A chair.
The image flashed too fast to hold, but it was there—straight-backed, metal-bound, bolted to the floor.
A boy standing in the corner.
Older than her. Tall already. Too still.
Watching.
Then the image was gone.
Lyra’s eyes snapped open.
Her breath came shallow but steady. No panic. No collapse. Only the cold, wild certainty that the memory was real—and that it wasnot simply about the corridor.
It was about him.
She stepped back at once, leaving the threshold before the ward-hum could deepen further. The metallic taste faded immediately. The pressure behind her eyes eased.
A boy. In the room. Watching.
Fourteen,she thought suddenly, with no logical reason for the number except that it fit in her body like truth. And nine for herself. Too young. Both of them too young.
Her hand tightened once against the wall.
Whatever had happened in that place was not abstract Collegium history. It was not about anonymous anomalies or lost students in general. It was part of their story specifically.
And she was done letting books explain it to her.
* * *
Adrian had written the message before dawn.
He had burned the first version.
Too emotional.
The second was too vague.
The third was better: brief, precise, and ugly enough to attract the right kind of attention.
To M. Durian —
The Thorne anomaly remains viable and unstable. Public binding imminent.
Current handler overconfident. Interference possible if timed before oath completion.
Further valuation likely exceeds present reporting.
He did not sign his name.
He did not need to.
Families like Durian did not receive letters like that without understanding the currency in them.
He sealed it in plain wax and sent it through a channel his father had once used for more discreet negotiations—a junior courier attached to one of the outer financial houses, the kind of boy who never looked directly at anyone and never remembered names afterward.
By midday the reply had not yet come.
