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I keep scrolling. Donor events. Academy patron lists. Historical archives.

Caervast. Black Chapel.

I stare at the screen, my stomach tightening as the pieces begin sliding together.

It isn't that the Virels own Black Chapel. It's that they seem to have their hands in everything. Every trail I follow somehow leads back to the same family.

The Virels. Ciaran Virel.

Good Light, so Damaris wasn't exaggerating.

And I walked straight into their territory on my first night because I thought I might find my sister there. How stupid am I?

My pulse is already knocking too hard against the band when another image loads onto the screen, taken the same night as the photograph I've been carrying but from a different angle.

This time, I can see more. Enough to make the scholarship stop feeling like luck.

Black Chapel. The Virels. Caervast. And now Halvern.

Maybe none of it means anything, and maybe I'm forcing connections where there aren't any.

But looking at Halvern standing beside Sola, I can't shake the feeling that I've stepped into something that was already moving long before I got here.

For the first time since arriving on Sero, I find myself wondering whether I found this scholarship or whether it found me.

The frightening thing about traps is that they rarely look like traps when you walk into them.

I zoom in further and catch something reflected in the glass behind them. A narrow black sign hangs above a doorway at the edge of the frame, the lettering half lost to glare and distance.

I lean closer, squinting at the blurred lettering, trying to make out the name.

A sharp click cuts through the quiet behind me, and I jerk so hard my knee slams into the underside of the desk. I save the image to my slate before I can think twice.

I haven't heard anyone come in, but I know it instantly.

I'm no longer alone.

Every hair on my arms lifts. I tighten my grip on the photograph and glance wildly across the desk, already searching for something I can use if I have to. My eyes catch on the metal terminal stand just as movement flashes in the darkness beyond the doorway.

A tall shape slips past the doorway, gone almost before I can catch it. When I turn hard in the chair, the corridor outside already looks empty, the library door still standing open.

I think I imagined it, until the sound catches up with me and cold understanding slams into place. Somebody just took a picture of me, the sharp click resolving, too late, into a shutter.

"Hello?"

No one answers. But then a footstep sounds somewhere beyond the doorway, soft and already moving away, and whatever's left of my common sense snaps clean in half.

My hand flies to the band, thumb pressing hard as the warning pulse bites against my wrist and my heart starts climbing too fast to obey me. "Is someone there?"

But all I get back is silence.

Then, from somewhere deeper in the building, footsteps echo on the stairs, and my breath catches as the tightness in my chest turns sharper, the dangerous skip in my pulse sharp enough to make the edges of the room flare white for a second.

Please. Not now. Not like this.

I think I hear something behind me and spin so hard my hip clips the corner of a table. Nothing behind me but shadow, and I almost convince myself I imagined the whole thing.

Then I'm moving, and I don't stop until I'm back at the dorm entrance, breathing too hard, my pulse racing beneath my skin like it's trying to tear loose.