"Well, here we are!" Beata declared, throwing her arms wide with pride.
She had guided Ema through the labyrinthine corridors of the ancient Convict building and brought her to the dormitories. The building breathed with age; high ceilings and creaking parquet floors mingled here with the smell of bleach and the unmistakable scent of student life, which reliably absorbed even the harshest magical anomalies.
When Beata opened the door, Ema froze right on the threshold.
The room was visually cleaved into two completely different halves. The right side was cozy and lived-in—there was a wide bed with a massive wooden frame, an elegant desk, and a small bookshelf packed with thick tomes. The left side of the room was... empty. Literally. A bare floor, a white wall, and a single window. Absolutely nothing else.
"You can customize this part however you want," Beata announced cheerfully, dropping her backpack onto the bedspread of her luxurious bed.
Ema swallowed and nervously scanned the empty corner. "I don't want to sound ungrateful, but... I don't have the money to buy a new bed and a desk."
Beata looked at her as if she had just denied gravity. Then she burst out laughing. "What money? What are you talking about? Just create it, you're an Architect."
Ema gripped the straps of her leather backpack so tightly her knuckles turned white. Heat rose to her cheeks. "I... I don't know how to use my power."
Beata froze. Pure astonishment peeled the smile from her face. "What? But you're... twenty? You've had years and the guidance of your elders to learn at least the basics." She wrinkled her nose and examined Ema suspiciously, as if inspecting a new species of insect. "Wow. I hope your evil relatives didn't keep you in a cupboard under the stairs and hide what you are from you. That would be like something out of a Muggle fairy tale."
"No," Ema blurted out faster than she intended. "I don't have a family anymore. I was completely alone for a long time before... before Viktor found me."
Beata's expression melted instantly. She sighed sympathetically. "Oh. I'm sorry, I didn't know." She walked over and gave her an encouraging bump with her shoulder. "Look, it's going to be damn hard for you here, I won't lie. But don't worry, I'm here. All the freshmen just try to survive and get along somehow." She clasped her hands behind her back, puffed out her cheeks, and put on a deep, elderly tone: "As our ethics professor likes to say... A rope is only as strong as its weakest link, ha!"
Ema couldn't help but smile. This dry, naive student humor reminded her of a world she thought she would never see again.
"The kitchenette is at the end of the hall," Beata continued as she went back to unpacking. "There's a giant fridge, but I'm warning you: don't put anything in it."
"Why? Does food get stolen?" "Stolen? I wish. We call it the refrigerator of jokes," Beata explained slyly. "It's an unofficial trap for freshmen. Bored upperclassmen practice subtle magic on other people's stuff in the evenings. You could easily wake up, open your favorite yogurt, and it'll suddenly pop out eyes, start begging for mercy in a tiny voice, and then run away from you on little legs across the counter and out the window."
Ema let out a quiet, disbelieving chuckle. "Okay. No yogurt." She ran her eyes over her empty corner again. She remembered the man who had sent her here. She had to try. "Beata? Have you ever heard of a man named Viktor around here? He has gray hair, but looks about our age. And he has... strange, golden eyes. He supposedly knows the Dean."
Beata thought for a moment, wrinkled her nose, and then shook her head. "Gray hair and golden eyes? That sounds like a cheap fantasy novel. Nobody like that hangs around here, and trust me, you can't even keep it a secret on campus if you sing off-key in the shower."
Ema swallowed quietly. It meant Viktor really was a ghost.
"I'm going to take a shower," she mumbled, grabbing a towel. Beata just waved a hand. With a quiet crackle, a simple military cot and a rough wooden desk formed in Ema's empty corner. "For starters," she winked at her. "Until you learn how to do it yourself."
When Ema returned a little while later—washed and dressed in a clean, though still overly large flannel shirt—Beata wasn't in the room. She sat down on her new, foreign-magic-created bed and pulled her backpack close. With a pounding heart, she unzipped it.
The inside smelled of newness and leather. Spare clothes in her size, toiletries, blank notebooks... and in a small inner pocket, a sturdy little box. She opened it. Inside lay a stack of banknotes. Viktor must have known she couldn't create money. There was enough to comfortably survive her entire studies here. Beneath the money lay a smartphone. Sleek, black, the newest model.
She took it out with trembling fingers and turned on the screen. No passcode. Her thumb immediately slid to the Contacts icon. Please. Let him have left me a way back.
Number of contacts: 0.
The white screen blinded her. The phone dropped into her lap. She understood. Viktor had secured her. He gave her money, protection, anonymity, and freedom. He gave her everything she needed to live, but took away the only thing she wanted from him. Himself. He had cut her off. Completely and without a trace.
It hurt so sharply she couldn't breathe. She pressed the backpack to her chest, buried her face in it, and hugged the quiet leather as if a piece of his warmth still lingered inside it.
The door creaked. Ema jumped and wiped her wet cheeks with the back of her hand. Beata stood in the doorway, holding two mugs of steaming tea. Her gaze darted between the teary-eyed Ema, the backpack she was clutching like a life preserver, and the dark phone on the bed. Her smile softened. She walked over, handed Ema a mug, and sat down next to her.
"That man with the golden eyes... that Viktor you asked about," she began carefully, nodding toward the backpack. "I'm guessing you got that from him. Based on how you're holding it, he probably wasn't just anybody. A fateful summer romance?"
Ema felt her cheeks burn. She lowered her gaze to the mug and gripped it tightly. "No... it's more one-sided. We're not together."
"Oh. I'm sorry," Beata said genuinely. But then she grew serious, and her voice lost its light student carefree tone. "You have to be very careful with that, Ema. We Architects have a complicated relationship with emotions because our power is directly connected to them. Love is an amazing catalyst—when we want to protect someone or help them, our abilities amplify incredibly. But one-sided love, a broken heart, hatred, or depression... that's something else entirely. Those are dark currents. When those feelings take over, the power completely consumes you. You lose control and become dangerous to yourself and everyone around you."
An amplifier, flashed through Ema's mind. Maybe he had kept his distance all this time for exactly that reason. So his rejections wouldn't derail her and turn her into a weapon she couldn't control. "What about you?" she asked quietly, to deflect from her own freshly scraped pain. "Do you like anyone?"
Beata laughed, and the tension broke. "Are you crazy? I haven't run into anyone like that. And honestly, I want to enjoy my student years before my parents start interfering. You know how it is with the old families. Eventually, they'll try to set me up with someone to 'maintain a pure bloodline and strengthen our power.'" She made air quotes.
"What family are you from?" "The Mojmírs," Beata replied with a quiet pride she rarely showed. "We belong to the oldest ones in the country. Our bloodline goes all the way back to the first Moravian prince. It's amazing at home, but sometimes insanely uptight too. Here, I can finally just be myself." She took a sip of tea and fixed her eyes on Ema. "You said this morning that you don't have anyone left. I'm really sorry about that. But what bloodline do you actually come from? Who were your ancestors?"
Ema froze. "None. They were just... ordinary people. They didn't have any power at all."
Beata pulled back as if Ema had just spoken utter nonsense. She furrowed her brow in confusion. "Ema, but that's physically impossible. Architects don't fall from the sky. If you don't belong to a bloodline, you're an anomaly. You must know that, you grew up with the power."
Ema frowned. "What power?" "The one inside you, obviously! Architects are born with their ability. We inherit it from our ancestors. You can't outsmart blood. How could you live this long and not know that?"
Ema's heart began to hammer in alarm. She remembered the Dean's words: Do not speak about what you saw.Architects are born with power. They inherit it. But she hadn't. She was completely normal until she touched that pulsating darkness. If anyone found out she gained her power from the outside... They would dissect her to the atom to find out how. And then there was the power transferred from the rebel.
"I... I guess nobody ever had the chance to explain it to me," Ema lied hastily, her eyes fixed on the bottom of her mug. She tried to make her voice sound only saddened, not terrified.
Beata sighed, clearly confused, but didn't push further. "Don't worry about it, Scalar. I'll guide you."
They talked late into the night. Ema listened to stories about Moravia, wine, and magic experiments, and gradually felt the tight knot of fear in her stomach loosening.
She fell asleep for the first time in a long while without pills or alcohol. But in the middle of the night, the darkness consumed her. She saw Friedrich again, his melting, insane face. She felt his surgical fingers tearing her heart from her chest. She screamed.
She woke up with a jolt, disoriented and covered in cold sweat. Something was holding her tightly. It took her a few seconds to focus in the morning gloom. It was Beata. She was sleeping in the same bed with her, her arms wrapped around Ema's back in a firm, protective grip.
Ema froze. "Beata?" she rasped, trying to pull away gently. "Uhm... listen, you're great and all, but I... I'm not into girls."
Beata slowly peeled her eyes open. She just stared silently at Ema for several long seconds. Then, surprise washed over her expression, quickly replaced by a deep, hurt sadness. She lowered her gaze, pulled her arms from Ema's waist, and moved away slightly.
Shame instantly flooded Ema, and she began backing away confusedly toward the edge of the bed. "I'm sorry," she blurted out quickly, her voice full of panic. "I'm so sorry if I was giving off the wrong signals yesterday, I totally didn't mean it like that, I was just upset and—"
Beata held it in for about another second. And then she burst into an absolutely uncontrollable, bubbling fit of laughter. She rolled back onto her pillow, laughing so hard she had to clutch her stomach.
"Don't worry, buddy, neither am I!" she choked through the laughter, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye. "Oh my god, your face! But seriously... you were screaming in your sleep so loud you'd wake the dead Tensors. You were thrashing around and crying. So I just crawled in with you and held you until you calmed down. That's how we do it in Moravia with little kids when they have bad dreams."
Ema felt a massive boulder lift from her chest. Relief washed over her, mixed with immense gratitude. Beata had pulled a prank on her, sure, but she didn't judge her for the nightmares. She was just there for her.
"Time to get up, Scalar!" Beata suddenly commanded, jumping out of bed and tossing a pillow at Ema. "We're going to school. You don't show up late on the first day."
With a grunt, Ema pulled the pillow off her face and squinted in confusion at the morning light. "To school?" she rasped sleepily, sitting up. "I thought the semester for university students didn't start for another week."
Beata was already standing in front of the mirror, vigorously brushing her pink tips. She smiled at Ema over her shoulder. "For normal mortals, maybe. But we Architects run on our own calendar. The department opens a week early so the freshmen have time to look around, test their power, and ideally not burn the building down before the campus fills up with powerless people. So hop out of bed! The coffee machine downstairs is already calling my name."