He set the midnight oil ablaze.

Of course, Beck was no stranger to the long hours. No matter where he worked – be it between the twisting ivorywood bookshelves of the Kururageum, underneath the gazebo’s floral kaleidoscope of a canopy, or simply at his desk – he was always accompanied by the moonlight. There was something mystifying about the way the silvery glow cast upon the lettering of the pages, how motes of starlight seemed to settle into each stroke of his quill. It didn’t serve to lessen the rigor of his work, but when he thought about knocking the papers off the table, toppling his books to the floor, and sending his inkwell flying across the room, the moon’s gentle shine always lulled him back into a begrudging calm.

Tonight he was in the Kururageum, seated at one of the tables sequestered far from the entrance or the librarian’s rosewood desk. He didn’t know how long he’d been there for, but he’d watched the sun dip under the horizon’s edge, supplanted by the moon soon after, so it must have been a while. Before him, several sheets of paper sprawled across the table, the rough markings of ink forming parts of a diagram – parts of a Cirae. Many more crumpled sheets bunched against the windowsill. With the moon clouded and lamps dimmed, they seemed to merge into one another as part of a glowering, contemptuous silhouette.

The libraries were nearly empty on the weekends, and were largely unattended. For some students, that meant indulgence in more publicly indecent activities – the few times he’d come across a few savvy couples, he pretended to have seen nothing at all – but for him, that meant he could work until the sun rose, and even afterwards. Not that he particularly enjoyed that.

Ink blotted out the underside of his pale hand, winding to his elbow, traces somehow making their way onto his face. He was dressed simply, and for comfort, for even he didn’t know how long he’d be stuck there. And not just in the physical sense. Long after he would leave the study, the things he left unaccomplished that night would occupy him mentally; of which, to his annoyance, remained plenty.

Surprisingly, spellcrafting came much more naturally to him than spellcasting. When he first arrived at Anaestra, he’d heard, through chatter in the hall, of the daunting coursework peppered inside a Cirae Theory specialization. Now that he was more than three-quarters finished, he could confidently claim that he faced the majority of those classes undaunted; and claim even more so that his knowledge in it was far greater than most. He was anointed Veritas for a reason, after all.

And yet, as he stared at the filling paper before him, his eyes narrowing at every curved line, every minute detail of the diagram, he most certainly did not feel like it. There was something wrong with it. And there were probably more things wrong with the other parts too, the ones he’d ‘finished’ – he just didn’t see it yet. And he didn’t know what, or how, or why. It’d been hours, and he’d come no closer to discerning an answer. His breaths became exasperated, his teeth grinding as he palmed his quill into the table, the shock almost toppling his inkwell, crushed the paper into a ball and tossed it away. Another failure.

He leaned back into his chair, the air flooding into his nostrils an irritated hiss. He had to calm down. There was no academic purport behind this endeavor – at least, not any that he cared about. It was for himself. But, and more importantly, it was for Ulstrom.

It was the month of the Gaze. The Ulstrom Gathering wasn’t set to occur until the month of Stagnant Sun, almost an entire season away, when the green leaves of summer peeled back and adopted colors like umber powder thrown into a fire. There was a story behind the name that Beck cared not of. To him, all that mattered was that the largest Bands would show – the year before, when Liar Court sent a few delegates, they were swarmed by a deluge of gawking students – and that he could show himself off. Not that he’d been successful, which was completely unlike a certain someone.

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But this year, his agreement with Mevis withstanding, he had a chance. A greater chance than years prior, if nothing else. He didn’t know what to expect with Mir. Not after her bout with Killen. But that was business between them, and though he remained curious, elected it better not to pry. It was still early to make a solid judgement, but she seemed much more manageable than he’d first thought.

Then came the other half of the agreement. As Mevis had said, all he had left was to show something for himself. And what did he have?

He let out a heavy sigh, his eyes resting on a wooden arch above. It was carved to look like two ends of two tree branches meeting. One housed a tiny, cowering eagle, perched upon a spindly branch that wound down into an equally spindly tree-beam; the other, a great raven with unfurled wings so large they felt like they could brush against Beck’s face. When Beck first saw it, he couldn’t help but snort at the ludicrousness of it all. A raven must have commissioned the piece.

He could hardly snort now. The pale moonlight cast a grim light over the raven’s haughty eyes, and he could hear a silent challenge echoing from its parted beak. The nature of the challenge he did not know, but what he did know, was that the way it looked unsettled him. Unnerved him. He wore its crest and studied in its nest, but rather than feeling like another raven, he found himself empathizing more with the eagle.

Beck shifted in his seat, removing his look from the arch. A splash of ink, from where he’d slammed his quill earlier, dotted the wood in an ugly smudge of black, tiny flecks adding to the marks already on his skin. They would be gone in a few days. The crumpled paper would be gone by sunrise. For all those hours he spent in that chair, scrawling on paper like a maddened sage, observed by the dimming stars – he only had two rough sketches that looked like chicken scratch. What did he have? Ink stains, tossed failures and fragments of an imperfect Cirae. Ulstrom was months away, but he could not help fear that this would be all he had of his ‘project’ by then. And it was far from enough.

He hadn’t noticed his hands snaking around his watch until it was already out. The watch was light in his hand, and he held it as if it might fracture with the slightest touch. He thought back to what Mevis said earlier, about it being enchanted. She made many empty platitudes, mostly in jest, and he wished that her words earlier could be taken as such – except, no matter how much he stowed them away, they returned to the forefront of his mind. And not in any leisurely manner.

Fifteen winters had passed since he’d been taken in at the Coarsewood House. Fifteen winters had passed since the complete eradication of the Maten Angels. Fifteen winters; but by the third, he’d already forgotten his parent’s faces. He read about Rain and Asfi, the twin Seraphs, of their exploits, their dives, their expeditions. Soaked in the wonder of their legend. Heard the rumors that they left behind a child – but those were nothing more than mere whispers. He never doubted his legitimacy to their heritage, not in the slightest, not when he’d been made a target of other children for claiming such, not when his caretakers looked at him with that contemptuous pity, thinking him lost in delusion. He christened himself as Danor, because that was who he was. Nothing would change that.

He dangled the watch by its chain. It was a gift from one of them, Rain or Asfi, long ago before that night. It stayed with him all throughout his time at the Coarsewood House, and now, past it. He looked at it curiously. Now that it was clean, he could appreciate much more of the craftsmanship behind it. The crystalline glass of the watch glinted with a new onyx-black, and the light from the stars seemed to coalesce under the cover. It was cool to the touch, almost cold, like a shard broken from the dark side of the moon. To anyone else, even other magicians, it might’ve looked magical. To him it was just a watch. His watch.

Enchanted? This thing?

As if to oblige his musing, the crystalline faces of the watch seemed to shift within the glass. He saw himself, his mousy hair, the dark circles under his eyes, reflected in a glass sea, melding together, breaking apart; and then, in a blink of an eye, saw nothing. He sighed. He must’ve been seeing things, a spell from the small eternity he spent in the library. The sleepless hours never got to him before, and letting them bother him now was not in his plans. He’d stay, but only for a few more hours. He needed to rest eventually.