If the days had felt repetitive before, they only became more so in the weeks that followed the disappearance of Simon’s only friend. The weather might have been improving, and the pyramid might have remained just as colorful as it always had been, but his life had become very gray. With every new body brought out of the pyramid and set alight in the plaza, his mood darkened further.

None of this needs to be happening, he told himself, for the thousandth time, just to avoid screaming it out loud in one of his incredibly repetitive lessons.

Simon could practically predict everything that his teacher was going to tell them on any given day. The letters always followed each other in the same pattern, and the stories and paeans she offered up to the God-King almost always occurred after the same letter they always did. He’d lived in a complicated sort of time loop for a long time, but he’d never felt more like he was trapped in the same day than he did now.

Every day, he woke up and ran to ensure he was fed. Then, he was bored to death all day while he slowly pretended to get better at the remedial writing lessons. All that really happened, besides giving him hand cramps, as well as the chance to sketch the city that stretched out around them in all directions, was that he slowly moved forward in seniority. After a few weeks there were more than a dozen kids newer than him, and just as many of the older boys and girls had vanished into the pyramid, never to be seen again.

Well, never was probably too strong a word. Simon saw Ajeem twice in the dining hall. Once, their eyes even met. However, even though Simon saw a flash of recognition on the other boy’s face, there were none of the dark-eyed boy’s smiles to accompany it. They both just continued on like nothing had happened.

Simon thought about that meeting for weeks. He even drew the boy’s eyes sometimes when they had time to practice art as he wondered about his fate. Was the gulf between them one of trauma, experience, or magic? The latter concerned Simon the most, of course. After his time as a vampire’s thrall, he had no wish to be beholden to anyone like that ever again, though he thought it was the least likely.

The Magi he’d met, however briefly, seemed to have their own personalities and priorities. The same was true with the minders. If the ruler of the Murani could just turn everyone into adoring mind slaves, then he would have no need to bombard the public with statues and stories of his greatness.

That meant that the answer was trauma, experience, or some unguessable third option. Simon had no idea what that could be, but he had a lot of time to contemplate the horrors that awaited him when he finally donned the black robes because they didn’t seem to be in any hurry to give them to him.

Even after Simon had been there for almost two months and made sure to show that almost all of his letters and pronunciations were perfect, they showed no interest in graduating him. Instead, they simply slowly collected one of the boys who had been there longer, even if his penmanship and art skills were only half as good as Simons.

That, at least, was a good sign. If they were so hidebound that everything had to be done in the proper order, then they’d miss a lot of details, and all of that would be to the good for him because once he had some idea of where they kept the things worth knowing, he planned to find a way to get his hands on them.

It was somewhere in his third month when he started to get flashes of people’s auras again. It was usually first thing in the morning when the doors opened up before he started his run. That moment of glare from the increasingly bright sun wiped his sight. Then, for just a moment, he could see the world as the place it really was, and in this compound, it was much darker than any of the colorful decorations would lead someone to believe.

It surprised him, but it made sense, too. He hadn’t used magic in about half a year, and his whole life had become a sort of tedious mediation of the pointlessness of being. However, without the Oracle’s teaching, he would have surely dismissed it. It was just a few hazy blurs around the people that happened to be in his vision and a web-like array of black lines that looked like a spider's web. It only lasted until he blinked a time or two, and then they were gone.

Still, it was those black lines that he found to be the most haunting part of his gray little world. They came from every part of the Magi’s compound, and all of them disappeared into the heart of the Pyramid of Lesser Miracles. Something terrible awaited him down there, and Simon felt like he could almost see what it was in the eyes of the boy who had once been his friend.

Line or no lines, his purgatory continued on. Truthfully, at that point, Simon was starting to believe that they’d figured him out and that they were just toying with him. He might stay here, scratching shapes into his slate until it was as worn out and useless as he would be by that age.

Then, suddenly, on a drizzling morning when he could scarcely be bothered to run up the steps one more time, that all ended, and Simon found one of the gray-robed minders standing in his way. At first, he thought that the man was there for another boy, running to his right. They both slowed, but after a moment, the other boy started up again.

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No, he’s not stopping him, he realized. It’s finally time. Something different is finally going to happen.

Simon smiled as he slowed to a stop at the realization before walking to the gray-robed man who was beckoning to him that morning up the stairs, but he wasn’t feeling joy or happiness. His facial reflexes were on automatic these days, but he only felt relief as the vast weight of frustration was being lifted off of him. He was finally being released from purgatory into some fresh new hell, but he would take it. He would take anything over living this week one more time.

“Well, Nijam, have you mastered the art of the word?” the stern-faced man asked. “Are you ready to experience the greater mysteries?”

There was only one answer to this question. “I am if the God-King allows it,” Simon said with a small bow. He could have said that in ways that were more grand, but he was supposed to be a teenager, not a courtier.

“The God-King doesn’t allow it,” the Minder answered. “He demands it. An empire as vast as his always requires more loyal, talented Magi to run. You are a long way from there, but in time, if you survive…”

He let the unspoken threat linger, and then, without a word of explanation, he turned and walked into the dark tunnel entrance that led further into the Pyramid of Lesser Miracles. Simon didn’t hesitate and followed the man into the dark. This was what he’d come here for, after all. He was finally going to learn some magic.

Simon moved to catch up with the man, but by some trick of geometry or magic, the Minder moved further and further away from him. Two dozen steps into the tunnel, Simon was shrouded in darkness and apparently alone. That was enough to make him slow to a stop. “Hello?” he called out cautiously. “I think I’m lost and—”

A room to his right suddenly illuminated. Simon knew that it was magic even before he turned. Unless they had a particularly well-crafted red lantern, there was no way to make that color light in this world without it since they were a long way from inventing neon.

Half blind by the sudden flare of light, Simon turned to see a small room he would have run past. It was round and perhaps twenty feet from one side to the other. Numerous boys in black robes stood around the walls, but the center was reserved for a Magi in red robes. He was standing beneath a glowing replica of the God-King depicting the man with his arms spread wide as he looked down in judgment.

In this case, I’m the one being judged, Simon thought as he stepped forward after only the slightest hesitation.

While he was getting sick and tired of all this ceremonial bullshit, he understood the purpose of it at least. This was a special moment, and they wanted to burn it deep in the minds of all of their would-be acolytes. They wanted to make this impression permanent, and how better to do that than with an image of the God-King presiding over this important moment.

It’s probably not even a lesser illusion, he decided as he approached the Magi and gawked as he looked up at the thing.

“Nijam, you have come before us today to be given a singular opportunity,” the red magi intoned. He was wearing a monstrous half-mask that was meant to make him look like a devil. At least, Simon was pretty sure that’s what it was. “Are you ready to swear your allegiance to serve the living god that rules over us all so long as you shall live?”

“I already do,” Simon lied in a tone that was as eager as it was genuine. With a little more ritual and any sign of magic, he might have been hesitant, but only for the rest of his life? He was game for that. “But I will swear to serve him with every ounce of—”

“You live for him, but would you die for him?” the Magi interrupted.

“I—” Simon hesitated, as he suspected anyone would, but that was mostly just for show.

If they actually tied him down to an altar to turn him into a blood sacrifice, he’d turn himself into a supernova, but as long as it was just words, he’d play along. A quick look around the room revealed that the only one wearing one of those amulets was the Magi in red, so the other acolytes here were definitely still way down the totem pole.

“I will give my life to the God-King in whatever way he requires,” he said with something that sounded a lot like conviction.

“That is a noble offer, and we will take you up on it.” As the Magi spoke, all of the acolytes produced black clubs from under their robes and advanced toward him.

A surge of cold fear went through him then. It’s all just a ceremony, he told himself, willing himself to stand there like a good little brainwashed puppy. He thought that they’d stop just short, or at worst, there would be a little ceremonial violence, but that wasn’t what happened.

Instead, they beat the crap out of him. He didn’t even try to fight back. There was no set of clever moves that could help him avoid the blows of a dozen boys with cudgels. He didn’t recognize any of the faces and took some solace that at least it wasn’t Ajeem who was beating him. At least he didn’t see the boy. That would have made all of this hurt more.

It took less than ten blows to drive Simon to his knees and less than twenty to make him curl up into a ball. He could feel a concussion as his skull bounced off the ground and the way that his hand went numb after a particularly hard strike told him that one or more fingers had definitely been broken. Still, he didn’t cry out. He wasn’t sure if the Magi who had spoken would actually carry out his threat, and he kept expecting the other boys to stop before they actually killed him, but either way, he was determined not to give anyone the satisfaction.

He did that much, but the only satisfaction he got from the experience was the sudden unconsciousness when someone struck him on the temple. Simon didn’t even have time to wonder if he was unconscious or dead. He was out like a light.