The Author's Extra: My SSS Skill Turns Souls into Anything!

"Wait—" Alden blinked twice. "What did you—"

"I said I like you, Alden." She repeated it the same way she’d said it the first time.

He stared at her.

He’d been prepared for a lot of things tonight. More about Augustus. Something about the Planner. Maybe even something about her father’s plans. He had not been prepared for this, and his mind was doing what it did when it couldn’t immediately process something — it had gone completely still.

"Seris." He rubbed the back of his neck slowly. "Look. I hear you. And after everything you just told me, I understand what you’ve been carrying all this time." He paused, choosing carefully. "But maybe right now your emotions are just— overwhelming. After everything with Augustus, with your family, after years of being alone—"

"No," she said.

"Just hear me out—"

"Alden." Her voice was quiet but it had an edge that stopped him. "I’m not confused about what I feel."

He looked at her.

"I’ve felt this way for weeks now," she said. "Not tonight. Not because of anything you said in this garden." The faintest color was on her cheeks but her eyes held his steadily. "I came to that conclusion on my own. Long before I told you."

He went still. "...For weeks?"

"Yes."

For weeks. Not an emotional reaction to her own confession. Not the relief of finally talking to someone. She had been sitting with this, by herself, for a week, and had decided to say it on her birthday because she’d decided to stop lying to herself.

Alden looked down at the fountain.

He didn’t have a clever response. His mind turned over the thing she’d said ’you were the first person who made me feel like I wasn’t alone’ and found he had nothing to put against it that was honest.

After a long silence, he exhaled.

"I’m sorry, Seris." His voice came out quiet. "I really am."

She looked at him.

"I don’t think of you that way. And I’m not going to tell you I do just because of everything you’ve been through — that wouldn’t be fair to you." He kept his eyes on the water. "This is all too sudden for me. I don’t know what I feel, and I won’t pretend I do. That’s not something I’m willing to do." He swallowed. "So I’m sorry."

The garden was completely quiet.

Seris looked at him for several seconds. Her face gave nothing away — the composure was there, the expression was even, the mouth was still.

Then she nodded.

"I see," she said. "I understand."

She turned her head away, toward the fountain.

Alden watched her.

And at the corner of her eye, just for a moment — one tear. Barely there. It slipped down her cheek before she raised her hand and wiped it away cleanly.

When she turned back to him, it was gone.

The smile that settled on her face was soft. Seris’s smiles were usually confident in a distinct way, the kind worn by someone who knows exactly what is happening and enjoys the fact that you do not. This one was different.

Like she was placing something back where it belonged.

"It’s getting late," she said, standing from the fountain. "I should sleep. We’re going to the palace tomorrow with the rest of the council." She looked at him. "You’re coming?"

Alden hesitated. He noticed the shift in her face, the difference in the smile, the way she was already somewhere slightly further away than she’d been a minute ago. He couldn’t find the right thing to say about it. "I... think I have something else going on."

Seris’s smile stayed exactly where it was. "I see."

She turned.

Her silver-white hair slipped forward as she did, partially covering her face, and she began walking back toward the dormitory building. Alden stood where he was for a moment, then turned in the opposite direction.

"Good night, Alden."

"Yeah..."

Neither of them looked back.

The garden that had felt quiet and still an hour ago now felt like something heavier had settled into it. The fountain kept running. The moon was still out. Everything was exactly the same and somehow nothing was.

_______

Far from the academy, the chamber smelled like old stone and something metallic.

Crimson lamps threw their light across the walls in flickering patterns. Augustus stood at the center of the room, holding a glass filled with something dark that caught the light wrong — too red, too thick, moving slightly when it shouldn’t have been.

Around him stood a group in dark clothing, and behind them, in the shadows, dozens of masked figures that hadn’t moved since he’d entered.

Augustus stared at the liquid.

"Will this actually work?"

One of the men stepped forward and lowered his head. "Of course, Young Master Augustus." No hesitation in his voice. Absolute confidence. "Drink it. You’ll understand once it’s done."

Augustus looked at the glass for another second.

Then raised it to his lips and drank it all at once.

The glass slipped from his fingers.

CRASH.

It hit the floor and shattered. Augustus’s whole body locked — back straight, eyes wide, every muscle going rigid at the same moment as crimson mana erupted from him with no warning. It didn’t build. It didn’t rise. It just arrived, flooding out from every surface of him at once, the shockwave rolling through the chamber and forcing the nearest people to step backward.

Red light crawled up his arms like fire finding new fuel. Spread across his chest. Coiled around his shoulders.

His fingers trembled.

Then, slowly, his mouth curved upward.

"Yes..." His voice was shaking but not from fear. "I can feel it."

The aura tightened around him, denser, hotter, the air in the chamber bending slightly near his hands. His grin stretched wider and his laugh came out low and unsteady, the kind of sound that had too much in it to be entirely controlled.

"This power—" He looked at his hands, turning them over, studying them. "I’ve never felt anything like this. I’m stronger. So much stronger."

The laugh stopped suddenly.

His head came up.

The grin was still there, but whatever was behind it now was different from what had lived behind his expression at the academy. That version of Augustus wasn’t this.

This was colder. Hungrier. Wrong in a way that had nothing casual about it.

He looked into the dark beyond the chamber’s light.

His fist closed slowly, the crimson mana surging once with the motion.

"Alden."

He said the name quietly.

"Seris."

His smile came back full.

"You two are finished."

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