Jack scratched something into the chalkboard, paused, stepped back, then scratched it out again.
The courtyard buzzed with its usual morning blend of sleepy murmurs, fluttering notebook pages, and the soft creak of wooden chairs shifting against uneven cobblestones. A breeze drifted through the stone archways, dragging dust and flower petals across the lesson like a challenge.
"Alright," Jack muttered to himself. "Third time's the charm."
He stepped back to admire the latest attempt:
DIVINE CASUALITY—all caps, triple underlined.
It took three tries to spell casuality, but there it was. Done.
"Class today, we talk about fate." He glanced toward Isaac. "Specifically, whether you get to choose yours, or if it was all laid out before you showed up."
He began pacing. "Maybe it was mailed to you and lost in the post. You'd never really know."
Jack tried not to smile—failed.
Isaac sat near the back, eyes glazed, head propped lazily on his palm. He hadn't spoken all class. His tattered notebook was blank, save for his name scribbled in the corner. He'd been staring at it too long.
He blinked twice and looked up. The sky was bright, too bright—wrong, somehow.
Isabelle leaned in and poked his arm.
"Hey, you alright?" she smiled. "You're not thinking about me, are you?"
Isaac paused.
"Hm? Yeah. No. I mean—I'm fine. Yeah."
He added, "Just sleepy."
"Did you dream again?"
"…Huh?"
"Did you dream again, Isaac?"
He turned to her, blinking. "Isabelle, how do you know about that?"
She tilted her head. "Know about what? I haven't said anything."
She giggled. "You really must be tired, huh?"
"Yeah."
Jack's voice drifted back into focus.
He was pacing through the patchy shade beneath the courtyard's fruit trees, brushing chalk dust from his hands.
"Some folks say destiny's like a river. Others say it's more like a wheel. Personally, I think it's bullshit," he said. "But maybe that's why I'm not in charge of anything important."
He stopped mid-step, eyes settling on Isaac.
"What about you? Any thoughts?"
Isaac looked down at his name on the page. He'd stared so long it had stopped looking like a name.
Then he looked up.
"I think fate is when your name stops looking like your name. Like when you repeat a word too much and it unravels, losing all its meaning."
A soft clapping echoed behind Jack—measured, deliberate. Then came the tapping: rhythmic, precise, like a metronome ticking down to something sacred.
All sound vanished.
The students froze. Even the birds fell silent in the trees.
The leaves hung still mid-sway, and Jack straightened his spine with more dignity than he'd shown in years.
"Good morning, Elder Gauis," Jack said, bowing low.
He turned to the class. "Show some respect, you brats."
Chairs scraped back as every student rose in unison.
They bowed.
Gauis raised one hand, fingers splayed like the spokes of a crown.
"May Devin'Him bless you all."
He gave a single wave.
They sat.
"I'm only here to listen, that's all," Gauis said, smiling faintly. "Just like any curious soul."
He strolled to the center of the classroom and gestured toward an empty seat.
"May I?"
The nameless boy seated beside it gave a stiff, polite nod.
"Thank you, sir," Gauis said with perfect grace, and sat.
He raised one hand. "Jack, I have a question for you."
"I thought you were only here to listen," Isaac asked from the back.
Gauis turned, amused. "Oh, this just brings me back, that's all. Can't I be a little curious?"
"Isaac, cut it out," Jack said, adjusting his posture again. "Of course. Go on."
Gauis raised his hand slightly as if conducting silence.
"They say a spark was left in all of us.
A divine ember, tucked just beneath the ribs—
placed there by Devin'Him so we might remember where we came from.
But I've seen what people do with fire.
They don't warm their homes with it.
They don't light the way for others.
They burn.
They consume.
They learn to worship the ash.
So the question must be asked—not whether the spark is real,
but whether we deserve to keep it.
What happens when the flame is wasted?
When generation after generation chooses blindness, indulgence, defiance?
We say the flame is sacred.
But maybe the real holiness… is in watching it go out.
Maybe that's the mercy He left behind:
To let it die in peace—
quietly, painlessly,
one soul at a time."
A few students shifted. One raised a hand halfway.
"…Was that even a question?"
"What's he talking about?"
The room went quiet. Slowly, all eyes turned to Jack.
He thought for a moment, then said:
"Maybe the flame isn't meant to light the world.
Maybe it's just meant to keep you warm enough to stay kind."
Jack seemed pleased with his answer.
Gauis laughed softly. "Well—maybe so, maybe so. Regardless."
He turned back to Isaac, eyes narrowing with a strange gentleness.
"It's something to think about."
The bell tower rang in the distance, cold and distant.
"That's math," Jack sighed.
"Let's go. You'll be coming with me, boy." Gauis nodded toward Isaac.
Jack made a weak protest but shrugged halfway through.
"Eh. He probably did it to himself."
He turned back to the board and erased the chalk.
This time, he wrote MATH.
Spelled it right on the first try.
The bell rang again.
Low and hollow, echoing across the courtyard.
A bird fluttered out of the tree just above Ian's head. It startled him awake.
He blinked, stretched, and immediately regretted it. His back was sore. The bark had left a pattern on his cheek.
"…What time is it?" he muttered to no one.
He sat up from where he'd been curled behind the broad base of the fruit tree, sunlight cutting through the branches in thin, dizzying beams. The voices had stopped. Class was over. The seat in front of Isaac and Isabelle—his seat—was empty.
"Damn. Again?"
He stood and brushed the dirt off his uniform. A few petals clung to his jacket.
He had no idea what today's lesson was supposed to be about, but the silence hanging in the air felt heavier than usual.
Like the kind of quiet that comes after someone says something you're not supposed to hear.
He looked over in time to see Isaac walking away beside Elder Gauis.
Jack was at the board, already halfway through spelling "MATH" with the intensity of a man disarming a bomb.
Isabelle noticed him and mouthed something. He couldn't tell what.
He yawned and started walking toward the classroom.
Jack caught sight of him and gave a half-hearted shrug, as if to say, Not worth it.
Ian dropped into the seat next to Isabelle and leaned over.
"What class is this again?"
"It's written on the board, idiot."
"Oh. Yeah." He squinted.
"…What kind of math though ?"
Isabelle rolled her eyes. "I think it's trigonometry today. I don't know."
Jack handed them each a worksheet covered in sad-looking triangles—some upright, some sideways, all missing angles and measurements like scattered puzzle pieces.
"Yeah. Guess it is trig," Isabelle said, flipping the page sideways. "Why do we need to know this again?" she stared at her paper like it had personally betrayed her. "I've never even seen a triangle in real life."
Ian laughed. "Yes you have. They just don't look like triangles when we use them."
"What do you mean?" Isabelle blinked at him.
"You know that collapsed mill house we always pass on the way here?"
"Yeah?"
Ian nodded at her page. "That's what happens when you don't know how to use triangles correctly."
"What do you mean?" Isabelle asked, squinting at her worksheet.
"Well, look at this one," Ian said, tapping the corner of the page. "It's asking about a beam leaning against a wall. Classic triangle."
She blinked. "That's a triangle?"
"Yeah. Imagine a wall, right? Straight up. Then imagine a beam going from the top of the wall to the ground a little ways out. That forms a triangle—wall, ground, beam."
She looked down again. "Oh. That's what this is?"
"Exactly. The angle they're asking for? That's where the beam meets the ground. If it's too sharp, the beam slips. If it's too flat, the wall doesn't get support."
"…So this is about building stuff?"
"It's about not dying under a roof someone eyeballed instead of doing the math."
Isabelle blinked again. "That's terrifying."
Ian smiled. "Welcome to trigonometry."
Ian went about explaining every question on the worksheet to Isabelle, making sure she understood every concept—sines, cosines, angles, all of it.
By the time they were done, her paper was covered in numbers, arrows, scribbled notes, and shapes she barely understood before.
"I've known you this long, and you never once told me you were good at… well, anything, really," she said with a smile. "Why today?"
"I don't know. Just bored, maybe. The sunlight's throwing me off. Something feels weird about it," Ian replied.
"What?"
"…Nothing."
She paused. "Have you seen Isaac?"
"Yeah. He was talking to Gauis earlier. They should be done by now—unless he really screwed up."
"I'm gonna go look for him."
"Be my guest."
Ian leaned back in his chair and stared up at the sky. Not a single cloud.
Isabelle left the desk and scanned the courtyard. She walked along the edges until she finally spotted them—Isaac and Elder Gauis—still deep in conversation beneath the archway near the far wall.
She slowed her pace and hid nearby before they could spot her.
Isaac's voice drifted toward her, low and tight with frustration.
"How come we're the only kids delivering things now?
This village is full of people—and we're stuck carrying boxes every day. For what?"
Gauis paused before answering, looking down at Isaac with something between amusement and pity.
"Your heart is closed off to other people," he said calmly.
"You have a solid bond with Ian and Isabelle, but beyond them? You're cold."
"You avoid eye contact. You don't ask questions. You do the job, but you don't care for those it helps."
He stepped forward, voice still gentle but now with weight.
"This place relies on its connections, Isaac. And right now, you are the weak link."
"What do you mean?" Isaac asked.
Gauis's voice stayed calm.
"I've seen that look in your eyes—glazed over, like you don't belong here. I used to wear that same look."
He folded his hands behind his back.
"Just pretending. Constantly performing. Believe me, it eats away at you eventually."
He paused.
"That mask you wear? It'll start to crack."
Isaac looked away. "Spare me the monologue."
Gauis stepped closer and placed a hand gently on Isaac's shoulder.
"Isabelle is worried about you. Don't let her suffer more than she needs to."
Isaac stared down at his feet.
Then, quietly—
"When you were younger… did you dream?"
Gauis raised an eyebrow. "Pardon me?"
Isaac didn't look up.
"Did you dream?"
"It feels like I'm stuck.
Like I'm waiting for days to pass… but they never do."
Gauis looked him in the eye. Calm. Unblinking.
"Your time will come, child."
Then, without turning his head:
"Isabelle, you can come in now. We're done here."
From behind the column, Isabelle froze.
She didn't move. Just turned—and ran.
She didn't stop until she was back by Ian's desk, heart thudding.
"How the hell did he know I was there…"
But when she got there, Ian was gone.
Only his worksheet remained, completely blank except for the note scrawled across the top.
Be right back. I think I saw something.
That was all.
To be continued.