Chapter 1168: An Open Door

The door to Selenne’s office closed behind Lucavion.

He turned the signed petition between his fingers, watching the violet ink catch the corridor light. Students moved past him with books in hand while an instructor argued with an aide farther down the hall.

Selenne had been generous with questions for someone deciding whether to provide a signature.

His affinity, the Rotunda, the source of his education, even his ability to behave when motivated—each subject had entered the conversation through a practical concern and remained long enough for her to measure the answer.

Lucavion could hardly object. Selenne now possessed an excellent academic excuse to keep his magical development within reach.

The petition gave him much the same advantage.

’She found herself a student to study and gave him permission to study her Block in return.’

Her signature occupied the receiving-faculty section, but several boxes beneath it remained offensively empty. Martial Arts still had to recommend the arrangement. Someone needed to fit both courses around his Primary Block timetable, register Selenne’s supplemental work, confirm practical capacity, and return everything to Student Affairs for final approval.

Selenne had not completed his enrollment. She had merely transformed an impossible request into a bureaucratic one.

’Encouraging.’

He had defeated stranger things than paperwork. Unfortunately, paperwork tended to survive.

Lucavion turned toward the stairs that would eventually take him back to the Martial Arts side. The Close Combat faculty still needed to release space in his timetable and recommend the outside workload. After that came registration, course materials, and the practical inconvenience of moving between two Blocks without arriving late to either.

Beyond the paperwork, a certain girl was still expecting the lesson he had promised her. He would need to finish quickly.

Still, two courses were enough. He had never intended to become a second full-time student or bury himself beneath every introductory subject the Magicians’ Block considered essential. Arcane Structural Theory and Innate Mana Flow Control addressed the immediate weakness, while his enrollment provided something the course titles did not mention: legitimate access.

He could enter the Block without inventing errands, learn its routines, use its facilities, and encounter the people moving through its magical affairs. The Academy would see two additions to a timetable.

Lucavion saw an open door.

He descended the first flight of stairs as his thumb brushed the folded edge of the petition. The two names written beneath Selenne’s restriction drew his attention again.

He remembered both from the novel.

They belonged to Elara’s ordinary first-year progression. The courses placed her among instructors, students, and magical developments that would later matter within the Magicians’ Block.

Elara would be in both.

Lucavion could already picture her surprise when he took a seat in the first lecture. She would look at him, look at the instructor, then return to him as though one of them had entered the wrong room.

"That should be enjoyable," he murmured.

He now had a legitimate reason to share that part of her academic life rather than repeatedly manufacturing one. The courses were useful to him already; their connection to Elara and the novel made them considerably more useful.

’Apparently, Student Affairs managed to make my life easier by accident.’

His academic reason had not been invented for Selenne or the petition.

During Mana Control, every detached structure had demanded another correction. Lucavion had stabilized one section, adjusted another, reinforced a third, then returned to the first before its shape loosened. His control had never truly left his hand. It stretched outward through continuous instructions, and the moment his attention relaxed, the entire construction began degrading.

A trained mage should not need to argue with every portion of a spell until it finished existing.

’That was control, perhaps, but not independence.’

The flower in the Rotunda had not behaved that way.

Lucavion remembered blood lifting beneath the movement of his finger, followed by ash that gathered along curves too fine to support through force. He had chosen the flower. The broad intention had been his, as had the movement of his hand and the decision to scatter the completed structure into petals.

Those choices belonged to him.

The finesse had not.

The sensation resembled another hand resting over his while he drew. Nothing had seized his muscles or pushed his will aside. His finger remained his own, yet each curve became certain before he consciously produced the control needed to shape it. The next movement felt correct before he understood why.

Blood followed without demanding adjustment. Ash settled into place before he solved how to suspend it. Their boundaries held without the repeated corrections that had consumed his attention during Mana Control.

Then he had released the completed flower.

Blood and ash separated beneath his intention, and the petals spread through the Rotunda with a precision that should have required dozens of separate corrections. Yet he had needed only to decide that the flower would scatter.

The structure had obeyed before he understood how to instruct it.

’That was indeed not my control.’

He had understood the difference at that moment. The question had never been whether something assisted him. The question was how the First Flame had guided Equinox closely enough to supply that precision without taking the action away from him.

The assistance had not come entirely without warning. Earlier, during his interaction with the Witness, his Flame of Equinox had responded without receiving a command. The First Flame and Equinox had entered a resonance he neither initiated nor understood.

The flower had carried the same trace.

Perhaps the First Flame had simply found Gervase unpleasant. Lucavion could hardly fault its judgment if ancient flames were capable of becoming annoyed.

Another possibility remained.

Lucavion had confronted Gervase, chosen the flower, and acted in accordance with something the First Flame recognized. It might have responded to his intention rather than the man standing opposite him.

’Did you dislike him, or did you approve of me?’

Neither explanation told him how the guidance had crossed into Equinox so naturally. Whether the First Flame guided him directly, Equinox accepted an influence through their contact, or the resonance produced something that belonged fully to neither flame remained beyond him. He did not know how deeply it could reach into Equinox without resistance.

Lucavion looked down at the hand holding the petition.

"Whichever it was," he murmured, "thank you."

Arcane Structural Theory would not identify an ancient flame for him, and Innate Mana Flow Control would not explain why two manifestations had recognized one another.

They could give him a baseline.

If he learned how trained mages preserved intent inside mana, stabilized detached manifestations, and reduced the need for constant correction, he could compare ordinary control against the flower. With enough understanding, he might separate what his own hand had performed from what Equinox supplied, what the First Flame guided, and what existed only because the two had touched.

Lucavion reached the lower corridor and stepped aside as three older students carried a boxed formation array toward the stairs. Once they passed, he looked again at Selenne’s signature.

The courses could improve his control. Their connection to Elara could return him to parts of the novel that had previously remained outside his natural reach. Even the unfinished approval process would carry him through offices and routines inside both Blocks.

Yet none of those benefits mattered as much as the name written across the petition.

Selenne’s death had occupied only a few decisive passages in the novel. Lucavion knew the broad event and the place where her part in the story ended. He did not know every duty that drew her there, every faculty dispute that narrowed her choices, or which small pressures accumulated before the Midterm catastrophe.

Knowing where someone died was not the same as knowing the road that brought them to it.

Now he could watch that road.

Regular access to the Magicians’ Block would let him see which responsibilities Selenne continued gathering, when her movements began diverging from what he remembered, and which warnings appeared before the ending the novel had assigned her.

Selenne wanted him close enough to observe.

Lucavion had acquired a reason to remain close enough to observe her in return.

The paperwork was unfinished. His magical questions remained unanswered, and the future had not changed merely because Selenne placed her name beneath his petition.

He had still moved closer to all three.

Lucavion folded the document carefully and slipped it inside his coat before continuing toward the Martial Arts Block. His steps remained quiet against the stone as he lowered his voice beneath the movement of the corridor.

"You won’t die, Senior Sister. You won’t die...."