When I opened the door, the world folded inward, twisting into light and noise and something that smelled faintly like chalk dust and old varnish.

Then—silence.

I blinked, and suddenly my hands were small again. The desk in front of me was enormous, carved from polished oak, its surface covered in etched initials that I'd never quite had the courage to claim as my own. My sleeves hung loose and child-sized. My boots barely brushed the floor.

No—not barely. They didn't touch at all.

I looked down at my legs, my stubby fingers, the faint scab on my right knuckle. Six years old. Somehow, the dream—or memory—had forced me into an imitation of my younger self.

I didn't have to guess where I was. The old classroom at Marr's Central Military Academy for Progeny of Service. Room C-7. The one with the cracked window that never closed all the way, letting in the sound of the training fields outside.

"Okay, class," came a flat, grating voice.

"Today's lesson is on aura."

I didn't need to turn my head. I could already picture her: Mrs. Conwell, hunched over her lectern, eternally wrapped in that same beige shawl that looked like it had been stolen from a grandmother and never washed again. Her tone was so monotonous that I wondered if the woman had ever smiled in her entire life.

And then it hit me—this was still a dream. My own memory, reconstructed through whatever nightmare architecture was twisting itself around me. Which meant every word out of her mouth was technically me parroting her lines.

That didn't make it any less boring.

"Aura," she continued, pacing slowly in front of the class, "is the visual manifestation of one's internal alignment. A reflection of your moral core and spiritual resonance. Every person has one, even children. Especially children."

Around me, my classmates straightened in their seats. I recognized them all—faces from decades past. Soren, who used to eat chalk. Emy, who cried whenever drills started. Even Micah, who would one day die during training at the border.

I swallowed hard. The memory didn't care that I knew their fates. It forced me to watch anyway.

Mrs. Conwell tapped the chalkboard with her stick. "A white aura represents one who follows the forces of law. A black aura, one who aligns with chaos. From there, actions—deeds—mix the colors. My own, for example, is pale blue. That signifies that I follow order but contain limited… 'SIN' in my system."

The class murmured in mild fascination. I rolled my eyes so hard I thought they might vanish into my skull.

Right. SIN.

The great acronym that was meant to terrify children. Spiritually Infected Notion, or Systemic Internal Nox, depending on which propagandist was teaching that week. Either way, the truth was simpler: miasma. Raw, ambient mana. The power that saturated the world, and the same thing we were forbidden to touch until our so-called "awakening day."

Marr liked to make it sound evil—corruptive. It kept us obedient.

I counted under my breath. "Three… two… one…"

The wall exploded.

The chalkboard cracked clean in half, the flag of Marr tore off its mounting, and a ripple of silent terror swept through the room.

I didn't even flinch.

"Mrs. Conwell."

My mother's voice was the kind that could stop a war mid-charge. It was calm. Too calm.

"I told you," Juliet Duarte said as she stepped through the smoke, ears twitching with restrained irritation, "not to use that word in a classroom with my son."

The sight of her, even as a dream echo, made my chest tighten. The long white hair, the red eyes, the faint shimmer of her sanguine aura bleeding into the room like firelight through glass. Even at her most composed, Juliet looked dangerous. Regal. Unshakeable.

Mrs. Conwell—poor, doomed Mrs. Conwell—was already backpedaling. "I—I meant no offense, Lop-Eared Legion ma'am, I was only trying to prevent the development of—of violent tendencies—"

I buried my face in my hands. Even as a child, I'd known what came next.

"Miasma," my mother said, her tone soft but lethal. "That's what it's called. Miasma. Every child in this room was born from parents who carry it in their blood. Look around you, dear. You see red auras, do you not? Shades of crimson. Rust, scarlet, sanguine." She gestured to herself, her aura flaring brighter. "Take mine. Crimson as war. Red as devotion. Do you really want to make me upset?"

Mrs. Conwell shook her head so fast her shawl nearly fell off. "N-no, ma'am."

"Good." My mother smiled. It wasn't comforting. It was the kind of smile generals gave before a siege.

The rest of the class sat frozen, too terrified to breathe. I wanted to melt into the desk.

Even now—years later, trapped in a nightmare-memory—I could feel the same heat in my face. The same embarrassed dread of being that kid. The one with the terrifying mother who blew holes in the wall to correct a vocabulary choice.

Back then, I'd just wished she'd leave.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Now, I found myself watching her in silence.

Her posture, her tone, the way she held herself—it was perfect. Controlled. Every motion deliberate. I realized, for perhaps the first time, that even in this recreation, she was beautiful in a way that demanded distance.

The dream shimmered around us. Details began to distort—the edges of the classroom rippling like ink dropped into water.

But Juliet remained clear. She always did.

She turned toward me then, and I half-expected her to scold me for slouching. But instead, she just smiled that same tight, knowing smile.

"You understand now, Alexander," she said, her voice shifting—echoing, as if it came from farther away than the walls could stretch. "They call it SIN so that you'll fear what's already yours."

Her hand brushed my hair, light as air, and for a second, the illusion almost felt warm. "Never forget who you are made from, my son."

Then she began to fade. The room darkened. The chalk dust became snow, the air turned sharp, and I was standing again in the empty frame of the classroom—only broken desks and flickering fluorescent lights remaining.

I swallowed hard.

A dream, yes. But a cruelly precise one.

The door behind me creaked open, spilling white light into the ruins. Another memory waited beyond, whispering its invitation.

***

Barely older. A different academy. A different sky.

I must have been ten—still small enough to be underestimated, old enough to know better. The air here always smelled faintly of iron, oil, and chalk dust, the perfume of discipline and structure. Everything about the place screamed order—rows of trimmed hedges, white stone corridors, banners fluttering with the crest of Marr's Military Youth Academy.

I sat on the back steps, a book in my hands. The Red Mark. My first real choice. Not something assigned or handed down. A story I'd chosen because I wanted to. It was battered, its spine broken and patched with adhesive strips, the corners curled soft from someone else's care. There were pencil notes in the margins—angry, curious, and honest. I liked that. It meant the book had lived before I opened it.

Most of the others were out in the training yard, sparring, running, shouting orders at one another. The air carried the rhythm of drills—the thud of fists on padded targets, the mechanical chirp of instructor drones calling out cadence. The academy didn't allow much space for stillness. Stillness was considered weakness.

But I preferred the quiet.

Car-Car found me there, as she always did.

Carline, though no one called her that. Seven months older, a year ahead, and eternally restless. Her uniform jacket was half off her shoulders, collar stained with sweat, and her knees were marked with bruises and scrapes from a fight I couldn't quite remember. That was how she existed—somewhere between chaos and defiance, her aura always a little brighter than the others'.

"Why do you insist on staying away from everyone?" she asked, sitting beside me with a sigh that was far too adult for her age. She unwrapped a ration bar, bit into it, and grimaced at the taste.

"Mother will just isolate me again," I said without looking up from the page. "Why wouldn't I do it myself first?"

She tilted her head, squinting at me. "That's not the same thing."

"It is when you're her son."

The silence that followed was heavier than the air. Somewhere nearby, an instructor barked at a group to reset their formation.

Car-Car brushed her hair out of her eyes. "Maybe we can fix that. If one of your family apprenticed under my father, maybe you could stay with us for a while. I could teach you how to move without her seeing. She doesn't have eyes everywhere, you know."

I gave a small, humorless laugh. "No?"

Then I pointed toward the edge of the courtyard—the narrow stretch of brown that passed for a garden, where concrete met soil.

"Seven to the power of seven," I murmured.

Car-Car frowned. "What's that supposed to mean?"

I kept my eyes on the spot. The sunlight caught on something faintly iridescent—a shimmer in the air that didn't belong. The space seemed to ripple, almost imperceptibly, as if the world itself were breathing in and out.

"She doesn't need to see me," I said quietly. "One of her does."

It clicked a moment later. Car-Car's eyes widened. "You mean… your mother's Arte?"

I nodded. "Septuplication. Seven perfect copies. Each one acting with her will, or without it if she decides to let them think independently. They're not illusions, not constructs—she's in all of them at once."

Car-Car's mouth fell open. "You mean there could be one here? Right now?"

I tilted my head slightly, lips tightening into something between a smirk and a grimace. "There's always one here."

She stared at me for a long time. The hum of the training yard filled the silence—the rhythmic panting of drills, the whir of machines, the clipped barks of officers. For a moment, it almost drowned out the weight of my words. Almost.

"That's… horrifying," she finally said, and I couldn't help but agree.

"It's efficient," I said. "Mother likes efficiency."

Car-Car sighed, leaning back against the stone step. "Don't you ever want to fight back? Just once?"

I closed the book gently, marking my place with a finger. "Fight back against what?"

"Against her," she said. "Against all of it. The rules. The control. The way they turn us into soldiers before we've even grown."

Her eyes burned when she said it, fierce and alive in a way that made her seem older than she was. She had this unbreakable faith that the world could be defied if you just wanted it badly enough.

"I think you can afford to want that," I said softly. "I can't."

She laughed—short, breathless, not unkind. "That's the saddest thing I've ever heard."

"Probably."

She leaned back on her elbows, looking up at the synthetic sky above the courtyard—the white-blue glow of artificial daylight flickering in the glass canopy. "You ever wonder what color your aura's gonna be?"

I raised an eyebrow. "Why?"

"Because it won't be red," she said. "Everyone says you'll have a crimson aura like your mother. I don't buy it. You're too quiet. Too… thoughtful. You're something else. Silver, maybe. Or violet."

"Violet's for psykers."

"So?" she said, grinning. "Maybe you'll be one."

"I doubt it," I said, though a small part of me wanted to believe her.

She shrugged. "You'll see. One day you'll surprise everyone. Even her."

The confidence in her voice was almost irritating. Hope always sounded arrogant coming from someone who hadn't had it crushed yet.

I opened The Red Mark again. The page I landed on read: The boy who hides from his own reflection will find himself hunted by it.

Car-Car noticed my expression. "You're doing it again."

"Doing what?"

"Thinking too hard," she teased. "You'll wrinkle before twelve."

I smiled faintly. "Assuming I make it to twelve."

She laughed—bright, unguarded, real. "You're too dramatic for someone who reads love stories."

"It's a political allegory."

"Sure it is."

When she stood, she gave me a sloppy salute, the kind the older cadets did half ironically. "Don't disappear on me, Paper Boy."

She walked off before I could answer, disappearing into the sea of uniforms.

When the courtyard finally fell silent again, I glanced back at the spot in the corner where the air had shimmered.

The distortion was gone.

But I still felt her watching. One of her. Always one of her.

And I wondered—not for the first time—if solitude had ever really been my choice at all.

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