Chapter 23: Chapter 23. Ice cream
Lyra followed a step behind him without a word.
Necrotize walked ahead with both hands buried in his pockets, his pace unhurried. Around him, most of the students watched with that particular kind of look he had grown familiar with. Wide eyes. Rigid shoulders. The instinctive stillness of people who had decided, somewhere in the back of their minds, that the safest thing to do was not to move.
Fear. Plain and simple.
He was acutely aware of it, and he was not happy about it.
He had been trying, genuinely trying, to dial that back. To exist in this Academy without making people feel like the walls were closing in around them. It had been slow, careful work. And now, in the span of a single morning, all of it had unravelled.
But what else was he supposed to do?
It was about Lyra.
She was the first real friend he had made since arriving at this Academy. He wasn’t going to stand there and watch her be humiliated in front of everyone, least of all over something that wasn’t even her fault. And besides, they still had no idea what she was truly capable of. Not even close.
He turned his head slightly and glanced back at her.
She was walking with her head dipped low, her silver hair drifting in the breeze with each step. One hand was picking absently at the nails of the other. Her footsteps were small and quiet, almost careful, like she was trying to take up as little space as possible.
Something about it made the corner of his mouth lift, just barely.
If she trained properly...
His gaze lingered on her for a moment longer.
She could become as powerful as a planetary god.
***
The two of them walked out through the training ground in full view of everyone.
The moment Necrotize crossed the threshold and disappeared from sight, a collective exhale swept through the remaining students, shoulders dropping, lungs remembering how to breathe. The tension didn’t vanish, but it loosened, like a fist slowly unclenching.
A girl turned to the student beside her.
"Did you see what I just saw? Lord Necrotize is an element wielder." She paused, shaking her head. "And that’s not even the part that gets me. He said lightning is stronger than every other element."
"I’m still trying to process all of it," the other student admitted. "When those clouds rolled in and the sky just went dark, I swear I felt death breathing in my ear. My entire body went cold."
"Same. My whole life was flashing in front of me. I genuinely thought I was going to die right there."
But then a question surfaced, one that oddly hadn’t occurred to anyone until now.
"Why did Lord Necrotize get angry?"
The voice belonged to a boy standing slightly to the left, thin-framed, with brown hair and a pair of glasses he was now adjusting with one finger pinched against the bridge. He had a habit of speaking as though he was working through something aloud.
"In ancient lore, it’s said that when an Ancient Origin loses their temper, the entire universe trembles in response. A sudden shift in weather, storms appearing from nowhere, lightning splitting a clear sky, that’s one of the signs." He paused. "So my question is: what made him angry in the first place?"
Several students nearby turned the question over in their minds. The noise of speculation picked up gradually around him.
And then, almost simultaneously, the same name rose to the surface in the minds of most of them.
Lyra.
"But why would he do all that for Lyra?" another student pressed, frowning. "He has no reason to get angry on her behalf, as far as I know. At the end of the day, she’s a mortal. What could she possibly offer someone like him?"
A fair number of students nodded along. It was a reasonable point, on the surface.
What none of them knew was what Lyra actually meant to Necrotize.
The discussion continued in scattered clusters, theories branching into more theories. Carlos, however, took no part in any of it. He had no interest in picking apart someone else’s business. He slipped out of the training ground shortly after Necrotize had left, without a word to anyone.
***
After leaving the class, Necrotize and Lyra made their way to a garden nearby.
It was vast, far larger than it appeared from the path leading to it. Flowers of every variety grew in unhurried abundance alongside trees of all shapes, their leaves catching the light in quiet flickers. Bees drifted lazily between blossoms, and butterflies moved like scattered petals caught in a slow wind. A gentle breeze ran through the whole of it, carrying something faintly sweet.
In the heart of the garden, Necrotize stopped in front of a bench and gestured for Lyra to sit. She did, without argument. Her expression was soft in the way that sad things sometimes are, a little distant, a little absent.
He noticed immediately.
He stood there for a moment, turning the problem over in his head. *How do you pull someone out of that?* And then something came to him, simple, maybe small, but it might work. It might at least take the edge off.
He raised one hand and snapped his fingers.
Two small bowls appeared, each holding a perfectly rounded mound of something white and cold. It looked almost like fresh snow compressed into a shape, but smoother, and the chill coming off it was gentle rather than biting, carrying something faintly sweet on the air.
Lyra startled slightly as the two objects appeared out of thin air before her. But Necrotize’s voice settled her before the surprise could take root.
"Nothing to be afraid of."
He took one in each hand, then held one out toward her. "Here. Take it."
She accepted it without question. The moment it touched her palm, a sharp coldness spread through her fingers. She turned it over, studying it carefully, a smooth, rounded ball of something frozen, resting in a small bowl with a spoon tucked alongside it.
She had absolutely no idea what she was looking at.
Necrotize caught her expression.
"What you’re holding is called ice cream. Think of it as a kind of sweet dessert." He paused. "It doesn’t exist in this world, which is why you don’t recognise it."
Lyra looked back down at the bowl with renewed attention. Something from beyond this world, sitting right there in her hands, and apparently she was supposed to eat it. She wasn’t particularly eager to. But she also couldn’t bring herself to refuse him.
So she scooped up a spoonful and put it in her mouth.
Nothing could have prepared her for what happened next.
It melted the instant it touched her tongue. A wave of sweetness and cold moved through her all at once, not just in her mouth, but through her entire body, like something had reached inside her chest and quietly rearranged things.
Her eyes went wide.
What is this?
The unease she had been carrying since the training ground dissolved without ceremony. She took another spoonful. Then another. The world narrowed pleasantly to just this, the bench, the breeze, the impossible thing in her bowl, until she scraped the spoon against the bottom and found it empty.
A quiet laugh came from beside her.
Lyra felt heat rise to her face. She hadn’t noticed how quickly she’d finished it.
Necrotize snapped his fingers again. The bowl filled back up.
Her expression softened into something that was almost a smile.
This time she ate slowly, letting each spoonful linger. Necrotize settled onto the bench beside her, his posture unhurried.
"Thank you," Lyra said softly.
"For what?"
She was quiet for a moment. "My lord. Even without you saying anything, I know. You don’t have an element either."
Necrotize glanced at her.
"You’re right," he said in a soft tone. "In a way. But you’re also wrong."
She looked at him, uncertain.
"It’s true that I don’t have just one element." He leaned back slightly. "But it’s not that I have all of them either. Ancient Origins don’t operate within the concept of elements at all."
Lyra stared at him, her spoon hovering forgotten in the air.
He continued, reading her expression. "We Ancient Origins exist outside that framework entirely. We can even use elements that don’t exist yet. If one of us were to simply decide that a new element should exist, it would take form in reality." He paused. "But none of us would ever do that. The universal balance would collapse if we did."
Lyra sat very still.
This wasn’t something written in any public record. It wasn’t buried in any ancient text she had ever come across. This was knowledge he was choosing to give her, and her alone.
And yet, beneath the weight of it, two quieter feelings moved through her simultaneously.
Relief. And something that ached.
The relief came because Necrotize wasn’t an element holder after all, not the way she had thought. And the ache came from exactly the same reason. Because for a brief, foolish moment, she had believed she had found someone like her. Someone who stood in that same hollow space she had always occupied. Someone who made her feel, for the first time, like she wasn’t being left out.
It had been a mistake. She knew that now.
But she had held onto it anyway, because for once, she hadn’t felt alone.
Necrotize watched the thoughts move across her face without comment. He had intended to keep what he was about to say to himself. Today had changed that.
"Lyra." His voice was even, but deliberate. "There’s something I need to tell you. But before I do, let me give you some context about elements first."
She set down her spoon and turned toward him, letting the other thoughts go.
"I’m going to tell you about the origin of elements."
