I’m not fine. I’m so far from fine that the word has lost meaning.
But the cover story works — everyone attributes my hollow eyes and mechanical movements to academic pressure rather than the constant war between what I am and what I have to pretend to be. Even the other dark Nephilim have stopped giving me sideways looks. They figure I’m burning out on advanced studies, not that I’m suppressing abilities that could rearrange this dining hall’s architecture if I lost focus for half a second.
Back in our room, a note waits on my pillow. Heavy parchment, library seal, Constantine’s handwriting. My pulse kicks up before I even unfold it.
“Specialized instruction requires environmental samples from the northern forest boundary. Proceed to clearing marker #7 after midnight patrol change. Shadow scout reconnaissance recommended for optimal route selection.”
Not Constantine’s usual coded format. More formal, almost ritualistic in its phrasing — language that carries the cadence of someone much older than a Hunter professor.
Understanding clicks into place and something warm blooms behind my ribs, chasing away the bone-deep exhaustion for the first time in days.
This isn’t about meeting Constantine. This is about Bael.
The hours between dinner and midnight stretch like taffy. I study at my desk, appearing calm, turning textbook pages at appropriate intervals while the monitoring crystals pulse their steady blue sweep across the room. Iris works on an empathy assignment beside me, occasionally humming under her breath — a habit she doesn’t know she has.
The normalcy of it feels surreal when I’m counting minutes until I can slip out of this surveillance cage and into the arms of an immortal who’s been waiting in a frozen forest for me.
Iris falls asleep around eleven. I watch her breathing settle into that kitten-soft rhythm for a full five minutes before I move — can’t risk her being in a light doze with those empath instincts. When I’m certain she’s genuinely under, I slip from bed fully dressed, my dark uniform blending with the shadows as I ease the door open one silent inch at a time.
The corridor is empty. Torchlight flickers along stone walls, creating pools of light and darkness that alternate like piano keys. I move through the dark sections, timing my steps to avoid the lit patches, my shadow scouts extending ahead to check each intersection before I round the corner.
The main courtyard is the real test — sixty feet of open ground drenched in moonlight that turns ancient cobblestones to a silver stage with nowhere to hide.
I flatten myself against the archway and send out a scout so thin it’s barely more than a thought given shape. Two guards at the eastern gate, deep in quiet conversation, their breath forming clouds that merge between them. One by the fountain, arms crossed, rocking on his heels to stay warm. A fourth patrolling the northern wall in a slow circuit, silver badge catching moonlight with each step.
I count. The northern guard reaches the western corner, turns, begins his return pass. I have approximately ninety seconds before his sightline covers my crossing route again.
I go.
Shadow-cushioned footsteps across the cobblestones — not silent, but soft enough to pass for wind or settling stone. I duck behind the massive plinth of some forgotten academy founder, press myself into the statue’s shadow, then cross the next open stretch to the colonnade along the north side.
The January cold sinks through my uniform like needles, sharp enough to make my eyes water, but adrenaline keeps the shivers locked down. Shivering means movement. Movement means detection.
The boundary wall looms ahead — fifteen feet of weathered stone topped with iron spikes that glint with malicious intent in the moonlight. During the day, the gates require identification and purpose declarations. At night, they’re sealed with physical locks and magical barriers that hum with low-frequency energy I can feel through the soles of my boots.
But there’s a section near the northern corner where centuries-old tree roots have cracked the foundation, creating a gap just barely wide enough for a person who knows it exists. Constantine showed me during a training walk last term. I never thought I’d actually need it.
I press my body against the wall — rough stone, ice-cold against my cheek, smelling of frost and old mortar. My fingers find the gap by touch, tracing the crack where root has separated stone from stone over decades of patient growth.
It’s tight. I exhale completely, turn sideways, and begin working through inch by inch. Stone scrapes against my uniform, catches on my belt, drags across my hip bone hard enough to bruise. My shoulders compress in ways that send sharp protests up my neck.
Then I’m through, and the forest opens before me like a held breath finally released.
The difference is immediate and physical.
A loosening in my chest, my shoulders, my jaw, muscles I didn’t realize were clenched releasing all at once. Beyond the academy’s surveillance perimeter, the constant low-grade pressure of detection equipment vanishes like stepping out of a headwind.
The air smells completely different. Clean pine and cold earth and frozen leaf mold, the mineral tang of creek water somewhere nearby. No metallic surveillance residue. No chemical monitoring aftertaste. Just the forest being a forest, ancient and unbothered by the paranoid institution squatting at its edge.
My shadows respond to the freedom with something that feels embarrassingly close to joy — stretching outward, extending scouts along deer paths and up tree trunks, tasting the darkness with a hunger that makes me realize how starved they’ve been. I let them range further than I’d dare on campus, the forest’s natural shadow depth feeding their reach until I can sense the shape of the landscape for hundreds of yards in every direction.
I move fast. Night sounds fill the spaces between my footsteps — an owl’s hunting cry somewhere above, something small rustling through frozen underbrush, wind whispering through branches that creak under the weight of old snow. The moon hangs fat and white above the canopy, throwing silver-blue light through gaps in the bare branches.
The clearing appears exactly as described — a perfect circle of open ground ringed by massive oaks whose gnarled root systems form natural borders. The trees are old enough that their lowest branches hang twenty feet up, creating a cathedral-like space with a living ceiling. The ground smells different from the forestfloor — cleaner, sharper, carrying a mineral quality that suggests underground water or ancient stone formations beneath the thin soil.
Moonlight floods the center, turning winter-dead grass to silver.
Bael stands in the middle.
