Chapter 30: Chapter 30. The Gossip In Cafeteria
Jennifer made a quiet decision as she stood at the front of the room. She would not raise the subject. Not a single word about what had happened. She simply taught, giving the class everything she had within the boundaries of the lesson, and brought it to its end without incident.
Necrotize listened to her internal reasoning as it moved through the classroom and found himself genuinely impressed.
They reached their conclusions remarkably quickly. They carry themselves like proper academics.
As the class continued, the atmosphere slowly unknotted itself. The worst of the tension that had been sitting over the room began to lift, not entirely, but enough that breathing felt easier. Even so, Necrotize found himself turning over the things he had been observing all morning, stacking one question on top of another.
This is more complicated than I expected. I’ll need to set aside time to study it properly.
The class ended. The break began.
***
The corridors filled with students moving toward the cafeteria in loose clusters, conversations picking up as the morning’s strangeness gradually became something people felt safe enough to talk about again.
"Hey, do you know what actually happened out there today?" A boy with slightly dishevelled blonde hair and a broad build nudged the student walking beside him.
"Not exactly. But from what I’ve been hearing, it was Lord Necrotize."
"Yeah, that tracks. Only he could pull something like that. But why though?"
"No idea," the other student admitted as they pushed through the cafeteria entrance.
They made it approximately two steps inside before walking directly into someone.
"Hey, watch where you’re—"
The person they had bumped into turned around.
Black hair. A face that had a certain quality to it, the kind that made you look once and then immediately look again without meaning to. And eyes of an unusual, deep violet.
The words died in their throats.
Their legs started shaking before the rest of them had caught up.
"Ah, Lord... Necrotize." The voice came out barely held together. And then, without further deliberation, both of them went down, full prostration, foreheads toward the floor.
"Please forgive us, O Great One. For we have sinned."
Necrotize frowned a little as he stared at them.
Lyra, standing just behind him, pressed her lips together to contain something that was very nearly a smile. His expression was deeply uncomfortable in a way she found quietly entertaining.
"Get up," he said. "You don’t need to apologise to me like that."
They remained prostrate for another five full seconds before slowly, carefully, returning to a standing position. Still frightened. Still unable to fully meet his eyes.
Necrotize looked at them, specifically at the blonde-haired boy, whose entire posture communicated the sincere wish to be somewhere else, and placed a hand on his shoulder. His expression settled into something calm and unhurried.
"We’re classmates," he said simply. "You don’t need to prostrate in front of me. And I’ve already asked people not to call me that."
The moment his hand made contact, something happened.
A warmth moved through the boy’s entire body, sudden and complete, reaching somewhere well beneath the surface. And then his surroundings dissolved.
He was standing on clouds. Real ones, soft and endless underfoot, lit from all sides by the golden-violet light of dusk. Everything was still. Everything was vast.
Then he looked up.
A figure stood before him, immense beyond any scale his mind had ever been asked to process. Its form stretched from the earth below to somewhere beyond the visible sky above. White robes. Eyes burning with quiet violet light. And from behind its back, hundreds of arms extended outward, each one the size of a mountain range, reaching in every direction as though holding the universe gently in place.
The boy sank to his knees without deciding to.
So this, he thought, in a voice that felt very small and very honest, is what a God actually feels like.
Necrotize, catching the vision from the outside, went very still for a moment.
What is he even picturing right now. That’s genuinely unsettling. He paused on the detail. And why do I apparently have hundreds of arms.
He removed his hand from the boy’s shoulder without further comment and stepped around them, continuing into the cafeteria. Lyra fell into step beside him.
Behind them, the blonde-haired boy remained standing exactly where he was, staring at nothing in particular, wearing the expression of someone whose understanding of reality had just been quietly and permanently rearranged.
***
They collected their food and found a quiet table away from the main current of noise. Necrotize sat down and began eating with the focused, unhurried efficiency of someone who had reduced the activity to its essential purpose. Lyra sat across from him and ate considerably more slowly, because unlike him, she was paying attention to the room around them.
The cafeteria was buzzing.
"Wait, seriously?" A girl with faintly orange hair leaned toward the group around her, eyebrows raised. "That can’t be right. How would Lady Lyra only have one element? And Lord Necrotize? That sounds like someone made it up."
"I’m telling you it’s true," her friend insisted, lowering her voice slightly as though that lent it more credibility. "Both of them, Lady Lyra and Lord Necrotize, came up as single-element holders in the Elemental Affinity Test. Lightning, for both of them. I got this from someone in the Magic Department directly."
"That’s absurd," another student cut in, shaking her head. "Lord Necrotize used a fireball in the entrance exam. We all saw it. That’s fire element. Right there."
"You’re missing the point entirely. Obviously he doesn’t actually have only one element — thinking that would be embarrassing. He’s clearly choosing to present himself that way. What doesn’t make sense is why."
"Didn’t Lady Lyra come up as single-element as well though?"
A brief silence. Several heads turned, slowly, then all at once, toward the quiet table near the far wall where Necrotize and Lyra were sitting together.
The realisation arrived across all of them at approximately the same moment.
"Ohhhh."
"Hold on. Is there something going on between them? It’s only the second day."
"That’s not even the main point. But why would he, with her specifically? She’s a mortal. If he wanted, he could be with Goddess Luna. She’s said to be the most beautiful being in the entire world."
"I genuinely don’t know."
***
Lyra’s face had gone completely red.
Not a subtle flush. A full, undeniable, tip-of-the-ears red that she had absolutely no control over.
What are they even saying. Why would there be something between us. We are ’friends’. That’s it. Just friends. Why is this a conversation that is happening right now.
She turned her head toward Necrotize, seeking some kind of anchor.
He was eating. Calmly. Methodically. With the complete serenity of someone who existed in an entirely separate universe from social embarrassment, one where cafeteria speculation simply did not register as a phenomenon worth acknowledging.
He must have felt her looking, because he turned his head toward her without particular urgency.
"What?"
Lyra held his gaze for a moment. Kept her expression composed. Decided, with great effort, that she was not going to explain what she had just heard.
She gave him a small smile instead.
"Nothing."
