Several days later...
The days that followed did not pass gently. They dragged. They piled. They brought with them that peculiar kind of fatigue that had nothing to do with bruises or blood loss, and everything to do with being watched.
Ludwig had crossed deserts and rivers of souls, had felt the gaze of things older than kingdoms, yet the Academy’s attention was its own brand of tornt: constant, clingy, and sohow confident it was doing him a favor.
"Sir Ludwig!"
The shout bounced off black stone and high arches, the sort of echo that made the tower halls feel like they were always speaking back.
"No!"
Ludwig didn’t slow. His steps were quick and annoyed, boots tapping a hard rhythm against polished floors that had been worn smooth by centuries of important feet. He kept his eyes forward like a man pretending the world behind him didn’t exist.
"Senior Ludwig!"
The voice ca from the side this ti, sweetened, cautious, as if changing the title might change his answer.
"No... I’m busy."
His reply was clipped, and the pause in it was the only rcy he offered. Busy wasn’t even a lie. He simply didn’t count being harassed as a proper use of ti.
"Please, master Ludwig!"
That one had desperation in it, a little too theatrical, a little too practiced, the kind of pleading ant to be overheard by other girls for effect.
"I don’t have ti..."
The words ca with a tiredness that didn’t match his body. He wasn’t exhausted from exertion. He was exhausted from existing in the line of sight of people who thought persistence was charming.
The sa words and sentences kept echoing around the chambers of the Black Tower Academy.
They followed him through corridors and stairwells, down through atriums where sunlight struggled to enter, through halls lined with sigils that humd faintly when students passed. The Academy slled of old ink, cold stone, and magic that had seeped into everything. Even the air felt educated, and yet the voices were always the sa, turning the prestige into a marketplace.
And Ludwig couldn’t help but keep everyone away as he was too annoyed with the ’attention’ he got.
He could tolerate hatred more easily than this. Hatred was honest. It told you where to stand and where to strike.
This attention was sticky, smiling, and utterly convinced it had the right to touch his ti. Ludwig’s patience thinned with every corner he turned and found soone waiting like a trap.
"Old man," Ludwig said as he opened the door to the mass teleportation gates.
The gate chamber breathed cold the mont the door swung wide, a vast space carved for function rather than beauty. Rings of runes were set into the floor like tallic scars, and the air tasted faintly of ozone and dust, as if teleportation left residue in the world. Ludwig stepped inside with relief that lasted precisely one heartbeat.
Everyone in the room turned, noticed Ludwig and the couple dozen female students all began rushing toward him, "SIR LUDWIG! PLEASE A MONT OF YOUR TI!"
Their footsteps ca in a rush, skirts and robes swaying, voices overlapping, eyes bright with the sort of hope that should have been reserved for gods. So held letters. So held flowers that looked too delicate to survive the tower’s cold. A few held nothing at all except confidence. Ludwig’s face tightened imdiately, a man realizing he’d run into an ambush rather than an escape.
The rest of the male students, however, were all giving him the ’eye’.
It wasn’t hostility exactly, not always. So were resentful, so were curious, and so were simply tired of living in the shadow of a man who had beco a story while they still had howork. Their stares followed him like small knives thrown from a safe distance.
"SILVA!" Ludwig howled, and imdiately the old man appeared next to him, "Hello, sir Ludwig," he said with a single snap of his fingers. Silva’s arrival was so casual it bordered on disrespect toward reality. One blink, he wasn’t there; the next, he stood at Ludwig’s side as he’d always belonged. His greeting was polite, calm, and utterly unconcerned with the chaos he had just stepped into. The snap sounded soft, but it carried authority.
Mouths opened. Expressions shifted. Pleas continued in silent pantomi, eyes widening as if the world itself had betrayed them. A few girls still reached forward, hands extended, but the room had beco a scene behind glass: frantic motion without sound. The sudden quiet made the chamber feel cavernous.
"You have to teach that," Ludwig said as he sighed.
The sigh was real, deep enough to carry days of irritation. He didn’t even bother hiding how much he wanted that trick for himself. The silence was the first gift he’d received in days that didn’t sll like perfu.
"Seems like your popularity isn’t as one would expect." Silva’s mouth curved, amused, his eyes drifting over the crowd like a man watching a familiar ritual repeat itself.
"It’s getting very frustrating," Ludwig said as one brow was desperately trying to remain calm while the other was frowning to no end. It gave Ludwig a more villainous look, and when he turned to the female students who still had a semblance of dignity to not push each other when Silva was present, it seed to have the opposite effect of scaring them off.
He could feel his face betraying him, the tension pulling his features into sothing sharper than he intended. The effect would have been useful against enemies. Here, it seed to inspire rather than intimidate.
The ones who were holding themselves back did so only because Silva was there, not because Ludwig’s mood frightened them. Ludwig’s stare t a few of their gazes and he watched their cheeks redden, watched their posture straighten as if they’d been chosen.
"For crying out loud," Ludwig sighed, "Silva, get back to the tower. I can’t even walk there; they’ll follow to the end of the damn earth at this rate."
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