The door unlatches. A hushed silence follows as we slip inside.
Thorne’s study yawns before us—dim, cold, cavernous. The fireplace sits empty, untouched. Bookshelves climb the walls like battlements. Artifacts gleam beneath dusty glass—things that seem to pulse faintly in the dark with a magick all their own.
Nothing is out of place. Not a quill left at rest. Not a single piece of parchment unfiled.
Even in absence, Thorne feels present. Watching.
My boots make no sound on the rug as I move to the file cabinets—the polished metal ones first, dull under the moonlight. I pull open the student drawer. Files hum with whispered histories—names I know, lives measured in awards and write-ups. I flip through until my own name appears.
I hesitate, then pull it free. The information is clean. Sanitized. The world’s version of my life: grades, class ranking, dormitory assignment. As if nothing unusual shadows my days. But it’s a mask. I know it, and I’m pretty sure Thorne knows it too.
Rozsen. Nate. Finn. Amelia. All here. Labeled. Documented.
My fingers drift to the next cabinet. The staff files. Professors, teaching assistants, the delegates from Vikhrostrum.
The last cabinet bears no label. Its surface is smooth, dark wood—ancient, unlike the others. And locked.
I reach out, my water testing its edges, but the moment it touches the cabinet, a low hum begins to vibrate beneath my fingers.
Another ward.
I pull my hand back, frowning. “This one’s different.”
Gavrail crouches beside me, already fishing through theinner pocket of his coat. “That’s because it’s not just locked and warded. It’s protected by something else.”
He draws out a small glass vial, stoppered with wax. The liquid inside is a dense black, almost violet when caught by the moonlight spilling through the window. It swirls slowly, like smoke trapped in oil.
I inhale sharply. “Is that?—?”
Shadowmire.
From our last fusion—bottled and saved, just in case.
The air changes the second he uncorks the vial: cold and sharp, the way the sky tastes before a storm breaks.
With a surgeon’s care, he tips it. A single drop falls into the cabinet’s top-drawer keyhole. It doesn’t burn—it seeps. Intelligent. Deliberate. Like it’s testing the ward before it decides to devour it.
“I’ve been experimenting,” he murmurs. His mouth tilts into a smirk. “Turns out it’s good for more than just hiding from our parents.” He watches the keyhole like it’s a pulse point. “Shadowmire doesn’t just break barriers. It learns them—takes their shape—then unravels them from the inside.” His gaze flicks to mine. “Locks aren’t built for that kind of pressure.”
A faint hiss. No flash. No heat. Just a subtle shift in the room—like the world exhales.
The shadowmire threads inward, thick and oily. It moves like ink over paper, slipping along the wards’ seams, finding every rule the lock is trying to enforce, then loosening them.
I feel it. The same way I felt it in the Grotto. Not his and not mine—ours.
The cabinet groans, a low, unnatural sound, like a bone shifting out of socket.
A long beat of silence.
Then—click.
The drawer slides open an inch on its own.
I release the breath I was holding.
Inside are carefully organized folders—heavier, older than anything else in the room. Some are stamped with wax, others lined with silk.
Ancient lines. Lineages. Tracked, cataloged, and watched.
