The surroundings stretch in every direction with an eerie quality that defies simple description.
The sky overhead isn't quite sky—it's something between, a canvas painted in shades of twilight that shouldn't coexist. Crimson bleeds into violet that bleeds into the deep blue-black of approaching night, all of it shot through with veins of golden light that pulse with rhythms I don't recognize. Stars exist where stars shouldn't be visible, burning with intensity that suggests they're closer than physics should allow, their light casting shadows that move independently of any source.
The air tastes of ozone and possibility.
Of endings and beginnings intertwined so thoroughly that separating them becomes meaningless.
Is this real?
The question forms with the particular weight of someone who has learned not to trust their perceptions. I've existed in too many impossible spaces, survived too many reality-warping trials, to assume that what I see reflects what actuallyis. My hand rises to touch my own face—fingers finding cheeks that feel solid enough, skin that responds to pressure the way skin should.
Or is this another construct?
Another test designed to break me in ways I haven't yet discovered?
But I can't feel anything.
Not truly.
The wind should be cold against my exposed skin, but the sensation arrives muted, filtered through layers of something that dulls every input to manageable levels. The grass should tickle where it brushes my ankles, but the touch registers as concept rather than experience. Even my own heartbeat—usually a constant companion, a drum marking time through every trial—seems distant, as if belonging to someone else entirely.
Hollow.
I feel hollow.
The realization doesn't carry the terror it should. Everything here is dampened, softened, stripped of the sharp edges that usually define my emotional landscape. I exist in this moment like a reflection in still water—present but not quitereal, observing without fully participating.
My gaze drifts forward, following the slope of the hill toward what waits below.
Oh.
The Academy's golden gates gleam in the impossible twilight, their ornate metalwork catching light from sources that don't exist and scattering it into patterns that hurt to look at directly. The symbols carved into their surface writhe with the same living quality I've seen in my own incantations—ancient languages rewriting themselves in real time, telling stories that predate the very concept of story.
Beyond the gates, the structure itself rises against the painted sky.
Wicked Academy.
The building that has taunted us for three years—months really, when I consider the compressed timeline that has defined our existence here. The Academy has never followed conventional rules of time or space, folding what should have been years of education into periods that barely register againstthe larger span of immortal existence. A wicked speed course through what should have been genuine academia, grinding us down and building us back up in cycles that left little room for breath.
The spires reach toward the false stars with architectural ambition that borders on arrogance. Stone that shifts between black and silver depending on the angle of observation, windows that glow with internal light despite showing no evidence of life within, gargoyles that might be decorative or might be guardians depending on factors I've never fully understood.
What was the true vision?
The thought surfaces with unexpected clarity through the emotional fog.
How did our parents imagine this place when they first conceived it?
Before Elena's corruption.
Before the trials became punishment rather than education.
Before death became a teaching tool rather than a tragedy to be avoided.
Did they envision something gentler? A school that nurtured rather than broke, that guided rather than tortured? Or was the cruelty always intentional—a forge designed to produce weapons rather than scholars, survivors rather than simply students?
I'll probably never know.
That truth died with them.
