Chapter 6: The Aetherveil

The library of Lunaria Academy was not a quiet place—not truly. Not when you knew how to listen.

Even at midnight, its vaulted chambers hummed with restless magic. Shelves towered like watchful guardians, their spines crawling with whispered spells. Pages rustled on their own, ink bled into unfamiliar shapes, and some grimoires snapped at curious fingers like caged beasts. A misplaced step might awaken the wrong spirit—or worse, alert the wards that kept the more dangerous knowledge under lock and key.

But you walked with purpose tonight. No hesitation. No turning back.

You moved like a ghost, your feet silent against the runed tiles. The hem of your cloak brushed the floor as your hand hovered near your satchel, ready to draw a concealment glyph at the first sign of alarm. You had no plan. No guarantee. Only desperation.

And desperation was louder than caution.

“I can’t trust him. I can’t trust any of them.”

You had repeated those words so often they’d become a mantra—etched into your thoughts, sealing off the part of you that sometimes hesitated when Taeyong looked at you with that unreadable, knowing gaze.

He had seen too much. But he hadn’t stopped you. Not yet. That was what made him dangerous.

So you slipped past the curfew bells and the invisible barriers that shimmered at the far end of the library—barriers most students never dared approach. You cast your veil spell low and thin, just enough to convince the detection glyphs that you belonged. Just enough to blend with the darkness between wards.

The Forbidden Wing loomed before you.

Ancient. Cold. Alive in its own way.

You stepped through the heavy archway, breath held, feeling the weight of the place press in like a second skin. The air was thick with dust and candle smoke, shadows writhing in the corners like they remembered pain.

Candelabras lined the stone path, their flames flickering pale blue. You passed tomes bound in flesh, scrolls that bled when opened, volumes chained shut and sealed with wax symbols that pulsed faintly, as if still breathing.

And then—you found it.

It sat alone, almost forgotten, wedged between a book on spectral possession and a codex of dragon marrow transmutations. Its leather binding was cracked, the title nearly worn away. But the ink on its cover shimmered under the moonlight filtering through a high, stained-glass window:

Disguises of the Flesh: Cloaking One’s True Nature

Your fingers trembled as you touched it. The book did not bite. It opened easily—as if it had been waiting for you.

Inside, the pages curled with age and secrets.

Spell circles drawn in meticulous hand. Symbols you barely recognized. Notes scrawled in a dozen languages—some human, most not. There were rituals for scent-masking, for aura bending, for rewriting one's magical frequency entirely. You flipped past pages that reeked of blood-bound pacts and soul carving. One spell involved anchoring your disguise to a cursed object, feeding it slivers of your life each night to maintain the illusion.

You didn’t stop until your eyes caught the name that sent a chill down your spine:

Aetherveil.

A whisper of a spell. Ancient. Witch-born. Designed for the desperate.

You read aloud in a hush, barely moving your lips:

“Aetherveil—shroud of the hidden self. Conceals scent, aura, and fleshform. Anchored through personal sacrifice: a memory, a name, or a piece of the soul.”

You stared at the faded ink, trying to make sense of the aching pull in your chest.

A piece of your soul?

You reached beneath your cloak and wrapped your fingers around the pendant hanging from your neck. A cheap thing. Simple. No enchantments. Just a memory—one of the last from your real life. A gift from your brother, given on the day you left home for the first time.

You hadn't taken it off since.

Would it be enough? Would it work?

Would you even survive it?

The magic wasn’t subtle. This wasn’t like a disguise spell that unraveled when dismissed. This spell took. And what it took—it kept.

A part of your identity would be lost forever.

But what was your identity now? A human girl, pretending to be a witch in a school built for monsters. If you didn’t do this, there wouldn’t be a “you” left to protect.

The candle beside you hissed, guttered. You looked up, realizing how long you'd been here. Your fingers were ink-stained. Your shoulders ached. The deep purples and blues of dawn had begun to bleed through the stained-glass windows above.

You'd been here all night.

Still, you copied the spell circle onto fresh parchment with meticulous care. You drew the glyphs for protection, for silence, for concealment. You traced the sacrifice sigil last, hand trembling.

The spell was yours now.

But it would cost you.

Just as you slid the book shut and tucked it under your cloak, you froze.

A footstep.

Then another.

Soft. Steady. Measured.

Too graceful to be a patrolling warden.

Too slow to be a student fleeing curfew.

You pressed your back to the shelves, parchment clenched tight, breath shallow. Your heart beat once, twice—painfully loud in your ears.

“Please not Taeyong.”

Another step.

“Please not Taeyong—”

A shadow turned the corner.

You held your breath.

And the predator stepped into view.

The footsteps grew louder.

Measured and unhurried, like they belonged to someone with nothing to fear—and nothing to prove. You clenched the edge of the shelf, forcing your breath into silence. Behind your ribs, your heart pounded like a war drum, screaming warnings your mind already understood.

Then she appeared.

Not Taeyong.

Not a teacher.

Not a warden with detection glyphs blazing.

Just… a girl.

Tall and pale, with hair the color of ash twisted into a lazy braid that trailed over one shoulder. Her robes were wrinkled and stained with chalk, as if she'd slept face-first on a spellbook and never bothered to fix it. Deep shadows hollowed her eyes—less menace, more exhaustion—and she moved like someone who lived more in libraries than beds.

Her arms were stacked high with tomes: one bore the seal of the Enclave of Necrotic Restoration; another shimmered faintly with blood ink. She smelled like parchment and bitterroot tea.

She stepped into the aisle—and saw you.

Your pulse stopped.

She paused, blinking as though you were a puzzle she hadn’t expected to solve today. Her gaze settled on the parchment clutched in your hands, the open satchel, the weary, cornered look in your eyes.

She sniffed once. Casually.

Too casually.

Then tilted her head and muttered as though speaking to a dust mote.

“Huh. Thought I was the only one who liked being here before dawn.”

Her voice was smooth but dry, as if every syllable cost her sleep. She shrugged, as if your presence didn’t concern her in the slightest, and adjusted the tomes in her arms.

“Don’t mind me,” she added with a yawn, her tone distracted. “I’m just grabbing a few extra readings before necromantic ethics. Dead people are exhausting.”

You stared, silent.

Waiting for the question. The accusation. The reveal.

But none came.

She moved past you with the slow, shuffling grace of the overtired, dropped her mountain of books onto a nearby reading table with a thud, and collapsed into the chair like her bones had momentarily forgotten how to hold her upright.

The tension in your chest loosened—just a fraction. Your knees stopped locking. You exhaled, soft and slow.

“Just another overachiever,” you thought, almost giddy with relief. “Just like me. Please just stay tired. Please don’t ask anything else.”

She didn’t.

Instead, she flipped open the top book and began muttering to herself.

“Soulbinding clauses… If your ex dies after signing the contract, does it still hold? Ugh, why are men always the ones with necromancer exes?”

You didn’t laugh.

But something like a smile twitched the corner of your mouth.

She was harmless. Or at least, harmless enough. No interest in your business. No questions about your scent, your magic, your humanity. She wasn’t a predator. She was just tired.

You slid the parchment into your cloak, adjusted your satchel, and quietly backed out of the aisle.

Every muscle in your body still thrummed with alertness, but your limbs moved on instinct now—training and fear braided into purpose.

Back to the dorms. Before the sun climbed any higher. Before anyone else noticed you weren’t where you were supposed to be.

---

The walk through the empty corridors was longer than it should’ve been.

You kept expecting a voice to call after you.

Taeyong’s voice.

The girl’s voice.

Any voice at all.

But no one stopped you.

No alarms sounded.

You reached your tower just as the light from the stained-glass windows spilled gold and red across the marble floors, like the library itself was bleeding secrets.

And you were one of them.

---

In your room, you unrolled the parchment with shaking hands.

The spell circle glowed faintly under the first rays of dawn.

Aetherveil. The shroud spell. The answer.

You read it again. The sacrifice anchor still pulsed with uncertainty, like a question only you could answer.

What would you give?

What could you part with forever?

You ran your fingers over the pendant at your neck.

A gift from home. A relic of who you used to be.

Your thumb brushed the curve of its surface, and a memory sparked: your brother, laughing through tears, slipping the chain over your head and whispering, “Don’t forget who you are, okay?”

Your throat tightened.

“Would he even recognize me now?”

You pressed the pendant to your lips. The spell would need it. It needed something real. Something true.

Something of you.

“I’ll cast it tonight,” you murmured aloud, voice hoarse. “I’ll do whatever it takes.”

You lay back, but didn’t sleep.

Not yet.

Not while the question lingered like frost at the edge of your thoughts:

What will you lose… when you give up a part of yourself?

—To be Continued—