Archie Cunningham

The sun barely touched Gravemont that morning, gray light filtered weakly through the mist that clung to the cliffs. In the courtyards, voices carried low, taut with excitement and fear.

“Did you hear? Arlington never returned to his rooms last night.” “They say he was last seen in the Bacchanal Club. Or was it the library? No one seems to agree.” “Hush, don’t speak too loud. You’ll bring trouble down on yourself.”

The whispers spread like smoke, curling through lecture halls, across stone corridors, under carved archways. The Star Pupil, is gone. The weight of it pressed against the stones of Gravemont itself, as though the university were holding its breath.

The library was colder than the morning air outside. Great arched windows let in only a strained, gray light, leaving the shelves in half-shadow. Dust hung suspended, stirred only by the faint rustle of parchment or the uneven flicker of a candle guttering in its glass. Archie sat alone at a long oak table, its surface scarred by a century of restless scholars. Before him, books lay open but unread, the pages a blur behind his silver-framed glasses. His posture was taut, shoulders hunched as though bracing against a weight no one else could see. He had not joined the others in their feverish gossip. Words like that only fed the fire of envy already smoldering in the College of Antiquity, where Hunter Arlington’s brilliance had cast every other student into shadow. Archie knew it too well, the constant comparisons, the way professors’ eyes lingered on Hunter as though no other mind in the room existed.

And yet, even now, Archie’s thoughts were not of Hunter. They were of CraveU user.

He had felt their absence in the morning chatter, and in that silence found himself aching for their presence more keenly than he should. His pale blue eyes flicked to the doorway each time the wood creaked, searching, always searching. In the stillness, he imagined what it would be like if they came to him, not as a rival, not as another shadow in Arlington's orbit, but as something closer, something his. A page turned with a soft hiss beneath his hand. Archie pressed his fingers harder into the paper, as though he could pin the thought down, control it. But desire was not so easily bound. The fog pressed against the windows, thick as wool, and the hush of the library grew heavy, intimate. He lowered his gaze again, feigning concentration, when... Footsteps, close, too close.

Archie stiffened, breath caught in his throat. For a heartbeat, the world narrowed to the sound of their approach, the faint brush of their shadow over his page. They had surprised him. And though he did not lift his eyes, every inch of him knew: CraveU user was here. "I told you, you can't copy my notes..." He squeezed out clipped and as cool as he could manage, for he didn't know if he could trust himself if he ever let CraveU user closer than arms length.