Jasiel ran through the shattering echoes of Mirror Law, heart pounding like a wild drumbeat in their chest. The air around them twisted with fractured light, runes slicing through reality like shards of glass, reflecting glimpses of impossible places: an ocean of bloodied stars, a library aflame, a throne room abandoned in time.
"Left," Thorne Kael said, a breath behind them. "Unless you want to get flayed by a warding wraith."
Jasiel turned left.
The corridor twisted, became a spiral, then unfolded like a flower of stone, depositing them inside a forgotten stairwell slick with condensation and ancient magic. The alarms above were still ringing, distantly now, like fading thunder. Their legs burned from the sprint and the thin mountain air scraped at their lungs like ice.
Thorne slid down the banister, boots barely touching the surface. He landed beside Jasiel with a grin that was too perfect to trust.
"That was... brave," he said. "And deeply, catastrophically stupid."
Jasiel pressed a hand to their chest, trying to steady their breath. "You pulled me into a forbidden spell circle."
"No. I opened a gate. You made it forbidden. I just helped you not die for it."
Thorne held out a hand. "Truce? Since they're probably going to assign us detention together anyway."
Jasiel eyed him. The boy was tall, aristocratic in the worst way—hair white as powdered bone, a mark of the Kael bloodline, and eyes like twin constellations simmering in a dark sky. But there was something off about his magic. It moved like oil: slick, deceptive, hard to pin down. A trickster's rhythm.
Jasiel ignored the hand. "Why did you help me?"
Thorne shrugged. "Because I'm bored. And because you broke a primary node with breath magic, which hasn't been done since the war. Anyone who can do that on their first day might be interesting."
He stepped away, brushing dust from his coat. "Also, I may or may not be in some minor trouble already."
"What kind of trouble?"
"The kind with three deans, two dead familiars, and a gambling debt paid in cursed memories."
Before Jasiel could respond, a glyph sparked in the air, casting golden light down the stairwell. Then another, blue and sharp-edged. The corridor shimmered as three professors descended through a veil of stasis magic.
"Found them," one muttered.
Jasiel raised their hands instinctively.
Thorne smiled like someone greeting an old friend. "Ah. Professors. Fancy seeing you here."
---
They were sentenced to Detention Hall before their second class.
The room wasn't a classroom at all, but a repurposed summoning chamber lined with binding circles and null fields. Candles floated in locked formations above the obsidian floor, casting light that somehow avoided casting shadows. Each flickering flame danced in synchronized rhythms, eerily perfect.
Professor Norell, a strict woman made entirely of angles and frowns, stood at the door with a clipboard.
"Jasiel Thorn. Thorne Kael. Both of you are to remain here for the next seven nights. No spellcasting, no speaking to the other students, and no attempts to alter timeflow."
"Again," Thorne muttered, settling into a stone seat carved with ancient warnings.
Norell's eyes narrowed. "And no sarcasm, Kael."
She turned on her heel and stalked out, sealing the door behind her with a rune that hummed with locked judgment.
Jasiel took the furthest seat from Thorne and sat, trying not to notice the other students—seven in total, all troublemakers in some form. One had silver chains where their arms should be. Another whispered to a shadow that didn't move with the light.
Time in Detention moved oddly. The clocks had no hands. The hourglasses suspended in the air ran sideways. The room held time like a fly in amber.
On the first night, they sat in silence. On the second, whispers grew from the walls—recordings of ancient lessons or spectral voices, no one knew. On the third, Thorne began speaking.
"You really don't know what you are, do you?"
Jasiel didn't look at him. "I'm someone who got in on a scholarship. That's it."
"Scholarship my ass. The rune you drew—it was from Mirror Law. That magic is outlawed in half the known world. It doesn't just bend reality. It reflects intention. You could've shattered the leyline network if you'd gone deeper."
Jasiel glanced at him now. "Then why help me?"
"Because I've seen what happens when someone with no idea what they are walks into this place. They get used. Or killed. Or both."
He leaned forward. "There's a reason they put the Dusk Dormitories underground, you know. It's not for space. It's containment."
Jasiel said nothing. But their fingers curled unconsciously, like they were holding onto something old. Something remembered.
That night, a memory came to them in a dream. Their mother, cloaked in black, whispering a rune over their cradle. A rune made of mirrors and ash. The same shape they had drawn without thinking.
On the fourth night, the door appeared.
It was not part of the architecture. Small, rotted wood, bleeding shadows like ink in water. No one else noticed it.
Jasiel did.
So did Thorne.
They met by it after lights dimmed. Neither spoke.
Jasiel reached for the handle.
Thorne stopped them. "Once we open it, there's no going back."
Jasiel nodded.
Thorne opened it.
Inside was not a room, but a realm.
A forest, ancient and breathing, lit by stars that whispered truths in languages no tongue could hold. Trees hung upside-down. Rivers flowed in spirals. The air shimmered with runes half-born.
At the center of the forest stood a throne made of books, feathers, and broken promises.
A figure sat upon it. Masked. Cloaked. Not entirely real.
It spoke without sound.
"Two cheaters. One rulebreaker. One liar. One key."
Jasiel felt the words ripple through their bones.
The figure rose. And in their hand was a mirror.
**"Steal the truth," it said. **"Before it steals you."
Then the door slammed behind them.
And the real game began.
---
The forest twisted around them. Every step they took reshaped the path, opening into memories not their own. Jasiel saw glimpses—a crown of cinders, a blade forged from regret, a child who never grew old.
"What is this place?" Jasiel whispered.
"A trial," Thorne said. "Or a trap. Maybe both."
They pressed on.
At the base of a tree that whispered names in dreams, they found a pool of silver. Jasiel leaned over it. Their reflection split into three—child, adult, shadow. The shadow smiled first.
They fled that place.
Later, they came to a glade of echoing laughter. Voices from their pasts, twisted and broken. Thorne dropped to his knees at the edge, covering his ears. Jasiel helped him stand. It was the first time they touched without tension.
Finally, they reached the heart of the realm. A mirror, taller than the sky, older than the sun.
And within it, their truths waited.
Thorne saw himself alone on a throne made of teeth.
Jasiel saw a battlefield, their own hands glowing with Mirror Law, surrounded by broken gods.
The figure appeared once more.
**"You were chosen not to learn," it said, **"but to remember."
Then it handed them the mirror shard.
**"The Academy fears you both. So they put you in chains made of gold and call it a gift. Break them. Or be broken."
Jasiel took the shard.
The forest faded.
They woke back in Detention Hall, mirror shard in hand.
Everyone else was asleep.
Only Thorne met their gaze.
"Partners?" he asked.
Jasiel nodded. "Partners."
And the game truly began.