The summons came at midnight.
Anaya had just drifted into uneasy sleep when the candle by her bedside flared to life, though no match had touched it. A slip of parchment curled from the flame like smoke, words etched in ink that glowed faintly silver.
Come. Bring no one.
Her heart pounded, but she dressed quickly and slipped into the corridor. The dormitory was silent, the kind of silence that pressed against the ears. She moved barefoot down the stone stairs, the candle leading her like a sentinel.
The message guided her through halls she had never seen before, past portraits whose eyes seemed to follow her, past doors that should have led to classrooms but opened instead into twisting staircases.
At last she reached a narrow arch carved with runes that flickered like embers. Beyond it lay a spiral stair plunging down.
When she descended, the air grew cooler, thicker, laced with the smell of ink and metal.
At the bottom, a door of black iron waited. It opened before her touch.
The chamber beyond was not a classroom. It was a vault.
Shelves of tomes stretched upward into shadow, ladders crossing like a forest canopy. Crystals floated in midair, casting pale light across instruments she couldn't name: spheres of liquid that swirled without being stirred, mirrors reflecting scenes that weren't present, blades etched with runes that pulsed faintly.
Headmistress Veyra stood at the center, her cloak spreading like wings.
"Welcome," she said. "This is the Atrium of Shadows. Few have entered, and fewer still have left unchanged."
Anaya swallowed. "Why me?"
"Because," Veyra said, "you are already changed."
The first lesson was perception.
"Every glimpse," Veyra explained, "is not prophecy but resonance. The soul vibrates at a frequency, echoing across possibilities. What you call destiny is merely the loudest echo."
She gestured, and a mirror floated between them. Its surface rippled like water.
"Look."
Anaya leaned forward. The mirror shimmered, then steadied. She saw herself standing in a lecture hall, speaking to rows of students, her hands raised as light spilled from her palms. A leader, commanding and sure.
Her breath caught.
"That is one echo," Veyra said. "Now—touch it."
Hesitantly, Anaya reached. Her fingers brushed the surface, cool as a pond.
The image wavered—then fractured. Suddenly she saw herself not as a leader but as a shadow, faceless, standing behind someone else who glowed brightly. Then it shifted again: she stood alone, surrounded by broken glimpses, faces turned away in fear.
Anaya yanked her hand back, trembling. "I didn't mean—"
"You resonated," Veyra said calmly. "Your gift unsettles echoes. That is why glimpses break around you. You do not see one possibility—you force them to admit there are many."
Anaya pressed her fists against her knees. "It feels like… destroying them."
"Then learn to see it differently," Veyra said sharply. "Creation is destruction's twin. You cannot open a path without closing another."
Days blurred into nights in the Atrium. Anaya's lessons were secret, stolen in hours when the rest of the Academy slept. She read codices bound in skin-like parchment, traced diagrams of intersecting timelines, practiced focusing until sweat dripped down her temples.
She learned to listen to the hum of glimpses in others, faint vibrations that quivered when she passed. She learned to still her own resonance, to quiet the ripple of her presence so others would not feel it.
But control was fragile. One evening, as she strained before the mirror again, she caught a glimpse of herself—not leader, not shadow, but something else entirely.
Her eyes burned white, her body surrounded by a storm of shattered echoes, as if every destiny around her had collapsed into dust. Students fled, their faces contorted in terror.
She stumbled back, gasping. The image clung to her mind like smoke.
"What was that?" she whispered.
Veyra's expression was unreadable. "Another possibility."
"That—thing—it can't be me."
Veyra's gaze did not soften. "Possibility is not destiny. But it is a warning. The question is: will you master it, or will it master you?"
Not all lessons came from mirrors. Some came from books Veyra handed her, volumes marked Restricted. One described anomalies across history: Transfers who did not fit, whose glimpses failed. Most entries ended abruptly: Expelled. Removed. Erased.
But one passage snagged her attention. A student, centuries ago, whose gift mirrored her own. They too had rewritten glimpses. They too had been feared.
The record ended mid-sentence. No fate, no death, no name. As though the Academy itself had swallowed them whole.
When Anaya asked, Veyra only said, "Not all stories are meant to be preserved."
But Anaya couldn't stop thinking about it. I'm not the first.
Outside the Atrium, the Academy's pulse quickened. Rumors multiplied: that she trained with forbidden methods, that she would unravel the Academy itself, that her presence was the beginning of an ending. Mira stoked the fires relentlessly, her circle growing louder, sharper.
Yet Leila and Kato stayed close, and Rafael more so, though his jokes were tinged now with unease.
"You're different lately," he said one night as they walked the courtyard.
"Different how?"
"Like you're carrying something no one else can see. Heavier than before."
She hesitated. "Maybe I am."
He reached for her hand, but she pulled back, the memory of the fractured mirror burning too hot.
Her final lesson that week came with no warning.
"Stand here," Veyra instructed, positioning her in a circle inscribed with runes. The air shimmered faintly.
"What is this?"
"A ward. If you lose control, the runes may contain you. Or they may not."
Anaya's stomach clenched. "That's not reassuring."
Veyra ignored the remark. "Focus inward. Find your resonance. Then bend it, deliberately, not by accident. Show me control."
Anaya closed her eyes. Her breath slowed. She found the hum inside herself, that restless vibration always present. She pressed against it gently, then harder, until it quivered.
The air thickened. She opened her eyes—glimpses flashed around her, shards of possibilities colliding. Rafael laughing beside her. Mira kneeling in defeat. Veyra watching with pride—or with fear.
The runes glowed.
Anaya clenched her fists. Not destruction. Not chaos. Choice.
The storm stilled. The shards dissolved into mist.
When she opened her eyes, the chamber was silent.
Veyra regarded her long and hard. At last, she said, "Better. But control is a door. What you choose to open it onto—that is yet to be seen."
Later, alone in her dormitory, Anaya stared at the ceiling, sleep refusing to come.
She thought of the erased student. She thought of the mirror image with burning eyes.
She thought of the offer she had already accepted, and wondered if the path was hers—or if it had been waiting for her all along.
And for the first time, she wondered if even choice could be an illusion.