Shadow filled the sphere. Dark and cold, just like the Mors students before me.
Okay. Death magic. I could work with that. It wasn't my first choice, but at least I'd have an answer, a direction, a place to—
Lightning crackled through the shadow, shattering it.
What?
Then red flooded the glass, hot and pulsing. Then purple, flickering and wild. Then all four at once, swirling together like oil on water, fighting for dominance inside the sphere, and the glass was getting hot in my hands, too hot, vibrating so hard I could feel it in my teeth—
I tried to contain it. Cupped my hands tighter, pushed back, tried to force whatever was happening to stop. But it was like trying to hold back a flood with my bare hands.
The sphere cracked.
Then shattered.
I gasped as glass bit into my palms, shards scattering across my desk and the floor around me. Four colors of magic dissipated into the air like smoke.
Dead silence.
Professor Warrick had backed up three full steps, her face pale. Behind me, I could hear the whispers starting—shocked, confused, afraid.
"That's..." Warrick swallowed hard. "Miss Grey, that's not..."
"Not what?" I kept my voice steady even though my hands were shaking, even though I could feel blood dripping down my wrists and glass embedded in my palms. "Not normal? Not supposed to happen? Not possible?"
She didn't answer. Instead, she approached my desk slowly, like I was a wild animal that might bite. "Hold still."
She pulled a bone wand from her sleeve—a Stylus Mortis, I realized, recognizing it from Brittany's description. Mors magic. Death magic. She muttered something under her breath and made a sharp gesture, and I watched as the scattered glass shards rose from my desk, from the floor, from my bloody palms—pulling free with tiny stings that made me hiss—and reassembled themselves in midair.
The sphere reformed, hovering between us. But it wasn't right. The surface was a web of cracks, fracture lines running through the glass like a shattered windshield held together by sheer force of will. And inside, faint traces of all four colors still swirled—shadow and lightning and red and purple, refusing to fade, refusing to separate.
Professor Warrick plucked it from the air and held it out to me.
"This is yours now, Miss Grey. Your responsibility." Her voice was carefully neutral, but I could see the way her hand trembled slightly. "You'll need to repair it before you can be properly assessed. I suggest you figure out how."
I took the sphere. It was warm in my bloody hands, and I could feel something humming inside it—my magic, still trapped in the glass, still fighting itself.
"How am I supposed to fix it?"
"That," she said, already turning away, "is something you'll need to discover for yourself. Class dismissed."
Students filed out around me, giving me an even wider berth than usual. I sat there for a moment, staring at the cracked sphere in my hands, blood still dripping from the cuts in my palms.
In the front row across the aisle, Callum Bolingbroke was staring at me with those ice-blue eyes. And for the first time since I'd arrived at Nyxhaven, I saw something in his expression besides cold disdain.
I saw fear.
He caught me in the hallway.
"Miss Grey."
I'd been trying to get to the bathroom to wash the blood off my hands, but his voice stopped me cold. I turned to find him standing a few feet away, immaculate as ever, looking at me like I was a specimen he couldn't quite classify.
"That's me." I was cradling the cracked sphere against my chest, trying not to drip blood on my blazer and failing. "Did you need something, or do you just enjoy cornering freshmen in hallways?"
Something flickered across his face—surprise, maybe, that I wasn't cowering. "Your performance in there was concerning."
"Really? I hadn't noticed, what with the dead silence and the professor looking at me like I was about to explode."
