Chapter 2: Blood and AshesElara didn't sleep.Every time she closed her eyes, she heard it. The Void remembers you. Every time she opened them, she half-expected to see Kaelen standing in the corner of her dormitory, pale and hollow-eyed, reaching for her.He never was. Just shadows. Just the creak of old wood and the distant hum of the academy's wards.By dawn, she had convinced herself it was a dream. Grief did strange things to the mind. She'd spent five years hearing her brother's voice in crowded streets and empty rooms. This was no different.She dressed in the dark, avoiding the cracked mirror above the washbasin. The uniform was a size too large, the hem frayed where a previous owner had tried to shorten it. She looked like exactly what she was: a charity case in a school full of heirs.The dining hall was a cathedral of glass and gold. Long tables groaned under platters of fruit and fresh bread, and students in immaculate uniforms filled the air with laughter and the occasio

Sera wanted to tell someone. Elara wouldn't let her.They slipped out of the restricted section, resealed the ward, and walked back through the library with the stiff, careful steps of people pretending they hadn't just seen something impossible. Sera kept whispering—we should tell a professor, we should tell Thorn, we should at least tell someone—and Elara kept saying no.Because the writing had been wet. Because the ink had been fresh. Because it wasn't a map anymore, it was a message, and messages were for one person only.Come find me.If she reported it, the Headmistress would know. And Caelan had warned her exactly what happened to students who became interesting.So instead, she went to Thorn.---His office was at the end of a corridor nobody used, behind a door that had no handle. Sera refused to come. "He gives me the creeps," she said, and vanished toward the dormitories.Elara knocked on the wood. The door opened on its own.Professor Thorn sat behind a desk buried in book

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

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

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