The door cracked open with a low groan, and the room fell still. No dramatic entrance, no pomp, just the quiet, dragging footsteps of an old man in charcoal robes, a stack of thick, rune-etched tomes floating behind him. His face was lined with the weight of time, his beard a chaos of gray coils, and his eyes, two pale orbs like misted glass, seemed to pierce through flesh and stone alike.
He turned without a word and traced a sigil into the air with his gnarled finger. The floating tomes spiraled down onto his desk in a neat column as the air shifted with pressure. Quills stood at attention. Chalk formed out of nothing beside the central board. The doors sealed shut.
Then he spoke.
"Magic," he rasped, voice hoarse as if dragged from the bottom of the earth. "Is not a gift. Not a right. It is not talent. And it is most certainly not some divine whisper granted to the chosen."
The room was silent. Not from fear, but gravity.
"It is a wound," he said.
He turned to the board and began drawing, slow, deliberate strokes that etched a spiraling helix with jagged rings around it, like iron thorns encircling a flame.
"The human soul was not made to touch the Deep. Our bodies are born of soil, breath, and bone. But the Deep… the Deep is beyond. It is the unformed. The raw chaos beneath all things, older than gods, hungrier than time. Long ago, men reached for power they could not name, and found it staring back."
He gestured, and the helix flared into illusion: a spectral figure clawing at a veil, warping, burning.
"We call it Vexum, the Tear. The fracture in the veil between the mortal world and the Deep. Every spell, every rite, every enchantment is a scar born from that Tear. Magic is not cast, it is channeled. You must offer something of yourself, mind, memory, blood, belief, and in return, the Deep reshapes reality, briefly, violently, always at cost."
Kael leaned forward, transfixed. So did Seret.
"There are six known Disciplines, though some say more exist in the wild wastes where civilization has yet to strangle imagination. They are not elements, they are conduits, lenses through which the Deep may be filtered without instant madness."
He wrote the words on the board:
Rend – The manipulation of raw force and matter. Destruction, telekinesis, shaping.
Bind – The manipulation of memory, will, and spiritual tethering.
Flux – The domain of change, healing, decay, and transmutation.
Veil – The art of deception, illusion, and misdirection, used by spies and assassins.
Writhe – Forbidden and mutagenic magic that reshapes flesh, time, and perception.
Hollow – The rarest art: anti-magic, the power to unmake spells and suppress the Deep.
"Each discipline comes with its own rites, its own signs, and its own toll," the professor said. "You cannot wield magic without paying its price. Burn your memories for a firestorm. Trade a heartbeat to heal a wound. Forget your own name to stop time for an instant. What you offer is gone, and the Deep does not return what it consumes."
A hand went up. A noble girl, golden-eyed, ringed in house insignia.
"But professors and archmagi wield spells all the time. They don't forget who they are. They aren't crippled."
"They are," the professor said without turning. "They've just gotten used to it."
He raised a hand, and the room dimmed. The center crystal sparked with a shared vision, a mage standing atop a ruined battlefield, eyes hollow, incanting a chant in a tongue older than language. As the spell formed, cracks split through the illusionary man's body. His hair whitened, fingers blackened, and when the spell ended, he fell to his knees, breathing hard, looking around like he didn't recognize the sky.
Kael's chest tightened.
The cult had never taught this. Not in these words. They taught power as a blade, a means of obedience. But this, this was a system. A truth deeper than the rituals they'd endured. And it chilled him to the marrow.
The professor turned to face them again, gaze sweeping the students like a blade.
"You will be taught containment glyphs. You will be taught rituals to offset toll with borrowed focus, crystals, catalysts, chant circles. You will study the runes of inheritance and devour the texts of fools who reached too far. But make no mistake: every time you touch the Deep, it touches you back."
He snapped his fingers, and the illusion vanished.
"You may live to graduation. If you do, it will be because you learned to respect the art, not master it."
No applause. No questions. Just stunned silence.
Kael's hands were clenched beneath the desk. His scar ached faintly. Seret was gripping her pen so tightly her knuckles whitened.
"Class dismissed."
And like that, the door unsealed.