Chapter One - Regenerative Anomalies

M𝔞𝔯𝔞 E𝔩𝔩𝔦𝔰𝔬𝔫

ᴡᴇꜱᴛᴏɴ ʜᴀʟʟ, ɢʀᴀʏꜱᴛᴏɴᴇ ᴀᴄᴀᴅᴇᴍʏ

◯ ☽ ◑ ● ◐ ❨ ◯

By the time I reached Weston Hall, the coffee I'd bought from Bellrow Market had gone completely cold. Morning walks through campus were dreadful, especially when nearly six thousand students decided they all needed to be somewhere immediately.

The main avenue through Sailorhead Court was packed. I watched as third-years rushed toward laboratories in the Regenerative Complex, half of them probably late. A group of Divine Warfare cadets jogged a few feet in front of me while in formation, carrying practice spears from early morning dawn drills. I shuddered. I'd never been gifted in combat, and I heard from close sources that their morning drills were rather... let's just say - constructive.

Near the giant fountain that sat in the middle of the main courtyard, someone had climbed onto the outer stone ridge holding a poster that argued for dragons' voting rights. Realistically, Aevor's Council would never allow that. But I still found it funny.

The heavy doors of Weston Hall groaned as I opened them, and the warm sunlight disappeared behind me. Outside, it smelled of salt and breeze from Blackwater Bay, but in here, it smelled of old limestone, candle wax, and mildewy paper. I finished the last of my cold coffee and threw it away in a trash bin before descending the Hall's main staircase. Weston Hall was the oldest building on campus. Generations of students had carved initials into the banisters despite repeated threats of getting expelled or punished.

"Morning."

I didn't have to look in the direction of the greeting to know who it was. A second later, Jonah - one of my best friends - appeared around the bend, descending the stairs two at a time. His satchel bounced wildly against one shoulder, completely unbuckled.

I watched one of his notebooks slide halfway out, "Jonah."

"What?"

"Your bag."

He looked down just in time to catch a textbook before it tumbled six flights onto the marble below.

"Ah-" he readjusted his bag. "Got it."

"You almost lost your entire semester."

"But I didn't."

I laughed. Jonah had an answer for everything. Professors disliked him because he would challenge them while doing the least amount of work possible. He always, in the end, passed his classes. At one point, Professor Blumbloom made him retake different versions of a chemistry test six times because she swore he was cheating. 

"I did some homework," he announced proudly.

I looked at him.

"You?" Jonah never had to study. I noticed that about him early. He was gifted enough not to. 

"Last night," he responded.

"For how long?"

"...a few minutes. Mara, I'm genuinely not as dedicated as you and Jade. So this is a feat. Trust me." he pushed his curly red hair back.

I laughed again. 

"At least I opened the textbook." Jonah shrugged as we reached the final landing. And as I expected, there was Jade. She stood beside one of the large pylons with a notebook balanced against the wall. Her pencil moved in short, quick strokes, stopping every few seconds only so she could stare into space before writing again.

"Good morning," I said.

Nothing.

Jonah leaned toward me. "I don't think she's here."

Without lifting her head, Jade replied, "I'm solving something."

"You've said that every day this week." I placed myself next to her.

"I've been solving the same thing."

"What thing?" Jonah asked.

"The Drift."

Jonah blinked. "The what?"

She finally looked up; her pin-straight black hair fell in her face, covering her left eye. "You didn't notice?" There was genuine surprise in her voice, as though she couldn't imagine how someone hadn't. "The pylons have been stationary in B-flat instead of A for the past eleven days."

I looked at Jonah. Jonah looked at me. Neither of us had heard a difference.

Jade frowned. “...really?" She looked almost disappointed for a moment, then she shrugged and returned to her notebook. "I suppose that's why I'm the one studying astromagical engineering."

Jonah waited until she'd started writing again before whispering, "I think she can hear colors."

"I think you're probably right," I whispered back.

Jade had always been different from the rest of us, though I couldn't remember exactly when I'd started thinking of her that way. Maybe it was the first week of our first year, when she'd corrected a professor's calculation in the middle of a lecture and thought that was a normal occurrence. Or maybe it was the first time we'd gone to Bellrow Market together, and she'd spent twenty minutes explaining why the lights over one of the stalls were producing an inefficient magical current.

Jade had a mind that never seemed to turn off. Maybe that's why she was here. She was seven years into her education if you counted the preparatory years she'd spent studying engineering before coming to Graystone Academy, and sometimes I suspected she'd already forgotten what it felt like not to have something to solve. I was jealous.

Astromagical Engineering was one of the newer disciplines at the university, built around the cross of celestial magic, engineering, and the old magic that powered much of Aevor. Jade loved it. She could spend an entire afternoon in the main observatory. Jonah, on the other hand, was different. 

He was one of the first people I met at Graystone. We had been assigned seats beside each other during a first-year Divine Chemistry lecture, and he spent the first twenty minutes whispering ridiculous answers to questions Professor Mercer asked the class. I didn't know anyone could get away with that, but Jonah could. He got away with most things. Girls knew him. Professors knew him. Half the university seemed to know him, actually. It got rather annoying sometimes.

I never understood the appeal. Well. That wasn't entirely true. I understood it. I just refused to encourage him.

Jade rolled her eyes and closed her notebook. "Are you all ready for Professor Mercer's lecture? I heard it's a tough one."

She looked toward the enormous doors at the end of the corridor. A few more students had arrived while we’d been talking. 

"As ready as I could be," Jonah sighed.

I ignored the question, studying the students who were all piling into the gallery. They walked in small groups. The closer we got to the Lower Gallery, the quieter everyone became. Lower Weston was always like this.

My theory was that it was because of The Source. Even after Graystone had built entire departments around studying it, I still had goosebumps knowing that there was a dead, one hundred-foot god beneath my feet. I still remembered the first time I'd seen it. I was a first-year. The professor leading our orientation refused to step too close to it, which became my first clue that this God was just as much a weapon as it was the source of Aevor's magic. Older scholars called it The Source because they couldn't find archives with records of its true name, and because every attempt to determine its magic eventually led back to the same thing: everything came from somewhere inside that God's body. 

"Do you ever think about how strange this place is?" I asked.

Jonah glanced at me. "We're in a university built over a corpse."

"Yes."

Jade tucked her pencil behind her ear. "Graystone wasn't originally built around the Source."

I looked at her. "What?"

"The original university existed before the discovery of the Lower Gallery. The earliest foundation records make that clear."

Jonah sighed. "Of course you know that."

"I read." Jade shrugged. 

The first set of containment doors opened. I glanced over to see the stairway heading to the Lower Gallery. I followed Jade through the doors just as the temperature dropped. There were no windows down here, no drafts, just a big, descending room with two spiral staircases that led down to The Source. I played with the copper ring around my left pinky finger as we cleared the Observation Floor. 

The chamber opened up around us. Every time I came down here, I forgot how large it was. With a domed and stretching ceiling, the room was supported by enormous stone arches that had been built into the walls. No windows, but massive torchlights lined the ceiling, intermittently followed by paintings and depictions of Aevorian mythology on the walls.

I found my seat in the third row, while Jonah dropped into the chair next to me with a loud thump. Jade sat on my other side and immediately pulled out her notebook. Jonah watched her. "You know you don't have to take notes before class starts."

"I'm not taking notes."

He leaned over.

"What are you doing, then?"

"Checking my notes."

"That's the same thing."

"No, it isn't."

"It absolutely is."

She ignored him. I smiled and opened my own notebook. There were already several pages of notes from last week's preparation work that I could be going over for this lecture. Professor Mercer had assigned us twelve articles, three anatomical diagrams, and a forty-page report on divine regenerative tissue. 

Around us, the rest of the class settled into their seats. Most of the students in Divine Biology were older than the average Graystone student. Before we were allowed anywhere near the Lower Gallery, we spent years learning ordinary anatomy, magical physiology, and the basic principles of divine medicine. Then Graystone taught us that it was all wrong.

Human bodies followed rules. Divine bodies did not. That was the first thing Professor Mercer had told us. The second was that the Source had broken nearly every rule researchers had ever tried to give it. 

A soft chime sounded from somewhere overhead. Professor Mercer entered through the opposite doors. He was a rather handsome professor, and many students claimed that he was part of the Inner Circle in Aevor's Council. An older fellow, he entered wearing snakeskin jewelry and a maroon scarf wrapped around his temple. His weathered tan skin reflected off the torchlights.

The Source lay in the center of the chamber. It was impossible to see the entire body from where we sat, as the platform was too large. But I could see the shape of its torso, one arm and the pale fingers resting against the black stone. Its hair had grown again - long silver strands that faded to black as it reached its midsection.

I noticed immediately. A few strands had spilled over the edge of the platform since our last observation. Unless someone at Graystone touched it, there was no reason why that should've been a normal occurrence. Jonah leaned toward me this time.

"Is that new?"

"Yes," I answered.

He frowned. "How fast does hair grow?"

"Not like that."

Jade was already writing, so I looked at her page. She had written the date, then:

Regenerative anomaly?

I looked back at the Source. Professor Mercer finally turned toward us.

"Good morning." He glanced across the room. His eyes paused briefly on Jonah. Jonah straightened, and Mercer looked away. “Before we begin, I want everyone to remember something."

He walked toward the center of the platform. "This God is not just a corpse. You're here to study a living system. The distinction matters." He gestured toward the body below. "The Source has been classified as deceased for four hundred and twelve years. That distinction is not biological. Everything you observe today should be approached from that understanding. Do not assume death simply because the subject does not move. Do not assume life simply because tissue regenerates. Your task as biologists is not to decide what the Source is, only to determine what it does."

Professor Mercer turned back to the body, and the projection behind him turned on. An anatomical drawing of the Source appeared above the main floor.

The class leaned forward, including me. I'd seen the diagram dozens of times, but since the body was very clearly changing… it intrigued me more than usual. The God was sketched out and remapped over decades. For example, the God's heart was the largest known organ. The Source's bones contained a mineral substance found nowhere else in Aevor.

The blood, though. My sister Verina had studied it, given her gift. She'd always been intrigued by the god's blood makeup, and wondered if, as a blood mage, she could replicate it somehow biologically. I never understood what she was talking about as a younger teenager, and definitely not until I saw the God for myself. 

A close-up of the Source's bloodstream appeared on the projection. Its blood wasn't red; it was gold. "Most of you already know the basics," Mercer said. "So we're going to begin with something slightly more difficult." The projection changed, and a series of measurements appeared, but there was something wrong with the numbers. I couldn't immediately tell what, but Jade noticed too. 

Jonah whispered, "What?"

I shook my head.

Mercer tapped the first figure. "This was the Source's average regenerative rate fifty years ago."

Another. "Twenty years ago."

Another. "Five years ago." Then the final number appeared. Current observation. The difference was a fraction of a percentage, but it was enough.

Mercer looked back at the class. "The Source is healing faster." How was that possible? With all of the containment wards and all of the protective magic the Inner Circle, Graystone leadership, and the Council were doing to maintain The Source, how could it be healing? And what exactly was causing it to heal? 

Jade whispered beside me. "I told you. The pylons have been changing."

Jonah looked at her. "You told us what?"

She didn't answer, and instead stared at the pylons. Her expression had changed into something more frightened. I looked from her to the pylons. They looked the same as they had every other morning. Tall black columns stood around the platform that held The Source. Light moved through the markings of old script, traveling from one pylon to the next before disappearing into the ceiling or floor. I was confused for a minute, but then I caught on to Jade's unsaid theory. The rhythm was different.

"What? You guys are scaring me." Jonah followed our gaze.

"The pylons, idiot," Jade said.

"Got that. What about them exactly?"

"They've been over-compensating." I finished Jade's sentence.

"For what?"

"I don't know." Jade finished it.

That answer seemed to bother her more than it bothered me, but I expected that. Jade hated not knowing things. She needed the world to make sense. If something behaved unexpectedly, she couldn't leave it alone. She'd take it apart until she found the reason, even if the reason turned out to be something she didn't like. I think that was why I respected her, because of her sheer determination.

I looked back toward Professor Mercer. He was watching Jade. "You noticed the shift," he said.

Jade hesitated. "Yes, Professor."

"How long?"

"Eleven days." A few students turned to look at her. Mercer didn't seem surprised. Nobody really did. It was Jade, after all. 

"And you reported it?"

"To the engineering faculty."

"I see. Did they investigate?"

"They said it was within normal fluctuation."

Mercer was quiet for a moment. It was obvious that he agreed with Jade's theory given his questionable expression. He looked toward the Source's chamber.

"Of course they did." Mercer turned back to the class. "This is why observation matters." he picked up a piece of chalk and turned towards the chalkboard in the corner of the room. "Numbers do not always tell us what really happened."

He wrote three words across the board in neat handwriting. ORQ: Observe. Record. Question.

"Those of you entering research will hear a great many reassuring phrases during your careers. Learn to recognize them." He set the chalk down.

I looked down at my notebook. I wrote the three words beneath the date. Then, I added another. Why?

Professor Mercer began the gritty part of the lecture. For the next forty minutes, we discussed regeneration. Mercer showed us records from the earliest Graystone examinations of The Source. Everything pointed to regeneration. I had spent enough time studying divine anatomy to know that the body below us wasn't an enormous version of ours. Everything was connected through something Graystone called the Continuity Cycle. Every divine system fed into the next.

Blood carried magic. Magic stimulated tissue. Tissue generated more magic. That was the gist of it. Mercer had explained it to us in our first year using a candle simulation. I wrote the last of Mercer's explanation into my notebook and looked down at the chamber. What I saw of the God remained perfectly still beneath us. For a moment, I let myself believe that was all it would ever do. Then, I heard it. A sound so quiet I almost mistook it for someone dropping a pencil.

Thump.

My pencil stopped. I looked up. Everyone was still writing. I glanced toward Jonah to find he was already looking at me with an unreadable expression. He'd heard it too. Another sound came from below, and that caught Jade's attention. 

The golden light below the God's chest brightened once, then twice. The machines beside the God, monitoring its vitals, glitched. And the enormous body beneath Graystone's oldest building gave a slow, faint heartbeat.