Elya’s feet dragged against the stone, her body swaying with each unsteady step as the senior apprentices escorted her through the halls. The once-familiar corridors felt alien now, their cold walls closing in on her, every torch casting shadows that seemed to taunt her with their flickering, shifting shapes. Each step took her further from the only world she had ever known, the place where she had fought, suffered, and dreamed.

  The great doors loomed ahead, tall and unyielding, the final threshold before she was cast out into the unknown. The iron hinges groaned as they swung open, the sound reverberating through the empty hall like a death knell. The moment the doors parted, the wind howled through the gap, rushing at her like a beast, lashing at her bare skin through the thin tunic Aldric had given her. It cut through her bones, a cruel reminder of how exposed she truly was. The sky stretched vast and indifferent above her, an endless expanse of gray, suffocating in its emptiness. The road ahead seemed to stretch on forever, winding into the distance like a path to oblivion, leading to nowhere, leading to nothing.

  She stopped just past the threshold, her breath shallow, her chest hollow, an aching void where certainty had once been. The cold air bit at her skin, sending a violent shiver through her as her mind scrambled to make sense of the moment. This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. Any second now, someone would stop this, call her back, tell her it was all some cruel test. But the silence stretched on, vast and merciless, pressing in on her from all sides, suffocating, inescapable.

  She waited.

  Each second that passed felt like an eternity, the wind biting against her skin, the cold seeping into her bones. Her fingers curled into fists at her sides, nails digging into her palms as she told herself, no, begged herself, to believe that this wasn’t how it ended.

  Surely someone would come. Someone had to come.

  Jalen, reckless and loyal, should have already burst through the doors, cursing Aldric and dragging her back inside, refusing to let this happen. Where was he? Had he been held back? Had he given up on her? But Jalen never came.

  Lina would step outside, realization dawning too late, guilt pooling in her eyes. She would beg for forgiveness, she would take Elya’s hands, and...

  She had sacrificed everything for this place, bled for it, suffered for it, and yet not one of them had spoken for her. Not a single voice had broken the silence to say that this was wrong. Not a single hand had reached for her as she fell.

  Had they ever truly seen her? Or had she been nothing more than an afterthought, a failure they had long since written off? Had all her struggles, all her desperate attempts to prove herself, been nothing more than a pathetic show in their eyes? Every grueling hour spent mastering spells, every sleepless night poring over ancient texts—it had all meant nothing.

  Had she ever mattered to them at all? Or had she only been fooling herself, believing she was part of something when she had always been on the outside looking in??

  The door creaked, and for a moment, hope sparked in Elya’s chest.

  Lina stepped out, her hands trembling as she reached beneath her robes and pulled something free. Elya’s breath caught as she recognized the worn leather of her journal. Lina smuggled it out. She had saved something.

  "I’m sorry," Lina whispered, her voice barely audible above the wind.

  Elya snatched the journal from her hands, fingers tightening around it as if she could squeeze out some fraction of comfort. Her gaze burned into Lina’s, searching for something, remorse, love, anything to make sense of what had happened.

  But all she saw was hesitation, regret tangled with cowardice.

  Elya’s jaw clenched. She had no words for her. No words for any of them. No words for the girl who had once held her, kissed her, whispered things that now felt like venom against her skin. She had thought Lina cared, thought she was different, but in the end, she had been just as silent, just as complicit as the rest of them. There was no forgiveness in Elya’s heart, not for this. Not for standing by and watching as she was torn apart, humiliated, discarded like she was nothing.

  She would never forget this. And she would never forgive.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  They had watched. They had let it happen. They had forced her to stand before them, stripped and humiliated, a spectacle for their silent judgment, and they had said nothing. Not a whisper of protest, not a single voice raised in defiance. They had stared with blank expressions, too afraid to speak, too indifferent to care, too cowardly to stand against the tide.

  Jalen, who had always been so loud, had been nowhere to be found. Lina, who had kissed her, who had made her believe she wasn’t alone, had lowered her eyes and done nothing. The weight of their absence crushed her, more suffocating than Aldric’s decree, more painful than the cold that seeped into her skin.

  They weren’t her friends. They never had been. They had been illusions, lies she had told herself to keep from realizing the truth. And now, stripped of everything, she saw them for what they truly were, shadows, empty, meaningless.

  She had no one. She had never had anyone.

  With one final glance at the towering walls that had once held her whole world, Elya turned away.

  She didn’t need them.

  She was alone now. And that was better than being surrounded by ghosts.

  But the world outside the tower was not kind to girls without purpose. She had read the histories, heard the whispers. Those without a trade, without a name of worth, without a patron to shield them, often vanished, swept away like dust in the wind. A child unclaimed by sixteen was a child doomed. Workhouses, brothels, the gutters of the cities, those were the places waiting for the unwanted. Those were the fates she had seen in the eyes of the unchosen when she had first arrived at the tower, back when she had still believed herself safe.

  Now she was one of them.

  Elya walked. There was nothing else to do. The weight of her journal pressed against her chest, but it felt impossibly small compared to the vastness of what she had lost. Each step was agony, the jagged stones and hardened earth biting into her bare feet, leaving behind raw welts and fresh blisters. The road stretched endlessly before her, the horizon an unreachable line shimmering beneath the weight of her exhaustion. The wind tore at her thin tunic, chilling her to the bone, but she hardly noticed. The numbness inside her was far colder than anything the wind could conjure.

  She had been stripped of everything, her name, her purpose, her dignity. Each footfall carried the echo of that loss, the brutal certainty that she was no longer a mage, no longer anything at all. For the first time in her life, there was no direction, no clear path forward. There was only the road, stretching out in cruel indifference, just like the people who had cast her aside.

  She had nothing. No money. No home. No future.

  Her mind reeled with everything she had ever been told about girls like her, girls with no family, no trade, no protection. She had seen the ones who hadn’t been chosen, those who had nowhere to go. She had heard the whispered fates of those who vanished. The world outside the tower was cruel, indifferent to those who didn’t fit neatly into its design. She had nowhere to turn, no skills beyond what the tower had taught her, and even those had been stripped from her.

  Her magic. Her breath hitched as she thought of it. They had left her with no means to fight, no way to prove herself ever again. But was that true? Had they truly taken it all? Magic had always been a part of her, something deeper than mere spells or rituals. The tower had tried to strip her bare, to tear away every connection she had to her own power—but magic was more than ink on parchment, more than the chants they had forced her to repeat. It was instinct, it was memory, it was woven into the fabric of her being. Perhaps they had cast her out, but they had not destroyed her. Not entirely.

  She couldn't hold large spells or push much energy, but she could create enough flame to start a fire, a flickering ember against the vast, cold night. It wasn’t much, but it was something. She wouldn't die to exposure, wouldn't freeze beneath an indifferent sky like so many lost before her. She could still summon a faint light, just enough to see by, and a weak push of force, barely more than a whisper of movement, but in this moment, such tiny scraps of magic could mean the difference between life and death. They had stripped her of almost everything, but she would claw and scrape to hold onto what remained.

  She pressed a trembling hand to her journal, flipping through its pages as she walked. The words she had written over the years, the careful studies, the theories on layered magic, she still had them. They could not rip her mind from her. If she could use what little she had left to her advantage, perhaps she would not be so powerless after all.

  She needed to get to a village, any village. Somewhere she could try to find work, even if it was just scrubbing floors or serving drinks. Perhaps she could barter labor for food, offer to carry water or mend clothing in exchange for a place to sleep. The thought of relying on the charity of strangers made her stomach twist, but the reality was cruel.

  She had no skills beyond her magic, and that was hardly enough. No master would take in a girl who had been cast from the tower, stripped of title and worth. No merchant would trust a beggar with no coin. She had nothing to guard her but scraps of magic and the words in her journal. It would not be enough.

  Her village lay far beyond the hills, a place she had once dreamed of leaving behind forever. But now, it was the only destination she had. The journey would be long, the road unkind. Hunger would gnaw at her, and the cold would creep into her bones each night. She would struggle. She would suffer. She had no choice but to endure.

  But she had already suffered. And she was still standing.

  The wind picked up, tangling in her hair, whipping against her thin clothing, but she squared her shoulders and forced one foot in front of the other. She didn’t know how to survive, but she would learn. She had no one to protect her, but she would find her own strength.

  She had been thrown to the wolves, but she would not be eaten.

  She would find a way.