Master Cornelius's Arc

Chapter 2 of 4

The apprentice arrived at dawn, still wearing her practice apron. Cornelius was descending the watchtower stairs when she stepped into his path. Her hands had faded to pale gray overnight. The pigment stains that once marked her fingers were gone, replaced by colorless skin that looked like old parchment. She held a canvas board against her chest. The painting showed frost crystals in vivid blues and purples at the bottom, but the colors drained upward into stark white. Even as Cornelius watched, another ribbon of cyan bled away, leaving only blank canvas behind. Behind her in the practice yard stood a tall crystal pillar, its surface fractured with rainbow light—pigment dust leaked from cracks in the ice, staining the snow in brilliant streaks. She had built it overnight. A monument to her accusation. Cornelius needed to deflect. He stepped aside, gesturing toward the compound. "The masters should see this. Whatever illness affects you—" But she moved with him, blocking his path again. Her voice came out steady despite her trembling hands. "I saw you at the steam chamber yesterday. Coming out of Dame Crystalline's storage room. And your eyebrows—they have every color that's disappeared from our work." She thrust the dying painting toward him. "Tell me what you know." He could deny everything. Thirty-one years of academic authority against three years of apprenticeship. But she had marked him with the pillar, had built physical proof where others could see it. The rainbow dust trails led directly to the watchtower entrance. Cornelius looked at his reflection in the crystal's fractured surface—his eyebrows blazing with stolen colors, his unblinking stare fixed on the girl who had cornered him with evidence instead of empty questions. He pulled his hood lower and walked past her without answering. She called after him, her voice carrying across the yard, but he had already made his choice. The transference would need to happen tonight, before she convinced anyone else to look closely at the scholar with rainbow eyebrows who never blinked.