Chapter 5: The Price of Failure

Chapter 5: The Price of Failure

The small flame in Professor Finch’s hand was a living thing. It danced and swayed, a tiny, hypnotic predator that promised an excruciating end. The soft hiss of the burning wick was louder than a scream in the dead silence. It cast flickering, monstrous shadows that writhed on the walls, turning the sterile exam hall into a chamber of hell.

For a split second, Leo’s mind was a white void of pure, paralyzing terror. He could feel the phantom heat on his skin, smell the acrid scent of burning flesh. The clinical descriptions he had just written—denaturation, combustion—were no longer academic terms. They were a prophecy.

Then, the image of his mother’s face, pale and tired but smiling at him from her hospital bed, flashed through the fire and fear. The scent of antiseptic, the smell that had driven him here, cut through the oily stench of lighter fluid. He wasn’t just fighting for his own life. He was fighting for hers.

That knowledge didn't just break the paralysis; it detonated a bomb of primal, cornered-animal fury deep within him.

He was not a victim. He was not an experiment. He would not be graded.

As Finch took another deliberate, unhurried step forward, the Zippo held out like a surgeon’s scalpel, Leo acted. He didn't scream. He didn't beg. He lunged, not at Finch, but at the desk beside him. His hands slammed down on the exam paper, the glossy photographs of the dead slick beneath his palms. He snatched the horrifying sheaf of papers and, in one fluid, desperate motion, thrust it forward directly into the flame.

The corner of the glossy paper caught instantly, curling into a black, bubbling crust before erupting into a bright, hungry orange.

Finch, for the first time, showed a flicker of surprise. His methodical advance faltered as his own macabre work was immolated before his eyes. It was a minuscule hesitation, a fraction of a second, but it was all Leo needed.

With a guttural roar, Leo shoved the burning, smoking papers straight into the professor’s face.

The examiner recoiled with a sharp, inhuman hiss, not of pain, but of sheer, offended rage. The smell of burning chemicals and paper filled the air. The Zippo clattered to the floor, its flame extinguished by the impact. In that same instant, Leo dropped his center of gravity and drove his shoulder into Finch’s unnaturally rigid frame.

It was like tackling a statue made of bone and ice. There was no give, no soft tissue, just a cold, unyielding hardness. But the sheer, unexpected force of the impact, combined with Finch’s momentary distraction, was enough. The professor’s perfect, rigid posture was broken. He staggered backward, his arms flailing for a balance he didn’t seem to need until it was gone. He stumbled over the chair Leo had kicked back earlier, crashing to the floor in a tangle of tweed and flailing limbs.

Leo didn't wait to see the result. He scrambled away, his lungs burning, his mind screaming one word: Door!

He flung himself at the massive oak portal, his fingers fumbling for the cold brass handle. He twisted, pulled, and slammed his shoulder against the wood. Nothing. The heavy thunk of the lock turning echoed in his memory, a sound of absolute finality. It was just as he’d feared. The door was an immovable barrier, a part of the stone wall, a tombstone sealing him inside.

A sound from behind him cut through his frantic efforts. It was the soft, metallic clink of the Zippo being retrieved from the floorboards.

Leo’s blood ran cold. He spun around.

Professor Finch was rising to his feet, not like a man, but like a puppet being pulled upright by invisible strings. There was no effort, no struggle. He simply unfolded. His tweed suit was unruffled. A black, greasy smear of soot marred one of his pale cheeks, a grotesque mockery of a wound. His cold, grey eyes were no longer merely curious. They were alight with a terrifying, glacial fury.

“Vandalism,” Finch stated, his voice a low, vibrating hum of displeasure. He held up the Zippo. “Destruction of exam materials. And assaulting an examiner.” He took a step forward, his movements once again unnervingly silent and fluid. “These are grounds for immediate expulsion, Mr. Vance.”

The Zippo snapped open. The flint wheel rasped.

Spark. Snap.

The flame was back, angrier this time, brighter. It reflected in Finch’s furious eyes, two tiny, dancing hells.

Leo was trapped. The door was his back, a dead end. Before him was the monster in the tweed suit, the incarnation of this academy’s sadistic soul, advancing with a lit flame and a promise of agonizing death.

His panicked gaze darted around the room, a desperate, final search for anything, any weapon, any way out. The overturned desks. The scattered papers. The stern portraits on the walls. The oppressive, vaulted ceiling. And the windows.

The three tall, arched windows that lined the far wall.

They were his only other way out.

They weren't an exit. They were a different kind of ending. They were on the third story, overlooking a courtyard of hard, unforgiving flagstones he had run across not even twenty minutes ago. A lifetime ago. The choice Finch had tried to force upon him with a pen, the universe was now forcing upon him in reality. Fire or the fall.

He looked at the approaching flame, then at the dark glass of the window, which reflected the terrible scene like a black mirror. It wasn't a choice between two deaths. The fire was a certainty, a conclusion curated by a madman. The fall… the fall was a chance. One in a million, maybe, but it wasn't zero. It was a price, a horrific price for failure, but it was a price he would choose to pay himself.

Finch was only a few feet away now. Leo could feel the warmth of the flame on his face.

He didn't hesitate.

He spun away from the door, grabbed the nearest upright chair by its back, and with a scream of pure, unadulterated defiance, he charged the middle window. The heavy oak chair felt impossibly light, an extension of his own desperate will.

He swung.

The sound was explosive, a cataclysmic shattering that ripped the suffocating silence of the room to shreds. The ancient, leaded glass didn’t just break; it detonated. Shards of glass, dark and sharp as obsidian, flew in every direction. For a moment, the world was a crystalline storm.

The cold night air rushed in, a shocking, liberating gasp from the outside world. It carried the scent of damp earth and distant rain. It was the smell of life.

Leo didn't stop. He dropped the mangled chair, took two more running steps, and launched himself through the jagged maw of the broken window frame.

For a breathtaking, silent moment, he was airborne. He saw the shocked, almost intrigued expression on Finch's soot-stained face, the tiny flame of the Zippo frozen in time. He saw the Gothic spires of Blackwood silhouetted against the bruised purple sky.

Then, he was falling. The world turned into a rushing, screaming blur of stone and shadow. The unknown had caught him. And the ground was rising up to claim him.