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Wahlberg Baigan had long known the comfort of silence. He found magic not in power, but in the subtle balance of nature. At Easton Magic Academy, he had been a prodigy, but quiet, withdrawn, often dismissed as “too gentle” for the ruthless world of high magic he aspired to.
Then came Cyril Marcus, like a comet across the night sky, a beam of light, something promising in the endless monotony of Wahlberg’s life.
Cyril was everything Wahlberg wasn't: bold, defiant, radiating a kind of magnetic energy that drew stares and shattered calm. His silver hair shimmered like moonlight, and his eyes held a crimson glow.
From the very first moment they met, in a classroom lined with ancient tomes, Wahlberg felt his body lean toward Cyril, pulled by a force he didn’t understand, but did not resist.
One evening, they stayed after class together as the warm orange glow of the setting sun streamed through the tower windows. Wahlberg was jotting notes while Cyril lazily flipped a coin in the air, bending time around him in a way that seemed so effortless it stirred in Wahlberg a quiet, genuine awe every single time.
"Have you ever felt like we're just pieces in someone else’s game?" Cyril asked suddenly.
Wahlberg looked up from his notes, studying the boy beside him. “Aren’t we?”
“No,” Cyril replied softly, yet with complete certainty. “I want to be the one who makes the rules.”
Wahlberg didn’t answer. But at those words, something stirred in his chest.
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Behind the academy stood a garden, forgotten, half-petrified by old magic, lost to time and memory. And so, it became their refuge, their safe place, their escape from the world.
Wahlberg bent space to carve out hidden corners, invisible to students and professors alike, accessible only to the two of them. Cyril slowed time just enough to make their days stretch longer, as if the universe itself wished to give them more time.
There, they laughed fought, trained. They became so inseparable that those around them found it hard to tell where one ended and the other began.
Wahlberg, whose world had always been steady and calm, found himself shaken, but not frightened, by Cyril’s unpredictability. And Cyril, who had never trusted anyone, reached out to someone for the first time. He didn’t know why, and it scared him.
One night, they lay side by side beneath the stars, their fingers almost touching.
“I dreamed I could freeze time forever,” Cyril said, eyes on the sky. “Not to run away. Just to hold on to something… so it wouldn’t leave.”
Wahlberg turned to face him. “And now?”
Cyril looked at him. “Now... maybe I want time to move forward. But only if you’re in it with me.”
Wahlberg’s heart fluttered. “I’ll stay as long as you want me to,” he promised.
Their hands found each other in the dark, fingers lacing tight and sure. Neither let go.
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It’s an unspoken rule: with great power comes great ambition. And as Cyril’s power grew, so did his hunger, unrelenting, insatiable.
While Wahlberg honed his spatial magic with precision and grace, within the boundaries of law, Cyril dove deeper and deeper into ancient, forbidden time magic. He tested lost rituals. Experimented alone. Defied authority without fear. It wasn’t rebellion anymore, it was obsession.
“You don’t understand,” Cyril said one night, his voice trembling. “They’ll never accept someone like me. That’s why I have to make the world change.”
“They already accept you,” Wahlberg replied, approaching him. “I accept you.”
“But that’s not enough anymore!” Cyril shouted. “It’s not enough!”
At his words, Wahlberg felt a sting in his chest. Am I not enough for you anymore? But still, he reached out.
“You know, you’re not alone in this.”
For a moment, the storm of magic calmed. Then Cyril stepped back, and the light between them flickered out.
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The day Wahlberg found Cyril in the garden again, the sky was crying.
He stood beneath the ruins, soaked and shivering, not from the cold, but from the weight of what needed to be said.
“You stopped trusting me,” Wahlberg whispered. It wasn’t a question, it was fact.
Cyril didn’t look at him. His voice cracked. “I stopped trusting even myself.”
Rain slid down his face, mixing with tears. “You were the only one who saw me, not just the magic. And I was too greedy, too afraid, to let that be enough.”
Wahlberg stepped closer. “It was enough. You were enough. You still are, to me.”
He touched Cyril’s cheek, and this time, Cyril didn’t pull away. There was no hesitation.
Their lips met, soft, cautious, aching. When they pulled apart, Wahlberg rested his forehead against Cyril’s.
“Don’t do this. We can still find another way.”
But Cyril only shook his head. “There is no other way, not for me. We were always made for different paths, you and I.”
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That night, Cyril disappeared.
Rumors came in waves. Some said he’d been expelled. Others, that he was a fugitive, a magical genius turned criminal. But Wahlberg never said what he knew: the truth behind their final kiss, the sorrow in Cyril’s choice, the unspoken promise he made that night, when everything fell apart.
Years passed. A hundred, to be exact.
Wahlberg became a Divine Visionary, then the headmaster of Easton Magic Academy. Cyril became Innocent Zero, the most wanted criminal in the country. And when they finally met again, on the battlefield, it wasn’t just magic between them.
It was memory, grief, regret.
And somewhere, buried beneath decades of pain and clashing ideologies, still existed that night under the stars, two boys, fingertips brushing, promising they would stay.
But only one had kept that promise.
__________________________________________________________
Present Day – Divine Visionary Selection Exam Arena
Shattered marble, leftover spell threads, and scorched earth littered the battle arena. Easton students cheered from the stands, chanting in honor of Mash Burnedead’s victory. Mash stood at the center, while Margarette Macaron sat before him, defeated and clearly exhausted.
Everything was calm. Until it wasn’t.
Then, he appeared.
Cyril Marcus, now known as Innocent Zero, materialized from warped space, standing atop a massive dragon, hood drawn.
The air went cold. Everyone instinctively backed away.
Everyone except Wahlberg Baigan. The headmaster stood still, stoic, unmoving in the face of the intrusion.
Cyril’s eyes swept over the students briefly, distantly. Then they locked onto Wahlberg. He tilted his head, voice low and sickeningly sweet. “Still at Easton, Wahlberg? You always did prefer our nights in the garden to the battlefield.”
The words fell heavy into silence.
Mash blinked. “Wait, what?”
Dot’s jaw dropped. “Did he just... romantically call him out?”
Lance narrowed his eyes. “No, tactical provocation, that’s all this is.”
Finn muttered, uncertainly, “That’s not what tactical distractions usually sound like.”
Wahlberg didn’t move. His staff shimmered faintly, spatial magic humming in tension. He answered, calm and seemingly untouched by whatever this was. “And you always preferred living in lies to facing the truth.”
Something flickered in Cyril’s expression. Memory? Bitterness? Longing? Hard to say.
“Do they know,” Cyril whispered, “how you waited for me in the garden ruins? Every night, without fail.”
All eyes turned to Wahlberg.
Mash whispered to Dot, “Is this like when you find out the principal had a secret romance with the school board president?”
Dot had gone pale. “No. It’s worse. This is… tragic.”
Finn’s eyes widened in panic. “So the headmaster did have a secret relationship with the country’s most wanted man?!”
Dot trembled. “Forbidden romance. But real.”
Kaldo Gehenna, stunned and deeply disappointed he had somehow missed this gossip, muttered to himself, “How did none of us know?”
Orter Madl crawled from the shadows, furious. “This is disgraceful. A headmaster entangled with a criminal? Scandalous.”
Cyril’s voice dropped again as he recalled, “He read me spell theory. Said it was beautiful, said I was beautiful.”
No magic on earth, not even his own, could stop time as effectively as that sentence just did.
Mash gawked, physically overheating from secondhand drama.
Dot whispered to Finn, “Is this part of the test?”
Finn whispered back, “God, I hope not.”
“I loved you,” Cyril said then, eyes locked on Wahlberg. “I loved you, and you let me go. You let me leave.”
Wahlberg shut his eyes for a second. Like the words had hit him like a blow. “You changed, Cyril. Became someone I couldn’t follow.”
Cyril’s magic flared, not from rage, but sorrow.
Orter muttered, “He’s a threat. He must be eliminated.”
Kaldo, fully invested in the emotional drama, fueled the fire. “Maybe Wahlberg’s the only one who can stop him,” he said dramatically. “There’s still a bond between them.”
Wahlberg stepped forward. His face wasn’t that of a warrior, or a leader. It was the face of a man who had loved someone too long and too deeply to forget. “You still have a choice, Cyril.”
Cyril laughed, short, broken, delirious. “There’s no ‘Cyril’ left. You knew that the day you let me fall.”
Wahlberg’s voice trembled, just barely. “I didn’t let you. You left.”
Then, with a deep breath, he spoke, clear, raw, sincere: “I loved the boy who dreamed of changing the world. Who loved freedom and wanted to rewrite the future. And I would’ve followed him anywhere. But the man he became, Innocent Zero, only wants to burn what we couldn’t fix.”
Gasps echoed through the arena.
Lance, stoic Lance Crown, was slack-jawed.
Dot whispered, stunned, “He actually said that.”
Finn, tearful, murmured, “That was… poetry.”
Mash, with a rare flicker of emotion, added, “That was… actually really sad.”
Kaldo collapsed to his knees. “I will never love like that. Never.”
Orter hissed, adjusting his glasses. “Get up, fool. You're disgracing the post with your juvenile outbursts.”
Dot now had tears in his eyes. Mash gently patted his shoulder. “I think they still love each other.”
Cyril stood in silence, his face an unreadable mix of emotions. His lips trembled. Eyes narrowed. He looked like something inside him finally cracked, something he’d barely held together for years.
He stepped back, slowly, uncertainly. Raised a hand. The air warped. Time bent. Everything blurred, then stilled. A heartbeat passed.
Then, almost too softly for anyone but Wahlberg to hear:
“I… never stopped waiting for you.”
And with that, he vanished into time. This time, forever. Finally, irreversibly.
No one spoke. For several long seconds, there was only silence. Then the arena erupted in celebration again, Mash’s victory remembered, cheers resuming as if nothing had happened.
But something had.
Wahlberg stared at the sky, at the place where Cyril Marcus had stood just moments ago, his friend, his rival, his anchor, the love of his life.
To others, he had looked like Innocent Zero, the criminal, the monster. But they were wrong. Because that man no longer existed. Not from that moment.
All that remained was Cyril. The boy Wahlberg had loved. Alive only in his memory. Enough, just as he had always been, and just as he had never believed he could be.
Wahlberg turned to the crowd. His face was calm, but his eyes, impossibly old, impossibly sad. His voice echoed: "You are dismissed. The exam is over.”