Professor Marris stands slowly, magic still laced around her fingertips like she’s afraid something else might rupture.
“She didn’t just touch it,” she says coolly. “She sealed a breach. Stabilized it. On her own.”
Raiden’s eyes flick to her. “That’s not possible.”
Kael’s jaw tightens. “Clearly, it is.”
Nolan shifts beside me but doesn’t let go, like he’s ready to hold me together if I shatter. “She didn’t do it alone.”
Kael’s eyes flash to him, then to where Nolan’s hands are still wrapped around me.
Raiden steps forward, voice quieter now. “We need to get her out of here.”
Professor Marris doesn’t argue. She just nods once, curtly. “The headmaster has already been alerted. Go. Now.”
Kael steps forward and crouches. “Can you stand?”
“I think so,” I breathe. My legs wobble as I try, but Kael’s already there in front of me, an arm steadying me with a strength that feels both effortless and overwhelming.
Nolan rises beside me, still close. Raiden takes position on my other side.
I don’t miss the way they all stand slightly between me and the rest of the class. Like they’re shielding me.
Kael’s voice is a low growl as he meets Professor Marris’s gaze. “We’ll handle it from here.”
We step into the hallway, the door closing behind us, muffling the noise of rising whispers and hurried footsteps.
The second we’re out of view, I sag. “Everyone saw what I did.”
Kael’s face is unreadable, but his voice is low. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It does,” I whisper. “It changes everything.”
Raiden doesn’t deny it. “You won’t be viewed as just a human anymore. They’ll see you as something else now.”
“Something dangerous,” Nolan adds softly.
Kael’s hand curls into a fist at his side. “Then we make sure no one touches her.”
The silence that follows is loud. That's not a promise. It's a threat. None of them miss a beat as we keep walking. Together.
And I don’t know what scares me more—the fact that they’re all suddenly united in protecting me…or the fact that I might actually need it.
I barely remember the time between class and the summoning to the Council Chambers.
One minute, I’m on my knees in the wreckage of Runic Arts, the taste of magic still burning on my tongue, and the next, I’m being led down long corridors lit with cold, flickering runes. No one speaks. Not Kael, not Nolan, not even Raiden—though hispresence hums next to mine like a live wire. The silence says everything.
I’m in trouble. Big, ancient, Council-level trouble.
The Council chamber isn’t what I expected.
Stone arches rise overhead, crisscrossed with thin veins of glowing magic. The air smells like parchment and judgment if that has a scent. Seven seats form a crescent at the far end of the room—five of them filled. Professor Marris stands to the side. The headmaster sits in the center, flanked by a warlock in deep silver and a woman with silver-threaded hair and frost in her eyes. None of them smile.
I stand in the center of the room, flanked again; Nolan on one side, Raiden on the other. Kael lingers behind me like a shadow that’s just waiting for an excuse to burn the world down.
“Lindsay Blake,” the headmaster begins. “You are human, admitted under trial status for academic and magical evaluation.”
I nod, throat dry. “Yes, sir.”
