Moonveil Academy: Trapped With The Five Kings

Elara:

Sunday arrived without any dramatic announcement, and perhaps that was exactly what I needed.

While most of the students seemed to have disappeared from the academy grounds almost as soon as breakfast ended, heading into town or spending their free day with friends, I chose the one place where nobody seemed particularly interested in bothering me - the library.

I had spent nearly the entire day buried between shelves and old books, determined to understand at least the basics of the world I’d been thrown into.

If I was going to stay at Moonveil Academy, if I was really going to become powerful enough to protect myself and eventually seek revenge for my family, then ignorance couldn’t remain an excuse. I needed to learn. And the first thing I decided to understand was magic.

I had already witnessed enough of it to know it was real, but knowing something existed and understanding how it worked were two very different things. So I sat at one of the enormous wooden tables near the windows with a stack of introductory books surrounding me and began reading.

Apparently, there were eight known elemental magics in Starfall - earth, fire, water, wind, ice, lightning, shadow, and light. The first four - earth, fire, water, and wind - were considered the most common elemental affinities, although common certainly didn’t mean weak. A sufficiently powerful elemental user could manipulate their element on a scale that made even the most advanced spells seem insignificant.

Ice and lightning were considerably rarer, while shadow and light were regarded as the rarest of all. According to one particularly old book, fewer than a handful of people were born with either shadow or light magic in every generation.

I found myself staring at those lines for longer than necessary. It was strange how quickly these things had started becoming normal to me. A week ago, I would have laughed if someone had told me there were people capable of controlling shadows or summoning lightning with their bare hands. Now I was sitting inside a magical academy reading about them as though I were studying for an ordinary college examination.

Naturally, the books that caught my attention most were the ones discussing wind and ice. Those were my mother’s elements. Those same elements had apparently been used as the foundation for the seal hidden behind my ear, and the thought made me even more determined to understand them.

I found separate books dedicated to both affinities and carefully went through everything I could.

Wind users could manipulate air currents, create pressure waves, increase their movement speed, generate blades of compressed air, and eventually develop techniques that allowed them to manipulate the atmosphere itself.

Ice magic was even more fascinating. Depending on the user’s strength, it could be used to freeze water, create weapons and barriers, manipulate temperature, generate ice constructs, and eventually establish an elemental domain.

There were pages filled with spells written in a language I couldn’t recognize, but thankfully each spell had an English translation underneath.

I pulled out a notebook and copied several of the simpler ones, deciding I would practice them later when I had enough privacy to make sure I didn’t accidentally destroy my dorm.

As I continued reading, I finally came across something that explained another part of Starfall’s magical system that had been confusing me since my assessment.

Apparently, most supernaturals were born with a single elemental affinity. Their elemental magic was the foundation of their power, but it wasn’t the only kind of magic they could develop. During their academic years, they could discover and specialize in what the academy called a magical efficiency.

There were three major branches. Beast mastery involved communicating with, understanding, controlling, and eventually forming contracts or bonds with supernatural beasts. Weaving magic was much broader and included abilities such as dreamweaving, memory weaving, illusion, and emotion manipulation - essentially magic that interacted with the mind, thoughts, memories, dreams, and perceptions. The final branch was manipulation magic, which dealt with things like space, teleportation, transformation, time, gravity, portals, and dimensional abilities.

Apparently, the most talented students could even develop more than one specialized efficiency, although that was considered extremely rare.

It suddenly made more sense why Moonveil Academy had been divided into Houses according to these magical disciplines. It wasn’t simply a fancy school structure. It was designed around the very foundations of supernatural power.

By the time I finally closed the last book, darkness had already swallowed the view outside the library windows. I blinked several times, surprised to discover how late it had become. Then my stomach growled loudly enough that I actually glanced around to make sure nobody had heard.

With a sigh, I gathered my notes, returned every book to its proper shelf, and left the library.

The walk back to my dorm took around ten minutes, and by then I was already thinking about what I could throw together for dinner. I was halfway through mentally planning a sandwich when I reached my door, unlocked it, and pushed it open.

The moment I opened the door, something happened.

Warmth exploded deep within my body, making me gasp. It was the same warmth I’d felt during the night of my parents’ death - sudden, powerful, and almost violent. It ignited somewhere beneath my ribs and spread through my entire body in the span of a heartbeat. My knees nearly buckled.

I instinctively grabbed the edge of the open door to keep myself upright, my fingers tightening around the wood as my breathing became shallow.

”What...” I whispered, unable to understand what was happening. Then something moved in front of me. I blinked in confusion as a small decorative vase that had been sitting on the narrow console table in the entrance suddenly lifted into the air.

My heart stopped.

The vase hovered for one impossible second before it shot sideways. A stack of books followed. Then a small metal tray. Then the decorative lamp. One after another, the objects sitting along the short hallway leading toward my living room began rising from their surfaces as though invisible hands had seized them.

I stumbled backward, staring at them in horror.

”No...” My voice barely came out. ”No, no, no...”

But the objects didn’t stop. They floated around me, spinning slowly before suddenly darting through the air. A book slammed into the wall. The vase narrowly missed my head. The lamp twisted in midair before hovering above the floor. And then I heard someone scream.

I looked toward the open doorway. Several students had stopped in the corridor and were staring at me.

One girl was holding a cup. Another student had a phone in his hand. Someone else was carrying a stack of books. Their expressions shifted from confusion to absolute horror when those objects suddenly ripped themselves from their hands.

The cup flew first. Then the phone. And then the books. Everything began floating around them.

My breath caught as dozens of objects from the corridor rose into the air at once, suspended in an invisible current that seemed to surround us. The students stood completely frozen, staring at the impossible scene unfolding before their eyes.

And I finally understood what they were seeing.

It looked like I was doing this. Like I was the one controlling everything. But I wasn’t. I didn’t even know how.