Single for Eternity
Chapter 122: Arcane Academy

Chapter 122: Arcane Academy

He didn’t scream.

Even as blood trickled down his cheeks like war paint, even as the sockets where his eyes once sat burned with a pain no spell could numb, Einar Sanguis did not scream.

The Sovereign Chamber dimmed around him, voices turning into echoes, archways into silhouettes. All sound blurred behind the hammering of his pulse, like a war drum pounding in a hollow cage.

He stood there, blind and bloodied, breathing slow. Measured. Almost reverent.

Like a priest welcoming pain as sacrament.

Freedom.

It was the only word that mattered. The only altar he bowed to. The only god he hadn’t killed in his mind a thousand times.

Not power. Not revenge.

Freedom.

Unshackled by name. Untethered by duty. Unowned by expectation.

The world had offered him a gilded cage, wrapped in tradition and status. And when he spit on it, they tried to chain him with guilt. With heritage. With blood.

He broke it all.

Even if it meant breaking himself in the process.

The muscles in his jaw ached from the force of his grin. Not joy—mania. A grin that bared more teeth than warmth.

He could feel the wet heat still leaking from the empty sockets. But he wouldn’t let them heal. Not yet.

The moment his Symbiote reacted to regenerate the damage, he’d instinctively stopped it. Bound the aether. Sealed the flesh in a state of ruin.

Because scars were proof. And proof mattered.

Proof that he wasn’t bluffing.

Proof that they didn’t own him.

Proof that he had torn away everything they expected him to be.

He took a step forward. Then another.

The world was black, but he moved with confidence. Muscle memory. Madness. Something between instinct and will.

There were hands near him. He felt them hesitate. Maybe someone was trying to help him walk.

He slapped them away.

"I walk alone," he muttered under his breath.

His voice rasped, hoarse from suppressed agony.

It wasn’t pride. It wasn’t arrogance.

It was principle.

He could still hear Seren. The soft intake of her breath. The silence in her footsteps. She hadn’t rushed to him. Hadn’t wept. Hadn’t reached out.

Good.

He didn’t want her to.

He didn’t want anyone to.

Affection made things messy. Love was just a more palatable form of possession. No one ever loved without wanting something in return.

And he didn’t want to belong to anyone.

Not Seren. Not the Academy. Not even the idealized version of himself that might have wanted connection once, long ago.

He couldn’t love. Because he was incapable.

But also because somewhere along the line, he had decided that freedom and love could not coexist.

He knew what would happen if he let himself feel it.

He’d bend.

He’d compromise.

He’d start trying to care what someone thought of him.

And that was the first step to losing himself all over again.

So he made sure of it.

Every time something close to tenderness bloomed in his chest, he crushed it. Let it rot. Let it bleed out like his vision now had.

Seren was close. He could feel her silence press against his awareness like a blade that never touched skin.

She was dangerous.

Not because she wanted to control him.

But because she could have loved him, if he’d let her.

And worse—because he might have wanted to love her back.

But he wouldn’t.

He couldn’t afford it.

He was free now. And freedom didn’t share a bed with longing.

The Sovereign Trial was over.

But his war was just beginning.

...

Somewhere behind him, the gates whispered.

They talked of scars. Of punishment. Of recompense and rebellion.

Let them talk.

Let them watch.

He hoped they saw what they’d made.

Not a Sovereign.

Not a Sanguis.

Just a man who’d torn out his own destiny, one vein at a time.

He would rise without his family. Without his name.

Without his eyes.

And if the world tried to make him kneel again—he’d burn it blind.

...

The chamber of judgment, known as the Sanctum of Concord, fell into silence as the last crimson drip from Einar’s ruined eyes kissed the marble floor.

But silence in Aetherion did not mean stillness.

Behind the veils of perception, beyond mortal hearing, the Lords conferred.

Not in voice. Not entirely.

They spoke in pulses of will, in thoughts like sunbursts. Their presence coiled around the golden chamber like unseen titans of a forgotten era.

The Red Gate stirred first, its voice like crackling embers behind velvet.

"He severed it."

The White Gate replied, cold and measured.

"No. Only his side. The bond still clings to the girl."

The Black Gate rumbled, old as tombs and iron verdicts.

"The engagement is undone in essence, if not in ceremony. A fracture this public cannot be sutured without blood."

A long pause.

Then the Blue Gate pulsed, thoughtful and sharp as frost.

"This is not just rebellion. This is precedent."

They were not afraid.

But they were interested.

The Aetherion Lords were not just men or women. They were structures of power given identity—arbiters born of centuries of tradition, logic, and war.

And they did not tolerate weakness in their lines.

House Sanguis had been humiliated.

Their heir cast aside his lineage in the sovereign chamber.

He dared gouge out the eyes that bore his blood’s proof, as if to declare: I owe you nothing.

House Album had stood idle.

Their daughter made no effort to uphold the engagement. Worse—she supported the boy’s defiance.

Their inaction had turned noble alliance into mockery.

The Golden Gate spoke, voice gilded with both fascination and disdain.

"Einar Sanguis has proven strength. But strength without control is fire in the wind. Unreliable. Unguided. Dangerous."

"And yet..." the White Gate hummed, "He resisted our command. He stood against Varek and remained whole in spirit, if not in body. We cannot dismiss that."

A ripple passed between them.

Ancient will weighing possibility.

"He will not submit," came the Black Gate, solemn and final. "He is no vassal. He is a storm."

"Then perhaps," mused the Red Gate, "he should be aimed."

The suggestion lingered.

Not as command. Not yet.

As strategy.

"Let him believe himself free," said the Golden Gate. "Let him think he’s escaped our grip. A hound unleashed still chases the rabbit we set."

"And the girl?"

They fell still.

Seren Album.

Of all the heirs, she had been the most promising. A blade without hesitation. Ice, poised on the cusp of heat. She had not chosen rebellion, but she did not shun it.

That was dangerous.

"The Album girl is compromised."

"She is still bound by name."

"But for how long?"

A hesitation none of them liked.

Dissonance.

Her blade was not ordinary. Not blessed. Not forged by man. It chose her.

And the Aetherion Lords did not yet know why.

"She must be watched."

"No. Tested."

"Let the academy be her crucible."

Their consensus was not spoken. It solidified. Like mountains deciding where to fall.

The engagement was gone. The alliance between two pillars of Aetherion—broken. But the Lords would not panic. They did not cling to sentiment.

If blood failed, purpose could replace it.

The Sanguis heir may be mad, but madmen had razed empires.

The Album girl may be torn, but a torn blade still cuts deep.

And the Arcane Academy—that would forge or consume them both.

The Red Gate pulsed once more.

"Then we let them go. Let them believe they’ve won. The boy with his freedom. The girl with her defiance."

"And in their triumph..."

"...they will bare their true nature."

...

Beyond the chamber, the world moved forward.

But deep in the Sanctum of Concord, behind veils of gold and fire, the Lords watched.

Einar Sanguis had been given his wish.

Freedom.

Let him see what it cost.

Let him discover what it meant when nothing and no one binds you—not even love, not even legacy.

Because the truth they all knew—the truth that echoed beneath every chamber, behind every throne—was simple:

’Those who walk alone are the first to fall.’

...

The wind at the gates of Arcane Academy did not sing.

It scraped.

Low and harsh, like metal dragged across bone.

The marble arch of entrance, tall enough for giants, glowed with restraint. Not grandeur, not welcome. Just a cold reminder of the power that permitted his presence.

Einar stepped through it barefoot, his coat torn, sleeves ragged, eyes hollowed but unhealed. He hadn’t let the Symbiote finish the regeneration.

He didn’t want it to.

The pain, pulsing in his skull, anchored him. It reminded him of Varek’s fury, of the voices from the gates, of the bloodline he’d cut away like rotted meat.

And it reminded him of how free he now was.

Two crimson streaks—one dried, one fresh—traced down his cheeks like tear-tracks of blood. But his mouth wore no pain.

It curled upward.

A smile, crooked and cruel, etched more in defiance than joy.

"Welcome, sovereign," the Proctor murmured at the threshold, a woman in velvet robes with a mechanical eye and a spine of copper filaments. She didn’t bow. She didn’t smile.

Einar liked her instantly.

"I assume you’ve prepared the room," he said, voice rasping from dried blood in his throat.

She nodded once. "Basement quarters. Warded. Monitored."

"I want the monitoring removed."

The Proctor blinked once—mechanical—and then said, "No."

His head tilted.

She didn’t flinch.

Einar grinned wider. "Good answer."

He walked past her.

No bags. No belongings.

Just the weightless violence in his breath and the silent scream of his severed name trailing behind like a cloak.