🌙 The Collage Ritual: Monday Maintenance at Taben’Rael

It is 5:00am on Monday morning. The sun has not yet broken through the hush of the eastern horizon, and the stone corridors of Taben’Rael remain silent but watchful. In the kitchens, the cooks prepare breakfast—ritual nourishment for students and staff. Yet before meal or merriment, there is reckoning. Monday mornings at the Collage of Taben’Rael have always belonged to the rite of Maintenance Spanking, a disciplinary ceremony rooted in tradition since 1801. This is not correction for wrongdoing—it is preservation, a weekly ritual of alignment.

From Friday at 4:00pm through Sunday at 8:00pm, students enjoy liberty—interrupted only by Church Mass at 11:00am and the sacred Prayer at 4:00pm. But Monday brings discipline. The halls brighten. Shadows recede. The dorm masters prepare to administer the ritual, and none are exempt—not even the elder brothers of the revered fraternity Discipline Matters. They too kneel under tradition, receiving their Maintenance from the Grand Master himself, Tony Vacherin.

This morning, each student stands ready. Dressed in their ritual uniform—tank top, white underclothes, white cape robes, and slippers—they move through the corridors with solemnity. The air is heavy with silence, and the light no longer dims. The ritual is at hand. Discipline isn’t punishment—it’s remembrance. And remembrance begins in flesh.

🕯️ The Monday Rite: Echoes in the Marble Halls

Before sunrise, the silence of Taben’Rael was not empty—it was expectant. Beneath the marble arches of the east dormitory, time seemed to pause as the ritual hour approached. The smell of simmering oats and spiced tea drifted from the lower kitchens, mingling with the crisp scent of candle wax and morning dew.

Dorm masters moved with reverent precision, checking rosters and inspecting uniforms. Their footsteps echoed in hallways that, just hours earlier, had been alive with laughter and debate. Now, those echoes carried a different charge: one of order. Of preparation.

The students stood ready. Clad in the traditional ritual attire—white robes hanging from shoulders like veils of accountability, slippers quiet against the floor—they awaited their summons. No one spoke. Even the wind seemed to hesitate at the stained glass windows.
From the west wing, the elder brothers of Discipline Matters assembled, heads slightly bowed—not out of shame, but humility. Even they, with honors and rank, would kneel before the rod. Their garments bore an additional stripe: gold embroidery on their tank tops, symbolizing stewardship through submission. Tony Vacherin, Grand Master, arrived at the hour mark in silence. His presence did not disrupt—it intensified.

“Let the light bear truth,” he whispered, and with that, the bells chimed. Ritual had begun.

🔥 *The Fifty Strikes of Memory

The ritual did not begin with names. It began with silence. A silence that thickened the air until even breath felt ceremonial.
Three Dorm Masters—Isaac, Aden, and Meno—stood before the Table of Correction. Their robes folded precisely at the waist, garments clinging to tension. The ancient paddles lay upon crimson velvet, carved with ivory script: *“Discipline begets Remembrance.”*
**Isaac gripped the edge of the table**, knuckles pale, eyes fixed on the iron sconces overhead. His frame did not flinch as the first swat landed—but by the twelfth, a low grunt escaped his throat, half swallowed by pride, half voiced in resignation. With each strike, his fingers tightened, the oak beneath him groaning as if absorbing the pain with him.
**Aden trembled—but did not yield.** His broad form bore the paddle’s rhythm like a storm testing the hull of a ship. When the twenty-eighth swat fell, he exhaled sharply—a gasp that echoed against the brass crests of the chamber. And still, he remained—spine arched, fists clenched, toes curled into the velvet runner below.
Meno did not cry. He sang. Moans surfaced from him like old psalms rising from a cavern—wordless, melodic, aching. On the thirty-seventh stroke, he bit his lip, blood blooming faintly against his caramel skin. The Master paused. Not to offer mercy—but to admire endurance. Then the final thirteen fell like thunder on stone.
Fifty swats per steward. A total of **one hundred and fifty memories** marked into flesh, soul, and legacy.
When the ritual ended, the Master turned not to the dorm heads—but to the seal on the wall. He lifted the paddle with both hands and whispered:
What is corrected is remembered. What is remembered walks wisely.”
Then the flame in the central brazier was extinguished. Not abruptly. Softly. Like pain forgiven.

Isaac's Journal – The Midnight Hour

Strike 1 gripped the surface. Strike 18 gripped me.

I did not cry. That was not the vow. But as I lay face-down upon the cedar floor of the dormitory afterward, I felt something ancient break open inside me—not weakness, but inheritance.  
They say pain has a memory. Mine whispered my father’s name. Then my own.  
I traced the bruises with my fingertips, like reading braille etched by flame. They say discipline restores alignment. I wonder if the stars above felt realigned tonight.  
---
 Aden’s Scroll – Rolled into a Candlelit Basin

Thirteen left. I counted each one backwards—to remind myself it would end.”  
 The paddle spoke in thunder and scripture. Not one blow lacked its own voice.  
 I clenched the table not from fear but from loyalty. My strength is not in resistance. It’s in remembering why we endure.  
My fingers bled slightly from gripping too tight. The candle beside me bends now, softened by the heat. 
So am I.

Meno’s Reflection – Sung into the Quiet

The strikes became verses. My body became parchment.

 
 I did not speak afterward. I sang. A melody that only bruised men understand.  
 Pain taught me which part of myself still hid from accountability.  
 The Master never asked us to repent. The ritual itself did that. The paddle didn’t humiliate—it illuminated.  
---