spark at the stone. The spark made no sound at all. The gag band held its line like a stern aunt.

They walked on.

They passed a pair of doors carved with lions who had seen too much. The lions' eyes were old amber. One had a crack in its nose. Someone had loved them enough to oil them anyway. Beyond those doors, the air was cooler. Cold needs no help to be serious.

Master Hale's steps never changed. She led, and the hall let her. Master Venn walked as if measuring the floors as he went, chalk clicking once against his palm at the bottom of every fourth step.

John noticed everything he could without turning his head: the way the lamps were set at even intervals but burned at different heights; the way the windows here were narrow arrows letting in thin blue light; the way the dust on the base of one column had been smudged by a hand that did not like dust.

He noticed his own feelings too and did not let them run. He had failed the written exam—on paper, by the list. He had written every answer with care. He had not blotted. He had breathed. Yet the clerk's slate had not lifted with his name, and the wall board had not found him. Fartray had smiled.

So why this. Why now? Why him.

They climbed a final stair that bent left and right like a river avoiding rocks. No one spoke on it. The stair was the kind that asked people to be quiet without saying why.

At the top, a door waited. It was not bright. It was not heavy with gold. It was plain wood, smooth with years, and the grain showed a pattern like a slow-drawn map. A small brass plate sat where a knocker would be, stamped with three thin marks that did not look like runes and did not look like scratches. John did not know them. He did not like not knowing things.

Master Hale rapped the door with the side of her hand. Not hard. Not soft. A way that doors recognize.

"Come in," said a voice from inside. It sounded like an old floorboard that still held its shape.

Master Hale opened the door.

The room beyond should have been large and was somehow larger. Shelves covered the walls and then covered the space above the shelves with a second shelf. Books lived there in stacks and sideways and open throats. Some were thin as a thought. Some were as fat as a winter pig. A few were tied shut with cord. A few were held open with stones.

A table sat under the tall window like a ship. It held: three lanterns (two lit, one smoky), a sand-timer (still speaking to itself), three cups (none matched), a hookah pipe with its stem lying across a ledger, a plate with crumbs and a knife that did not belong to crumbs, and a globe the size of a child that turned itself in small patient clicks.