Supper.

  Sitting at their regular spot in the dining hall, Ty silently sipped on her soup with an unshakable, heavy feeling in her chest. The weekly suppers were important to her, but today she felt like she was supposed to be somewhere else. If not pursuing the truth, then in bed, sleeping enough for the entire month. Nightmares, shivers, waking up in a cold sweat, come what may—anything to rid her of this feeling.

  Anything but missing class supper.

  “What did you end up with for your Fieldstudy course?”

  “Bah, don’t ask me. Don’t wanna think about it.”

  “Callie, how did he do?”

  “W-wait—”

  Clink. “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Yikes. What did you do?”

  “I—I…no, it’s, uh…”

  “Graces, Elias, that’s cold.”

  “Have you not seen Callie? Were you like, out with people?”

  “Sounds more like Luci.”

  “Oh, speaking of…”

  From beside her, where Faris sat, was a tap.

  “Hm?” Ty looked up from her drink, dazed.

  “What happened with Luci?” asked Cyril with genuine curiosity in his eyes.

  “Oh, nothing,” she tried to say as coolly as she could with her small voice, scanning the attentive faces around the table. Never did she think that she would feel bad for Luci, of all people.

  “He’s crazy.” Theo tore off a small piece of bread and put it in his mouth, displeasure written all over his face. The dark rings under his eyes didn’t help.

  “I mean…” Alex started, trailing off.

  “He ain’t bad. It’s refreshing,” commented Korinna, finishing Alex’s sentence. “This past month has been a real slog.”

  “Tell me about it,” Elias sighed dramatically, resting his chin on the table and staring at the plates of food in front of them.

  Cyril eyed the lazy student fondly. “Luci’s definitely not very good at being serious. Explains why Ty doesn’t like him.”

  All eyes at the table centered in on their class lead, who let her spoon drop into her bowl of soup with a dull thud.

  Struggling to find the right words to defend herself yet not wanting to miss her chance at an explanation, she stuttered, “W-well, listen, I’ve repeatedly told him to stop, but—”

  “Ah, so that’s it,” Cyril smiled knowingly, turning to Alex. “Hey, Alex, he do that to you?”

  The duelist shook her head obliviously. “No.”

  Plainly trying not to laugh at Ty now, he also shook his head. “Yup, me neither.”

  Faris finally got it. “Ah.” He turned to Ty, who could only manage a vacant look. “They think he’s doing that because he likes you.”

  Mind as blank as a fresh sheet of paper, Ty stated, “That’s ridiculous.”

  Selene raised her head up from her food and poked Korinna beside her before silently pointing at Theo from across the table.

  “What?” challenged Theo with a severe look on his face.

  “This is too much work to translate,” complained Faris, who returned to his food.

  “I don’t understand,” was all Ty could say.

  Kor waved dismissively in her direction, not even trying to hide her smirk. “It’s okay, you’ll understand one day.”

  The tactician lowered her voice and leaned toward Faris. “I don’t understand.”

  He eyed her warily out of the corner of his eye, eating a spoonful of potato mixed with herbs and spices. “Let it go. They’re teasing you, and you’re denser than a brick to realize why.”

  Then Callie finally spoke up, her voice choked as she stared down at her plate. “I don’t think it’s very nice to tease someone if it becomes hurtful.”

  Alex nodded enthusiastically, pointing the end of her fork at Callie. “Yeah, what she said. I don’t know how you three just sat there.”

  Finally, Theo jumped at the chance of being able to redeem himself. “Hey,” he countered. “Did everyone just forget what I did?”

  “Ooo,” Korinna said sardonically, “You even told him off. It was so scary.”

  “You’re one to talk, you admire the psychopath!” he shot back.

  “What? He’s fun!”

  “Ah yes,” Theo rolled his eyes. “I forgot that fun is the most important factor of someone’s decency! Forget if they’re awful, they’re fun!”

  All worked up now, Theo got up from his seat and exhaled sharply. “I’m sorry. This last exam I have is really stressing me out.” He locked eyes with Ty at the other end of the table and nodded toward the back entrance. “Ty. I need to talk to you. Let’s go.”

  When she sat dumbfoundedly at the table as Theo walked away, the gears in her head at a standstill, Faris stood up and gently pulled her up from the table himself. “Alright, up you get,” he grunted, handing Ty her bag and rotating her to the direction of Theo by the entrance.

  When she still did not move, he gently ruffled her hair. “Lead.”

  “Oh.” Ty blinked rapidly, inhaling and trying her best to process everything. She looked at the table, at Faris’s best try at a compassionate look—which honestly wasn’t that bad—and then took her unfinished bread roll before hurrying over to her irate classmate.

  “Did…you really have to bring that with you?” asked Theo in disbelief when Ty finally approached, messy-haired with half a bun in hand.

  She nodded and bit off a piece absently while following Theo, noticing that they seemed to be heading back to the dorms.

  “I’m sorry if you wanted to eat,” he apologized as soon as they arrived in front of their class dorms, voice less exasperated. “I needed to show you something, and I figured that it’d be best if people didn’t ask questions.”

  “You think they won’t ask questions about you pulling me out of supper?” she asked while taking another bite.

  “Okay,” he conceded immediately, placing his pin onto the building door and stepping in. “Well, hopefully less questions. I’ve got to show you a book.”

  Following him closely, she eyed the large volume tucked under his arm. “Don’t you have to study?”

  The regret on his face was palpable as he sighed heavily. “I do, but you don’t.”

  Ty was thoughtful as they continued down the dorms hallway. “Why hasn’t your supplemental class for offensive magic finished?”

  “Because my professor says so.”

  Usually Theo wasn’t one to complain about work, so she countered his ireful reply with another question. “Does that make you displeased?”

  “It’s not that I don’t want to learn, but the work he’s giving me is far more than even the primary students.”

  Passing the communal study room at the end of the hallway, they turned left to go toward the other set of rooms on the opposite end. “Who, Nate?”

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  “Yes. Moriya.” He turned his head to give her a critical glare. “I think it’s weird that you call him by his first name, by the way. He’s the head of the casting department; he deserves at least some respect.”

  She genuinely could not recall if he had introduced himself to her as such, or if she had learned it from the Headmistress. “I see,” she answered lightly, coming to a halt at the first corner room and watching curiously as he mumbled a few quick Ancient phrases under his breath with his hand on the door.

  What would he have to keep sealed? Isn’t the pin enough?

  “Well?” Theo asked, holding the door open into his room, watching Ty stand in front of the entrance.

  Never having expected to be invited in, she panicked. “You…you’re not going to…bring me the book?”

  Looking at her like she was mad, he gestured for her to enter the room again. “No, it’s my book, it’s going to stay in my room.”

  Anxious about intruding upon another classmate’s space—she had only been in Callie’s once before to help her correct a slip—she took slow steps inside, catching the door when Theo let it go, and then gradually let it shut.

  The word ‘organized’ was one word she would have used to describe Theo. Meticulous was another: he was astute in his studies and performed his duties with frightening accuracy. The way he somehow always had what he needed with him in the weathered book bag he carried with him almost all the time seemed like another indicator that he was precise and calculating. That there was no way he could not have had his entire life organized with painstaking precision, much like her idea of a true tactician.

  “What is this mess?” she whispered, stepping into Theo’s room and seeing stacks upon stacks of books, journals, scrolls, and papers—surely there was a limit to how much one could practically transport from home to the Academy.

  The standard-issue table, to the left after entering, was engulfed in several giant towers of books that began from the floor and practically spilled onto the wood. There was a thick, crushed blanket sitting on a crate where there would usually be a stool, beside the wall so he could probably lean on it while working. A small square cushion lay to its side.

  “What?” Theo asked, not the least bit bothered.

  “You…” Words would not come to her. “Why do you…books?”

  “What about them?” he responded perfectly pleasantly, flipping through a notebook on his desk before walking over to the table Ty was staring at and leaning over to pick up a small stack of books. “Here.” He nodded to the desk. “Can you push those papers aside for me?”

  Ty thanked the Graces she had finished her bread before entering. It would have most assuredly been covered in dust by the time she had taken her first step into the room.

  “Come on,” Theo insisted impatiently, already fumbling to push the papers on the desk further into the mess.

  Gingerly, thinking of apologies to the books and crushed papers, she helped him until there was a neat rectangular area that was exactly the size of four open books.

  Theo let the books drop softly onto one of the inner spaces before checking his notebook again by his desk.

  She turned her head to his study table. “Why.” That was all she could find to say to address the countless open books, stacks of papers, notebooks, and a plethora of…of…

  “I don’t even own six cups,” she breathed, trying to tally all the mugs on his desk.

  As if proud, he corrected her while walking back to his small stack of books and pulled out one that he placed into another one of the spaces. The rest, he left on the ground. “Well, I’ve got eight. Here, sit.” He pointed to the crate and blanket.

  Unsurprisingly, Ty did not obey.

  After flipping to the page he needed, he looked at Ty bewilderedly. “Aren’t you going to sit?”

  “Isn’t that your spot?”

  For a few good seconds, he just stared at her unbelievably, mouth slightly agape. Then, he turned around and grabbed the stool by his desk and placed it opposite to the crate—where stools are supposed to go, Ty mentally noted—before gesturing to it. “There. Your seat.”

  Swallowing her nerves, wishing he could have just told her to leave and return the book later, she gingerly sat down on the chair.

  Theo placed the open book before her. “Here. Read the chapter.”

  She flipped to the front first. A Survey of Ancient Magic: Volume 3.

  And then back to Theo’s page. Chapter 24: Discerning Auras.

  “You read through this?” she couldn’t help but ask.

  “Yeah, it’s a book,” Theo replied confoundedly, putting a metal tin in the space between them before setting his notebook and textbook in front of him.

  She squinted her eyes before rubbing them, trying to make the words look less fuzzy. “Okay…”

  Going through the chapter slowly, resting her increasingly heavy head on the palm of her hand and making sure she processed every sentence before moving on, it was obvious that he still hadn’t let go of Darius’s comment about his own aura.

  Theo, this important because it is special, not normal…this color, this null.

  It began with general details: auras developed around the teenage years, from around eleven to sixteen years of age. Each one a specific hue with differing intensity and proliferation, remaining static throughout one’s life, it determined the primary characteristics and predispositions of an individual.

  Considering the entire spectrum, the sheer number of archives dedicated to different combinations of auras across time, and the fact that even adolescents could tell which color meant what…it was incomprehensibly impressive to her. To memorize that the slightest hint of white meant dominance and purity, and that a larger, more focused white meant a more cleansing spirit—Ty did not feel like it was practical for her to retain any of it, especially because she could only see the auras of Ancients, and there was no other Ancient but Darius.

  After flipping through some more data and testimonials, she rubbed her eyes again and could feel her head growing heavier as she stretched her neck and snuck a peek at Theo.

  Completely absorbed in his reading, he didn’t bat an eye when she took a minute or two to observe him. He’d take turns reading from the book in front of him and writing down something in his notebook. His handwriting was neater than hers—though that wasn’t a very high bar to set in the first place—and was swift, accurate. Every once in a while, he’d mumble to himself and use his index finger to point at a specific line in the text or scratch his head absently.

  While watching him was far more intriguing than the literature, she was still cognizant of her own readings, so after a soft sigh, Ty turned to the last section of the chapter—the editor’s note.

  It expanded upon their experience gathering the data on auras, the problems with trying to write down something they could not understand, something that even the Ancients could not properly describe sometimes. It outlined the deciding factors for why specific questions had been asked, why a particular community had been chosen. It was all very understandably subjective and mundane.

  Perhaps, the author had thought, it was because they believed that commoners—non-Ancients—would try to replicate the same in their own people, to try and figure out how to get one of their own to perceive auras to the same degree as Ancients.

  Wouldn’t that suggest that there was something beneficial or advantageous in being able to see the auras in general? And wouldn’t that create, to some degree, discrimination? If one had known that Darius was predisposed to his caring and nurturing lifestyle, then wouldn’t it make sense for people to take advantage of it? Rather than someone else who was characteristically protective and proud, for example.

  Yes, Ty thought to herself. Yes, that’s a good reason why MATS would want to find someone who could discern auras.

  Yet that did not seem to be all of it as she read on, realizing that this was the part Theo must have caught for her:

  Not all Ancients who were approached agreed to contribute to my work. While it is likely true that most complied because they knew the nature of my employers, my presence was outright rejected by a singular family. I originally approached them because I wanted to speak to their child, but once they realized my intentions, they became hostile and sent me away.

  You see, as with every community, there are often rumors. Rumors that many deny, that some substantiate, that no one ever professes to publicly. However, after a particularly unfruitful day of research, I spoke to the neighbors of a family who was loath to answer my questions, to speak with me for something so common and mundane as auras. Out of the five individuals I approached, there was only one elder who spoke to me in confidence.

  “Aura of child,” they explained to me slowly, in broken common tongue as expected, “Broken. There is break.”

  I asked her what the break meant, and why no one had mentioned it.

  “Shame. Burden,” she responded quietly, head lowered to her chest. “Earth Mother unkind, to deliver child broken.”

  “But how can you tell?” I asked.

  “Empty,” she said plainly, sorrowfully. “Aura lack part. Broken.”

  “Can it be fixed?”

  “No. It is by Earth Mother. Shame.”

  Again, with the Earth Mother. Could it be predestined?

  “Do you mean to say that the child was born with the broken aura?” All the data I had gathered pointed to auras as something that was given by the Earth Mother—it was not negotiable.

  It was then that I asked myself: if auras are akin to an individual’s soul, then what repercussions would this have on our understanding of the world, and of nature? Of life after death? What weren’t the Ancients telling us? Could the Earth Mother predict the future? Were the broken marred from a previous life? Did auras break after an instance in time, never to become whole? Always destined to fail, to be corrupted, to suffer?

  And then the elder answered me. “Yes,” she spoke clearly, in such a confident manner that I did not think to question it. “Broken. Earth Mother cannot fix. Forever. Shame.”

  The next few questions I asked in a hurry, fearing that someone may interrupt our fateful conversation. “Is this common? How does it happen? Do you mean to say that there are, indeed, different lives we have all lived, that carry on? Or does the Earth Mother expect these broken children to remain as such, to be born only to suffer, shut away?”

  To my surprise, she attempted to allay my desperation, answering, “We talk not of broken. Shame. Ancients, we peaceful. We try not to burden. To break. To anger.” She shook her head sadly, her bottom lip slightly trembling. “But is true. We have many broken. Broken that beget broken. A constant reminder of…shame. Only shame.”

  And as fate would have it, before I could ask her to answer the last question—and perhaps I should have asked the most damning one first, the one that would have had the most consequences—someone stepped into the tent and said something in the Ancient tongue to her while rushing her away.

  In a community of more than a hundred, I could not locate the elder again, despite my best efforts. No one spoke to me about the topic of broken auras, and many looked confused as if it were completely new knowledge.

  I know how historians work, how data works. It was only one elder. One random night. One account in a sea of thousands. No one will believe me. Nowhere else is it written. This could be all fantasy—the elder could have been delusional. I will never know a truth I cannot perceive myself.

  Shame. I think about the concept often, even as I write these chapters. I think about the words she used. The look on her face as she repeated the words. Shame. Shame. Shame. What does it mean, to be delivered to the world broken, and what exactly is shame’s role in all this? Exactly how powerful is it to be kept such a secret? And possibly the most important one to consider, for those who believe: is the Earth Mother truly all-loving?