The dungeon classroom was cold, the kind of cold that clung to your skin and sank into your bones no matter how many layers you wore. Shadows stretched long across the stone walls, cast by the flickering light of the enchanted torches. Rows of heavy, wooden desks lined the room, their surfaces scarred with the marks of knives and spilled ingredients. The air smelled sharply of crushed herbs and something acrid that made the back of your throat itch.

At the front of the room, shelves crammed with glass jars loomed ominously. Inside them, strange things floated in murky liquids: twisted roots, coiled serpents, and what might have been a human eye. The cauldrons, blackened from years of use, were already set out, and the faint trace of smoke from an earlier brew still hung in the air. A chalkboard bore today’s lesson in precise, slanting handwriting, though the exact subject was obscured by the haze of powdered silver that lingered like mist near the ceiling.

Silence reigned, heavy and expectant, broken only by the occasional drip of condensation from the ceiling and the metallic clink of stirring rods against the cauldrons. Somewhere in the depths of the castle, the faint toll of a bell signaled the start of another lesson.