The official records are useless. Everything about grimoires was removed in 1927, and what's left is sanitized to the point of meaninglessness—vague references to "unified magic practitioners" who were "integrated into the four-disciplinesystem" after the Schism. No names. No details. No explanation of what happened to them.
But there are other sources. Old newspapers in the archive section, their pages yellowed and brittle. Academic journals from the early twentieth century, before someone decided to scrub the history clean. Letters and diaries from Nyxhaven alumni, donated to the library and apparently forgotten.
I piece together fragments. A woman named Helena Grimoire who published passionate arguments for magical equality in 1925. A sorority called the Grimoire Girls, headquartered in a building called Concordia Hall, which accepted students who could channel all four disciplines. References to something called "the capacity problem" and debates about whether unified magic was a gift or a threat.
Then, in 1926, the Schism. The four fraternities formally separated. The Grimoire Girls sorority was "dissolved." Concordia Hall was "condemned."
And after that—nothing. An entire category of mage, erased from the record like they never existed.
I keep digging. There has to be more. There has to be something that explains what I am and why everyone's so afraid of it.
The shadows curl around my ankles as I work, keeping me company in the dark.
The weather turns strange on Thursday.
I notice it first in Professor Parker's class—she's lecturing about atmospheric magic and its relationship to emotional states when the sky outside the window goes from grey to green in the spaceof a breath. Thunder rumbles, distant but growing. The pressure in the room drops so fast my ears pop.
"Interesting," Parker says, glancing at the window. "It seems we have a live demonstration. Can anyone identify the magical signature?"
A Tempest student raises her hand. "Storm casting. Someone's pulling a lot of atmospheric energy."
"Correct. And based on the speed of formation and the intensity of the pressure drop, I'd estimate it's someone quite powerful. Perhaps even—" She pauses, tilts her head like she's listening to something the rest of us can't hear. "Ah. Yes. Class dismissed early today. I'd recommend staying indoors until this passes."
The students scatter. I hang back, watching the clouds through the window—dark and roiling, shot through with flashes of green and purple lightning that doesn't look natural. The cold thing in my chest stirs, and I feel something else stir with it. Something new. A prickle at the back of my neck, a hum in my teeth, a sense of electricity building in the air.
I know who's doing this. I've felt his storms before.
The quad is empty when I step outside.
Everyone else has taken Parker's advice and fled indoors, leaving the wide stone courtyard abandoned beneath the churning sky. Rain hasn't started yet, but it's coming—I can smell it, ozone and wet earth and something sharper underneath, something that tastes like burning.
Atlas is standing in the center of the quad.
He's not casting, exactly. He's juststanding, feet planted, head tilted back, arms loose at his sides while the sky tears itself apart above him. Lightning arcs between the clouds in sheets and forks, illuminating his white-blond hair, the hard line of his jaw, the way his whole body is tight with something I can't name.
He's not causing the storm. Heisthe storm. His emotions made manifest in wind and thunder and the electricity that crackles through the air thick enough to taste.
I should go inside. I should turn around, walk back to Bellamy Hall, let him work through whatever this is alone. That's the smart choice. The safe choice.
Instead, I walk toward him.
"Atlas."
He doesn't seem to hear me. The wind is howling now, whipping my borrowed black shirt against my body, tearing at my hair. I push forward, one step at a time, until I'm close enough to see his face.
His eyes are wrong. Not glazed, exactly, butdistant—like he's seeing something that isn't here, something that happened a long time ago. His hands are shaking. Lightning dances across his knuckles, uncontrolled, responding to whatever's happening inside him.
"Atlas," I say again, louder. "You need to stop. Someone's going to get hurt."
That reaches him. His eyes snap to mine, and for a moment I see it—the fear underneath the rage, the grief underneath the fear, something raw and wounded that he usually keeps buried under all that cold hostility.
Then the mask comes down and he's just Atlas Knox again, the Tempest president who tried to fry me on a rooftop.
"Get inside, Grey." His voice is rough, scraped. "This isn't your business."
"You're about to electrocute half the campus. I think that makes it everyone's business."
"I saidget inside."
