She holds the sphere up to the light. Examines the crack. Watches the four colors chase each other inside the glass with the expression of a jeweler appraising a stone.
"Interesting." She turns it in her fingers. "You never managed to fix it."
"It won't separate." My voice comes out steadier than I feel. "The disciplines—they won't stay apart."
"No." Her eyes meet mine over the sphere, and the smile sharpens—the warm mask peeling back by a millimeter, showing something underneath that's been waiting for this moment with a patience I can't fathom. "They wouldn't, would they?"
She places the sphere on the pedestal.
The effect is immediate. The colors inside surge brighter—the four disciplines responding to the proximity of the four presidents behind me, reaching toward their sources like iron filings toward magnets. The sphere vibrates on the wooden surface, the crack glowing faintly, and I feel an answering vibration in my chest. A tuning fork struck. A frequency matched.
Catalina steps back. Folds her hands. Looks past me to the four presidents.
"Standard practice for unusual cases," she says. Louder now. For the audience. "Each president will channel their discipline toward Miss Grey. We'll observe what her sphere does—and what she does." A pause. The smile. The warmth that stops at her cheekbones. "There's nothing to fear. This is simply a diagnostic."
Nothing to fear.The same words Callum heard in her office. The same words she said to his brother, the night before he left.
I plant my feet on the stone platform. Square my shoulders. The four magics are humming in that unified chord—shadow and storm and blood and chaos, all of them bracing, all of them ready, all of them telling me in their different languages that what's about to happen is going to change everything.
Felix's voice in my head:Don't fight it. Go with whatever your magic wants to do.
Ren's voice:Blood magic is about sharing. Not taking.
Atlas's voice, broken and raw:I won't watch that again.
Callum's voice, barely a whisper in a dark classroom:I don't have a choice.
"Shall we begin?" Catalina says. She's not looking at me anymore. She's looking at her son. "Mr. Bolingbroke."
Callum steps forward.
His face is blank. His hands rise, slow and steady, and the Stylus Mortis—the bone wand with its silver inlay—extends from his right sleeve into his fingers with the practiced grace of someone who has been casting death magic since before he could write his own name. The shadows on the platform darken. Pull toward him. Pool at his feet like ink spreading across water.
He doesn't look at me. Not once.
The shadows come for me.
Chapter 22: Everly
Callum's magic hits me like falling through ice.
Not a wave—a current. The shadows pour from his Stylus Mortis in a controlled stream, precise and directed, the same surgical precision he brings to everything. They cross the platform in a straight line, black as ink against the dark stone, and when they reach me they don't hesitate—they go in through my chest like a key into a lock, and the cold is immediate. Deep. Familiar. The same cold I absorbed in Ossium Hall weeks ago, but amplified, refined, channeled through the strongest death mage on campus instead of a student who lost control.
I gasp. My back arches. The shadows I already carry surge to meet the new ones—a reunion, a recognition, the magic inside me rushing toward its source like a child running to a parent. The cold intensifies, spreading from my chest to my shoulders to my fingertips, and for a second I can't see—just dark, just shadow, the world going black at the edges.
Then it settles. Finds its place. Slots into the space behind my ribs where the death magic lives, and the cold becomes bearable. A stone. A weight. Something I can carry.
On the pedestal, the sphere responds. The shadow-dark color inside deepens, swirling faster, pressing against the crack. The glass vibrates on the wood—a sound I can feel more than hear, a low hum that resonates in my molars.
I breathe. I can do this. One down. Three to go.
Catalina's voice: "Mr. Knox."
Atlas steps forward.
His jaw is still locked, the cords in his neck visible, and his conductor shakes in his hand—a fine tremor that he's trying to hide and can't. He raises it, and the sky above the amphitheaterresponds. Not a storm—not yet—but the clouds darken, the pressure drops, and the smell of ozone fills the courtyard, thick enough to taste.
His eyes meet mine. Blue. Agonized. The look of a man aiming a weapon at someone and praying it misfires.
