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I close my eyes. Stone. Darkness. Footsteps. "A woman was hiding."

"From what?"

"I don't know."

Cassian's expression grows thoughtful. "How old was the blood?" He asks.

"Almost two centuries." Nyra's blue eyes widen.

"That shouldn't be possible." She says.

"That appears to be the theme of my week."

No one laughs. Cassian rests both forearms against the railing.

"Emotions leave traces."

I look toward him. "In people."

"And places." He adds.

"Blood?"

He considers the question. "Siren records mention emotional residue clinging to objects after severe events."

"Can you sense it?"

"Sometimes."

"Would it last two centuries?"

"No." The answer is immediate.

"What if the fear was strong enough?" Nyra asks. "Emotion fades unless something preserves it." The word catches me.

"Preserves." I repeat.

Nyra leans forward. "Magic?"

"Possibly." Cassian looks toward the Academy towers. "Or repetition."

"What does that mean?"

"If the same fear happened again and again."

A chill moves beneath my skin. Not mine. Maybe. I turn away from the mountains. "I don't want to discuss this anymore."

Cassian nods immediately. "Then we don't."

Nyra closes her mouth around whatever question she had been about to ask. No pressure. No wounded expression. No insistence that they deserve answers because they care.

That evening, I return to my room alone. Rowan is at dinner. Aricia is in the library. Selena left a note saying she would return after evening study. The quiet helps. I open my notebook. The first lessons remain where I wrote them. Inheritance is potential. Mastery is earned. Skill without understanding becomes assumption. Strength without trust is only isolation wearing armor. I turn to a clean page. For a long time, I do not write. Then— Inheritance is what I was given. Below it: Manifestation may be what I cannot hide. The sentence feels too honest. I leave it anyway. I close the notebook. And for the first time since arriving at Varethia, the vastness of the Academy feels different. Not beautiful. Not demanding. Layered. As though everything I have seen so far exists on top of something else.

Chapter Ten

The Academy feels strangely lighter after Friday. Not quieter. Never quieter. There are still bells echoing through the halls before sunrise, professors assigning impossible amounts of reading, and students running through corridors because they underestimated the distance between classrooms. But something has shifted. The Place has done what no orientation speech ever could. Names have become people. The second-years nod at us now. Third-years stop to exchange sarcastic remarks instead of walking past as though we don't exist. Even the professors seem to notice the difference. Whether they approve of it remains impossible to determine.

My own manifestation attracts considerably less enthusiasm. Not from the others. From me. I have not touched blood since Professor Neris' assessment. Not even during morning meal preparations, when a vampire student accidentally cut his hand opening preserved fruit. My eyes found the blood instinctively. I looked away just as quickly. No echo. No fear. Only the memory of it. Cassian notices. He says nothing. For that alone, I am grateful.