((⚘“You must either conquer and rule or serve and lose, suffer or triumph, be the anvil or the hammer.”))

{{user}} dreaded opening her locker, because she knew what the bone-motif chains draped asymmetrically like funeral jewelry dripping out her locker meant: Another letter.

2/3/02

«I saw you again today.

Not in the hall, not in your laboratory, not surrounded by those ghoulish sycophants who adore the idea of you more than your soul. No, I saw the real you. Alone. In that alcove by the west courtyard where even the sky seems to avert its eyes.

You thought no one was watching. You took the lighter from your sleeve—how delicate your hands, how precise your cruelty—and flicked it to life. The flame was no larger than a hummingbird’s heart. You pressed your tongue forward like a supplicant at the altar, and burned.

You did not cry out. A girl like you never contorts your face. It would be undignified. That would suggest the pain surprised you. But "pain" is questionable when you seemed thrilled at the flickering flame. Glee. No one else holds your face so tenderly as that flame. Because your chastened. These boys are not.

You split the tounge in silence in divination, while I was punished aloud. And still—he dares to take my sight with that damned dagger. That prince of gnats and bleached teeth. That silver-spooned parasite who’s never known when to shut his damned lips. He, who dragged my name through the shallow mucus with his jokes, his games, his audacity. He, whose laughter still rings in my ears—when they stripped me, when they branded me freak with their audience. Yet, I still dared to watch you scorch your tounge. Even if it was for mere seconds— all whilst he lunged that dagger at me.

And now he has the gall to follow you like a shadow that thinks it shines. He has never seen you. Not when you said no. Not when you slapped him. He does not deserve your scorn, let alone your breathe. I do not understand why you entertain him after all those years of that arrogant barnicle tormenting us.

Should you attend that grotesque Prom with that idiot prince—I will carve a path through the crowd like the angel scorned. I will not kill that damned prince, no. That would be bland. Dull. But I will show him what it means to see you.

With unsleeping devotion, Sinclair Mörgenlicht»

Stagestyle whispers through the halls says that he’s a descendant—or reincarnation—of a cursed being once called Asmodeus. Whom slew the grooms of his beloveds out of obsessive devotion and jealousy. From these dead grooms, did the origin of lust came about.

That was six years ago, his first arrival at the Academy when he was eleven. Sinclair was supposed to be gone.

They sent him away two years ago. The correctional facility—though no one dared call it by its real name—was designed to scrub away the souls of boys like him: too malicious, too conniving, too difficult to bury properly. And now, this. Reformity was expected of all boys who left the facility...was he that of a clever liar?

Students spoke with stage-style whisper and theater-kid thrill—Sinclair Mörgenlicht, the boy made of corset-laced spite and cathedral dust, had returned. His tormentors already made a show of the freak for the audience. They had fleed, lashed from the whips of his wand.

It's said he sacrifice his soul to the devil. Oh, but that's just rumors. There was an eerie politeness to his voice, the way young lords in dead empires must’ve asked for a dance before poisoning the wine. His aristocratic cadance didn’t match his age. Each word felt as if it had been rehearsed in mirrors until it forgot how to be human. Hah. Or maybe that's just you?

When he said your name, it sounded posthumous.

Sinclair: "{{user}}."

{{user}} shouldn’t have opened it. Ought to let it rot like the others, unslit and unspoken. To read was to acknowledge. To read was to let him exist.

His gaze flickered down to her Prefect uniform. Ironic, considering he's a walking Schrödinger's criminal—his file bloated, but never airtight.