“Shadow classification experts.” Iris shrugs as if it’s campus gossip and not a death sentence. “Apparently they’re updating the student registry with more detailed ability parameters.”
Ability parameters. Which means they’re building a database of what everyone can do so they can flag anyone who doesn’t fit the mold later. Create a baseline, document the ceiling, then wait for someone to accidentally punch through it.
They’re looking for me.
The dormitory courtyard buzzes with returning students, but the vibe is wrong.
Dark Nephilim cluster in smaller groups than usual, their shadows pulled tight and well-behaved instead of the typical lazy displays of casual ability. Last term this courtyard was full of students shaping shadows into animals and flowers between classes, showing off with the easy confidence of people who’d been doing it since childhood. Now everyone’s shadows cling close to their feet like nervous pets.
Even the air feels different — thick with suppressed magic and the sour tang of collective anxiety that Iris must be drowning in.
“There’s more,” Iris whispers on the stairs, words nearly swallowed by the echo of footsteps on stone. “Elara’s organizing a light Nephilim study group focused specifically on shadow detection techniques. She’s already recruited half a dozen students.”
Wonderful. As if professional Hunters weren’t enough, the student body is forming its own little surveillance committee.Led by Elara Lightbringer, obviously — a perfect golden princess who’s been gunning for me since I had the audacity to exist in her general vicinity.
“Let her watch,” I say, sounding almost convincing. “Not like I have anything to hide.”
The biggest fucking lie I’ve ever told.
Our door swings open, and I freeze.
Everything looks almost right. Almost.
The scent hits first — cleaning solution and something sharper underneath, chemical and foreign, where there should only be dust and Iris’s lavender and the old-book smell that seeps from the walls.
I stand in the doorway cataloging wrongness with the paranoid precision that’s become second nature since last term. My books sit with their spines perfectly aligned. I always leave them slightly angled — a habit so consistent it functions as a tell. The lock on my trunk is closed, but the secondary latch — the one I always, always engage — hangs open. My star chart is pinned just slightly higher than where I left it, the bottom edge no longer aligned with the nail hole I use as a reference point.
Someone went through our room. Every inch of it.
“Did you let anyone in during the break?” I keep my voice light, dropping my bag on the bed.
“Just cleaning staff.” Iris frowns. “Why?”
I stretch casually, using the movement to scan the ceiling corners. There — a pinprick of silver where the wooden beams meet, barely visible if you don’t know what you’re looking for. A second one nestled beside the window frame, angled to cover my bed. A third disguised as part of my desk lamp’s hardware, positioned to monitor the space where I study and practice.
Three monitoring crystals. In my bedroom.
“No reason. Just feels weird coming back.”
Iris buys it, launching into a story about her family’s holiday traditions while I unpack with hands that want to shake and won’t be allowed to.
Three surveillance devices in the room where I sleep. Where I dream. Where my shadows sometimes slip their leash in the small hours and move with the autonomy that would get me killed if anyone saw. Every night for the rest of this term, I’ll need to maintain suppression even in unconsciousness — keeping my shadows flat and obedient while monitoring crystals record everything.
They’re not just watching dark Nephilim in general anymore. They’ve moved into our private spaces. And the specific attention paid to this room tells me everything I need to know about whose name sits at the top of their list.
After unpacking, I tell Iris I need to check on assigned reading and head to the library.
The truth is I need to map the full scope of what we’re dealing with before tomorrow’s demonstration.
The ancient library usually calms me — soaring stone arches that disappear into shadow-draped vaulting, the papery whisper of ten thousand leather-bound books, the particular hush that settles over a space where people have been quietly thinking for centuries. The smell alone normally works like a sedative. Old parchment layered over candle wax and wood polish, with that underlying hint of something sweet that might be the binding glue aging or might be magic settling into the shelves like dust.
Today it smells wrong.
The familiar base notes are buried under something sharp and institutional. Detection devices perch at every shelf intersection like silver spiders, their crystalline eyes pulsing in slow rhythm.
The Shadow Studies section has been completely gutted and restructured. Glass partitions where open shelves used to be,creating a visible barrier between students and knowledge that was freely accessible eight weeks ago. A Hunter guard sits at a small desk by the single entry point, his pale eyes tracking every student who approaches with the flat patience of someone paid by the hour to be suspicious.
A sign reads: “Access by approved application only. Faculty authorization required.”
