Chapter 15: Chapter 15: Leaving the Academy

The afternoon lectures passed without incident. Whatever tension had lingered in the air between Lillith and me after that morning seemed to dissolve into the ordinary rhythm of classes — droning professors, chalk dust, the scratch of quills against parchment. Normal. Peaceful. The kind of peace I knew better than to trust.

When the final bell rang, I gathered my things and made my way through the crowded corridors of Astraea Academy, moving with purpose while everyone else drifted toward the dormitories or the training halls. I had one destination in mind: the administrative office of Mrs. Stella, our homeroom teacher.

The academy’s hallways were something I still hadn’t fully gotten used to — wide stone corridors lit by floating luminite orbs that cast everything in a soft blue-white glow, tapestries bearing the crests of legendary alumni hanging between tall arched windows. By any standard, this was an institution of prestige. The kind of place the old Kael Draven had scraped and begged to attend despite his lack of talent. I understood that desperation now. Even as someone who carried the weight of dozens of game runs in his memories, there was something genuinely humbling about walking these halls.

Mrs. Stella’s office was at the end of the east wing, tucked behind a heavy oak door etched with protective seals. I knocked twice.

"Enter."

She was seated behind a desk buried under scrolls and assessment ledgers, her reading glasses perched low on her nose. Mrs. Stella was the kind of woman who seemed ageless — somewhere between forty and a hundred, with sharp grey eyes that had probably seen through every excuse a student had ever tried to give her. She looked up at me with the practiced calm of someone who was already mildly suspicious.

"Mr. Kael," she said, setting her quill down. "This is unexpected. You don’t usually visit outside of class hours unless something has gone wrong."

"Nothing’s gone wrong," I said, taking the seat across from her without waiting to be invited. She raised an eyebrow at that but said nothing. "I wanted to formally apply for a short leave of absence from the academy."

Silence stretched between us. She removed her glasses, folded them carefully, and set them on the desk.

"A leave of absence," she repeated. "And what, precisely, is the reason for this request?"

"I need to return home," I said simply. "There’s something there of great importance to me. Personal matter. I expect to be back before the end of the week."

I’m going to find a Celestial art no one in this world has touched in decades, I thought, keeping my expression perfectly neutral. Something that could change everything.

Mrs. Stella studied me for a long moment. I’d learned from the game that she was sharper than she appeared — not just administratively, but perceptive in the way that people who’ve spent decades around talented and dangerous young individuals tend to become. She had a gift for reading between lines.

"Is that so," she said finally. It wasn’t quite a question. "You understand that a leave of absence, even a brief one, means you’ll miss scheduled assessments. You’ll be responsible for catching up independently."

"Understood."

"And you understand that students who leave academy grounds are no longer under the institution’s protection. Whatever happens to you out there is your own responsibility."

"Also understood."

She leaned back in her chair, arms folding across her chest, and gave me a look that was equal parts warning and something I could only describe as reluctant respect. "You won’t be denied the leave, Mr. Kael. Students here are not prisoners. But I want to be very clear." Her grey eyes sharpened. "Do not do anything that will bring harm or disgrace to this academy. We have a reputation that has been built over three centuries, and I will not have it tarnished by whatever impulsive venture a student from the lowest-ranked class has decided to embark on."

The glare she fixed me with could have cowed most people. I simply met it steadily.

"Of course," I said. "I won’t cause trouble."

I rose, gave a short bow — more habit than anything — and turned to leave. The door was barely open before I walked straight into someone on the other side.

The collision was solid. I stepped back, already irritated, the word forming before I even processed who I’d walked into.

"Watch where you’re—"

I stopped. 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

The word died in my throat.

She was tall — nearly my height — with an easy, unhurried posture that radiated a kind of quiet confidence most people spent years trying to cultivate and never quite achieved. Her hair was a deep, dark auburn, tied loosely over one shoulder. Her uniform was the same as every other student’s, and yet somehow she wore it differently, like someone who belonged in it rather than someone assigned to it. Her eyes, when they met mine, were a clear and steady amber-gold.

I knew those eyes.

"Kael," she said. Her voice was warm, familiar, carrying the easy comfort of someone who had known me for years.

My own voice failed completely.

"...Verdia," I managed. Barely above a whisper.

Verdia. The heroine. The girl who, in every single run of the game I had ever played, had stood between the main character and the Demon of Wrath when everything else had failed. Who had laughed even as she fell. Who had died with a kind of grace that made it feel, somehow, worse than if she had screamed.

She was the one character whose death I had never found a way to prevent. Not once. Not across dozens of attempts, dozens of different choices and routes and desperate interventions. She always died. The game’s story seemed to demand it, like it was woven into the fabric of the world itself.

And here she was. Standing in front of me. Alive. Warm. Entirely unaware of what I knew.

Something cracked open in my chest that I hadn’t been prepared for.

"What are you doing here, Kael?" she asked, tilting her head slightly, that familiar small smile already forming at the corner of her mouth. The same smile she wore in the cutscenes. The same one she wore in the moment before—

I felt the heat behind my eyes before I could stop it.

Verdia’s expression shifted — subtle surprise, then a careful kind of softness. "Are you... crying, Kael?"

I hadn’t realized. I raised a hand to my face and found that she was right.

"Because I refused to be your fiancée doesn’t mean you have to cry in front of me," she said, and there it was — that gentleness she always had, even delivering something that should have stung. She said it like a joke and a kindness at the same time, the way only Verdia could.

I blinked. "Wait — what?"

She gave me a patient look that suggested this was not new information as far as she was concerned.

A connection between Verdia and Kael Draven. Of course. In the game’s lore it had been a footnote — a minor backstory detail, easily missed. Their families had apparently discussed a potential arrangement at some point, and it had been declined from her side. Kael in the game had moved on long before the events that mattered. But now, standing here, I understood for the first time what that refusal must have meant to the original Kael. The one who had actually lived this.

I didn’t think. I just moved.

I closed the distance between us and pulled her into a hug — firm, real, the kind that doesn’t leave room for ambiguity. She stiffened immediately, caught completely off-guard.

"I’ll save you this time," I said quietly, with more certainty than I’d said anything in a long time. "I promise you that."

I let go before she could respond, turned, and walked away down the corridor at a pace that didn’t invite conversation.

Behind me, I heard nothing for a moment.

Then, quietly, to herself: "...What exactly is he talking about?"

I didn’t look back.

What I didn’t know — what I wouldn’t know until much later — was that I wasn’t the only one watching from that corridor. Pressed against the wall a dozen feet further down, half-concealed by a tapestry bearing the academy crest, Lillith had seen the entire thing.

She had followed me from class on instinct, or something she was telling herself was instinct. She had watched the meeting with Mrs. Stella through the small gap in the office door, watched me leave, watched the collision, watched Verdia’s smile, watched me reach for her like she was something worth holding onto.

Lillith’s jaw was tight. Her hands, pressed flat against the stone wall, were trembling slightly — though whether from anger or something she wasn’t ready to name, even she couldn’t say.

He hasn’t hugged me yet.

The thought arrived fully formed, unbidden and embarrassingly honest. She shoved it away immediately, straightened her spine, and turned to leave the corridor with a dignity she wasn’t entirely feeling.

The expression on her face, had anyone been looking, was not one she would have chosen to wear in public