I walked toward the entrance, keeping my head down, ignoring the way conversations dipped as I passed.
Yeah. I knew how it looked.
Calder Ashenford dropping me off at school in his sleek, stupidly expensive car? That was practically an open invitation for rumors. I could already imagine the exaggerated versions spreading like wildfire by lunch.
The last thing I needed was more attention.
Before I could dwell on it further, a familiar voice cut through the buzz of the parking lot.
"Athena, Athena, Athena," Jax drawled.
An arm slung casually around my shoulders as he fell into step beside me, his signature smirk firmly in place. "You do love making an entrance, don't you?"
I sighed, shaking my head. "You say that like I planned it."
Jax grinned. "Oh, come on. The whole mysterious, fashionably late arrival in an expensive car thing? That's main character's behavior."
I rolled my eyes, pushing open the doors as we entered the hallway. "Main character behavior or public humiliation? Jury's still out."
Jax snickered but said nothing as we stepped into the corridor lined with towering black-and-silver lockers, the air buzzing with faint magical energy as students rushed to grab their materials before first period.
The lockers at Brightforge were enchanted, attuned to each student's schedule. With just a touch of my sigil, or in my case, sheer hope that it wouldn't malfunction again, they summoned the materials I needed for the day.
A faint hum pulsed beneath my fingertips as my locker responded, runes flickering along the edges before textbooks and supplies materialized in an orderly stack, glowing faintly before settling into place.
Runic Language, first period.
I grabbed my things, relieved it had worked without a hitch this time.
I pulled my books from the locker, exhaling quietly. Relief settled in my chest, though not entirely for the right reasons.
At least my friends, except for Jax, hadn't seen me arrive with Calder.
There was a good chance they were already in class, sparing me from the inevitable interrogation and relentless teasing.
But more than anything… I was relieved Riven hadn't seen it.
After Saturday night, after that shift, the unspoken weight between us, showing up with another guy wouldn't have just looked bad. It would have felt bad.
I clenched my jaw, shoving my books into my bag, pushing the thought away. It didn't matter. None of it mattered.
A quick glance at the time sent a jolt of urgency through me.
One minute before the bell.
I cursed under my breath. "Gotta run. See you at lunch."
Jax gave a lazy salute. "Try not to fall asleep in Runic. Or set anything on fire."
I shot him a glare over my shoulder before taking off, the bell ringing through the halls as first period began.
I stepped into Runic Language, the residual hum of magic wrapping around me the moment I crossed the threshold.
Ms. Amara turned, her gaze locking onto mine.
She didn't speak.
For a moment, she simply looked at me. Not with surprise. Not with curiosity. With expectation.
Then, her attention shifted.
Her sharp, assessing eyes flicked down, to the Ancient Rune now permanently etched into my skin.
She took it in silently, deliberately, as if she were checking for something only she understood. A flicker of something crossed her expression. Satisfaction? Contemplation? Something else?
The moment passed.
Her gaze lifted back to mine, and with an unreadable expression, she arched a perfect brow.
"Hurry to your seat, Athena."
Her voice was smooth, calm. Too calm.
I swallowed and nodded, moving toward my usual spot in the intimate circle of five other students. The energy in the room shifted ever so slightly as I passed, like the very walls were aware of me.
Or, more likely, of the mark I now carried.
I lowered myself into my seat, the surface of my desk adjusting to my presence, the runes etched into it glowing softly before fading back into stillness.
Ms. Amara flicked her wrist, and the lesson for the day materialized in the air in front of us, ancient runes appearing in a circular pattern above the center of the room, glowing softly before fading into view on the pages of our texts.
"Today, we will be unraveling the properties of foundational sigils, how they bind, break, and reshape power."
My breath caught for just a second.
Binding. Breaking. Reshaping power.
My fingers instinctively curled over the rune on my arm, a slow heat unfurling beneath my skin.
It had chosen me right here, in this very class.
And now?
Now, we were learning how to manipulate power itself.
A coincidence? Or a carefully placed step in something much larger?
I forced my fingers to loosen their grip on my arm as Ms. Amara's voice carried through the room, smooth and methodical.
"The foundation of all sigil work begins with intent. A sigil will only ever be as strong as the will behind it."
She lifted a hand, and a flicker of runic symbols materialized between her fingers, shifting like molten gold before forming a single command sigil in the air. With the slightest movement, the rune glowed brighter, and suddenly, the gravity in the room felt heavier, like the air itself was pressing down.
My breath hitched.
The magic settled just as quickly as it had risen, and the rune dissolved, leaving only the faint crackle of energy in its wake.
"Runes can command energy, reinforce barriers, and even alter perception," Ms. Amara continued, pacing slowly around our small circle. "But today, we focus on sigils of control."
At that, my stomach tightened.
Control.
Her gaze flickered toward me again, brief, but enough to make my pulse spike.
I wasn't imagining it. She was watching me.
"A sigil can bind or unbind, depending on how it's wielded. It is not the rune itself that decides its strength, but the user who commands it."
She lifted her chin. "We will begin with a simple exercise, calling forth and stabilizing a control sigil."
A flick of her wrist, and the surface of my desk shifted, the runes along its edges rearranging themselves into a new sequence. In the center, an unfamiliar sigil took form, glowing softly, waiting to be activated.
I swallowed.
The rune looked... harmless. Simple, even.
But as my fingers hovered over it, the Ancient Rune on my arm pulsed, a slow, deliberate warmth spreading beneath my skin, like it recognized what I was about to do.
I exhaled and pressed my palm against the sigil.
The second my skin made contact, magic snapped to life.
A surge of heat shot up my arm, sharp and sudden, like the Rune on my skin was reacting, no, answering. The sigil on my desk flared violently, the runic lines warping, twisting.
The room dimmed, as if the magic had siphoned the very light from the space.
Something wasn't right.
I tried to pull my hand back, I couldn't.
The sigil held me in place, its glow intensifying, and then, pain.
Sharp, hot, curling through my palm, my wrist, traveling straight to the Ancient Rune on my arm.
My breath caught, my heart slamming against my ribs.
I heard Ms. Amara's voice, distant, sharp: "Athena, release it. Now."
I tried. I couldn't.
The rune had latched onto me.
The glow turned from gold to something deeper, darker, and suddenly, images crashed through my mind: Flickering shapes, runes shifting, unraveling, re-forming,
A whisper. A voice.
"Find me."
Then darkness.
A sharp, cutting force broke the connection, and the sigil exploded off my desk, the force sending my chair skidding backward.
I gasped, blinking, the world snapping back into focus.
The classroom was silent.
My breathing was uneven, my palm tingling, the Ancient Rune on my arm still warm.
I looked up.
Ms. Amara's expression was unreadable. But her gaze was fixed on me.
"Class dismissed."
The room exhaled as my classmates began to gather their things, casting wary glances my way. Not openly questioning, not asking, just watching.
I forced myself to move, to shove my books into my bag, to act like I wasn't still reeling from whatever the hell had just happened.
The moment I stood, Ms. Amara spoke again, quietly, but pointedly.
"Athena. Stay."
My stomach dipped.
The other students hesitated, one of them, Kalen, shooting me a cautious glance, but no one protested. One by one, they filed out, leaving me standing there as the classroom door sealed shut behind them with a quiet thrum of magic.
Then it was just me and Ms. Amara.
Alone.
The energy in the room shifted again. Not hostile. Not threatening.
But heavy.
Like something unspoken was pressing down on the space between us, stretching thin under the weight of a conversation we hadn't had yet.
I crossed my arms, trying to mask the unease curling through me.
Ms. Amara approached slowly, her gaze sharp, wary, not at me, but at the Rune on my arm.
I caught the way her fingers twitched, as if resisting the instinct to reach for something dangerous.
A cold weight settled in my chest.
"What just happened?" I asked, my voice low, unsteady.
She didn't answer.
Instead, she took my hand with a gentleness that felt unnatural for her, her thumb brushing against my wrist before her fingers pressed against the Rune itself.
A sharp, jolting sensation shot through me.
Two forces collided. One was familiar, but the other was foreign.
Heat and cold. Light and dark. A pull and a resistance.
It wasn't just power. It was a struggle, a war waged in silence, threading through my veins, unraveling and twisting into something chaotic and raw.
I could feel it: the push, the resistance, the way my body was no longer entirely my own.
Ms. Amara inhaled sharply, and suddenly, shadows curled from the rune, inky tendrils writhing, twisting, reaching.
The air thickened, turning dense, suffocating.
I gasped, but it was like breathing through water. My lungs refused to expand.
The darkness crawled up my arm, coiling around my fingers, slithering like sentient smoke.
Then I heard it. A whisper.
Low. Hollow.
Ancient.
I couldn't make out the words, but they weren't meant for me.
I felt them.
And then, in a sudden, violent shudder, the black shadows leaped from the rune.
A massive cloud of darkness erupted, curling into the air above us, twisting, expanding, before ripping itself away and vanishing through the corners of the room.
The moment it disappeared, my body lurched forward, air finally rushing back into my lungs.
Ms. Amara caught my shoulders, stabilizing me.
I clung to her arms for just a second, trying to ground myself, before pulling away, blinking hard, trying to make sense of what just happened.
The Ancient Rune on my arm still burned.
Ms. Amara exhaled, her composure visibly shaken for the first time since I had known her.
Then, her voice cut through the silence, quiet but laced with urgency.
"Athena," she said carefully, "have you encountered a darker power recently?"
The words hung in the air like a blade.
I blinked. "What?"
Her expression remained unreadable, but the sharpness in her gaze told me she wasn't asking lightly.
"Since the Rune marked you," she continued, "have you felt… something? A presence? A shift in your surroundings? A force that does not belong to you?"
A cold prickle ran down my spine.
I opened my mouth to deny it, to say, Of course not.
But the words caught in my throat.
Because I had.
The nightmare. The suffocating shadows. The figure lurking at the edge of my vision.
And then last night.
The blackout after Lune Noire.
Creepy shadows, the feeling of being followed, being scared to death. What had I seen?
I swallowed hard and forced my voice into something steady, unaffected.
"No."
Ms. Amara didn't move.
Didn't blink.
The silence between us thickened, stretched too long, until I realized she wasn't going to question me.
Because she already knew.
Her lips parted slightly, and for the first time, there was something in her expression I had never seen before.
Distress.
Her throat bobbed in a slow swallow, her fingers twitching as if reaching for a weapon that wasn't there.
Her next words came out softer, barely above a whisper.
"It's here."
A cold weight slammed into my chest.
I stiffened. "What?"
Her gaze flickered toward the corners of the room, where the shadows disappeared moments ago.
Then, she turned back to me, her voice low, deliberate.
"A dark power is here in Elarion. It got to you. It tried to subdue the power of the Ancient Rune, preventing it from revealing things forgotten to you."
My pulse lurched, Ms. Amara's words echoing in my head.
I opened my mouth, but the words wouldn't come.
Because suddenly, things started falling into place.
Something happened last night at Lune Noire.
I wasn't just drunk. I wasn't just careless.
I was vulnerable.
And the dark force took advantage of that.
A chill slithered down my spine as the realization settled, heavy and undeniable.
But how? How did it strike?
I pressed a hand to my forehead, trying to piece together the fragments of my memories, but there was nothing.
Just a void. A complete, suffocating absence of time.
I was convinced now.
Something had come for me that night.
But there was another question gnawing at the edges of my thoughts, one that sent my pulse thrumming harder, sharper.
Did Calder notice anything? Was he there when it happened?
Or… was he hiding something?
My fingers clenched against the desk.
Calder had been too calm about everything this morning. Too smug, too unaffected.
And yet, he had said something, something that stood out to me now, like a puzzle piece I hadn't realized was important.
"I don't know what you saw, but you totally freaked out."
He knew.
Maybe not everything. Maybe he didn't understand it, but he had seen something.
And he hadn't told me.
A slow burn curled in my stomach. Then another thought hit me like a slap to the face.
Lara.
I hadn't spoken to her yet.
She was with me at Lune Noire. She had been drinking too, but she wasn't nearly as gone as I was.
Did she remember anything? Had she noticed something was wrong?
Or worse, had something happened to her too?
I needed answers. Now.
Ms. Amara's voice broke through my spiraling thoughts.
"Athena."
I blinked, snapping my gaze to hers.
Her expression had shifted, no longer just unreadable, but watchful.
I didn't know if she had picked up on my reaction, or if she was simply waiting to see what I would do next.
But I knew one thing for certain. I needed to talk to Calder and Lara.
And I needed to find out exactly what happened last night.
I shoved the rest of my things into my bag, moving on autopilot, my pulse hammering behind my ribs. I needed to get out of here.
Ms. Amara didn't stop me.
She didn't say anything else, didn't try to pry further. But as I turned toward the door, her voice came one last time, quiet but firm.
"Be careful, Athena. The mind forgets what the soul refuses to see."
I stiffened but didn't turn back.
A moment later, the door unsealed with a soft hiss of magic, and I stepped out, the weight of the conversation still pressing against my shoulders.