The glow of the monitor illuminated Ethan's face, reflecting the lines of code scrolling down the screen. He navigated the labyrinthine structure of the company's latest software project, a cloud-based accounting system that, in its own way, was almost as complex as the arcane energies he was learning to manipulate. He’d managed to convince his boss that his recent "absenteeism" was due to a particularly virulent strain of the flu, a lie that felt almost as blasphemous as some of the forbidden spells Marcus had warned him about.