Noah didn't tell anyone about the statue.What was there to say? *A stone wolf looked at me and something in my chest answered it.* They'd laugh, or worse, they'd send him to the infirmary for a scan, and the scan would come back the same way it always did … nothing. No wolf. No trace of one. Just a boy with a normal heartbeat and an overactive imagination, according to the last three doctors who'd checked.So he said nothing, and by the next morning the whole thing already felt like something he'd made up to feel less alone.The monthly rankings board was posted outside the mess hall every four weeks, and today was that day. Students clustered around it before breakfast, shoving for a look, cheering or groaning depending on where their name landed. Noah didn't need to push through the crowd to know where his was. It was always in the same place.*47. Gray, N. … Unranked Wolf Class.*Forty-seven out of forty-seven. Same as last month. Same as the month before that."Look at that," som

Elite training happened every Thursday, out on the east field, and Noah wasn't allowed anywhere near it.That didn't stop him from watching.Dax caught him leaving the dorm that morning, boots already on, book bag left behind. "You're doing the fence thing again.""It's not a thing.""You sit at the tree line for two hours every Thursday and watch Adrian train people who aren't you. That's a thing, Noah.""I like watching the drills.""Sure you do." Dax didn't push it further. "Just don't be late for dinner. Again.""I won't."He found a spot along the tree line where the fence gave a clear view without putting him in anyone's way, and he sat there most Thursdays, alone, pretending he had a reason to be nearby other than the obvious one. Nobody ever questioned it. Nobody paid enough attention to him to bother.Adrian ran the sessions himself. Not Vess, not any of the junior instructors … Adrian, personally, because elite training was reserved for the top ten ranks, and apparently that

The dream started the same way every fire starts. Small. Easy to ignore. A single flame in the dark, flickering somewhere just out of reach.Noah was standing in a hallway he didn't recognize, stone walls carved with symbols that meant nothing and everything at once, and the flame was creeping along the tapestries above him, slow enough to almost look gentle.Then it wasn't small anymore.The fire ran up the walls all at once, swallowing the symbols, swallowing the ceiling, licking across a long banquet table set with plates no one had touched. Somewhere behind him a woman was screaming his name … except it wasn't his name, not Noah, something else, something with more weight to it, a word that felt like it belonged in his mouth even though he'd never said it before.*Kaelen.*He turned to find her and the hallway kept stretching, longer with every step, the fire chasing him no matter which direction he ran. Her voice kept calling, closer and then farther, closer and then farther, lik

The chapel bell struck ten, and Noah was already there, standing in the dark behind a half-collapsed pew, waiting for a man who never came.The chapel itself was older than anything else on campus, half-swallowed by ivy, most of its windows boarded over decades ago. It smelled like dust and cold stone, and every small sound … a settling beam, a bird somewhere in the rafters … made his heart lurch toward the door.He gave it twenty minutes. Then thirty. He told himself Corvin had been delayed … The faculty meeting running long, some excuse that made sense … and stayed until the cold coming off the stone floor had worked all the way through his shoes.By eleven, he stopped telling himself anything and just felt afraid.He walked back to the dorms alone, replaying every version of what could have gone wrong. Maybe Corvin got caught sneaking away. Maybe someone else found out about the meeting first. Maybe the man from the courtyard had gotten to him. Every possibility was worse than the

Noah didn't remember the walk back to the dorms. One second he was standing frozen on Adrian's porch, and the next he was lying on his bed staring at the ceiling, Adrian's voice still looping in his head like something stuck under his skin.*We don't have as much time as I thought we did.*He didn't tell Dax what he'd heard. He didn't tell anyone. Some things felt too dangerous to say out loud, like naming them might make them more real than they already were.He lay there until his stomach reminded him he hadn't eaten since breakfast, and even then he almost didn't move. Every part of him wanted to stay still, to let the day end without asking anything more of him. But staying still meant thinking, and thinking meant circling back to Adrian's voice on that call, and he'd already done that enough times to know it wouldn't lead anywhere good.He went to dinner anyway, because staying in his room alone with his own thoughts felt worse than sitting in a crowded hall pretending to be norm