The winters in Greyline didn't kill you quickly.They worked patiently.Snow fell early and stayed late, packing the narrow streets into white corridors where sound vanished and warmth became a rumor. Houses leaned into each other like tired men, sharing heat through cracked walls and shared misery. Fires were small. Food was smaller.People survived by learning how not to feel.It was a small village, far from any real civilization. Easy food was rare. Help was rarer.Most days followed the same pattern. People rose late because there was no reason not to, then lingered near cold hearths, pretending warmth would return if they waited long enough. Doors stayed closed. Windows stayed shuttered. When someone left their home, it was with purpose. Water. Wood. Trade. Or theft.Children learned early which streets to avoid and which corners offered shelter from the wind.Older folks watched from behind glass, counting bodies and measuring whether winter had taken another name from the vill

The academy courtyard was too clean for the number of people packed into it.Stone polished smooth by decades of magic reflected the pale morning light. Banners hung perfectly still despite the open air.The stone seemed to drink in sound rather than reflect it, as though the place itself had learned how to listen.Hundreds of students stood in uneven rows, whispers rippling through the crowd like insects trapped beneath glass. Some voices were sharp with excitement.Others trembled with nerves.All of them blended into a restless, constant murmur that pressed in from every direction.Riven hated crowds.Not because they were loud.But because they were unpredictable. Too many people. Too many unknown variables.He stood with his hands at his sides, posture relaxed in a way that took effort. Every muscle stayed loose by design, ready to tighten at a moment's notice. He forced his breathing slow. Even. Steady.His eyes moved constantly, tracing lines most people ignored. Exits. Elevate

The bell did not ring like a warning.It rang with the promise of new work and hard lessons.Clear. Measured. Resonant enough to carry through stone and air alike. Its echo rolled across the academy grounds, settling into walls, courtyards, and halls as if the place itself had been waiting for it.With the sound came movement. Not rushed. Not fearful. But deliberate. Students flowed from doorways and arches into branching paths, robes swaying, voices lowering naturally as the day took shape.Riven paused just long enough to take it in.Every choice here had already been made once. Paths were worn not by age, but by intention. Stone had been laid where it would guide traffic. Towers had been positioned to watch, not impress.This place was not improvised.It was maintained.Cael shifted beside him, adjusting his pack with an uneasy roll of his shoulders."They really like their bells.""They like everyone moving at the same time," Riven said.His eyes followed the flow of students as t

Ilyra blinked.For a moment, she wasn't in the classroom.She was back on the road.Stone beneath her boots, worn smooth by centuries of leaving and returning. A carriage ahead of her bearing the academy's sigil, its wheels turning steadily, endlessly.The city behind her blurred into distance. Rooftops shrinking. Smoke thinning. The hospital's silhouette fading until it was just another shape swallowed by the horizon.She felt the familiar pull in her chest.The ache of absence.The quiet fear that something would go wrong the moment she was no longer there to steady it.Not panic.Not urgency.Just the certainty that the world was always closest to breaking when you weren't looking directly at it.That things held together out of habit more than strength."Ilyra."Her head snapped up.The classroom swam back into place. Tall windows admitting pale afternoon light. Stone walls etched with diagrams so old their meaning had softened into suggestion.Rows of healer initiates sat in care

Ilyra had fallen asleep in the medical wing healing Cael.Her consciousness snapped into place.Not because of pain.Because the room fell away.For a single, suspended moment, the medical wing ceased to exist. The white stone. The muted glow of ward-lights. The careful murmurs of healers working in practiced rhythm. All of it peeled back as if it had never been real to begin with.The ward-lights flickered.Not enough for anyone else to notice. Just a fractional hesitation in the steady glow, the kind that only registered if you had spent years watching for signs of failure.The hum beneath the room shifted pitch, like a note held just slightly too long. Her hands tingled where they rested near Cael's chest. Not with magic, but with expectation.And then the room let go of her.Sound vanished first.Then weight.Then time.She stood somewhere else.The sky was wrong.Not dark but empty. Devoid of any color. As if someone had reached up and scraped the color out of it, leaving behind