The early morning quiet of Caelus Darion's office was deceptive.
Sunlight poured through the tall arched windows, casting golden lines across a desk that looked more like a battlefield than a place of work. Stacks of parchment rose like siege towers. Magical correspondences blinked softly, waiting to be read. Three cups of coffee—one cold, one forgotten, one recently reheated—sat abandoned amid ink-stained ledgers and unfinished student evaluations.
Caelus sat at the eye of the storm, quill in hand, half a spell away from replacing his entire filing system with a sentient creature that could scream when something needed attention.
He was halfway through signing off on a facilities request for reinforced training dummies—again—when a red-marked document floated into his peripheral vision.
He blinked.
The seal caught his eye first: disciplinary incident, flagged for administrative review.
With a groan that was less dramatic and more soul-deep resignation, he set down his quill and pulled the page forward.
Subject: Varek Thorne – Ascendent Tier, Class 2 Report Summary: Repeated misconduct, combative behavior, unauthorized use of magic, misuse of familial status, public disruption.
Caelus exhaled. "Of course it's you."
He flipped to the next page.
Incident 1: Excessive force during a training session. Refusal to acknowledge an opponent's surrender.Incident 2: Open provocation and threats toward another student—Aeryn—escalated by inflammatory remarks regarding social status.Incident 3: Public disruption in the courtyard. Magical assault repelled by another student. Resulting restraint via summoned flora. Student remains detained in disciplinary hold pending evaluation.
Caelus rubbed his temple.
"One month," he muttered. "He lasted one month."
He leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling as if it might deliver him divine intervention—or at least an excuse to teleport into the sea for the rest of the semester.
Varek Thorne. The name alone was enough to give half the faculty a migraine.
Son of High Magister Thorne. Scion of the Thorne Trading Conglomerate. Descendant of a bloodline as deep in the noble magic circuits as it was in legal protections. The kind of student who arrived with both a recommendation and a warning, usually in the same envelope.
Caelus had dealt with students like him before. He was a headmaster. This was part of the job.
But few wielded their family's power with as much smug efficiency as Varek. Fewer still had the gall to throw it around in public.
He skimmed the witness notes, and sure enough, there it was—quoted word for word in a magical transcript from the Courtyard:
"You know who I am? I could have this entire academy crawling on its knees if I wanted to. My family doesn't get punished. We get promoted."
Caelus closed his eyes. He breathed. Then, he turned slowly in his chair to look at the third coffee mug.
He drank the entire thing in one long pull.
Setting it down with care, he returned to the page that mentioned the courtyard incident. Specifically, the last line:
"Restrained mid-threat by Ms. Aeryn via spontaneous overgrowth. Varek immobilized. Crowd dispersed. Student walked away without comment."
Caelus's lips twitched.
Not a smile. Not quite.
But close.
He remembered Aeryn. He'd spoken to her briefly during orientation—a calm, quiet girl who carried herself like she didn't need anyone's approval. There'd been something in her presence, something beneath the surface, something powerful. Her spirit, Sylra, had been equally striking—still, poised, dangerous in the way only ancient things are.
When he read that Aeryn had tangled with Varek in the Training Hall, he hadn't been surprised. When he read that she'd ended a fight with a wall of living vines and walked away like nothing had happened—he wasn't disappointed.
He was impressed.
Varek, of course, had turned the entire thing into a performance. According to secondary reports, he'd spent ten full minutes yelling at the top of his lungs while suspended midair, wrapped in a spiraling lattice of summoned flora. His rage had reached a pitch high enough to send a flock of sparrow spirits scattering from the trees. No one had taken him seriously. Some students had laughed. Most had walked away.
And Aeryn?
She hadn't even looked back.
Caelus turned the page over and scrawled a quick note for himself:
Meet with Ms. Aeryn. Determine long-term placement. Monitor spirit anomaly re: Library of Beginnings. High potential. Minimal ego. Proceed cautiously.
He tapped the edge of the parchment once, then set it aside atop the "Worth My Time" stack—an increasingly exclusive category.
Next, he pulled out a clean page and began drafting his reply to the Thorne family.
Dear Lord and Lady Thorne,Thank you for your continued faith in Aetherion Academy. Regarding your son's recent disciplinary challenges…
He paused.
Then scratched out the word challenges and replaced it with activities.
Then scratched activities and replaced it with flamboyant expressions of privilege.
That would need a revision.
Probably several.
And a footnote or two about the academy's standing policy against weaponized nepotism.
He was halfway through drafting the letter to House Thorne when his pen paused just above the page, his mind drifting back to something he'd jotted down earlier.
Spirit anomaly. Library of Beginnings.
Caelus blinked, lowering his pen.
Right.
He flipped back to the notes on Aeryn's file, eyes scanning the section labeled "Anomalous Spirit Activity." Another document—this one flagged in a deep crimson seal typically reserved for interdepartmental investigations—was tucked behind it.
He peeled it free and unfolded it.
Formal Inquiry:Subject: Sylra – Spirit Companion of AerynStatus: Unaccounted forLast confirmed manifestation: Outside the Library of BeginningsWitness statements confirm involuntary absorption into the Library structure.Connection to host remains intact, though distant.Current Location: Unknown.
Caelus's expression darkened as he read the rest. The account was clear—Sylra hadn't simply vanished. She had been pulled into the structure of the Library itself. Taken.
He set the paper down slowly.
The Library of Beginnings had stood since before the Academy's founding. To most, it was a monument of knowledge, a centerpiece of magical history. Students and faculty interacted with it only through the mana registration system, never setting foot inside. The structure wasn't sealed by accident. It was sealed by design.
Caelus had never entered it.
No Headmaster had—not in recent memory.
But he knew what lay within.
It was a truth whispered only between Headmasters, passed down from one generation to the next in a ritual that predated even the Academy's current political structure.
The Library of Beginnings wasn't a library.
Not truly.
It was a Labyrinth.
A pocket dimension bound to the physical tower. A sprawling, shifting space built not to house knowledge but to contain it. A maze of forgotten spells, forbidden research, ancient constructs, and secrets powerful enough to rewrite the world. What books it offered through the summoning system were mere surface fragments—harmless echoes pulled from the labyrinth's edge.
But no one had touched its core in centuries.
And now, a spirit had been absorbed into it.
Sylra. A named spirit. An intelligent one. Bonded to a first-year student.
Caelus closed his eyes and exhaled slowly.
This wasn't just a stray ripple. This was a breach. And if Aeryn's spirit was being held inside, it wasn't going to be as simple as unlocking a door.
He opened his eyes again and reached for his final two coffee mugs—cold and worse for wear—but drank them both without hesitation.
Then, he stood.
For the first time in weeks, he pushed his chair fully back from the desk and turned toward the long-forgotten arcane communications array embedded in the office wall.
His fingers danced over the runes with ease, years of disuse melting away beneath practiced familiarity. Light flared along the lines etched into the marble as he activated the priority channels.
He began calling in favors.
Old names. Dangerous names.
People who owed him more than they cared to admit—and people who, frankly, terrified most of the current staff.
He requested a formal override of access seals on the Library's physical entrance.
He dispatched coded summons to hand-picked allies, bypassing bureaucratic channels entirely.
And as the messages went out, Caelus returned to his desk and pulled open the bottom drawer—the one sealed with his own signature.
Inside sat a long, narrow box, engraved with unfamiliar runes and layered in three protective wards.
He placed a hand on it.
The wards peeled away like silk.
When he opened the lid, the air shifted.
Inside lay a wand. Smooth, dark wood veined with silver threading, its core humming softly, almost like a heartbeat.
He hadn't used it in years.
But if he was stepping into the Labyrinth...
He'd need more than just authority.
He'd need to be ready.
Caelus Darion, Headmaster of Aetherion Academy, straightened his coat, adjusted the collar of his robes, and spoke to the empty room with calm certainty.
"Let's go."