Page 92 of Academy of the Wicked, Year One

The barrier holds, but barely.

Its light flickers with each renewed strike, the serpent’s thrashing making the air tremble. My head feels like it’s spinning, and I struggle to process what’s happening.

My memories are a tangled mess, blurred and disjointed. Faces, voices, and emotions swirl together in an incomprehensible haze, leaving me grasping at fragments that slip through my fingers like grains of sand.

I can’t move.

My limbs are numb, my body unresponsive. Yet, there’s something on my neck, something that keeps pulsing in rhythm with the faint beat of my heart.

It’s persistent like a hand gripping my consciousness and refusing to let me fade away entirely. I try to focus on it, to understand what it is, but my thoughts are sluggish, and my senses feel dulled.

Then I hear it — a voice, faint and childlike, cutting through the haze like a blade.

“You like a Duskwalker?”

The voice is so unexpected, so out of place, that my eyes snap open further. The effort is exhausting, but I manage to focus on the figure before me.

A little boy stands between me and the hovering serpent.

He’s impossibly small compared to the massive creature, yet he seems unbothered by its presence. His wide eyes gleam with a curious light, and his expression is calm, almost eerily so.

I frown, confusion tightening in my chest.

There’s something familiar about him.

His dark hair falls in messy waves around his face, and his delicate features remind me of someone. My sluggish mind struggles to piece it together until the realization hits me like a jolt.

He looks like Malcolm, but younger, untouched by the darkness that seems to define him now. There’s an innocence in his gaze, a softness that makes my heart ache.

I try to respond, but my voice is weak, barely more than a whisper.

“I… just met him,” I manage to say, the words slow and broken. My head feels impossibly heavy, and I let it lull forward, the weight too much to fight against.

The boy tilts his head, watching me intently.

When I don’t say more, he waits, as if expecting an explanation. His silence feels like a question, a prompt to continue.

“There’s… something about him,” I say quietly, my voice strained. “Something that resonates… between us. I couldn’t resist it. Even though he’s a stranger, and I don’t know…anything about him.”

The boy remains still, his gaze unwavering.

The snake behind him thrashes against the barrier, but I barely notice it now. My focus is entirely on him, on the strange, surreal moment we’re sharing.

“I don’t know his favorite color,” I continue, a faint, broken laugh escaping my lips. “But…I think it’s white.”

The boy’s expression doesn’t change, but his voice is soft when he replies.

“He’s a Duskwalker. Duskwalkers like black. They always like black.”

I smile weakly at that, the effort draining but worth it.

“Why does he have to like what the world wants him to like?” I ask, my voice barely above a whisper. “He can like white… even if the world thinks his soul belongs in the dark. At least… that’s what I believe.”

The boy tilts his head again, his expression unreadable. Then, after a moment, he speaks.

“Aren’t you sad?” he asks quietly. “You’re not going to see him again.”

The question pierces me, but I don’t flinch.

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