It's Not Fair

The spontaneous run-ins had become more frequent since then.
Kai would visit the library after class as usual, hoping for a quiet escape, yet every time, he would find Rose there — in the same section, by the same shelves. Thankfully she was too focused to notice him, but it was as if the world itself kept aligning them.

He tried to slip away again that afternoon, ducking behind a row of towering bookshelves. But he could feel it — that soft, unwavering stare.

“Kai?” Rose’s voice carried gently across the aisle.

He stopped, shoulders stiffening, and turned to face her. His head lowered as he greeted her, eyes avoiding the white of her robes.

She closed the book she’d been reading and tucked it under her arm before stepping toward him. “Did you manage to decipher the scroll?”

“No,” he answered, his tone quiet. Not because of the library’s silence, but because he didn’t want anyone to notice who he was speaking to.

White cloaks.

At Caelera Academy, they were rare — students from the high Houses, rank A by birth and magic alone. Whether caster or stabilizer, their power was unmatched, and their names carried weight. They were the ones everyone wanted to tether with. The chosen few. And because of their rarity, Rose was the only one at the school currently.

In a way, they’re lonely too, Kai thought.
Tethers for them were mostly arranged long before affection could ever form. Although these political pairings held weight, a tether wouldn’t form if one of the two didn’t want to. A lifetime bond decided by a family’s and the individual’s ambition.

But Rose was different.

She wasn’t seeking a tether. She wasn’t entertaining proposals.
She was… talking to him.
A rank D stabilizer with no prospects, no family name worth repeating. The lowest of the low.

She doesn’t realize what being seen with me could cause, he thought. He’d have to take the initiative to be more careful, for both of them.

“Take a look at this.” Her voice snapped him from his thoughts.

She held out the book she’d been holding. The cover was worn, edges tattered, the title long gone. He accepted it carefully, his fingers brushing the faded leather. The texture was familiar — uncomfortably so.

“Can you hold this for a second?” Kai asked, curiosity overriding his hesitation.

“Sure,” she said, watching as he reached into his shoulder bag.

He drew out the book Rose had handed him a month ago when he bumped into her, Tethered Fate. His father’s book. The one he carried everywhere.

“Don’t they look similar?” he said, holding it up beside hers.

Rose’s eyes widened, not in surprise but in recognition, as if some part of her had expected this. “Should we compare?” she suggested, nodding toward one of the nearby reading tables.

Kai followed her gaze. The table she pointed at sat squarely in an open area — too visible. Too many eyes. Too many whispers waiting to happen.

He hesitated. “I think… I got too excited,” he said softly, slipping his father’s book back into his bag.

“Kai.”
Her voice carried a quiet authority — firm, unwavering. “I don’t care about ranks.”

For a moment, neither spoke. The scent of old parchment hung heavy between them. Then she pressed the book toward him again.

“I already told you. The way things are…”
Her words trailed off. Her eyes lowered, her expression dimming like a candle losing its flame.
“…we’ll all be destroyed.”

“What?” Kai blinked, unsure what she had whispered.

“Nothing,” she said quickly. Her composure returned in an instant, her smile polished and steady. “Forget it.”

She turned, her white cloak flowing behind her as she disappeared through the forest of shelves, her footsteps fading toward the entrance.

Kai stood in silence, the book still in his hands.

He exhaled slowly, the air around him suddenly heavy. Then, without another word, he made his way toward the counter to check it out.

Outside the library doors, the hallways were mostly quiet. The afternoon sun slipped through the long windows, casting stripes of gold across the polished floor. Kai walked with his head slightly bowed, the worn book open in his hands as he eagerly flipped through its fragile pages.

Most of the text was unreadable — diagrams that faded halfway through a line, circles broken before they could close, sketches of human figures covered in spiraling fractures that seemed to twist even without motion. He frowned, brushing a thumb along the edge of a page.

Passing through the administrative wing, he caught the faint echo of teachers’ voices behind closed doors. The air here always carried a faint smell of ink and parchment — the scent of people who spent more time writing than breathing.

His steps quickened as the end of the hall opened into sunlight. The wooden doors groaned when he pushed them aside, and warm air rolled over him like water. The courtyard stretched wide, the usual trimmed grass, the lined stone benches and neatly planted oaks. But in the distance, a lone willow stood out, slightly apart from the symmetry of everything else.

Its drooping branches swayed lazily in the wind, their shadows brushing across the grass in waves. To reach it, there was no path — only the soft resistance of the field beneath his shoes. He stepped off the cobblestone walkway and cut straight through, ignoring the looks from a few students nearby.

The sound of the campus faded behind him with each step. The willow’s rustling leaves whispered like a quiet invitation, and by the time he reached its shade, the world felt still — perfectly still. Here, time always slowed.

The wind stirred lightly, lifting the corners of its pages. His eyes scanned a rough diagram — a stabilizer’s body outlined with faint orange lines cutting through all parts of the body. The words underneath degraded away from time. 

However, Kai knew what it meant. 

Before he could read further, a sharp pain seized his side.
Kai gasped, his body doubling forward. The book slipped from his hand, landing open in the grass.

The pain was sharp, invasive — like something alive was clawing beneath his skin. He pressed a hand to his side, his breath catching in his throat. For a long, merciless minute, he could do nothing but endure it.

When the pain finally dulled, he lifted himself weakly against the trunk, his chest rising in unsteady breaths. He tugged open his robe, half expecting nothing.

But what he saw froze him.
His skin had cracked open — thin, glowing fissures spreading outward in a faint orange hue. The light pulsed softly beneath the surface, like his body was burning from the inside.

“This must be what untethered stabilizers die from…” he whispered to himself.

He’d read about it before — though most avoided the subject.
Casters who failed to tether by sixteen lost their mana over time, their eyes turning gray as their magic faded to silence.
But stabilizers… their mana turned inward, flooding through a body never built to contain it. Energy compressing until it tore through the flesh itself.

Kai leaned his head back against the tree, staring up through the weaving branches above. He would turn sixteen soon. He had less than a year. That was all the time he had before the deterioration consumed him completely.

A quiet, bitter laugh escaped him — dry and fragile.
His chuckles caught midway, softening into silence.

“It’s not fair…” he said, his voice breaking.

The wind answered with a whisper through the willow’s hanging leaves, the sound soft and almost kind.

Above him, the academy’s white spires gleamed in the sun — beautiful and cruel.
And somewhere, beyond the courtyard walls, Rose walked among them — searching, perhaps, for the same impossible answer.