Chapter Text
Part 1
Raven's POV
The sky over Lyptos has dissolved into the color of dirty lead this morning, shedding an icy Mid-October downpour that seems entirely intent on washing away the last, desperate remnants of my motivation.
I run. My black ankle boots clatter against the wet asphalt of the university campus in a fast, hollow rhythm that echoes the frantic numbers spinning in my head. Eighty-two percent. That is the failure rate the institute casually threw at us during orientation week for Historical Philology. It is my minor; a heavy, theoretical, even if entirely optional, anchor I intentionally strapped to myself just to have something solid to hold onto alongside the emotional roller coaster of my acting studies. On the theater stage, they constantly demand that I turn my innermost self inside out. They want my tears, my sweat, my every raw nerve exposed. Philology, though, is made of naked facts, words spoken by already dead people, and rigid structure. It's supposed to be an effective contrast and a distraction from the emotional and much demanding world of acting.
To my left, the jagged, neo-gothic silhouettes of the older faculty buildings cut into the mist like broken teeth, their dark granite facades streaked with decades of soot and rainwater. The campus of Lyptos' University for Art and Culture always feels less like a place of higher learning and more like an architectual purgatory; a sprawling labyrinth of cold stone, drafty cloisters and modern concrete additions that look like geometric scars against the ancient landscape. Today, the rain transforms the entire courtyard into a grim, monochromatic canvas. The gravel paths have dissolved into grey streams, and the few naked, ancient oaks scattered across the plaza thrash their twisted branches against the low-hanging sky like skeletal hands clawing at the fog.
I think back to the plan I made. Compensating some of the stress from acting class this semester by taking the rather monotonous, but interesting, course on Historical Philology. But I realise right now that if I can't even manage to cross the threshold of the lecture hall on time today, the whole fragile system of balance I have constructed in my mind will collapse before the semester has even properly started. My acting professor loves to preach that punctuality is the first true form of presence. If you are late, Raven, you have already lost the stage before you even speak your first line.
When I abandon the paved path to take a desperate shortcut across the massive courtyard lawn of the campus, I realize too late how quickly my reserves are running dry. The grass has turned into a waterlogged sponge from days of continuous rain. With every stride, the sodden earth gives way, swallowing my boots into the mud with a heavy, wet squelch. My breath grows shallow, and a familiar, hollow ache creeps into my limbs. The inevitable, silent receipt for the meals I have quietly skipped over the last few days finally reaches me. But it's a feeling I have already grown accustomed to. It's exhausting, but it's not new. My body is running on fumes, and just staying upright on the slick ground requires more energy than I want to admit. Stupid, I think, a wave of faint dizziness washing over me. It's your own fault, I scold, but I'm lying to myself if I say I regret not eating. I welcome the weightless feeling of exhaustion, actually. I enjoy the control I have over choosing to eat. Or not to. It is the only thing in my life I can control, I think.
Cold splatters of earth shoot up the hem of my coat as I fight my way through the mire. By the time I finally slam my palms against the heavy, iron-clad double doors of the main entrance and slip into the stuffy warmth of the foyer, the dampness has won. It has settled over me during my sprint like a heavy, suffocating second skin. My dark wool coat is entirely waterlogged, dragging down at my shoulders with a miserable weight. The freezing rainwater has found its way beneath my collar, drenching the knitted fabric of my sweater until it clings uncomfortably cool against my collarbones.
The main entrance hall is an imposing, cavernous space that feels entirely detached from the modern world outside. High, vaulted ceilings stretch upward into the shadows, supported by massive, fluted columns of dark, vein-streaked marble. The air in here is a stifling cocktail of damp umbrellas, old radiators, and the faint, sour tang of wet clothing. Echoes bounce off the stone walls: the frantic scuffle of wet shoes, the sharp slam of locker doors, and the distant, muffled chatter of students drifting down the intersecting corridors. The floor is a mosaic of ancient tiles, worn smooth in the center by generations of stressed academics, now covered in a slick sheen of tracked-in muddy water.
I can't exactly sit in a packed lecture hall looking like a stray animal. The thought of drawing any kind of attention to me on the first day was a terrifying enough possibilty for me to now hurry down the long, stone-tiled corridor and duck into the very first restroom I can find.
The door clicks shut behind me with a heavy, dull thud, instantly locking out the distant, echoing murmur of the other students passing by. Silence encapsulates me immediately, and the heaviness of my wet clothes now suddenly feels suffocating. A thick, sterile quiet that smells faintly of chlorine and cheap liquid soap anchors me to reality. The radiator in the corner gives a low, rhythmic hiss, a lonely mechanical breath in the empty room. I march up to the long row of porcelain sinks, my heels clacking on the tile flooring, and peel off my sodden coat, draping it over the edge. Snatching a handful of the rough paper towels from the dispenser, I rub the rain from my face and finally force myself to look into the large, slightly tarnished mirror. The harsh, pale buzz of the fluorescent tubes offer no mercy. They hum softly, a tiny, vibrating overhead drone that makes my ears ring. Staring back at me from the glass is a face whose sharp, almost gaunt features lay bare the brutal toll of the past years. My cheekbones cut through my skin far too prominently, and the translucent paleness of my complexion gives me a distinctly sickly aura. My green eyes — the only actual color I have left to offer — look massive and dull, buried deep in the bruised shadows of their sockets. I am a ghost. A ghost chasing dead history. The smokey eye I'd attempted this morning has smudged from the rain. It actually only accentuates the deadness of my complexion instead of making me look like a sexy vampire, so I make the split decision to rub it off with the already damp paper towel. I sound a soft, exhausted sigh and reach back with clammy fingers to tame the straight, long black sea of hair that is entirely plastered to my head. I twist it tightly, securing it into a wet, sad bun at the nape of my neck. Propping my weight against the cold rim of the basin, I just close my eyes, trying to force my breathing back into a normal rhythm.
The quiet settles over me again, heavy and cold. It never does completely, though. There is always a humming in my head, a restlesness that only seems to grow louder the weaker I get. But even if I don't feel true peace in this second, the silence of the moment still manages to ease the headache I feel coming up.
Then, it fractures.
Behind me, the door of the very last stall swings open. It moves completely soundlessly on its hinges, but the subtle shift in air pressure makes the hairs on my arms stand up.
A man steps out into the shared vanity space. I hear the confident steps of his strut before I see him.
He takes a sharp step toward the sinks, catches sight of me, and freezes entirely mid-motion. Our eyes lock in the glass of the mirror, and for a long, fragile moment, the world falls into an absolute, breathless vacuum. The hum of the fluorescent lights seems to drop an octave, turning into a heavy thrum that vibrates in my chest. He is taller than me, which is not exactly an achievement, because my height is underwhelmingly average. At least one thing that is usual about me. The man is wrapped in a dark, impeccably elegant coat that gives him a cold, entirely unapproachable gravity. He paired it with a dark blue scarf that wraps neatly around his neck. I can't see his pants, but there is no mud on his black, clean shoes. Nothing about this man screams carelessness. The rain has not disheveled him, and every line of his clothing sits with deliberate perfection. His face, though, is what strikes me most: a perfectly defined, sharp jawline, matching high cheek-bones and straight black, damp hair that is cut neatly, but not too short. A few rogue strands cling messily to his forehead and brows, but that's the only kind of imperfection I can see on him. And honestly, the contrast only adds to his conventional attractiveness. His skin possesses a stark, marble-like paleness, looking nearly translucent beneath the harsh fluorescent lights. A few droplets of rain cling to his temple and the curve of his cheeks, like glass beads on polished stone. Unlike me, he isn't drenched, only lightly damp. I can't tell from here, but I think his eyes are blue, or perhaps green, like mine. He doesn't have a monolid, but the shape of his eyes appear somewhat east asian to me. He looks to be in his late twenties, early thirties at most, but his chilly, almost imperial presence doesn't match the typical, disheveled students I usually run into around here. He holds himself with a certain elegance, even while standing. His posture is straight, his face perfectly still.
He looks entirely, beautifully out of place. His light eyes are a striking, piercing contrast to his dark hair, pinning me to the spot through the reflection. Who carries themselves like that in a place like this? I wonder, my acting brain automatically trying to dissect his posture. His Presence commands the room without saying a word. He owns the stage. And then, the embarrassing reality of the situation finally seeps through my thick skull, shattering the aesthetic appreciation: this is the women's restroom.
He seems to register it at the exact same second. His casually distant expression fractures just a bit. His shaped dark eyebrows knitted minimally, and a fine crack appears to shoot through his rigid, almost regal posture. He doesn't look embarrased. What I read on his expression is the pure, frosty irritation of a man who suddenly finds himself in a deeply improper predicament. For a second, the silence between us is so taut it feels like a physical wire. I can hear the tiny, rhythmic drip... drip... drip of a leaky faucet somewhere to my left, marking the seconds of our frozen standoff. My heart knocks a little faster against my ribs, the sound loud in my own ears. I'm not even sure why; for once, I did nothing wrong.
He doesn't say a single word. He doesn’t stammer out a clumsy apology like anyone else would have. Like I would have. He simply holds my gaze in the mirror for one heartbeat longer, then spins on his heel and vanishes out the door with quick, sweeping strides. The door swings shut behind him with a solid, echoing click, cutting off his exit. I am left behind alone in the quiet. I give my head a hard shake to clear the fog. He'd probably just been lost. But still, he could've apologised at least. Or say something to make me feel less... disturbed. Arrogant twat. A sudden glance at my smartphone instantly shattered the whole mystery, though. The lecture starts in five minutes. Forgetting the stranger, I grab my damp coat, throw it over my arm, and rush out into the hallway.
As I hit the barren corridor, my pace falters for just a second. Come to think of it, how long had he even been in that stall? I had been standing in front of that mirror the entire time and hadn't heard a soul walk in or move inside those stalls. I would've heard the rustle of his coat or the shifting of his feet on the smooth tiles. And why on earth is he barely wet, while I look like a drowned poodle? He hadn't even been carrying an umbrella. I shrug it off. In the end, it doesn't matter. A university of this size is practically built on eccentric characters, and if I play my cards right, I’d never have to see that arrogant, annoyingly handsome face again. I have much bigger problems to solve. Turning away, I hurry with quick, splashing steps toward the grand lecture hall, leaving the shadow of the restroom behind.
The scent of damp wood, cigarette smoke, and stale coffee hangs like a heavy blanket over the Lecture Hall. Following my usual ritual, I seek out a seat in the back rows, close enough to the wall to dissolve into the shadows if necessary, and far enough from the podium to escape the roaming eyes of the professor. Around me, the monotonous hum of nearly a hundred students fills the air. The rustle of notebooks, the rhythmic clicking of laptop keyboards, and the muffled giggles of two girls a few rows ahead coalesce into a distant white noise, doing nothing but fueling the throb of my headache. I stare down at the blank page of my sketchbook, my fingers tightening around my pen. The familiar, hollow emptiness I momentarily forgot about gnaws at my stomach, carrying the bitter certainty that the alarm bells of my eating disorder are ringing exceptionally loud today. After that freezing sprint across the muddy lawn, I feel utterly depleted and hollowed out from the inside, yet somehow so transparent that anyone in this room could look right through me. I draw my elbows tighter against my sides, trying to make myself smaller. More invisible.
"Did you hear?" a student in the row ahead whispers to his neighbor.
"Old Professor Vance officially retired. We’re getting the new guy today for this module. Supposedly a total genius. Some prodigy who tore through his degrees in record time."
"Probably just an arrogant snob from a rich family," the other grumbles back.
I feel my lips twitch into an involuntary curl of skepticism. A prodigy. Just another pristine product of a hyper-competitive society that demands perfection and penalizes weakness. Instantly, an instinctive aversion to this stranger takes root in my chest. I haven't even met the guy, but in my experience, disproportionately young professors tend to compensate for their lack of real-world mileage with overinflated egos and unnecessarily convoluted exam questions. I picture a lanky man in his early thirties, buried in an ill-fitting tweed jacket, trying desperately to look important. The kind of person who basks in the spotlight of academia without ever possessing a shred of true depth or actual talent for teaching young minds. The heavy double doors of the lecture hall swing open at exactly eight-fifteen. The chatter in the room doesn't die instantly; instead, it ebbs away in a rolling wave of surprised whispers. I raise my eyes. And in that split second, my heart misses its beat entirely.
The man entering the room with long, measured strides is no lanky academic try-hard. I know him. Well, no, I don't. But I had just met the man five minutes ago. A collective, sharp intake of breath ripples through the female students, and even I have to admit that the sheer gravity of this man, even with a hundred people present, completely commands the space. He has shed his overcoat. Now, he wears a tailored, midnight blue three-piece suit that accentuates his broad shoulders and narrow waist. The white shirt beneath is fastened to the very top button, his tie perfectly centered. His dark hair, which had fallen damp and unruly across his forehead just five minutes ago, is now slicked back with meticulous precision. Only a single, stubborn strand refuses to obey the symmetry, falling over his right eye. He radiates a chilling, almost aristocratic elegance. His movements are entirely devoid of haste, dictated instead by an uncanny, fluid stillness, as though he exists in a completely different time zone than the rest of this frantic world. He places his leather briefcase onto the massive wooden podium, arranges his lecture notes with two precise turns of his hand, and finally faces the auditorium.
"Good morning," he says. His voice possesses the exact resonant, deep baritone that I'd associate with someone who carries himself like he does. It isn't loud, yet it carries a natural weight that effortlessly reaches every corner of the room. The remaining whispers die instantly.
"My name is Isaac Grey. As of today, I will be taking over the module for Historical Philology. My main focus will be Comparative Literature and Regional History."
He reaches for a piece of chalk and writes his name across the blackboard. His handwriting is rigid, beautifully cursive, and matches his utterly sophisticated name perfectly. Isaac Grey. I stare at him, entirely bewildered. My brain flatly refuses to piece the puzzle together. Mr. Grey. A professor. This man can barely be older than the senior students in this very room. I'm actually sure he's even younger than some of them. It feels absurd. He looks impossibly young, and yet beneath the unyielding coldness of his expressions lies a maturity that suffocates any hint of youthful light. He looks like a man who has spent decades doing nothing but breathing the air of dusty archives.
He’s a fraud, the thought flashes through my mind, my prejudices rising up selfishly. An arrogant, over-intelligent eccentric hiding behind a mask of absolute perfection.
Isaac Grey sets the chalk down, meticulously brushing the white dust from his fingertips, and lets his gaze drift slowly across the tiers. In the pale light of the lecture hall, his eyes look entirely dark. He seems to appraise everyone collectively, yet without a single flicker of emotional warmth. His face is a fortress, impenetrable and absolute. His gaze sweeps over the back rows, brushing against me for the fraction of a heartbeat, but moves on completely unbothered to the next sector without a pause, without a single hint of recognition. There is no trace of the chilly irritation from the women's restroom. In this moment, to him, I am simply another nameless face in a sea of nearly a hundred students. The professional distance he projects is absolute. He opens his manuscript and begins to speak.
The next hour and a half unfolds as a slow torture of fascination and deep-seated distrust. Mr. Grey doesn't read from his notes. He lectures entirely from memory on the epochs of regional myth-making, weaving historical data with literary movements, expressing himself with a precision so flawless it borders on the unnatural. He uses no modern colloquialisms, no rhetorical tricks. His sentences are perfectly constructed, almost mathematically exact. Several students attempt to catch him off guard with overly complex questions, but Grey doesn't so much as blink. He listens to each inquiry with a slight tilt of his head, waits through a second of absolute, dead silence, and then dismantles their arguments with a cold, clinical logic so cutting that no one dares try a second time. He isn't rude, he is simply untouchable.
I feel my initial disdain shifting into something far more uncomfortable: an obsessive curiosity. Who is this man walking through the corridors of this university like a living anachronism?
When the shifting of chairs and mumbling of voices announces the end of the lecture, I breathe out fully for the first time in ninety minutes. I pack away my things with clammy fingers while Mr. Grey stands with his back to the hall once more, letting his documents slide into his briefcase. His movements remain stiff, controlled. Flawless.
I swing my backpack over my shoulder. I stare at his back for a moment longer. I watch the way his muscles shift under the blue fabric of his jacket, the way his hands close the latch of his bag with mechanical precision. Then I leave.