The old man waves dismissively.
“Yes, yes. Sunlight incarnate, apocalypse larva, tragic emotional backstory, paperwork. I know.”
Aster blinks.
“…I’m sorry, did you just summarise my life like an overdue library notice?”
“Aster Elchen,” the old man says, finally looking at him properly.
The room changes.
Instantly.
The threads twitch.
Something passes over Aster—not pressure, but attention so complete it stops feeling human halfway through.
“Oh,” the old man says. “That is unfortunate.”
Aster blinks. “Excuse me?”
The old man sighs at the plant.
“You have the structural integrity of a political promise.”
Then, as if only now remembering Aerathena exists, he brightens immediately.
“Aerathena! You’re glowing. Promotion or homicide, I assume. Hard to tell with solar cultivators.”
“This is—” she tries again.
“Yes, yes, the host of a stabilised Void-Chrysalis. I gathered that from the boy-shaped anxiety standing in my office.”
Aster stares at him.
Then at Aerathena.
Then back.
“This is the headmaster?”
The old man points to the threads.
“That one said you’d be ruder.”
Aster follows the gesture before catching himself.
“…Right.”
Ndlovu rises slowly from his chair.
Like someone deliberately choosing the speed at which reality is allowed to perceive him.
When he stands fully, the atmosphere shifts. The threads begin to vibrate softly. For one horrible second Aster has the sensation of invisible eyes opening somewhere across the universe.
The old man studies him.
Still half-blind.
Still smiling.
But something ancient has moved beneath the expression now.
“Hm,” he says.
A long pause.
“Hm.”
Aster shifts. “Should I be worried about the hm-ing?”
“Oh, tremendously.”
Aerathena folds her arms. “Ndlovu.”
“What?”
“You’re unsettling him.”
“I know. I saw it earlier. Builds character.”
Then the headmaster laughs.
Softly at first. Then harder. Not mocking—genuinely delighted. He leans against his desk, covering part of his face, laughing under his breath like he’s just heard the funniest joke in several centuries.
“Oh, this is nasty work,” he mutters. “Oh, you callous bitch. You absolute menace.”
Aster glances at Aerathena. “Is he talking to—”
“Fate,” she says flatly.
Ndlovu points vaguely upward.
“You tangled the boy into that?” he says to the empty air. “Cruel. Inspired. Very on brand.”
Then he stops laughing.
Silence drops instantly.
The old man slowly lifts his gaze to Aster.
For the first time, his eyes open fully.
Aster forgets how breathing works.
He has the horrifying sensation that every possible version of himself has just been dragged into the room and examined simultaneously.
Failures.
Monsters.
Corpses.
Kings.
Things wearing his face.
Entire lifetimes unfold and collapse inside a single heartbeat.
Then the old man blinks.
The pressure vanishes.
“Huh,” Ndlovu says softly.
For the first time since meeting him, the amusement leaves his face.
Not fear.
Curiosity.
Real curiosity.
“Well,” he murmurs. “That is new.”
He circles Aster slowly now, hands clasped behind his back, like an old mathematician discovering a number that shouldn’t exist.
“Hm. Fate refuses to settle around you properly. Probability collapse everywhere. Fractured convergence…” He leans in slightly. “And something underneath chewing holes through causality itself. Oh, she’s going to be insufferable when she realises.”
Aster blinks. “…Who?”
“The universe,” Ndlovu says at once, as if this should be obvious. “Try to keep up, boy. I’m old and time is expensive.”
Aster crosses his arms. “You speak about Fate like it’s a person.”
Ndlovu snorts.
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“Of course she’s a person. All systems become people eventually. That’s the final stage of bureaucracy.”
He wanders back toward his desk, muttering as he goes.
“Empires become gods. Gods become markets. Markets become hunger. Hunger becomes law. Law marries inevitability and suddenly everyone is paying taxes to destiny.”
Aster looks at Aerathena.
“…Is he allowed to run a school?”
“No one has successfully stopped him,” she shrugs.
“Several have tried,” Ndlovu adds cheerfully. “Met terrible luck, all of them.”
He stops directly in front of Aster and tilts his head.
Behind him, the Loom begins twitching violently. Threads split and knot faster and faster. Several simply… stop existing when they brush against the vague cluster of strands surrounding the one Ndlovu had indicated was his.
Probability itself seems to keep losing its train of thought.
Ndlovu settles back into his chair with a tired sigh and pours himself tea.
“You’re afraid you’ll become the monster.”
Aster goes still.
No humour this time.
The room itself seems to pause with him.
Ndlovu doesn’t look up from his cup.
“I’ve seen seventeen thousand four hundred and twenty-one versions of this conversation,” he says quietly. “In most of them, you ask whether you’re destined to destroy the world.”
Aster swallows. “…And?”
Ndlovu blows across the tea.
“In the overwhelming majority,” he says, “the world would deserved it.”
Silence.
Then the old man looks up again, smiling faintly.
“But fortunately for civilisation, annihilation isn’t easy.”
He gestures vaguely toward the Loom.
“Reality prefers efficient tragedies. Repetition. Predictable suffering. It conserves effort.”
His gaze drifts back to Aster.
A beat passes.
Then Ndlovu frowns toward the corner of the room.
“…Huh.”
Aerathena follows his gaze. “What?”
“The third-year alchemy lab explodes in approximately…” He tilts his head. “…eight seconds.”
Aster blinks. “What?”
Seven.
Ndlovu sips tea.
Six.
“You’re joking.”
Three.
“No.”
Two.
A muffled boom echoes somewhere outside.
One.
A second explosion follows almost immediately.
Students begin screaming faintly in the distance.
Ndlovu nods to himself. “Mhm. Worse than expected.”
Aster stares at him in horror.
“You knew that was going to happen?”
The headmaster looks offended. “Of course I knew.”
“Then why didn’t you stop it?”
Ndlovu gestures vaguely with his teacup.
“Because now the chemistry instructor owes the gardening department three months of funding and two students accidentally discover a catalyst formula that becomes relevant in eleven years.”
Aster opens his mouth.
Closes it.
Opens it again.
“…That is the most insane sentence anyone has ever said to me.”
Ndlovu smiles warmly.
“Oh, don’t worry, boy. You haven’t even attended orientation yet.”
He gestures toward a small table by the window.
“Tea?”
Aster follows the motion warily.
Three cups sit arranged in a neat row.
Aster narrows his eyes.
“Please. Choose.”
Aster doesn’t move.
The Loom drifts quietly behind them, casting soft gold light across the room. Somewhere outside, another distant explosion echoes through the academy, followed by faint cheering.
No one reacts.
Aster stares at the cups.
Then at the headmaster.
Then back at the cups.
“What’s in it?”
The Headmaster’s smile sharpens.
“One cup contains a growth draught. If you drink it, one of your Gates opens fully.” He pauses, noticing Aster’s confusion. “An infinitely valuable development for someone in your condition.”
Aerathena says nothing.
“Another cup is merely tea. Quite good tea, actually. Cinnamon notes. Slight citrus.”
“And the last?”
Ndlovu smiles pleasantly.
“Poison.”
Aster stares.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“If you drink it, you become violently ill for several days.”
“What happens to the ones I don’t choose?” Aster asks slowly.
“They’ll be distributed at random among two of the plants in the office.”
Aster frowns. “Why the plants?”
“The plants are part of the experiment,” Ndlovu says.
He gestures toward the nearby plants. “If one of them receives the poison, it dies. If it receives the elixir, it forms a core and develops nascent consciousness that may eventually mature into full sentience. A very rare boon.”
A beat passes.
“This sounds like a threat disguised as tea.”
“It is philosophy disguised as tea,” Ndlovu corrects. “Much more dangerous.”
Aster looks at the plants.
Then at the cups.
Then immediately hates where his mind goes next, because now the problem isn’t which cup helps him.
It’s which cup helps him while killing something else.
He exhales slowly through his nose.
Somewhere inside his skull, the exhausted remains of his sanity quietly file for political asylum.
Ndlovu watches him closely now.
And Aster understands, with awful clarity, that this isn’t a test of intelligence.
It’s a test of harm distribution.
One cup rewards.
One cup harms.
One does nothing.
But the point isn’t the contents.
It’s that the suffering goes somewhere.
Most people would choose strategically.
Take the chance at power. Avoid the poison. Minimise risk.
That’s how the world works.
Shift the cost somewhere else while keeping the reward.
His gaze drifts back to the plants.
One has tiny curling leaves reaching toward the light.
So plants can become conscious here, he thinks.
Something twists unpleasantly in his chest at the thought.
Because the truly annoying thing—
the deeply inconvenient thing—
is that he genuinely doesn’t want the stupid plant to die.
Which is ridiculous.
It’s a plant.
And yet.
He thinks of the sentient shrub who had voted on his behalf.
Aster swallows hard.
Then reaches forward.
Aerathena leans forward.
Ndlovu’s eyes narrow with interest.
Before either of them can speak, Aster drinks all three.
One after another.
Fast.
Tea burns down his throat. The second tastes floral and strangely sweet.
The third—
Oh.
Oh, that one is deeply, spiritually incorrect.
Aster nearly chokes as something toxic hits his stomach like an industrial accident. He slams the final cup onto the table, coughing violently.
“Well,” he wheezes, eyes watering, “one of those tasted like capitalism.”
Aster wipes his mouth weakly and glances toward the plants.
“…Sorry,” he mutters to them. “About the growth one. I know one of you would've achieved greatness, but it didn’t feel fair to help one while killing another. You should unionise, by the way. Stop this lunatic from using you as trolley problems with chlorophyll.”
Silence.
Ndlovu begins laughing.
“Oh, Fate preserve me,” he wheezes. “You drank all three. That callous bitch is going to despise you!”
Tears gather at the corners of the old man’s eyes as he finally straightens, wiping them away with the sleeve of his robe.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve just done to her bookkeeping? Probability spent several seconds trying to determine whether you were selfless, suicidal, or simply too stubborn to participate in causality correctly.”
Ndlovu points vaguely upward like a husband complaining about his wife to dinner guests.
“And Fate—bless her vindictive little heart—adores patterns. Predictable suffering. Clean mathematics. Little tragedies lined up in orderly rows like taxes.”
Aster presses a hand against his stomach.
The old man tilts his head slightly.
“How are you feeling exactly?”
Aster pauses to take inventory.
Which, admittedly, has become a much stranger process lately.
“No burning skin. My organs haven’t liquefied yet. I think my spine still exists?” He frowns slightly. “My stomach feels weird though.”
“Weird how?”
Aster considers it.
“…Like two raccoons are fighting in it over a plastic bag full of regret.”
Ndlovu nods thoughtfully. “Excellent.”
“That is not reassuring.”
“The poison and growth draught neutralised one another.”
Aster blinks.
“Their alchemical structures are naturally oppositional. Growth accelerates cellular expansion. Poison inhibits energetic propagation. Taken simultaneously, they collapse into equilibrium.”
A beat.
“So now I have magical indigestion?”
His stomach twists violently in agreement.
He already regrets every decision that led him into this room.
Ndlovu walks slowly toward him.
“It was the only way to test for something currently blinding the threads of fate. The Council sent you here because they fear what lives inside you.”
Aerathena’s expression tightens.
“They wanted me to answer one question.”
The headmaster stops beside the Loom.
“Are you dangerous?”
The threads drift behind him in slow silence.
“And of course you are,” he says simply. “You contain a power capable of unravelling causality itself.”
He smiles faintly.
“But then again,” he adds, “so do I.”
His eyes drift toward Aerathena.
“The question was never whether the boy possesses power worth fearing.”
His gaze returns to Aster.
“It is whether he possesses the cruelty required to use that power without remorse.”
Silence settles softly through the office.
Aster tries to steady his breathing while his internal organs begin what feels suspiciously like a workers’ strike.
Ndlovu gestures vaguely toward the cups.
“Civilization itself is largely the story of people avoid pain where possible and outsourcing suffering onto strangers.”
Aerathena watches quietly.
Ndlovu continues.
“But you…”
The old man smiles sadly now.
“You did not even consider whether to outsource the pain onto something else.”
Aster looks away instinctively.
Which, unfortunately, says enough on its own.
Ndlovu studies him for a long moment.
Then sighs softly.
“A rare heart.”
“The wyrm has been feeding on his fate since before birth,” Aerathena says quietly.
“That would do it.”,” Ndlovu replies.
The Loom pulses once behind him.
“People misunderstand destiny, boy. They imagine some grand design.” He snorts quietly. “But fate is simply accumulation.”
He gestures lazily around the room.
“Enough small decisions leaning the same direction eventually become inevitability.”
His eyes settle on Aster again.
“Most people become cruel long before they become powerful.”
“You have suffered enough, that cruelty should already feel natural to you.”
A pause.
“The fact that it still doesn’t, is… statistically significant.”
A pause.
“You are only dangerous because you destabilize systems, but not all systems deserve to be stable.”
He turns towards Aerothena. “You can tell the council that he has passed my tests. He will one day wield power, but he is not a danger to them or our future.”
Ndlovu places a hand lightly against Aster’s shoulder.
“Welcome to Galamad.”
The old man smiles faintly.
“Try not to unravel too many of my threads before midterms. The paperwork is dreadful.”