I spent almost a week in the infirmary.
A week of pale curtains and soft whispers and waking with smoke in my throat and fire trembling under my skin like an aftershock.
The Hope Core menders checked on me constantly. Their golden light washed over my body in warm waves, but it never lingered long. It always flickered at the edges, like a candle threatened by wind. I could feel it every time they pulled away, careful and cautious, as if getting too close meant risking a burn.
Ryn stopped by once, gentle and unsure. He stood by my bedside, watching me the way someone watches a storm they don't know how to read, but don't dare turn their back on.
Lyla came every single day.
She brought pastries wrapped in napkins and stories she half-whispered as if we were conspiring. She kicked her boots up on the edge of my bed and laughed too loudly on purpose, just to make the nurses glare. She smelled faintly of jasmine and warm sugar each time she hugged me goodbye. I hadn't realized how much I needed her until each night she left and the room felt too empty, too quiet, like something essential had followed her out the door.
And still, in the moments when no one else was there, my thoughts kept circling back to Aren.
Whether he'd come again.
Whether he'd appear out of the dimness the way he had before, silent as breath, eyes burning with something I didn't know.
I had no idea whether the thought terrified me, or whether a small, shameful part of me hoped he would.
I was released the morning of the sixth day.
The nurse handed me my folded uniform with the kind of careful politeness people use around wild animals. Her fingers brushed mine only briefly, but even that tiny contact felt like she was checking for heat, for instability, for the faintest flicker of the fire that had swallowed the training field whole.
"You're stable now," she said quietly, though her eyes flicked once to the glow beneath my ribs, as if she wasn't entirely convinced. "Just... take it slow for a while. And Headmistress Anira will want to see you tomorrow morning. She'll explain the next steps."
Next steps.
The words settled sharp and heavy.
Since the fire, my Core had felt wild inside my ribs. Burning and pounding one minute, freezing and trembling the next. Something felt almost alive, out of my control completely.
When I stepped out of the infirmary, the shift hit me immediately.
The air in Velanor always had a strange clarity to it, cool and pure in a way that didn't belong to any world I'd ever known. Today, though, it carried something else. A tightness beneath the clean surface. An alertness that made the hair on my arms rise.
Students were already moving through the halls, their footsteps echoing off the polished stone. Normally, Velanor sounded alive, chatter bouncing between archways, laughter drifting from distant staircases.
But today the sounds felt dimmed. Softened the moment I appeared.
A trio of Hope students passed first. Their gold-trimmed uniforms glowed faintly, warmth radiating from their Cores. They were mid-conversation, something about an upcoming assessment, but the moment they saw me, the words wilted. One girl slowed just enough to really look at me, eyes scanning my expression, my posture, the faint shimmer under my skin.
Her smile tightened before she forced herself to look away.
Two Anger students walked by next, crimson bright as sparks. They didn't stop talking, but the tone shifted, hardening, like they wanted me to hear the edge but not the words themselves.
No one said anything out loud.
But every breath felt heavy with the things they didn't say.
They think you attacked them, a voice inside my head reminded me.
I kept my head down; my uniform clutched too tightly in my hands. The corridor seemed longer than I remembered, the stone beneath my feet colder. Each step made my Core thrum, an uneasy pulse that didn't match my own heartbeat. It felt like something inside me was pacing, restless and caged.
By the time I reached the main staircase, I had almost convinced myself I was imagining it all, the staring, the tension, the whispered pauses.
Then Lyla appeared.
Or rather, burst into view, coming down the stairs like she was racing sunlight itself. Her curls bounced wildly, her scarf slipping off one shoulder in a way that only made her look more untamed. She froze the moment she saw me, and all the frantic brightness in her expression softened instantly.
"There you are," she breathed, relief washing through her voice like a warm tide.
Before I could speak, she crossed the last steps in three light strides and looped her arm through mine, protective and familiar in a way I wasn't used to, but appreciated more than anything.
"You're out," she said, squeezing gently. "Finally."
I managed a small sound, half a laugh, half an exhale.
She leaned in, lowering her voice. "You okay?"
"I think so," I said... though the words didn't quite feel true.
Lyla's eyes lingered on my face a moment too long, perceptive awareness in her eyes. Then she turned sharply, throwing a glare at a group of students who had slowed to watch us.
"Honestly," she muttered loudly enough for them to hear, "you'd think none of them have ever seen a Core flare before."
The group gasped and scattered like startled birds.
"It's just rumours," she scoffed, waving a hand.
Looking at me, she added, with a gentle smile. "Velanor students love a rumour more than oxygen."
I offered a small smile, though the knowledge that every student here had already formed an opinion of me, already whispered about the training fire, made my stomach twist with nausea.
We stepped out into the gardens, and the fresh air hit me at once, cooler, clearer, and touched by the soft scent of damp earth and blooming flowers.
For a moment, I just stood there, breathing.
Velanor's gardens were nothing like the ones I remembered from my world. Those had been patches of brittle grass behind abandoned buildings, or weeds pushing up through cracked pavement, little pockets of stubborn green in a place that had forgotten how to grow.
But these...
These felt alive in a way that made something in my chest loosen.
Mist clung low across the ground, pooling around the roots of towering trees. Their branches arched overhead, thick and ancient, letting sunlight drip through in soft, golden threads. A narrow path curved between beds of pale pink blossoms, their petals trembling in the cool breeze. Beyond them, a lake stretched smooth as glass, reflecting the faded silhouettes of trees standing along the bank.
And there, beneath the wide crown of an old oak, was a bench. The bench itself, was not anything special, weathered wood, worn smooth at the armrests, half-sunk into moss and shadow, but the place felt serene.
I felt myself gravitating toward it without thinking, like some small, instinctive part of me had already claimed this as mine.
Lyla tugged me gently toward it.
I lowered myself onto the bench, the wood cool and still damp from the morning mist. It creaked softly under my weight, worn smooth by years of people sitting here long before I ever existed in this world.
Lyla sank beside me, pulling one knee up to her chest. Her curls glowed softly, copper catching the light spilling through the trees.
I exhaled slowly, feeling the breath drag out of me as if it had been held in for years.
"It's strange," I murmured, eyes fixed on the mirror-still lake. The surface was so perfectly smooth it felt unreal, like glass stretched thin over something deep and waiting. "This place feels so peaceful."
The words sounded small compared to the ache behind them.
Lyla leaned her shoulder against mine, a simple touch that somehow kept me anchored to the bench and not drifting into the panic pressing at the edges of my ribs.
"In my world... before all this..." My throat tightened. "It was just Eli and me."
I swallowed, trying to keep the tears back.
"We spent seven years running. Hiding. Stealing food, sleeping in abandoned buildings, praying we didn't get caught."
Memories flickered in sharp flashes: cold nights on concrete floors; Eli's hand gripping mine too tightly; the hollow ache of hunger gnawing at our bones.
The garden smelled like wet leaves and sunlight, scents so gentle they felt wrong in my lungs.
I couldn't remember the last time I'd been surrounded by something beautiful without immediately bracing for it to be taken away. Eli should have seen this place. He deserved softness more than I ever did.
But now he was gone, and I was here, breathing air he never got to breathe.
I should have protected him better.
I should've known how to keep us safe.
The grief rose fast and bitter, but beneath it slithered something else, guilt, because he had spent years trying to save us, but now I was the one here. Sitting in a beautiful garden. Wearing clean clothes and getting fed.
"I thought the worst thing that could ever happen had already happened." My voice cracked, the sound small and humiliating in the quiet of the gardens.
"But this... this Core thing..." I pressed a hand over my sternum, feeling the faint, restless thrum beneath my palm.
"It feels like something I don't understand. Like... something I can't hold still. I feel like it wants something from me, and I'm too slow to figure out what."
The words weren't even the whole truth. Not really...
"There's also..." I hesitated, heat crawling up my throat. "Aren."
Lyla's eyes widened slightly. "Trauma Core Aren?"
My eyes drifted back toward the lake, knowing Lyla would be able to read the embarrassment on my face immediately.
"Every time he's near... my Core, it feels like its reacting or something. Not like it's scared. Just—" I swallowed. "Like it's answering something in him."
A flicker of that night returned: the shadows, his voice low and furious, the strange pull under my ribs that didn't feel like fear at all.
Lyla's gaze softened, real worry shadowing her expression.
"Serra..." she murmured, and the way she said my name felt like both a warning and a promise.
"What if my Core isn't normal?" I whispered. "What if this isn't just fear at all... what if it's something else?"
"Listen," her voice was soft, but steady. "Your test, it showed fear." She nudged my arm lightly.
"Those tests aren't just vague guesses. They're ancient magic. I've never heard of one being wrong before."
She paused, just for a second. A tiny, fragile hesitation. But her eyes didn't waver.
"That doesn't mean you're broken," she went on, firmer now. "It just means your Core is loud. Fear Cores run deep. They pull from instinct, from survival, from everything you've lived through. It doesn't make you dangerous."
I tried to believe her. I wanted to.
But the fear coiled tight under my ribs kept shifting, restless, like it knew better.
Lyla watched me for one more heartbeat, and something shifted in her face, softness first, then a quiet, blazing resolve. She always looked at me like she could see straight through the words I couldn't say. It comforted me. And terrified me. How much of me did she actually see?
"Okay," she said quietly, almost to herself. "Then we find out what's going on."
I blinked. "What?"
"There's a rumor," she finally murmured, lowering her voice even though the closest living thing was a bird perched on a distant branch. "About a hidden archive. Supposedly buried beneath the Headmistress's office. Old records... the kind they don't want us reading."
She met my gaze with something sharp and determined.
"If you want answers," she said, "that's where we'll find them."
I stared at her, stunned. "And how, exactly, are we supposed to waltz into the Headmistress's office and find a hidden library?"
Her lips curled into a grin so confident it bordered on reckless.
"Oh, we don't waltz." Her smile turned sly, curling at the edges.
"I happen to be very talented in... persuasion."
"Persuasion?" I echoed flatly, remembering faintly what the instructor had taught us about trained Desire Cores.
She nodded.
"And I know for a fact, that the guards on duty tonight... are Desire alligned."
She leaned closer, whispering like she was letting me in on a scandal.
"Desire Cores love temptation more than rules. Trust me, they'll let us in."
Then she winked, absolutely shameless.