Greyline did not kill you quickly. It took its time. Winter arrived early and refused to leave, settling over the village like a debt no one could pay. Snow packed the streets into narrow white corridors where sound vanished and breath turned brittle. Roofs sagged. Wood split. Doors warped in their frames. Warmth was something you remembered, not something you owned. Houses leaned toward one another as if tired of standing alone. Cracked walls pressed close, sharing what little heat they could trap. Fires burned low. Food ran lower. People survived by learning how not to feel too much. Greyline was small and far from anything that mattered. The nearest trade road iced over before midwinter. Caravans passed when they could. Most did not bother. Easy food was rare. Help was rarer. Days followed a pattern. Rise late because there was no reason to rise early. Count what remained. Decide what could be spared. Keep doors closed unless leaving meant survival. Water. Wood. Trade. Or th

The academy courtyard was too clean for the number of people packed into it, the stone polished smooth by decades of magic reflecting pale morning light with almost deliberate precision. Banners hung motionless despite the open air, their fabric unnaturally still as though the wind had been instructed to behave. Even the ground seemed to absorb noise rather than return it, swallowing sound in a way that made the space feel less like a gathering place and more like a chamber built for observation. Hundreds of students stood in uneven rows, whispers moving through them in restless currents that never quite rose above a murmur. Some voices carried sharp excitement, others trembled with nerves, but together they blended into a constant pressure that pressed inward from every side. It was not chaos, but it was unstable, and instability was what Riven noticed first. He hated crowds not because they were loud but because they were unpredictable. Too many bodies meant too many variables,

The bell did not ring like a warning. It rang with the promise of new work and hard lessons, clear and measured, resonant enough to carry through stone and open air alike. Its echo rolled across the academy grounds and settled into walls, courtyards, and halls as if the structure itself had been waiting for the sound. With it came movement. Not rushed. Not fearful. Deliberate. Students flowed from doorways and arches into branching paths, robes swaying as voices lowered naturally and the day arranged itself into order. Riven paused just long enough to observe the pattern. Every path had already been decided. Stone was laid not for beauty but for direction. Towers were positioned to monitor rather than impress. Nothing here felt 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 replied. His eyes tracked the flow as the crowd divided al

Ilyra blinked, and for a moment she was no longer in the classroom. She was back on the road, stone worn smooth beneath her boots by centuries of leaving and returning. A carriage bearing the academy's sigil rolled steadily ahead of her, its wheels turning with relentless certainty. The city behind her blurred into distance, rooftops shrinking and smoke thinning until the hospital's silhouette faded into the horizon. The familiar pull settled in her chest. Not panic. Not urgency. The ache of absence. The quiet fear that something would unravel the moment she was no longer there to steady it. The world, she had learned, was often closest to breaking when no one was looking directly at it. Things held together out of habit more than strength. "Ilyra." Her head lifted sharply. The classroom returned in full clarity, tall windows admitting pale afternoon light, stone walls etched with diagrams so old their meaning had softened into suggestion. Rows of healer initiates sat composed in d

Ilyra had fallen asleep in the medical wing beside Cael's bed. Her consciousness snapped into place not because of pain, but because the room fell away. For a suspended instant, the medical wing ceased to exist. The white stone walls, the muted glow of ward lights, the careful murmur of healers working in practiced rhythm all peeled back as though they had never been there. The ward lights flickered, not enough for anyone else to notice. Only a fractional hesitation in their steady glow, the kind that registered only if you had spent years watching for signs of failure. The hum beneath the room shifted pitch, a note held slightly too long. Her hands tingled where they rested near Cael's chest. Not with magic. With expectation. 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 color, as if it had been scraped clean and stretched thin across something too wide. A pale nothing pres