Chapter 52The room Selene chose sat two floors below the Headmaster's tower, windowless, its stone walls layered with faint silver warding lines that hummed almost imperceptibly when she closed the door behind them. A single table. Two chairs. No guards, no restraints, nothing that announced itself as an interrogation space beyond the bone-deep quiet of a room built specifically to keep sound from leaving it."Sit," Selene said, settling into the chair across from him with unhurried precision. "Your wolf may stay. I'd prefer to observe his reactions alongside yours, if you don't object."Ethan sat, Ash pressing close against his leg beneath the table, violet eyes fixed on Selene with the same unbroken wariness it had carried since the tower."I'll begin with the mark," she said, producing a small, polished lens from within her robes, its surface etched with the same silver warding pattern as the walls. "Your Awakening crystal flickered an unrecognized symbol before settling on your o

# Chapter 54Selene summoned them to the academy's lower training yard just after dawn, a circular stone arena sunk below ground level and ringed with the same silver warding Ethan had seen in the interrogation room, humming faint in the gray morning light. She stood at its center already, black robes stark against pale stone, and for the first time since the tower, she wasn't alone.A shape stood beside her that made Ash go rigid the moment Ethan led him down the stone steps.It looked, at first glance, almost gentle—humanoid in rough silhouette, wings folded close against a form built of something that wasn't quite light and wasn't quite substance, radiating a soft, warm glow that made the surrounding stone look washed-out and gray by comparison. Its face held no features Ethan could properly focus on, smooth and luminous, and where its eyes should have been there was only brighter light still, patient and watchful.**[SUMMON DETECTED: LIGHT SERAPH]****[RANK: A]****[CLASSIFICATION

The knock came well past midnight, soft and deliberate, three measured strikes against Ethan's dormitory door that didn't match the Bureau's usual precise authority at all.Ash's ears pricked up instantly, violet eyes fixed on the door, and Ethan rose from the edge of his bed where sleep had refused to find him for the better part of two hours, crossing the small room with Nyx's whispery presence stirring alert at the edge of his mind.*the headmaster,* Nyx said quietly, before Ethan had even reached the handle. *alone. and afraid, in a way i have not sensed from him before.*Ethan opened the door to find the old man standing in the dim corridor, no formal robes tonight, just a plain traveling cloak that made him look considerably older and more ordinary than the measured authority he usually carried."May I come in," he said, voice low, glancing once down the corridor behind him. "Quickly, if you don't mind."Ethan stepped aside. The Headmaster entered, and the moment the door shut b

The Pit sat a league beyond the academy's eastern boundary, reached by a narrow mountain path that wound steadily downward into a basin ringed by sheer rock walls, warding runes carved deep into the stone at regular intervals, humming with a dense, oppressive energy that made Ethan's skin crawl before he'd even reached the bottom.Selene waited at the edge, Sariel drifting luminous beside her, a small contingent of academy proctors and two other Bureau agents Ethan hadn't seen before stationed at careful intervals along the rim."The parameters are simple," Selene said, voice carrying easy across the basin's stone amphitheater. "One hour, from the moment the gate opens. No weapons beyond your beasts. No intervention from outside the Pit unless your life becomes genuinely, immediately forfeit—a threshold I alone will judge, and I promise you I will not judge it generously, because a trial with an easy escape proves nothing." Her gray eyes found his, steady and unreadable. "The creature

They carried Ash out of the Pit on a stretcher conjured by one of the Bureau agents, healers converging the moment the stone gate ground fully open, and for a long, disoriented stretch of time Ethan lost track of everything beyond the raw, hollowed-out exhaustion dragging at every part of him. He remembered Lyra's face, white with fear, breaking through the gathered crowd to reach him. He remembered Cassian's hand gripping his shoulder, steadying him when his own legs finally gave out. He remembered very little else until he woke hours later in the academy infirmary, sunlight slanting low through the windows, Ash breathing slow and steady in the cot beside his own."You're awake," Lyra said, from a chair pulled close beside his bed, dark circles shadowing her eyes like she hadn't slept at all. "You lost a considerable amount of blood. The healers weren't thrilled.""Worth it," Ethan said, voice cracked and dry."You promised me you'd pull back." Her voice carried equal parts relief an