The committee leader was a middle-aged woman with a white, curled wig Mary recognised from the judges she saw on TV. It looked especially comical against the usual suit of a common clerk instead of formal robes. She raised the cup to her lips, and was mirrored by her colleagues - six to the left and six to the right. They didn’t wear the wigs, though.

“We have gathered today to announce the rulings of the Thirteen Established Authorisers,” the judgy clerk said. “Nicolaus Mouse, please step forward.”

The creature of sand took three steps, and each of them took him not only forward, but also upwards - geysers of sand supported his feet, leaving Mary with the impression that he was walking up the stairs. By the end, he was looking on the jury down, not up. The sands orbiting him were increasing in both volume and speed, and soon, he could barely be seen through the sandstorm.

The committee leader didn’t seem to notice, entirely focused on the papers in front of him. “Nicolas Mouse, on the twenty-eighth of June of the present year, you fought a final battle against your arch-nemesis, the xeno-spiders queen, who was at the time trying to consume the Brutus Saint’s Academy. You were supported by two members of your party, Paolo Impaler and Mortimer Twardowsky, along with an army of volunteers from supporting parties.”

The monotone voice made Mary dizzy, despite the underlying steel and wrongness. With every cell of her body, she knew it wasn’t right - she just wasn’t sure what the ‘it’ was.

“After reviewing all the protocols, the battle has been declared personal, and as such, you will be the only one held responsible. Your party members are henceforth considered uninvolved. Do you object?”

“No.” The sand man’s voice sounded like mountains scraping against each other, accompanied by a howling wind. Mary glanced at his party members, still surrounded by a shrouded clipboard-wielding army. The heroes seemed strained as if they were fighting some invisible chains. Which... might have been the case for all Mary knew.

“Perfect,” the clerk continued without raising her eyes. “Therefore, according to the Statute of Heroic Interventionism and Turmoils, you will be held responsible for the damages inflicted by your arch-nemesis. These include, but are not limited to: causing property damage of yet to be estimated value, mass murder of at least fifty-four academy students and heavily injuring further two hundred, littering the national reserve of the Midnowhere Desert with tons of scrap metal, and fighting a battle next to the academy without receiving the Dean’s authorisation. Do you deny any of this happening?”

“No,” the same voice thundered above the gathering. The sands somehow grew darker, and Mary felt a knot tie in her stomach. She noticed the clipboard operators spread in a circle around the hero, pens held just above the paper.

“What is going on?” Mary whispered to Melanie, but the younger girl shushed her even before she could finish the question. Her eyes were wide as she looked at the scene.

“Therefore,” the judge continued, still staring at his papers, “the Thirteen Established Authorisers find you guilty of all the above. You are therefore expelled from the Brutus Saint’s Academy, effective immediately.”

“No,” came in the same deafening voice. The hero thrust his arms forward towards the committee, and the storm surrounding him flowed towards them like giant tentacles. The sudden roar hit Mary like a flashbang, but impossibly, she managed to hear an ominous sound of pen scrapping on paper.

A blue forcefield sprang to existence in the form of a wall separating the clerks from the hero, and streams of sand splashed against it harmlessly. For a few seconds, the roaring of the sands and crackling of the forcefields were the only sounds Mary could hear. Then, she heard more of the dreadful scrapping, as dozens of pens danced across dozens of clipboards, and the forcefields bent around the hero, trapping both him and the sand in a blue crackling sphere.

“Nicolaus Mouse. By the power of the Prime Tribunal and Seven Deans.” The clerks drank from their cups in unison, and a wave of wrongness washed down Mary's spine. It wasn’t supposed to be like that. She tried to say something but found herself unable to move a single muscle.

“Your prophecy is nullified,” one of the clerks said, while all of them simultaneously made a mark on their papers, and a black thunder darkened up the sky. Mary felt her chest tighten.

“Your magic is voided,” said someone on the other side, and after another synchronised motion, a whirling cloud of sand rose over the desert behind the Academy’s gate. The crackling sounds coming from the sphere intensified.

“We take from you your power.” The sands inside the sphere lit up, and a stream of burning particles flew from the sphere towards the committee’s cups. A tormented scream escaped the hero’s throat as the sand and glass covering his body were torn apart by the decree, exposing the tissues underneath to the sandstorm's rage.

“Your right to attend the academy has been revoked.” With a final decree, the hero was flung away from the scene, far through the gate and into the whirling sands outside the Academy. They didn’t even look at him once. The pressure on Mary’s chest increased to an unbearable level, bending her in half and forcing her to fight for each breath. Something twisted in her stomach, something dark.

She recognised this darkness - it was the same shadow that protected her during the battle, and even earlier, in the office. It was pounding against its mortal prison, craving to strike at these... people. To tear flesh from bone, and souls from bodies. To see the light die in their eyes until only darkness remains. Mary clenched her fists and silently made a vow.

A few seconds later, she collapsed on the floor, barely aware of Melanie calling her name.

She was surrounded by a sea of stars, walking on a narrow pathway to the island. She recognised this place, a memory from another dream. She looked at herself - this time, she saw the black veins under her skin and the whiteness of her hair. Her necklace was present too - but it was merely a plain, reflective sphere of pure blackness, darker even than the void between the uncaring stars.

Mary followed a familiar melody, and sure enough, she saw the same human dressed in black and white. This time, however, he spoke immediately, without breaking the piano’s wordless song.

“I wonder, had anyone ever bothered to teach you manners?” Veritas asked.

“Yes.”

“So it is not through lack of their effort, but incompetence, that you came out this way? Or is it that where you come from, leaving in the middle of a conversation isn’t a sign of disrespect, like in the civilised world?”

Mary took a sharp breath, trying to come up with a proper retort, but the villain raised a gloved hand from the keyboard in a silencing gesture, leaving the other to play a solo passage. “No matter. Tell me, rather - did you like the proceedings of the Thirteen?”

Mary gaped at him. “How do you-”

“-know about this already? Oh really, of all the questions you could ask, this is what you choose?” Veritas sighed disappointingly. “I see more than you dare imagine, child. Now, would you kindly answer my previous question?”

Mary wanted to just tell him what a jerk he was, but a different thought fought its way to her tongue. “I don't know what they were even thinking, it was probably the least fair thing I had ever witnessed. It was worse even than that one time, back in the orphanage, when Hannah stole the cookies, and I-” she blinked twice, and took a long breath. “Anyway, it's not like you're much older than me.”

The villain tilted his head and let the last accord slowly fade into silence. “Fascinating,” he finally said, and his fingers began another dance on the piano’s keyboard. “You see the truth behind the Academy and the Adolescent Division of the Heroes Department, yet you’re still willing to act as their puppet. Can you tell me, why is that, exactly?”

But before Mary could utter an answer, she felt a sudden pull throwing her out of the island and towards the distant void between the stars. Before everything went dark, she saw Veritas standing on the island’s edge with his left hand resting on a hip. Even from that distance, she could feel the irritation he radiated.