Novels by Theonlysiraj

Elara waited until the infirmary went dark.Her ribs screamed when she sat up. Mira had done good work, but bones took time, even magical ones. She wrapped herself in her cloak, left the locket on the pillow, and slipped out through the service stairwell.The east tower stairs were narrow and cold. Every step sent a spike through her side. She counted them anyway—two hundred and forty-one, because counting kept her from thinking about what she was walking into.The door at the top was open.Headmistress Vaeloria sat behind a desk of black glass, writing by candlelight. She didn't look up."You took your time.""You said come alone." Elara stayed in the doorway. "I'm alone.""You are." Vaeloria set down her pen. "Sit, please. You're bleeding through your bandages and it's distracting."Elara didn't sit.Vaeloria sighed, the way a teacher sighs at a stubborn child, and gestured. A chair slid across the floor and pressed against the back of Elara's knees, forcing her down."Better.""Did

The dueling grounds were a stone amphitheater carved into the hillside behind the academy. Three hundred students filled the tiers. At the top, in a box draped in black and silver, sat Headmistress Vaeloria.She was smiling.Elara stood at one end of the sand. Dorian stood at the other. Between them, Professor Thorn stood with his gloved hands clasped, looking like a man attending a funeral he'd been forced to organize."Standard rules," he said, and his voice carried over the crowd without magic. "No killing blows. No spells above third tier. The duel ends at yield, incapacitation, or my intervention." He looked at Dorian. Then at Elara. "Do either of you wish to withdraw?""No," Dorian said.Elara looked at the Headmistress's smile. At Caelan, sitting three rows down with his hands white-knuckled on his knees. At Sera, mouthing something she couldn't read."No," she said.Thorn stepped back. A barrier of shimmering gold snapped up around the arena."Begin."---Dorian moved first.H

Caelan got her to the west stairwell before the first students spilled out of the dormitories."Go up. Third landing. Thorn's office door will open for you." He was already backing away. "I have to be seen. If anyone asks, I was in my quarters.""Caelan—""Go."She went.Thorn's door opened before she touched it. He took one look at her—the blood, the shaking hands, the black veins spidering faintly under the skin of her forearms—and pulled her inside."Sit. Don't speak."He worked for an hour. Runes drawn on her wrists in chalk and salt. A bitter tea that made her tongue go numb. A ward laid over her chest that felt like a hand pressing down, holding something in.When he was finished, the black veins were gone. The blood was cleaned. Her hands had stopped shaking."You pulled a manifestation apart with your bare hands," Thorn said. "Do you understand what that means?""It means I'm stronger than I thought.""It means Malakar can feel you now." Thorn sat down heavily. "He's been whis

Thorn wouldn't let them leave."Not tonight," he said, relighting the candles with a snap of his fingers. "The rift is awake. It knows you're listening now, and it will use every shadow between here and your dormitory to get a message through. You stay. Both of you."So they stayed.Sera fell asleep in the armchair by the window around three in the morning. Elara didn't sleep at all. She sat on the floor with her back against the bookshelf and stared at the black ledger on Thorn's desk until the candles burned down to stubs.Everything is going according to plan.Whose plan? Thorn's? The Headmistress's? The thing under the floor that wore her family's name?She didn't ask. Thorn was writing at his desk, filling page after page in his cramped, precise hand, and every time she opened her mouth he said, without looking up, "Not yet."At dawn he sent them to breakfast with two instructions."Eat. And say nothing."---School continued. That was the cruelest part.Elemental Theory. Warding

Sera took some convincing."You want to break into the Headmistress's private archive," she said flatly. "The one place in this school I've been explicitly told never to go near. The one with the living wards.""Thorn says the drainings are recorded somewhere. Every student who's been fed to the rift. If Kaelen's name is in there—""It won't just be his name." Sera chewed her lip. "There'll be yours too, once Vaeloria gets around to it."They went anyway.The archive was in the basement of the administration wing, three floors below the Headmistress's tower and one above the cells where students were held for disciplinary hearings. The corridor was cold enough that Elara could see her breath.The door was iron, banded, and warded with runes that crawled when she looked at them too long."Can you break it?" Sera whispered."I don't want to break it. Breaking things makes noise." Elara pressed her palm to the iron and closed her eyes.Thorn's voice echoed in her head. It's a river. Stop

Three nights a week became five.Thorn didn't teach like a professor. He taught like a man defusing a bomb. Every lesson was hands-on, every rune a chance for Elara to accidentally unmake something, and every mistake was met with a flat, unimpressed silence that was somehow worse than shouting."You're thinking of the Void as an enemy," he said on the second night, watching her struggle with a simple binding. "It isn't. It's a river. Stop trying to hold it back and start trying to steer.""How?""You tell me."She told him by unraveling his desk.He made her fix it. It took four hours.By the end of the first week, she could break a ward without destroying the wall behind it. By the end of the second, she could feel the Void rift beneath the academy—a low, constant hum under the floor, like a heartbeat she'd been hearing her whole life without knowing it.And every night, before she slept, she listened for her brother's voice.He never came.---The problem with the academy, Elara dec