It was a cool night, the moon was absent in the sky. Tosin stood with a semi-automatic in hand, guard to a building he hadn’t even entered. Beside him Emmanuella was eating nuts.

  “You’re really not sharing?” he asked her.

  Blue eyes smiled at him. Her brunette hair held up in a tight bun, Tosin could see every feature of her face. She was as beautiful as the first day he’d seen her, which was funny because his friends said that she had a crooked nose and her jaws were too sharp.

  “I only got enough groundnut for one person,” she told him. It was funny because he had seen the bag she’d brought it in. There was enough ground nuts to feed three people. At least there had been, now, the bag was almost empty.

  Tosin shook his head, returning his attention to the world outside. “You should learn to share.”

  “And you should get a girlfriend who’ll be happy to share with you,” she said with a chuckle.

  Tosin shook his head. “Work like this? No way I’m putting some innocent woman through such a thing.”

  “With how much love you have to give, I’m sure she won’t really feel your absence.” Emmanuella paused. Her brows furrowed and she looked at the door behind them. “Ever wondered what’s behind these doors?”

  Tosin shrugged. “It’s not like they are locked. Open it and lose your job for curiosity.”

  “I’m serious,” she said, smacking him on the arm. “It’s quite literally the only building in the whole school with armed guards who never leave the door. We aren’t even allowed to take a break until we’ve been relieved. We treat it like a military base. You’d think they were keeping Delvers to be experimented on inside.”

  “Speculations kill.” It was all Tosin had to say.

  Emmanuella frowned. “And you are not the least bit curious?”

  “Curiosity killed the cat.”

  “I’m not a cat.”

  Tosin smiled. “Who said curiosity can’t kill a human too?”

  “Fair point.”

  Tosin nodded, glad that he had dissuaded her of her curiosity… for now. In a few weeks, she would be curious again, he was sure of it. Until then, she still had her job and some money in her bank account.

  Still, he had once had these questions in his head. What exactly was the purpose that the building served besides housing the important council of the school. He refused to believe that the building was so sacred simply because some old men and women who were basically shareholders held meetings in it.

  “Sir!” Emmanuel stood at a sudden attention, almost saluting.

  She had served in the army for a while before retiring and getting a job here. Tosin was still doing his best to work the army habits out of her. They were just guards now.

  Turning his attention in the direction of the person that caught her attention, he frowned. A man with brown hair strolled up to them casually. He had a hand in one of his pants’ pockets and had a casual air about him. He was like a man on a stroll in his own garden.

  Tosin did not recognize the man. He did not know the man.

  “Good evening, sir,” he greeted when the man came to a stop in front of him.

  The man had blue eyes that seemed green in the darkness of the night. It didn’t make sense to Tosin. He doubted blue eyes worked like that.

  There was a moment of silence that settled between the three of them. The man regarded them as if he was wondering what he would do with them.

  “Tosin and Emmanuella, right?” the man asked.

  Both of them nodded.

  “That’s good.” The man looked around, then returned his attention to them. “Is the door locked?”

  Tosin shook his head. “No, sir.”

  “Oh.” The man sounded amused. “Is it ever locked?”

  Emmanuella shook her head. “No, sir.”

  “I guess they aren’t prisoners,” the man mused. “Or maybe it’s a different type of imprisonment.”

  Tosin leaned forward. “Pardon?”

  “Never mind.” The man made a dismissive gesture. “Anyway, I’ll be going in now. Don’t let it bother you too much.”

  “We won’t,” Tosin assured him, stepping aside.

  The man nodded. He walked past them and opened the door. Just before he entered, he gave them simple smiles.

  “At ease,” he said, then walked in, closing the door behind him.

  Alone once more, Emmanuella turned to him. “Tosin?”

  “Yes?” he answered.

  “Who was that?”

  Tosin shrugged. “I have no idea.”

  “Oh.”

  Emmanuella returned to eating her groundnuts. As for Tosin, he wondered what had happened and why it wasn’t bothering him. It was a strange feeling not to be bothered by it. The feeling lingered in his mind for a while before he finally succumbed with a shrug.

  I’m sure it’s going to be alright.

  They were under strict orders not to let anyone in. Why he wasn’t bothered by the fact that he and Emmanuella had just let in someone that they’d never seen in their lives was…

  He shrugged again, letting the thought go for reasons he could not make sense of.

  These things happen.

  …

  There was no wind in the room, no gentle breeze. There was almost no air. It would be easy to think that there was none, but he knew better. How? Because if there was none, the human sitting before him, consumed by her very hubris would not be able to.

  They called him, Bayad or Spotted—some horrific joke concocted because of some of his features. Bayad never let it bother him, after all, there were greater strains existing, strains greater than being misnamed.

  I could be unnamed, he thought, remembering folklores told to him as a child. They had been folklores, until he’d grown into adulthood and gotten to see things, learn things.

  Bayad shook his head. This was no time to be reminiscing.

  “You look particularly bothered this night,” the lady said. She was old, weathered. Talwort, she called herself, Mrs. Talwort. “Are your bindings perhaps too tight?”

  Bayad turned his head, not really bothered. His wrists were bound in cold iron. It wasn’t some special type of iron, not really. It was just iron. He called it cold iron simply because it was cold around his wrist. The metals clamped around his wrist were connected to chains the size of his hand that reached out on both sides to bind him directly into the walls of the building, forcing him to remain on his knees.

  Looking at them made him nostalgic. He could still remember a time when this building had not been so big. Humans were interesting. They had quite literally created this building around him for fear of moving him.

  But the bindings around his wrists were no real threat. What truly kept him here were the runes and sigils and symbols that spanned the ground beneath him. Cast when the woman before him was nothing but a distant dream in the balls of her father, it had been made by three truly powerful Gifted. An [Enchanter] touched beyond the portal. A [Mage] that had almost reached beyond the realm of SS-rank. And a [Crafter] who had crafted the ink from blood taken from a dying Sphinx.

  Deep blue as the symbols were, they did not glow even as they continued to drain Bayad. He looked down at them, each symbol staring back at him. Symbols he had once taught those who had become his captors.

  Yes, he thought. There are greater worries than being misnamed.

  “Not in the talking mood?” Mrs. Talwort asked.

  Bayad shook his head. “I cannot say that I am not. My mind was merely elsewhere.”

  “Elsewhere?” The woman leaned forward on her seat. “Pray tell.”

  “I was thinking of the [Unnamer],” he said easily.

  “The [Unnamer]?” she mused. “I haven’t heard this one. Is it some tale or an actual person.”

  Bayad smiled something nostalgic. “I tale of a person.”

  “Would you be willing to indulge me?” she asked.

  “Would you be willing to loosen my bindings?” he asked in return.

  Mrs. Talwort’s smile was motherly. “You know that I cannot.”

  “And yet I continue to try.”

  There were now at a pause. His story versus her lie. Bayad waited, not that he truly cared. The humans that knew of him feared him too much to even admit to a possibility of releasing him. In fact, they would rather die than loosen his chains. In truth, he was at fault for that. The last human who had shown enough compassion to loosen one of his clasps had died at his hand.

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  The man had been neither good nor bad. Not by Bayad’s standard of good and bad. He was simply… human. For reasons Bayad had never come to find out, the man had possessed some form of compassion that night.

  It had been his own undoing.

  “So, no tales of the [Unnamer]?” Mrs. Talwort asked.

  Bayad sighed. “The [Unnamer],” he said, seeing no reason to hold the tale from her, “is said to be a man who had grown so tired of creation that he had once gone around unnaming them. Species fell to his boredom, races even. A mother lost her name only to take that of her son. A serpent lost its name only to wield that of a piece of wood.”

  As he spoke, he could see it in the woman’s eyes. She truly thought his words were nothing but folklore. Still, he had her attention. She would live and die on every word. The humans that knew of him were always like this. They wielded fear and curiosity in so intertwined an abomination that they obeyed him while fearing their very destruction at his hands.

  “He was feared in the greater cosmos once,” Bayad continued. “Until he was almost forgotten. Some say that he was brought down only by the arrival of a [Namer]. Some say that he merely got bored of being bored.”

  “Is that how the story is being told now?”

  Bayad and Mrs. Talwort started at the sound of the voice. It was a gentle baritone, the kind that told you that its owner was benevolent not charismatic.

  Both their heads moved in the direction of the door, as they took in the impossible that had just happened. Not once since the creation of the building had a person entered during a conversation with Bayad. What was worse was that the person was not known.

  Mrs. Talwort kept her composure as she got up and turned her attention to the man.

  “You are not supposed to be here,” she said in her voice Bayad knew she reserved for diplomacy.

  The man nodded. “And yet, here I am.”

  He spoke to her, yet looked past her to Bayad. His eyes showed curiosity… No. Intrigue, perhaps.

  Interest?

  Bayad was not sure, and he did not like that he was not sure.

  “Are you lost?” Mrs. Talwort asked the man.

  He shook his head and started walking up to her. “Not at all.”

  “May I show you the way back?”

  The man shook his head in response. Then he waved her away as he walked past her. He had deemed her uninteresting, inconsequential, perhaps.

  Mrs. Talwort frowned now that the man wasn’t looking at her. He had come to a stop in front of the glass that separated Bayad from the rest of the room.

  Still frowning, she did the most surprising thing.

  “Alright then,” she said, turning away, “I’ll leave you to it.”

  With that, she opened the door and left the room.

  For the first time since coming to this world, Bayad was left alone with a total stranger.

  …

  “Remind me how you got me to come out with you, again,” Melmarc said.

  Ark shrugged. “I asked, you said no. I asked again, you said yes.” He threw his arm over Melmarc’s shoulders and justled him playfully. “Really? I didn’t do anything. I’m genuinely as surprised as you are.”

  Melmarc knew. The reason he had agreed to come along was that he wanted his school life in Fallen High to me more fulfilling than his old school. Mainly, however, this was the starting point of his Delving career, even if he was not a Delver.

  Every student in Fallen High was a potential powerful Delver. It wouldn’t harm him to make a few connections that would be as old as high school.

  He and Ark were walking down the road now. Their ride had dropped them off about a block away from the location. Ark said it was a trick he’d learned to calm himself. A slow but short stroll to the venue would help Melmarc prepare himself for it.

  In the dark night illuminated by the stars above and glowing light from the houses around, they could already hear the blast of music. If they were lost, all they would have to do was follow the music to find the venue.

  New school, new friends, Melmarc reminded himself. It wasn’t the first time he was doing it. At this point it was becoming something of a pep talk.

  When they finally got close enough to see the house, it was a suburban styled home, complete with an attic. There was a small group of people outside, small enough that Melmarc could count them all at a glance.

  Twenty-five, he counted.

  Almost all of them bopped their heads to the loud music blaring from inside the house. In their hands were party cups, all of them red. Even with the illumination, there were patches of dark shadowy spaces around the house. Melmarc saw two people kissing in one of the shadows.

  Ark’s hand planted itself firmly on his back and pushed him forward. “No, you don’t get to do that.”

  Melmarc hadn’t even realized that his steps had slowed or even come to a stop.

  “It’s just alcohol,” Ark pointed out.

  “Twenty-one’s the drinking age,” Melmarc said, even as his legs resumed their initial pace, carrying him forward.

  “Pretend we’re all twenty-one tonight.” Ark was shouting now, trying to be heard over the loud music as they basically stepped off what was the sidewalk and onto the front yard of the compound. “Besides, you don’t have to drink if you don’t want to. Also, you and I both know that the Gifted have special circumstances on things like this. Most of these kids won’t get drunk on alcohol.”

  “Unless they have crafted alcohol,” Melmarc opposed.

  Crafted alcohol was a brand of alcohol designed specifically for those specific Gifted that had developed something of an immunity to normal alcohol, which was almost all Gifted. You would see the warnings clear as day. Most of them often had alcohol contents north of a hundred percent.

  Melmarc had seen one at two hundred once at a store. He’d asked out of curiosity and he’d been told that Gifted with poison immunity tended to favor contents that high.

  He was still contemplating on alcohol content levels when a boy’s voice slipped thtrough the noise of conversations and music.

  “… And then I told her that she can suck on it if she’s feeling generous!”

  Dissonant.

  Melmarc froze in his steps once more. His attention settled on the crowd again, seeing them in a new light. This was not just a party.

  This is going to be a problem.

  Ark stopped guiding him towards the party to look at him. “You good?”

  “For now.” Melmarc nodded, doing his best to let the words of conversations get lost in the words of the blaring music being played.

  Ark took a moment to assess him before nodding. “Alright then, before we go in, a few rules.”

  He was still shouting. Melmarc realized he’d been raising his voice too.

  “I’m listening,” he said.

  “One.” Ark raised a finger. “No fighting.”

  Melmarc gave him a flat look, and Ark rolled his eyes.

  “I said no fighting,” Ark repeated.

  Melmarc nodded. “I’m not the one that does the fighting, but okay. What’s rule two?”

  “Try not to get bullied.”

  Melmarc’s jaw dropped. “You make it sound like I just walk around asking to be bullied.”

  “Well…” Ark dragged the word apologetically, “you do kinda have this ‘bully me’ look on your face when you are in crowds you’re not comfortable with.”

  “Bully me look?”

  “Yeah. It’s like this sad look that makes you look like you’re kinda slow and it will be fun to pick on you for the sake of a harmless prank. Besides, bullies like to pick on the big guy, it’s like conquering impossible odds.”

  Melmarc turned bodily to look at Ark. “How do you know what that looks like?”

  “What?” Ark shrugged. “I recognize the look. All bullies recognize the look.”

  “You weren’t a bully in school. You aren’t a bully.”

  “Yes,” Ark confirmed with a nod. “But that’s only because you wouldn’t like it. Sad to say but bullying’s fun. You just don’t like it, so I just don’t do it.”

  Melmarc gave him an incredulous look.

  “I’m serious,” Ark said, laughing a little, there was nothing nervous about his laughter. “You know how the movies like to make it look like bullies have some kind of unseen trauma back home or somewhere else that makes them bully?” He waved his own words aside with a gesture as if it was stupid. “Maybe some do. But the truth is, bullies bully because it’s fun, at least on an average… I think.”

  “So, without me you would’ve been a bully?” Melmarc asked, genuinely curious.

  Ark gave a nonchalant shrug. “Most likely. But not because I’m cruel, more because I wouldn’t know better. Harmless prank and all that.”

  Melmarc sighed a little deflated. “I won’t get bullied.”

  “Oh, you sweet little boy.” Ark tugged playfully on his cheeks. “At least two people will want to bully you. One might try. I can already see someone trying to figure out if we’re bully material or not.”

  Melmarc turned his head, trying to find out who Ark was talking about. He saw nobody that stood out.

  “Alright,” he said, returning his attention to Ark. “What do I do when I eventually get bullied, since you’re so eager to see me get bullied.”

  “Run.”

  Melmarc cocked a brow. “Run?”

  “It’s a party with a crowd. You’ll get lost in the crowd.”

  “Run?” Melmarc made sure he sounded as incredulous as the idea. “Not fight back.”

  “There are some S rank Gifted in there, Mel. If you try to fight, things will get rough, then you’ll have to go all out. I vividly remember you having a skill that could kill a person in one blow.”

  “Oh.”

  Melmarc knew what Ark was talking about. [Rings of Saturn] and [Secrecy] could kill a fellow Gifted in one blow according to Uncle Dorthna. But it wasn’t like he was going to use it on people. He’d since come to the conclusion that the skill was for monsters and monsters only. If he used [Secrecy] around people, he would be sure to aim at nothing alive.

  “I know better than to use them,” he objected.

  Ark was already nodding. “I know you do. But, like I said, S ranks. Get into a fight with one or two of them and things are going to get… dire real quick. I don’t want to see what happens in such a situation.”

  Melmarc pressed his lips in a thin line, doing his best not to frown. “Alright, got it. I’ll run.”

  He didn’t want to, and he didn’t like the idea, but for Ark’s sake, he was willing to agree.

  “No Santa’s helper giant either,” Ark added when Melmarc was about to start walking back into the building. Right now they stood on the grass just before the sidewalk.

  “Helper giant?”

  Ark nodded as if he hadn’t just said something chaotic. “No helper giant. If you see someone getting bullied, stay out of it. If you see someone doing something bad, stay out of it. If your dissonance flares up, stay out of it.”

  Melmarc’s brows furrowed into a frown. “I might as well just go home then, Ark. You’re asking for too many unreasonables.”

  Ark paused in contemplation for a moment. He thought about it for a while before finally nodding.

  “Okay,” he said. “How about this. If you get bullied or find yourself in a situation where you have to play hero, you raise your hand and point?”

  Melmarc’s eyes narrowed. He had an idea where this was heading.

  “Ark,” he said slowly.

  “Yes, brother dearest,” Ark replied innocently.

  “You’re stronger than me.”

  “But you are deadlier than me.”

  Melmarc opened his mouth to argue but paused. Uncle Dorthna had applied some handicaps for his spars with Ark for the purpose of safety, so Ark did have a point.

  “There we go.” Ark slapped him on the back. “Just have a little fun. Maybe mix all your drinks with soft drinks or don’t drink at all.”

  Melmarc had no plans of drinking at all.

  Alright, then, Melmarc told himself. Time to make connections.

  …

  Bayad could not believe what had happened. He hadn’t sensed any mana fluctuations in the room. How had the man gotten Mrs. Talwort to simply leave. She’d even had the clarity of mind to identify the fact that she didn’t know him.

  And yet she left him alone with me.

  The man remained standing before the glass, giving him a quizzical look. For the first time in his life, he looked at a human and had one thought.

  He’s dangerous.

  The man took his eyes off him for a moment to look at the glass. He turned his head from one side to the other as he looked. After a while, he simply stepped through the glass.

  Bayad’s brows furrowed in thought before he could stop himself.

  A skill? he wondered.

  It had to be a skill. But the glass had mechanisms in place to prevent skills just like that. Was it some SS-rank skill that was unique?

  “Don’t think too much,” the man said absently. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

  Bayad did not like being talked down to by a human who showed no caution around him.

  “Then how did you do it?” he asked, instilling more confidence in his voice than he actually had. It made his words come out a little arrogant.

  The man shrugged. “I have a certain level of, let’s call it control, over existence. It’s just a little perk. But I’m here for more interesting things.”

  The man had lips that looked like they were supposed to be jovial, smiling most of the time or sighing in the exasperation of putting up with people he loved. Right now, however, they were empty, devoid of any expression.

  “White wings with black spots,” the man mused, taking in Bayad’s wings that reached out from his back to settle on the ground in exhaustion. They had a span of over ten feet from one tip to the other right now, when fully stretched, they could reach fifteen.

  Bayad frowned. It had been a while since someone had analyzed him like some kind of experiment.

  The man came to squat in front of him without any fear. There wasn’t even a touch of curiosity in his eyes.

  “One wing white with black spots,” he said clearly. “The other black with white spots.” He cocked his head to the side. “Are you supposed to be a fallen trapped in a school named Fallen?”

  “I am an angel trapped,” he scoffed at the man. “Not fallen.”

  “An angel.” The man didn’t seem impressed or even bothered. “I can see why you would say that. You do smell of light.”

  Smell of light?

  There wasn’t a human alive in this world that could say that with certainty. Just how much had the world evolved since he’d ended up here?

  What was going on beyond the school that his captors were keeping from him.

  “However, I do have a question,” the man said.

  Bayad opened his mouth to berate him, re-establish a hierarchy in the conversation and sweep the rug out from under the man, when silence took him.

  The man’s expression had changed. It had hardened. Bayad’s instincts flared with warnings of danger.

  The man’s next words confirmed those warnings.

  “If you are supposed to be an angel,” the man said, his voice suddenly heavy, “why do you smell of smokeless fire?”