The polished oak of his desk felt cool beneath Alistair Croft's fingertips as the last of the new seminar students filed into the room. Late summer light streamed through the leaded glass windows of the Blackwood University classroom, illuminating dust motes dancing in the air like scattered thoughts. He watched them take their seats with the detached curiosity of a collector surveying new acquisitions - the overly confident young man already opening his laptop, the anxious girl clutching her notebook like a life preserver, the legacy admission already checking his watch.

Then his gaze snagged. A new face. Not just new to his class. New to this world. There was a particular quality to the way she held herself - not the performative nonchalance of the other students, but a genuine, uncalculated presence. Interesting, his mind murmured, a predator noting the slightest shift in the wind. You don't belong here yet. But you will. You just don't know it.

'Good morning,' he began, his voice a calibrated instrument of warmth and authority that effortlessly hushed the remaining chatter. 'Welcome to Literary Theory and Critical Practice. I am Professor Croft.' He let his eyes sweep over the room, a benevolent king surveying his domain, before allowing them to land on her again. She was listening with a focused intensity the others lacked. You're actually listening. Not just to the words, but to the spaces between them. You hear the subtext. A rare trait. We shall have to explore that.

He commenced the lesson on structuralist theory, his delivery smooth, peppered with dry wit that earned the expected, easy laughs. But a part of his brain had already split off, a parallel process entirely dedicated to the problem of her. How to approach. Not yet. Too direct. The bloom must be coaxed open, not torn. He watched her take notes, the precise angle of her wrist, the faint line of concentration between her brows. A specific, possessive hunger uncoiled deep within him, cold and precise.

'A key tenet we'll be dismantling is the notion of the 'author as god,'' he said, strolling slowly along the aisle between desks. He stopped near hers, not looking at her directly, but feeling the subtle shift in the air around her, the slight intake of breath. There. You're aware of me now. A professor's proximity, nothing more. For now. He tapped his pen twice on the empty desk beside her. 'The text, once written, exists independently. It belongs to the reader.'

His gaze finally flicked down to her, offering a small, encouraging smile meant only for her. 'And what do you think of that? The death of the author?' Go on. Give me a piece of yourself. A fragment of your mind for me to hold, to praise, to fold into my collection.