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"Where's Caelen?"

"Coming."

"How did you convince him?"

Rhyven looks down to his reports. "I told him I needed to discuss Wing readiness."

"That wasn't a lie."

"No."

"Just not the whole truth."

He looks at me. "You've learned."

I glare at him. His mouth twitches. Then footsteps approach outside. The expression disappears. Caelen enters without knocking. "You know, some of us respect normal hours." He closes the door behind him. Then sees me. His eyes move from my face to Rhyven. The ease leaves him immediately. "What happened?" No greeting. No joke. He knows.

Rhyven gestures toward the empty chair. "Sit."

Caelen remains standing. "Why is Eirea here?"

I answer before Rhyven can. "Because this concerns me."

Caelen looks at me. Something guarded appears in his expression. "All right." He takes the chair nearest mine. Rhyven does not sit. He stands beside the desk, arms folded. Caelen notices. "You're expecting me to be angry." He says to Rhyven.

"Yes."

"Useful." His gaze returns to me. "Start talking."

I begin with the First Trial. Not the version Caelen already heard. The truth. The cold. The silence. The moment when the forest felt absent rather than empty. I tell him about the ward stone. Vyrael's bond disappearing. Aldric's blood remembering nothing. Then remembering only what came after the Place. Caelen does not interrupt. His face becomes still in the same way Father's does when he is listening to something he dislikes. But Caelen's stillness has never frightened me. Until now.

I tell him about Professor Neris. The letters. Thirty-eight reports from across the kingdoms. Wards failing to recognize their keepers. Manifestations disappearing and returning violently. Teachers forgetting where they stood. Dragon bonds vanishing in flight. I tell him about the Silent Archive. Ilara Menn's journal. The missing pages. The Academy map. The Hall of Dominion. The records someone deliberately removed.

Finally, Briar's Hollow. The escalating silence. The old blood. The forest becoming unreachable. The broken-circle marker beneath the earth. When I finish, the room feels too small. Caelen looks down at his hands. For several long seconds, he says nothing.

Then he raises his eyes toward Rhyven. "You took my sister into this." His voice is quiet. No anger yet. Something worse. Hurt.

Rhyven does not move. "She was already in it."

Caelen stands. "She is a first-year."

"I know."

"She has been here for weeks."

"I know."

"She should be learning how not to get lost between lecture halls, not investigating whether an enemy from the Silent War is returning."

Rhyven's expression remains controlled. "She found the first evidence."

"That doesn't make it her responsibility." Caelen now sounds irritated.

"No."

"Then why?"

There's a short silence. "Because ignoring what she can do won't make her safer."