William entered the professor's office, the heavy wooden door closing behind him with a dull thump. The air was thick with the scent of ancient parchment, dry ink, and melted wax. Shelves curved along the stone walls, and dozens of parchments, tomes, and fragments were scattered across the desk in a carefully organized chaos.
Aurus awaited him, seated with his hands clasped and his gaze sharp under the dim light of a silver candelabra.
"I have prepared some material for you," he said, gesturing to a side table. "Take a look."
William approached calmly. On the table rested several strips of yellowed leather, clearly tanned hides of ancient animals, engraved with symbols that pulsed with a faint mana, imperceptible to the human eye. Volgaris. The strokes were hard, aggressive, like open wounds. Alongside them were other softer, almost melodic writings: Remika.
William examined them one by one, narrowing his eyes. He let his fingers float barely above the surface of the texts, just enough to show interest, but without touching them directly.
"This... is different from what I saw in class," he murmured, feigning effort to read.
"Indeed," Aurus replied, standing up. "The first text is in Volgaris. You have already tasted its power. The second is Remika, the common tongue of magic. It is the one I will teach you."
William tilted his head.
"I thought we would study Volgaris."
Aurus's voice dropped a tone.
"You are not ready yet. Volgaris is dangerous, unstable, fragmented. It reacts. Remika, on the other hand, is stable, structured. You must master it first. From today on, you must remember that words are not as safe as they seem."
William nodded slowly.
"Understood."
He did not need to feign ignorance when reading Remika. Angel was already translating everything directly into his vision, but he silently moved his lips, letting his eyes wander over the text as if struggling to decipher it.
Aurus seemed content. He leaned forward, taking one of the Remika parchments and spreading it on the table in front of them.
"This script," he said, "is hardly taught. Not even among nobles. What we see in class is barely a diluted version. Repetition and superficial understanding. But what we will do here... will be profound."
He spoke with a strange reverence, his fingers caressing the parchment as if it were a sacred relic. He began to explain the grammatical structure: prefixes to command elements, suffixes to control direction. William listened, taking notes slowly but firmly. Angel recorded everything.
And then... something changed.
When Aurus unrolled another document, older, darker, written entirely in Remika, he began to recite it, as if singing an ancient song. His voice had a hypnotic rhythm, and for a moment, it seemed that a Celtic choir sang in the distance, drawing William's mind into a trance.
Angel's voice suddenly thundered in his mind:
"Unknown wave detected. Activating defense protocols."
William blinked.
"Protocols failed."
"Alert—"
The message was cut off.
William froze, his pen suspended in the air. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the parchment ripple.
Not physically. Not visibly.
But something within the text moved. A ripple in the mana. A wave. Silent. Imperceptible. And yet, it reached his mind like a whisper passing through his skull.
He blinked again.
The room grew a little darker. The edges of his vision softened. The lines on the parchment seemed to curve, glow, twist into patterns that were not written. Shapes that meant something. Symbols that not only spoke... they commanded.
He held his breath. His hand stopped moving.
Aurus watched him.
Silent. Motionless.
His hands slowly rubbed together in anticipation, and a faint smile appeared at the corner of his lips.
"Keep reading," he said softly. "You are doing well."
But William could not respond.
His mind vibrated. Something had touched him. Not a thought. Not a spell.
A presence.
From the parchment.
Within the ink.
Behind the words.
Aurus's smile was no longer hidden. His eyes, usually cold and calculating, gleamed with a mixture of expectation and almost animal anxiety.
And then... it happened.
William's mind was torn from reality. As if his consciousness had been absorbed by the document, he was thrown into a strange, unreal plane. A dense, gray mist enveloped him completely, so thick he could not even see his own hands. There was no sound. There was no direction. Only the haze, oppressive and silent.
For an eternal moment, he floated there, disoriented, searching for something... anything.
And then, something changed.
The mist barely dissipated, revealing a strange figure in front of him. It was not a being or a body, but a white mask. Smooth. Expressionless. Suspended in the air as if floating by its own will. It only had two eyes, but no holes for a mouth or nose. However, from those eyes radiated a spectral energy that imposed an overwhelming presence.
William took a step towards it, driven by a strange force. He raised his hand, hesitating... and just before touching it, the mask turned sharply and looked at him.
It had no eyes. But it looked at him.
The mask cracked, forming a kind of mouth... a mocking grimace rather than a smile. And then, a terrifying sound emerged: as if all the sound in the world was rewound, causing a cacophony of whispers and laments.
And in that instant, everything broke.
William suddenly snapped out of the trance, with a choked scream, gasping as if he were drowning. His body trembled violently, and his pupils were dilated. He fell backward, convulsing, as if his mind struggled to escape from something his senses could not process.
Aurus stepped back, visibly surprised, even frightened for a second. His expression tightened. He had not expected that.
"William!" he exclaimed, dropping the documents as he rushed to hold him. "Calm down, breathe!"
But William did not hear him. His body thrashed uncontrollably, teeth clenched, hands clenched. He seemed on the verge of an epileptic seizure.
Aurus shouted, trying to attract William's consciousness. But there was no response.
William's body was completely paralyzed, as if his soul had been left hanging in another plane, leaving only the memory of that mask.
That eyeless gaze.
And a voice that was not spoken... but was etched deep into his soul.