And the walls...
The walls reveal what they've always hidden.
Murals that don't exist in physical reality cover every surface, depicting histories that predate the Academy's founding, stories that explain why this place was built and what purposes it was always meant to serve. Gwenievere's ancestors feature prominently—Fae royalty whose bloodlines eventually produced the hybrid standing before me in ghostly form, their crowns ofthorns and roses marking them as the particular lineage I've spent centuries waiting to welcome back.
She turns back to me.
Shock, mesmerization, and confusion compete for dominance across her spectral features.
Beautiful even in bewilderment.
Perhaps especially in bewilderment.
"What... how... this is..."
The incomplete sentences speak to overwhelm that no amount of explanation could have prepared her for. She's seeing the world as Fae see it—layers upon layers of reality existing simultaneously, magic visible in ways that witchcraft never allowed, truth revealing itself without the filters that protect mortal minds from comprehension they can't handle.
She'll have much to learn.
Techniques for managing the input, for filtering what requires attention from what can be safely ignored. Methods for switching between sight modes without triggering headaches that can incapacitate for hours. Protocols for navigating social situations where others can't see what she's seeing, where speaking about the mystical realities she perceives would mark her as unstable rather than awakened.
We won't be granted time in Year Four.
The thought carries weight that dampens my momentary satisfaction.
The trials approach with the particular inevitability that defines this Academy's structure—challenges designed to test and break and occasionally kill those deemed unworthy. Whatever forces opposed her parents, opposed the original Academy's vision, opposed everything Gwenievere represents... they haven't disappeared during the centuries I've spent waiting.
They've been preparing too.
Building strength.
Planning opposition that will strike when we're most vulnerable.
I've trained for centuries for this moment.
Prepared contingencies for contingencies, backup plans for backup plans, strategies that account for variables I couldn't possibly predict. The knowledge accumulated across endless decades exists specifically for this purpose—to guide my Queen through challenges that would destroy her without proper support.
It would finally come to fruition.
Or we would all die in the attempt.
Those are really the only options.
I pull her soul back without warning.
The extraction was gentle, controlled, designed to minimize trauma and maximize educational value. The return is similarly smooth—magic reaching across the boundary between spectral and physical, gathering the luminescent essence that is Gwenievere's separated consciousness, and guiding it back toward the vessel awaiting its return.
She gasps as reality reasserts itself.
One moment she exists as ghost, incorporeal and weightless. The next she's crashing back into flesh that suddenly carries weight again, into senses that suddenly register physical input, into a body that hasn't quite adjusted to having its soul forcibly removed and returned.
Her eyes flutter.
Roll back slightly.
Then her body goes limp.
I catch her before she can fall—arms wrapping around her form with reflexes honed across centuries of combat and crisis. Her head lolls against my shoulder, silver hair spilling across my chest in streams that feel like silk against my skin. The dress shifts with her movement, transparent panels revealing curvesthat my hands itch to explore but that this moment doesn't allow.
