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I don't tell her. A professor does. Coward. Maybe.
By three in the morning, the village fires are contained enough to stop spreading.
By four, the western Academy ruins have been searched once. By five, again. No more voices beneath the stone. Dawn begins as a thin grey line behind smoke. Ugliest sunrise I've ever seen.
The Academy looks different in daylight. Night hid things. Daylight doesn't. Blood dried across pale stone. Burn marks. Broken windows. Collapsed walls.
Scales. Weapons. Clothing. Things that belonged to people. Bodies have been covered now. Rows. Gods. Rows.
Students sit wherever their bodies finally stopped working. Against walls. On stairs. In grass blackened by fire. Some asleep. Some staring. Some holding hands. Nobody tells them to move.
The dragons remain together near Theryn. Her body covered only partially. Too large for anything else.
Eddy still beside her. Nobody asks him to leave.
Vyrael stands farther back. Rhyven visits him once.
No words I can hear. Obviously. Hand against his scales. Forehead briefly lowered. Then he comes back. We keep working. Because what else is there?
At some point, I lose Rhyven again. Not scary this time. I know where he is approximately. Alive. Enough.
Nyra sends me to eat. I tell her to fuck off. She gives me bread. I eat it. Apparently everyone has become Rhyven.
Cassian falls asleep sitting against a wall while holding a blood-soaked towel. Someone takes it from him. He doesn't wake.
Caelen is with Father. Arguments. Probably. I don't care. Not yet.
Near six, there is finally nothing immediately requiring my hands. That might be the worst moment. I stand. Alone. For the first time since the wards opened.
The courtyard stretches in front of me. Or what remains of it. The missing-person board still stands near the central passage. I don't know how. One corner is burned. The wood black. Part of the frame cracked. But the board remains.
Names.
Aelindra.
Jonas.
Others.
Theryn's marker still there.
Tavian added beneath.
Gone.
Missing.
Except Theryn isn't missing anymore. She's fifty yards away. Dead.
I walk toward the board. Slowly. Everything hurts now. Apparently my body waited until permission.
Ribs. Shoulder. Hands. Cheek. Head. All of it.
The Headmaster stands nearby. Alone. For once.
His robes are burned at one sleeve. Blood along the hem. He looks older than yesterday. Much older.
He is staring toward the western tower. I stop beside him. Neither speaks.
