The classroom assigned for Forbidden Thaumatology was buried deeper in the Sanctum Magna than Kyle had expected—beneath the eastern towers, past archival wings and sealed stairwells no one seemed to use. The air grew colder the farther he descended, the torchlight dimming as if reluctant to touch what lay ahead.
He arrived at a stone door marked with silver inlay. Not a room number. Just a symbol: a fractured spiral enclosed in a triangle.
He hesitated, hand hovering over the iron handle, then pushed it open.
The room was cavernous—larger than any lecture hall he'd seen so far. Bookshelves climbed the walls, ancient and bowed. A circular table occupied the center, surrounded by empty chairs. Only one was pulled out. For him.
And at the far end, standing by a tall chalkboard and etching runes in white chalk, was Professor Iskra.
"You're late," she said without turning.
Kyle stepped inside. "By three minutes."
"In this class, that's three minutes of your life you'll never get back. Sit."
He slid into the chair cautiously. "There's… no one else?"
"You expected a crowd?" Iskra finally turned, brushing chalk dust from her gloves. "This is Forbidden Thaumatology, Kyle. Not potions for precocious adolescents." She said the last part more sarcastically than necessary.
"I just thought—" Kyle glanced around. "I mean, it's listed. I figured there'd be other students."
"There were," she said flatly. "In the past."
"What happened to them?"
"Some dropped out. Some transferred. One forgot how to speak for a week. Another set her room on fire with a spell she couldn't remember casting." She paused, eyeing him. "They all had one thing in common."
Kyle raised an eyebrow. "Which was?"
"They thought curiosity was the same as readiness."
He leaned back slightly, unsure if the chill in his spine came from the room or her words. "Why keep the class open at all, then?"
"Because someone always comes along who needs to know."
She waved a hand, and the chalkboard shifted. The runes shimmered and rearranged into a diagram—a split helix that pulsed faintly.
"Thaumatology, as most students learn it, is the study of sanctioned magical mechanics. Energy regulation. Spell structure. The 'how' behind the 'what'—nothing more." She tapped the upper helix. "They learn rules. Frameworks. Ritual and rationale."
Her hand moved to the lower helix. "Forbidden Thaumatology is different. It concerns everything we agreed not to teach—branches trimmed from the great tree of magic for fear they'd poison the roots."
Kyle leaned forward. "So it's dangerous magic?"
"Not quite. The magic itself isn't inherently dangerous. But the knowledge is. Because knowledge invites experimentation. And experimentation can crack open doors best left sealed."
The diagram shifted again—now showing a tree with broken branches on one side, and what looked like… eyes?… nestled in its roots.
Kyle felt the hairs on his arm rise.
"You'll find no clear textbook here," Iskra continued. "No step-by-step guides. This field is mostly forgotten lore, whispers from lost ages, and reconstructed theories too unstable to share with the general curriculum."
He hesitated. "So why teach it to me?"
"Well, I simply planned on having you pass on the basis of attendance. But you've already touched it."
Kyle froze.
"The moment you stood near that archway and triggered the dead zone," she said, "you walked closer to forbidden magic than most do in their lifetime. You heard it, didn't you?"
Kyle remembered the pressure. The voice. The mirror in the dream. "Yes," he whispered.
"Then you deserve to understand what it was."
She handed him a worn tome—leatherbound, its title etched in a tongue he couldn't read.
"Lesson one: forbidden does not mean evil. It means unknown. And what is unknown can either consume you… or elevate you. Your assignment for the foreseeable future is deciphering that tome."
For the next hour, she lectured—not with the rigidity of a textbook scholar, but with the fervor of someone who had danced at the edge of a great fire and returned changed. She spoke of memory magic forbidden because it rewrote the soul. Of time-fracture rituals outlawed for tearing through reality like wet paper. Of resonance links, capable of tethering minds across space—used once in a war and never again.
Kyle listened, rapt. Each word was a key. Each example, a lock undone.
By the end, his notebook was a maze of diagrams and questions. He hadn't even noticed how cold the room had gotten.
"You'll meet with me weekly," she said as he stood to leave. "No one else must know what you study here."
He nodded, then paused at the door. "Did any of them—the ones who dropped out—ever come back?"
She smiled faintly. "No. But a few tried. One even forgot why he left in the first place."
Lunch was quieter than usual, tucked in a corner of the courtyard café that overlooked the reflecting pool. Kyle had barely touched his food.
Mirai stabbed at a fruit tart. "You look like you've been living in a crypt."
"Smell like it too," Orin added helpfully.
Kyle gave a small, tired grin. "I've been busy. And I smell normal—unlike you. You sleeping in an oil barrel?"
Orin gasped in mock pain.
"Busy disappearing?" Mirai shot him a look. "It's been like four days. We thought you got turned into a frog."
Kyle hesitated, then put his fork down. "I had to meet with the counselor."
Orin blinked. "Seriously?"
"Yeah. After that Void Studies class. Professor Iskra recommended it. Mostly because of how I reacted to Chris."
Mirai's expression softened. "You were… intense that day."
Kyle looked down at the rippling water. "I—I'm sorry about what I said to you."
"It's not just him. It's nobles. Arrogant, self-serving, power-drunk nobles who think the world owes them for being born."
"You mean like half the school?" Orin said, then frowned. "No offense, Mira."
"None taken," she said, gently touching Kyle's wrist. "What did the counselor say?"
"That it's limiting me. That I need to see people here as individuals, not extensions of their families."
"Is he wrong?" Orin asked, uncharacteristically serious.
Kyle thought of the dream. The mirror. The boy in the reflection who wasn't a boy.
"I don't know," he admitted. "But I'm trying."
Mirai smiled. "Good. Because you're not the only one trying, you know. We all carry things."
Orin raised his sandwich. "To emotional baggage!"
Mirai groaned. Kyle laughed, tension finally breaking.
But even as they talked, something gnawed at him from beneath the surface—something cold and watching.
He thought of the forbidden tree on Iskra's board.
And wondered how deep its roots truly went.