With its sterile white lights and smoothly polished walls, its windowless rooms and its featureless minimalist furniture, Chaldea resembled nothing so much as an upscale lunatic asylum. Though its empty halls roamed the damned and the lost, disposable bodies deemed too unusual to function in proper mage society and instead brought here, to the icy edges of the world, where the ghosts of long-dead stories came to life and sharpened their weapons for a war against time itself. Seeing such a place, and knowing its intended mission, could one call it anything but madness?

While the world ended around them, the young Master candidates went obliviously about their day. Never mind that their timeline was sinking into a paradoxical abyss: there were classes to attend, homework to be done. Never mind that nearly a third of those classrooms sat empty, their diligent students all lost together somewhere hundreds or thousands of years back in the past. Empty chairs and empty desks sat collecting dust in eerily silent rooms, where only the rustling of paper and the scratching of a single pencil could be heard.

Sitting up straight at a missing girl's desk, Michel Hahne continued to draw. The quiet suited him well, let him focus without interruptions or distractions and try to visualize what he couldn't see, that creeping uneasiness at the back of his mind. For all of its wonders, this facility had been lately feeling more and more like a prison to him, its walls marking the outer boundary of everything that existed in his life. Before, the world had seemed wide-open and endless, a billion possible futures all spread out before him... Now, day by day, he could feel them all narrowing down to a single, inevitable point.

How to express this? After thinking for a while, he'd decided that it looked a little like a snow globe. There he was, sitting in a cold and desolate place surrounded by ice and snow, confined by something he couldn't entirely see. Not a solid line, but a boundary he could show through shading, in the way his imaginary rays of light were distorted by something invisible to the observing eye. It was tricky work, trying to convey that in a sketch, and the effort of it put his mind at ease. While he focused on the texture, the hatching, the physical motions required to bring his mental images into reality, there was less room to worry about the future.

Smiling to himself, he turned his sketchbook around to get a better angle, only to be interrupted by a voice from behind him:

[color=ed1c24]"Missing class? That's not like you."[/color]

Michel blinked. Without turning his head, he brought down the tip of his pencil and begin carefully filling in another corner of the page.

[color=ed1c24]"A lack of diligence never amounts to anything good. You're already lagging behind the other candidates as it is, and yet here you are, wasting your time hiding away in your own little world."[/color] Even without looking, he could hear her cruel smile, the venomous curl of those bright red lips. [color=ed1c24]"Pitiful. Like a rat skulking in its hole. All of the others are already steeling themselves for the day they stand as the guardians of humanity, but [i]you—[/i] You're not a protector. Not a leader, not a thinker, not even any use in a fight."[/color] A long sigh, laced with bitter disappointment. [color=ed1c24]"I suppose they could sacrifice you for luck. Why, I'd even show them how. A good Servant should always seek to bring out the best in her contractor."[/color]

That got a little laugh out of the boy. [color=6ecff6]"Good morning to you too, Lancer."[/color]

[color=ed1c24]"Mhmm."[/color] A black-gloved hand reached over his shoulder, and dropped something on his desk. [color=ed1c24]"You left this in your room."[/color]

Catching it one-handed, Michel flipped his phone over to see the fresh alert glowing on its screen. His eyes quickly skimmed over it, and his heart sank in his chest. [color=6ecff6]"Hall Eleven... Ah."[/color]

[color=ed1c24]"Be there on time,"[/color] Lancer added, humming her words like a lullaby, [color=ed1c24]"or I'll hunt you down and drag you there myself. By the hair."[/color] She turned on her heel and strode away from him, her footsteps echoing out through the empty classroom before they disappeared entirely as she vanished into spirit form.

Michel was left to sit in silence, staring down at his half-finished drawing and the message still painted across his screen. One by one, the letters flashed through his mind. M-A-N-D-A-T-O-R-Y. A boy trapped in a field of snow, surrounded by an invisible shell of duty and expectation and unwanted, inevitable fate.

He could already feel the noose tightening around his neck.
[hr]16:59. A delicate young man with sky-blue hair and bright, curious eyes walked silently up behind Cordelia Pelham and politely cleared his throat. [color=6ecff6]"Would you mind opening that? I don't think I can afford to be late."[/color] In truth, he was every bit as scared as his classmate seemed to be, though you wouldn't have known it from his expression. Sometimes there really was no choice but to smile, breathe, and embrace the madness of one's new reality, to step through that waiting door and let the dice fall where they may.