The walk back to the dorm tower felt longer than it should have.
Callum's legs moved on their own, his mind quiet in the way that only came after surviving something you weren't sure was survivable. His heart hadn't stopped racing, but it was a different kind of fear now—cold, clean, and not entirely unpleasant.
Not all victories left you cheering.
Some just left you… intact.
The door to Class 9-Z's common room creaked open, and the smell of burned sage and half-eaten stew welcomed him like an awkward handshake.
Elly sat cross-legged on the ceiling. Not floating. Just sitting there, somehow.
"You're alive," she said.
"Observant."
"I was half-right," Harlan added from the corner, where he was carving tiny runes into coins. "Thought you'd come back as a talking shadow. Maybe a puddle."
Callum dropped into the nearest chair. "He let me go."
"Correction," Elly said. "He didn't erase you. That's not the same."
Callum didn't argue. It wasn't worth it.
The conversation with Verrin still pressed against the back of his skull like a bruise. He could still hear the Archmage's question: Was it true?
Callum had answered with a smile, but the truth was—he didn't know.
He'd lied. That was certain. But somewhere in the middle of saying it, he had started to believe it. That was the part that bothered him.
Because if he couldn't tell when his own lies started to feel real…
How long before he couldn't tell what was truth at all?
Later that night, he found himself awake again.
The cot creaked beneath him as he rolled over for the fiftieth time. The wind outside howled in intervals—five seconds strong, two seconds weak—like someone breathing uncomfortably close.
He gave up and sat up.
The moon spilled its light through the crooked window, casting thin blue lines across the floor. The light stopped just short of the center of the room—where the floorboards changed. Not visibly. But feelably.
Callum got up and walked to the center. There was a single knot in the wood shaped like an open eye.
He crouched. Knocked once.
It sounded… wrong. Too deep. Too hollow.
He felt around the knot, fingers brushing against edges that shouldn't have been there. A seam. Barely visible. Circular.
He pulled.
The knot rose upward, revealing a ring of old bronze, and beneath it—stairs.
Narrow. Downward. Cold.
He hesitated.
Nothing in the dorm's blueprint mentioned a basement. Nothing in the instructor's lecture had even hinted at underground levels for students.
Which, of course, meant there absolutely was something down there.
Callum grabbed his coat and descended.
The air changed three steps in.
Dryer. Still. As if the space below had been waiting without breath for years.
The staircase curved like a snail shell, walls tight enough to press in on his shoulders. It finally opened into a chamber that was… ordinary.
Bookshelves. Dusty. A few cracked chairs. One candle still burned in a corner.
And at the center of the room, floating a foot off the ground, was a memory sphere.
Callum had seen one before in the academy museum—an orb of glass infused with Mnemos root and bound with silent runes. They could store thoughts, visions, even whole conversations.
But this one was active.
It pulsed, dimly. Waiting.
He stepped forward.
A single rune appeared on its surface: Speak.
Callum hesitated, then cleared his throat. "Hello?"
The orb flared. The light grew. And then—
He was no longer in the room.
The memory didn't start with images.
It started with pain.
Ringing. Like a thousand truths breaking at once.
He staggered—though his body wasn't his—and felt water around his ankles. Cold. Moving.
Vision returned in fragments.
A battlefield. Ruined. Smoke and lightning split the sky.
Dozens—no, hundreds—of bodies lay around. Some armored. Some robed. All broken.
Callum's breath caught. Not his. The memory's.
Then a voice: "Do not speak. They will know."
He turned.
There, in the center of the memory, stood a boy.
Young. Pale. Hands ink-stained. His eyes…
Callum's stomach dropped.
His eyes were exactly like his own.
Not just similar—identical. The shape. The shade. The fear behind them.
"I thought I could make it better," the boy whispered. "If they believed I was a hero, maybe I could become one."
Callum stepped forward. "What… what is this?"
The boy looked up. Eyes wide. Hopeful. Familiar.
"Are you… real?"
The memory shuddered.
The battlefield cracked. The corpses faded into smoke. The orb dimmed.
And then the boy said, softer now:
"Don't lie to yourself. It makes the magic hungry."
And everything went black.
Callum jerked awake in his cot.
Sweat covered his neck and back. The sky outside was still dark, but lighter now. Pre-dawn.
He stared at the ceiling, breathing hard.
The sphere. The boy. The battlefield.
What had that been? A past wielder of [Lie]? A future one?
Or…
Or had it been him?
The voice. The manner. The eyes.
He pressed a hand to his chest. The mark of [Lie] pulsed faintly beneath the skin—three curved lines, still, but warmer now. Almost like it had responded.
Almost like it remembered.
Later that morning, Callum said nothing at breakfast.
Elly noticed, of course. "You look like someone fed you your own dream."
Callum didn't answer.
Harlan raised an eyebrow but stayed quiet. He had that look in his eyes he only got when sharpening things. A private war behind the irises.
Callum finally asked, "You ever hear of students going crazy from their Skills?"
Elly blinked. "You mean before or after graduation?"
"Before."
Harlan grunted. "Plenty. Most Skills don't talk back though."
Callum paused. "But some do?"
Elly shrugged. "There's a theory. That the rarer the power, the more it leans on concepts instead of raw mechanics. Like your [Lie]? It's not casting. It's a bending. And concepts? Concepts leak."
"Leak?"
"Thoughts. Memories. Futures that shouldn't be real. The stronger the concept, the less it likes being bound to one timeline."
Callum swallowed.
"So what happens when the concept takes root?"
Elly smiled thinly. "You start lying to yourself."
After class that day, a letter awaited him on his bed.
Another sealed envelope. Same mark. Different handwriting.
You've seen it, haven't you?
The memory that remembers you.
Come to the west courtyard at dusk.
Tell no one. Bring no lies.
Callum stared at the paper.
No name. No signature. Just that chilling instruction.
Bring no lies.
He didn't know what he feared more—
The fact that someone else had seen the same memory.
Or the fact that someone knew he had.