“Someone call the headmaster! Now!”

"By the gods! H-his face!"

The girl's scream pierced through the silence that had blanketed the classroom, drawing the attention of the other students. 

All eyes turned towards him now, three boys stood at the center. The classroom smells of books, papers, chalks, and blood.  

The first, a boy kneeling on the coarse floorboards, clutched his face as blood oozed through his fingers, staining the wooden floorboards beneath him. His sobs were muffled, drowned out by the overwhelming horror of the moment. His wand, made of sturdy ashen oak and silver engraved accents lies in defeat in front of him. A dragon finally slain… But amidst its den.

The Second, stood over him, the second boy’s breath came hard and fast, his chest heaving. His fist was still clenched, the jade ring on his finger pulsing with a sickly green glow. The air around him crackled, the lingering green transmutation circle hovers over his hand. The mark of an Alchemist in training.

The duel. The anger. The need to win. It still burned in his chest, a fire refusing to die. But then, a voice broke through behind him… shaken and small.

"E-Eddie?"

“Stay back Markus,” The second boy said, “I got this—” 

“Eddie… his face…”

The voice was small, coming from behind him, The Third boy called Markus stood rigid, his face pale, his wide eyes locked on the scene before them. His hands twitched at his sides, as if wanting to reach for Eddie—then thinking better of it. 

"What have you done?" Markus said to him at last.

The glow of the ring flickered. Then, as if drained of life, it dimmed.

Eddie, the second boy blinked. The fire in his chest sputtered, giving way to something colder. He followed Markus’s gaze down—

And saw what he had done.

The Boy lay sprawled on the floorboards, blood seeping between his fingers as he clutched his face. His breathing ragged, wet and pitiful.

Eddie’s stomach lurched.

The duel was over. But the nightmare had just begun.

Whispers began, low and fearful at first, but quickly growing in intensity. Fingers pointed, eyes narrowed in disgust and fear. 

“Did you see that spell? isn’t that…”

“Isn’t it obvious?… And Welton just used it against him?”

“Yeah, look at him…” 

“Someone call the headmaster! Now!”

Eddie stood in the center of it all. The room felt too bright, the lamps flickering against the polished tables, illuminating every horrified stare. His breath came shallow, too fast. He could feel their eyes crawling over him, stripping him bare.

A sense of sickness. The jade ring on his finger sat cold and heavy, and it started to get heavier and heavier. an anchor dragging him down. The weight mounting and mounting. 

He followed their gazes—past the blood on the floor, past Markus’s stricken face—back to his own trembling hands. He looked at it, shaken.

The weight of what he had done pressed in, suffocating.

The door to the classroom burst open. 

Gusts of cold air followed, sweeping through the aftermath of the classroom. Then came the headmaster, his heavy robes rippling like a gathering storm. His gaze sharp enough to cut through the air itself.

Behind him, a procession of teachers flooded in, their presence a verdict before a trial had even begun. Nurses, and Healers pushed through the throng of students, ordering them to make way, their voices sharp and urgent. The Boy was lifted onto a stretcher, his bloodied hands weakly grasping at nothing, his screams still muffled. Someone pressed a cloth to his wound. Someone else muttered a healing incantation.

Eddie barely saw it… He don’t want to,

A hand landed on his shoulder—firm.

He looked up. The headmaster’s eyes locked onto his, a silent decree of what was to come. No shouting, no accusations. Just the crushing certainty of what this meant.

The jade ring on Eddie’s index finger felt as heavy as the mountain itself, its magic… or whatever it had just conjured, now has long gone. 

He barely noticed as they took it away from him, his lifeline—his heirloom, as if the weight of the mountain has been lifted from his very index finger… he felt somewhat free… but he dreaded that feeling.

They led him away from the classroom, away from the chatter, away from the accusations.

The whispers followed him down the corridor, curling against the stone walls, not only his classroom, the whole hallway is filled with students poking their heads out of the classroom windows, muttering his fate in hushed, pitiless tones as Eddie continues his walk of shame. Aella Academy, the very institution itself seemed to recoil before him him—walls narrowing, shadows deepening, as if it could no longer bear to house him.

He had spent years dreaming of these halls. Studying, pushing himself, proving himself.

And now, step by step, it was all being stripped away. Death by a thousand cuts.

The end was waiting for him at the headmaster’s office. A place of judgment. A place of exile.

He knew his sentence had already been passed.

Edward Welton is going to be expelled.