By the time I got back to the dorm room, the afternoon light had dimmed.
The commoner dormitory corridors were quieter now; the midday rush was replaced by the softer hum of students reading, napping, arguing through half-open doors, or pretending not to be overwhelmed.
I walked the corridor with one hand in my pocket and the other tearing pieces off the bread that I had carried back with me.
My room door was locked, and I didn't bring my key card with me.
I stared at the door for a brief second.
Then knocked.
A pause.
"I unlocked the door. Come in," Kael's voice answered from inside.
I pushed the door open and stepped into the room.
Kael was sitting at his desk by the window, books spread open around him in a controlled disaster. Not my-style chaos, but Kael-style chaos, which looked organised enough to earn its own indexing system.
Kael looked up at me as I entered.
Unlike usual, there was no immediate joke.
Which was already slightly ominous.
I shut the door behind me.
"Hey, Kael. We need to talk."
Kael raised a brow.
"That sounds concerning."
"Yeah, well, maybe I learned from the best."
"I'm concerned that you think you may have learned this from me?"
I crossed the room and leaned against the edge of my own desk instead of sitting.
I studied Kael for a second.
Even now, it was there.
An artificial distance was created, seen by the expression on his face.
The sense that part of him was still elsewhere.
I folded his arms.
"Ok. I'm just going to get straight into it. I don't want this to sound weird. Or that I'm taking this lightly— basically, Kael. I'm worried about you, dude."
Kael blinked once.
Not dramatically. Just enough to show he'd been hit directly and hadn't expected it.
I pressed on before he could dodge.
"You've been acting strange."
Kael leaned back in the chair slightly. "I thought you already established that?? It shouldn't be anything new."
"No." I pointed at him. "See, that's exactly what I said to Randel. You've always been weird. But this time… It's different."
"Randel?"
"Ah, just a friend I made recently, I'll introduce you to him— wait. That's not the point. Stop deflecting and answer. What's been going on with you recently?"
Kael didn't speak.
I searched for the right words and immediately hated how hard that was.
"You came back from the library looking like some archaic prophecy had hit you," I said. "And ever since then, you've been acting like you've got something sitting in your head that weighs more than the rest of you."
Silence.
Then Kael exhaled very quietly.
"I was hoping that I had hidden it better."
"In terms of hiding things, I would say you were terrible."
"That is... unfortunate."
I straightened up a little.
"So. Something did happen then?"
Kael looked away for a moment, toward the window, toward his books, toward some thought he clearly would have preferred to organise privately.
Then he nodded once.
"Yes."
I waited for him to continue.
The room stayed still around them, warm with afternoon light and the low hum of Academy machinery through the walls.
Finally, Kael said, "Ok. Sit down."
That got my attention. So I sat.
Kael folded his hands loosely in front of him and, for a second, looked much older than he should have.
Then he started talking.
Not all at once.
Not dramatically.
Just carefully enough, as if he'd already decided exactly how much he wanted to say and was now fitting it into a package he found acceptable.
He told me about the library. About looking for records on multiple affinity users. About the librarian, some girl called Arielle. About the incomplete books and useless theories. About staying too late. About trying to get into the restricted section.
Then he told me that Elya Veyrannis had shown up.
And the book.
And the memory.
He didn't describe every detail in order; it wasn't like he was reciting a report, but I managed to get the gist of the contents all the same: Kael was pulled into an ancient battlefield and witnessed something the world had forgotten or hidden. A man named Alaric Edrin. A man named Maelor Veyrannis. An all-affinity user. A city erased. A truth so terrible it had been removed from history.
But I could tell that Kael was keeping some things from me.
It was something that I just knew instinctively.
There were aspects of the story missing. Certain pauses that felt too deliberate to be accidental.
But the core of it was there.
And by the time Kael finished, the room had gone very still.
I stared at him and then leaned back slowly.
"Whoa."
Kael looked at him, wary.
"That's awesome," I said.
Kael blinked. "Awesome???."
I threw my hands out.
"Yes, awesome. Disturbing, horrifying, probably nightmare fuel, but also awesome."
Kael stared at him for half a second.
"You did hear the part where I said a city was annihilated, right?"
"I did." I pointed at Kael again. "And the part where some random guy sent a Head of House Veyrannis backwards through time or whatever that was."
"Temporal Reversal. Apparently—"
"Exactly! That part!" I leaned forward, my eyes bright. "Kael, do you understand what that means?"
"Yes. I know exactly what it means," Kael's voice was flatter now. "It means that at least one person in history reached a state so powerful that even the world stopped resisting him."
"Well, yeah, that too," I said. "But also the fact that some random ancient huma-monster-thing was strong enough to fold an heir-founder like paper. Someone like that actually existed, and you saw it— saw him."
Kael's expression didn't change.
I frowned slightly.
"…That's not the part bothering you, though, is it?"
Kael looked down at his own hands for a moment.
"No."
I leaned back again.
Of course it wasn't.
Kael's thinking isn't the same way as how 'normal' people think.
He wasn't caught up in the spectacle of it.
He was probably measuring consequences.
"I'm not worried because Alaric Edrin was strong, a monster even," Kael said quietly. "I'm worried because he was convinced."
My expression changed, slightly more serious.
Kael continued, his voice low and controlled.
"He didn't look mad. He didn't sound unstable. He genuinely believed that what he was doing was necessary."
The words sat heavily between them.
I watched my friend's face and saw something there that hadn't fully made sense until now.
It wasn't fear.
It was the recognition of a possibility.