Chapter Text
"You know what's the worst thing about studying at a university where they resurrect historical figures? Having to sit through JFK's long monologues."
Don Pedro II University — 19th Century
Lancelote was counting the seconds—not those on the clock, that purple wooden rabbit hanging on the wall, its eyes swinging from side to side with the hands. Those were too easy. He was counting the seconds since John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 35th President of the United States, had last opened his mouth.
Thirty-seven seconds. And the man still hadn’t taken a breath.
This was something the professors never mentioned on the first day of class, when they introduced the Resurrected to the new students.
They spoke of the privilege of learning from minds that had shaped civilizations, of history given flesh and blood once more, and above all, of the bridge between eras that this institution—the only one in the world legally authorized to perform the Ritual of Return—had built.
What they didn’t mention was that the Resurrected carried with them the indelible mark of death.
That was why none of the thirty students in Class VII looked directly at JFK’s face. Not out of malice, of course.
The mark manifested differently in each of them.
Joan of Arc, for example, sat three rows ahead. She had a large third-degree burn across her neck. By some miracle, they hadn’t resurrected her with an even worse appearance.
As for Kennedy… well, Kennedy had his face…
Lancelote had made the mistake of looking straight at him during the first week of classes.
He had seen the exact instant of impact—his skull split open like a deformed flower, his gaze fading even before the body began to fall.
After that, like everyone else, he had learned to focus on a point just beyond the man’s shoulder: the American flag pin on his suit lapel, or the hypnotic gestures of his hands slicing through the air as he spoke.
“…and so, my young friends, when they ask you what you can do for your country, remember that sacrifice is not the end, but the beginning of true servi—”
prod
prod
“What is it, Andere?”
The prods came twice. The first was discreet as an earthquake. The second, not so much.
Lancelote turned his head to find the broad, heavy-boned face of his best friend.
Andere was a half-giant—which, in practice, meant he was two meters and twenty centimeters tall at sixteen years old, with shoulders that barely fit in the oak chair and a smile that promised trouble before the words even left his mouth.
His skin had the bronze tone typical of his lineage, and small teeth lined up inside his wide jaw.
“This class is so boring, man,” Andere tried to whisper.
The problem was that the concept of “whisper” for someone whose lungs were the size of bag bellows was rather vague.
The sound that came out of the half-giant’s throat could only be described as an embarrassed thunderclap. Three heads turned in near-perfect unison.
Joan of Arc—perhaps a friend, or more accurately, the “involuntary chaperone” of the two—pierced the row with a gaze as sharp as an arrow. Her pale French skin glowed under the mystical light floating near the classroom ceiling. She wore a blonde bob that fell over the nape of her neck.
“What are you two scheming?” she asked. Even her maternal tone couldn’t hide the warrior’s spark burning in her pupils.
Bianca Borgia, seated beside Joan, didn’t even turn her head. Her eyes remained fixed on some point on the blackboard, but her fingers stopped moving the quill she held.
Constança also turned fully, her brown curls bouncing over her shoulders. There was something in her face that recalled the official portraits of her father—Simón Bolívar—but softened, with freckles scattered across her nose like private constellations.
“Uh, I didn’t even say anything,” Andere raised his enormous hands in defense.
“Andere’s right,” Lancelote intervened, brushing his blond hair back behind his ears. The gesture was automatic, almost a nervous tic. “We were just… contemplating. The eloquence. Of Mr. President.”
Bianca finally turned—only enough for the light to catch the line of her jaw. Lancelote saw in her what everyone saw when they looked at a daughter of the Borgias: a cold, calculating, and dangerous beauty. It was said she had inherited her father’s ability to smile while planning her next stab.
“Yeah, sure,” Joan said sarcastically.
“But suddenly leaving like that might not be very elegant…” Lancelote continued, ignoring her tone.
“Look who’s talking,” Joan mocked, pouting. “The little boy who wants to join the Arcane Knights.”
Blood rushed to Lancelote’s cheeks. She was only two years older than him, but she spoke as if she were a Roman matron and he a crying child. And worse: she had hit the mark perfectly.
The Arcane Knights were the elite of the elite. The oldest order of magical combatants on the continent, founded in the early days of the University, when it was still believed that spells and gunpowder could not coexist.
They had fought in the Independence, the Confederation, and the Ragamuffin War. They were living legends—exactly what Lancelote had dreamed of becoming since he was seven, when he saw one of them—a woman in silver armor with eyes of fire—take down a basilisk in the central courtyard with a single lance thrust.
“Yeah, big shit,” Lancelote crossed his arms, wearing a bored expression that fooled no one.
Andere chuckled—a low rumble that vibrated through the air. Joan opened her mouth to retort, but was interrupted by a sound every student knew better than the University anthem.
Triiiiiiiimmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
The siren.
The noise came from a mechanism installed in the central bell tower—an artifact of bronze and crystal that required three specialized mages to operate. Its sound pierced reality like a needle, echoing not only in the eardrums but throughout the entire university.
Kennedy stopped mid-word. For a moment, his face seemed to hesitate between continuing and acknowledging the end. Then, slowly, his shoulders sagged.
“We will resume in the next fortnight,” he said sadly. There was something profoundly weary in his voice. As if, even in resurrection, the man was still trying to finish a speech the world had interrupted.
The students rose in elegant disorder. Backpacks were closed, wands holstered in leather sheaths, daggers sheathed, grimoires stacked in arms. Class VII, like the other thirty-two high school classes at Don Pedro II University, was free until nightfall—when private lessons with their masters would begin.
Lancelote grabbed his satchel and followed the flow of bodies toward the double carved oak doors. Andere walked beside him. Joan and Constança caught up with them in the corridor, Bianca floating a few steps behind like a shadow scented with musk.
“Where are you two going now?” Constança asked, adjusting the strap of her bandolim—she was one of the few students who preferred arcane music to traditional wands.
“Central Library,” Lancelote replied. “I need to review transformation theory before my lesson with Master Da Vinci.”
“Lucky you,” Joan smiled sideways. “Leonardo da Vinci is a good man. Sometimes I seriously wonder why he teaches a mischievous boy like you while I…”
“That’s because you pronounced the tercet in the wrong order,” Bianca finally spoke, her voice mellifluous, like silk over a blade.
Joan shot her a look that promised bonfires. But she said nothing. Even the Maid of Orléans knew when it was best not to argue with a Borgia.
The group split up in the main atrium, where the statues of the four founders of the University kept silent vigil.
Lancelote and Andere turned left, toward the corridor leading to the west wing. It was there—walking beneath Gothic arches covered in fluorescent ivy, passing stained-glass windows that told the story of Independence in fragments of colored light—that the true magnitude of the place imposed itself on them.
Don Pedro II University was not just a school.
It was a city within a city. A country within a country.
Founded in 1842 by imperial decree, when Don Pedro II had been re-elected by the Order of Imperial Archmages, with the eyes of a dreamer and an obsession for knowledge bordering on madness, the institution began as a small college for young wizards and witches of the court. But it grew. Fueled by the discovery of the Eternal Void—a fissure in reality where death lost its absolute meaning—the University expanded like a living organism, swallowing entire city blocks and distorting space to accommodate towers that shouldn't fit.
Now, in 1886, Don Pedro II University was the largest center of arcane learning in the Vatican Hemisphere. Its domains stretched across nearly one square kilometer of extradimensional territory, housing in total:
— Seven main faculties (Applied Arcana, Historical Alchemy, Comparative Bestiology, Ritualistic Necro-Magic, Reality Engineering, Shadow Medicine, and the newest and most controversial: Spectral Politics).
— Thirty-two high school classes, each with an average of forty students.
— A total of 1,280 students from all provinces of the Empire and neighboring kingdoms.
— An unknown number of Resurrected—historical figures brought back to serve as teachers and mentors.
— And countless other creatures, entities, and beings that defied any taxonomic classification.
As Lancelote and Andere passed the Bohemian Skull Tavern (where a group of older students were already drinking mead from pewter mugs), the interior of the University was already ridiculously large, but the outside could be even bigger.
A centaur in a security uniform stood guard near the secondary gates, its ceremonial spear gleaming with alert spells.
Two gargoyles rested on marble pedestals, temporarily petrified while they dozed under the sun filtered by enchantments. A group of free-fairies—small translucent creatures with dragonfly wings—flew in circles around a floating globe, updating political borders with strokes of silver light.
And then, of course, there were the students. Diversity was evident.
Forest elves with blue facial markings.
Dwarves from the Ouro Preto mines with braided beards and hammers slung across their backs.
Hairy-legged satyrs playing improvised flutes in the corridors.
European court vampires, sent to study in exile, with black silk parasols and smiles that showed delicate fangs.
Werewolves in uniforms tailored to accommodate their tails.
And humans—many humans—beings of unlimited potential, each with their own stories, techniques, and tragedies.
Lancelote felt small there. Not physically—his 1.75 meters and narrow shoulders were average for a sixteen-year-old human—but spiritually. As if the entire University were a giant creature and he was merely a cell racing through its veins.
“Hey,” Andere prodded him again, this time more gently—which still nearly made Lancelote stumble. “You’re making that face again.”
“What face?”
“The ‘I want to be a hero but don’t know how to start’ face.”
Lancelote sighed. Andere knew him too well. They had been friends since they were eight, when Lancelote had arrived at the University from a small village in the interior of Maragônia, fatherless and the son of a mother who could barely afford the tuition. Andere had been his first friend, perhaps because he was also an outsider—half-giants were rare at court, usually treated as curiosities or heavy labor tools.
“It’s not that,” Lancelote lied. “It’s just… have you ever stopped to think how strange all of this is?”
“What exactly?”
“This.” Lancelote gestured broadly with his hands, encompassing the corridor and everything beyond it. “This university. The Resurrected. The fact that I have a class with Thomas Jefferson tomorrow on Democracy and Binding Enchantments. The fact that Don Pedro II—the Emperor—sometimes shows up in the middle of classes to ‘hear the opinions of the youth.’ It’s… a lot.”
Andere scratched his head, making a face of pure confusion and arching his thick eyebrows.
“You think too much, man,” he concluded with the simple wisdom of someone smart enough to know that thinking too much messed up the mind, and excessive intelligence was a curse. “It’s a school. There are boring teachers, hard tests, and a cafeteria that serves wonderful carrot cake. The rest is… let’s say, decoration.”
Lancelote laughed—a short, almost involuntary laugh. And maybe Andere was right. Maybe he was overcomplicating things…
“LANCELOTE ARTHUR PENDRAGON!”
The shout came from behind them, slicing through the corridor’s chatter like a sword through silk. It was a male voice, authoritative, with a strong Italian accent and a tone that suggested its owner was not used to being ignored.
“Oh no,” Lancelote murmured, closing his eyes.
“Oh yes,” Andere grinned, stepping aside. The treacherous cowardice of a best friend.
Lancelote felt his name echo like a poorly cast summoning spell, one that pinned the target in place before dragging them. He turned slowly, already knowing what he would find.
Leonardo da Vinci marched down the corridor in a cape splattered with paint and chalk, his gray eyes flashing beneath thick eyebrows. The man did not age—or rather, resurrection kept him frozen somewhere between fifty and sixty, with a long white beard reaching his chest and a beret on his head.
“Lancelote Arthur Pendragon!” he repeated, his voice cutting through the air. “Five minutes, boy. Five. Since the siren stopped howling and you were still trading secrets in the corridor as if time were a luxury I could grant you.”
Firm hands, stained with oil and pigments, grabbed Lancelote’s shoulder and pulled him forward. A few students ahead stopped to watch, mouths curved in discreet smiles or muffled laughter that died quickly under the master’s gaze.
Lancelote stumbled along at the inventor’s hurried pace, climbing the spiral stone stairs that creaked like ancient bones.
“Master, I was just—”
“Just nothing,” Da Vinci interrupted without slowing down. “Astrological studies do not wait for corridor chatter.”
On the landing, the inventor touched a polished bronze panel. The air rippled, and a teleportation elevator materialized with a low, cold hum. They entered. A moment of swirling darkness, and the world reassembled on the Observatory Floor.
The room was wide and circular, dominated by a dome of enchanted glass that showed the night sky even during the day. Star maps were drawn on the walls. In Da Vinci’s laboratory, bronze-geared machines turned by themselves in dark corners, and the smell of old parchment mingled with the ozone of recent spells.
Da Vinci released his shoulder and gestured toward a chair near the central table.
“Sit. And tell me what’s really bothering you before I lose patience with that face of yours that looks like it’s carrying the weight of the world on its shoulders.”
Lancelote sat down, hesitant. The words came out low at first, then gained strength.
“I want to be an Arcane Knight. For real. Not just dream about it. I want to be out there, facing whatever comes from the Void, protecting the Empire like they do. But every time I think about it, someone reminds me that I’m just an orphan from Maragônia. That I don’t have a strong enough lineage.”
Da Vinci remained silent for a moment, his back to him, adjusting an astrolabe on the table. When he spoke, his voice carried the weight of centuries he had truly lived.
“Dreams don’t ask for permission, Lancelote. They are born stubborn, like weeds in cracked soil. I spent years drawing machines the world called impossible. Flying? Ridiculous. Painting souls on canvas? Blasphemy. And yet here I am, breathing again, teaching boys who dream too big.”
Lancelote continued, now calmer, in an almost paternal tone. “You are unique, Lancelote. I know that. So go after it. Don’t let them hold you back. Friction only sharpens the blade. If the path is blocked, build another. That’s what I’ve always done.”
Lancelote felt something loosen in his chest. He took a deep breath and stood up, walking over to a large painting covered by a dark cloth. He pulled the fabric without thinking.
The space where the Mona Lisa should have been was empty. Only the golden frame and a hazy landscape background remained.
“She… disappeared?” he asked, surprised.
Da Vinci shrugged, a tired smile on his lips.
“She left. Stepped out of the canvas one night, said she was tired of smiling forever. She said goodbye politely and left a polite note. I’m fine with it. Some creations need to fly on their own.”
The master changed the subject with the fluidity of someone who had seen many strange things.
“Now, come here and look at this. It’s my new project.”
He pulled out a metallic apparatus covered in runes, something between a clockwork box and a mechanical heart. Inside, a faint, unstable light pulsed.
“I am studying the transfer of a Resurrected’s core to inanimate objects. Imagine: preserving the essence of a brilliant mind without the fragile body that death has marked. But it is very dangerous. The core rejects the vessel most of the time. I’ve already lost two automatons this week. Small explosions, but… memorable. It’s not ready yet.”
He sighed deeply.
“Perhaps I will never finish this… death really doesn’t like to be negotiated.”
They talked for hours. Da Vinci corrected exercises, demonstrated precise transformation gestures, and told anecdotes from Florence that seemed to have happened yesterday.
When Lancelote finally descended the stairs, the sky beyond the stained-glass windows had already darkened to a deep purple.
In the dormitories, the corridor smelled of incense and candle wax. He opened the door to the shared room and found Joan of Arc already lying on the wide bed they shared—an arrangement imposed by overcrowding and her insistence on “keeping the boy out of trouble.”
She was reading a grimoire by the light of a floating candle, her blonde hair loose over her shoulders.
“You’re late,” she murmured without looking up. “Andere already went off to complain to JFK. Poor guy.”
Lancelote smiled faintly as he removed his boots.
“At least his monologue for today is over.”
Joan let out a low snort of laughter and closed the book. The darkness of the room enveloped them.
------
It was one of those early mornings when Don Pedro II University seemed to swallow time itself.
The smiling moon, a perpetual oblique crescent that tore through the black mantle of the sky, hung like a cracked mirror. Its silver, cold rays pierced the tall ogival windows of the main building, filtered through stained-glass windows depicting great alchemical feats, and finally spilled, pale and liquid, across the floor of the Department of Intelligent Machinery.
The other sirens hurt the eardrums and grated on the nerves, announcing the end of class or the start of a mock invasion. This one did not. This one pierced something deeper—the bone, the marrow, the place where the soul rested.
Lancelote woke with the sound vibrating in his teeth.
For a moment, he didn’t understand where he was. The damp-stained ceiling. The empty bed beside him. The silk screen swaying as if touched by an invisible breeze.
“Joan?”
No one answered.
He sat up so quickly that blood throbbed down into his hands. The room was dark, except for the light coming through the window—an intermittent orange glow, like torches carried in haste.
The siren continued without stopping, now lower but still loud enough to vibrate through the walls. The lights flashed red.
Lancelote put his feet on the cold floor. The stone felt colder than usual, as if the entire University were going into shock.
The dormitory door was ajar.
He didn’t remember leaving it that way.
Outside the room, the corridor hurt the eyes. Torches that never burned so high now crackled with blue flames—emergency will-o’-the-wisps, the kind that only ignited when something had died within the sacred walls.
Students in pajamas clustered in small groups, whispering. In the distance, he saw Joan leaning against the opposite wall.
Her pajamas were a thin white nightgown, too light for the night, and the burn on her neck looked darker than Lancelote had ever seen it.
“Joan.”
She didn’t look at him. Her eyes were fixed on some distant point in the corridor, where the flow of people grew denser.
“What happened?” Lancelote grabbed her shoulder. “The Luctus Funebris. It’s a Resurrected, isn’t it? Someone died.”
Joan finally looked away. There was something in her face that Lancelote had never seen in the eyes of the Maid of Orléans. It was emptiness. As if she already knew what he was about to discover.
“Go, Lancelote,” her voice came out strange… flat. “You need to see.”
“See what?”
She didn’t answer. She simply pushed away from the wall and pointed to the end of the corridor, where a crowd was forming like water pooling behind a dam.
Lancelote ran.
His bare feet slapped against the cold stone, and each step echoed like a funeral drum. He passed groups of students who moved aside to let him through—some out of recognition, others out of fear of the expression on his face.
A centaur in uniform tried to block him with its spear.
“Hey, student! You can’t—”
Lancelote dodged without thinking. His shoulder brushed the centaur’s hairy belly, and he kept going.
The corridor widened. The blue torches multiplied. And then he reached the main staircase.
The two hundred and forty-three steps.
This time, there was no music beneath his feet. The stone was mute. Silent. As if the steps themselves were in mourning.
Lancelote took the stairs two—three at a time. His calves burned, but he didn’t feel it. His lungs begged for air, but he wasn’t breathing. There was only the climb, the blue torch at the top of the stairs, and the certainty growing in his chest like a poisonous flower.
No…
No.
No!
The atrium of the teleportation elevator was empty. The bronze platform swayed weakly, its runes flashing red—lockdown code.
Someone had blocked the passage.
Lancelote didn’t think twice. He ran to the service staircase, a narrow stone spiral used by staff when the elevators failed. The walls sweated moisture, and the air smelled of mold and rust.
The top floor.
The door to the observatory was open, as if someone had entered like they were coming home.
The light coming from inside was not blue.
It was white. Silver. The light of the smiling moon, oblique and perpetual—pouring through the skylights in the vaulted ceiling, illuminating every shard of glass, every gear, every forgotten flask on the shelves.
And the body.
Lancelote entered.
His bare feet touched the wooden floor, and he heard the creak—the same creak as the uncomfortable bench where he had sat hours earlier.
The master lay in the center of the room.
Arms spread. Legs slightly apart. Head tilted to the left, eyes half-closed as if contemplating something very far away.
The body was in the position of the Vitruvian Man.
And beneath him, drawn on the floor in red chalk, the perfect circle and square, the human figure inscribed in sacred geometry. Had the drawing always been there? Lancelote didn’t know. Maybe it had always been, and now…
Leonardo’s tunic was open at the center of his chest. Between the ribs visible beneath the wrinkled skin, there was a hole.
It was not a bloody wound. No blood flowed from it. The hole was black, like a ravine. The color itself was strange—like a piece of night cut out and placed over the sternum. Its edges were clean, almost surgical, and the surrounding skin was intact.
Only emptiness.
Where the core should have been—the essence that anchored a Resurrected to the world—there was nothing.
Lancelote fell to his knees. The splintered wood cut into his skin, but he didn’t feel it. His eyes were fixed on Leonardo’s face, on the expression the master wore in death.
It was… surprise. As if, in his final seconds, Da Vinci had discovered something extraordinary.
Lancelote’s eyes filled with hot water, but the tears wouldn’t come. Only the sob that refused to escape, caught in his throat.
The smiling moon bathed Da Vinci’s body.
Eryk, the guard—a thin man with protective tattoos on his arms and a scar dividing his left eyebrow—was still leaning against the wall, his face pale as chalk, not daring to approach Lancelote.
“I was doing my rounds,” he said, his voice trembling. “The siren went off by itself. It… it wasn’t supposed to. The Resurrected don’t trigger the Luctus. T-they’re already dead. They can’t die again.”
“They can,” Lancelote whispered, and his own voice sounded strange to his ears. Distant. As if it came from somewhere else. “If you steal their core.”
Eryk grew even paler.
“Who would do something like that?”
Lancelote didn’t answer. His hands trembled open on his knees.
He didn’t dare touch the body. The coroners would arrive later. For now, he could only stare at Leonardo’s body—that man who had dragged him through the corridors, urging him to chase his dream.
Then he squeezed his eyes shut tightly and remained there on his knees.
Lancelote clenched his fists so hard that his nails drew cuts in his palms.