Lucien Hale did not wait for her answer.
He studied Elara the way scholars studied artifacts—with distance sharpened by possession. His gaze flicked once to the stone wall behind her, then back to her face, as though confirming what he already knew.
"You shouldn't linger here," he said quietly. "The library keeps records of movement."
Elara forced her fingers to loosen around the strap of her bag. "Does it?"
"Yes." He stepped aside, giving her space rather than taking it. "Especially in places that aren't meant to exist."
Her pulse thudded in her ears.
"You followed me," she said.
"I noticed you," Lucien corrected. "There's a difference."
She didn't like how calm he was. Or how unsurprised.
Students passed at the far end of the aisle, their murmured conversation drifting faintly toward them. The library seemed to lean closer, listening.
"What was behind that wall?" she asked.
Lucien's eyes darkened—not with fear, but with calculation. "If I answer that, you'll ask a second question."
"And the problem with that is?"
"The second question costs more."
He glanced toward the aisle entrance again, then back at her. "Come. You don't want to be here when the proctors make their rounds."
Against every instinct she had cultivated for survival, Elara followed him.
They didn't speak until they reached the inner courtyard.
The fog had thinned, revealing stone benches and a narrow reflecting pool at the center, its surface perfectly still. The academy walls rose on all sides, enclosing them in shadow and silence.
Lucien stopped near the pool.
"Elara Finch," he said, as if tasting her name for the first time. "Scholarship student. Top of your class everywhere you've been. Library records show you check out books others don't notice."
She stiffened. "You've been watching me."
"I've been paying attention."
There it was again—that unsettling sense of being catalogued.
"You didn't answer my question," she said.
He exhaled slowly. "The journal you found doesn't belong to the library."
Her breath caught.
"You know about it."
"I know about some of them." His gaze sharpened. "How many pages have you read?"
"None," she said quickly. "I haven't opened it."
A lie—but a careful one.
Something flickered across his face. Relief, perhaps. Or concern.
"Good," he said. "Then we still have time."
"Time for what?"
"For you to decide whether you want to be ignorant or endangered."
Anger flared, cutting through her fear. "You don't get to decide that for me."
A pause.
Lucien smiled then—just slightly. "No. But Blackwood does."
He turned away, clearly dismissing the conversation.
"Wait," she said.
He stopped but didn't look back.
"If I'm in danger," she said, "it's because someone put me there."
This time, he faced her fully.
"Then," he said quietly, "you're closer to the truth than you realize."
Elara waited until nightfall to open the journal.
Her dorm room was silent, the courtyard below swallowed by darkness. She sat at her desk, the journal resting before her like a living thing.
Up close, it felt… warm.
Not hot—just faintly alive, as though it retained the heat of a body long gone. The leather cover bore no title, only the familiar symbol carved deep into its surface. When she traced it with her fingertip, the lines pulsed softly, responding to her touch.
She swallowed and opened it.
The first page was blank.
So was the second.
She flipped forward, heart sinking, until faint lines began to emerge—ink blooming slowly, like bruises beneath skin.
The writing was cramped and slanted, written in a hand both elegant and frantic.
If you are reading this, then the Collegium has failed—or you have.
Elara's breath hitched.
She turned the page.
Names followed. Dates. Locations. Some crossed out. Some circled. Margins crowded with symbols she didn't recognize—variations of the circle-and-line, layered with additional markings.
At the bottom of one page, a single sentence was underlined three times.
They erase us quietly.
Her skin prickled.
The journal resisted her in strange ways. When she lingered too long on certain passages, the ink blurred, rearranging itself. Other entries sharpened when she leaned closer, as though rewarding attention.
It was coded—but not in any system she knew.
Until she reached a page marked with a symbol she recognized from class.
A logical operator.
Her pulse quickened.
She grabbed her notebook, sketching out the symbols, comparing them to philosophical notation she had studied earlier that day. Slowly, patterns emerged. The journal wasn't written in code—it was written through it.
Logic. Language. Ethics.
A test.
Hours passed unnoticed.
Elara didn't hear the soft knock at her door until it came again—harder.
She slammed the journal shut, heart racing.
"Yes?"
The door opened before she reached it.
Lucien stood in the doorway, his expression tense.
"You shouldn't have opened it," he said.
Her anger flared again, hot and sharp. "You don't get to control what I read."
His gaze dropped briefly to the desk. To the journal.
The glow beneath the leather had intensified, faint light seeping through the cracks like breath escaping clenched teeth.
Lucien swore under his breath.
"How far?" he asked.
"Far enough to know people disappear here," she said. "And that you know why."
Silence stretched between them.
Finally, he closed the door behind him.
"The Obscura Collegium," he said, voice low, "was founded to protect knowledge from misuse."
"That's not what this says."
"No," he agreed. "It isn't."
He leaned against the desk, close enough that she could see the fine scar near his temple, the exhaustion he usually concealed.
"They choose students," he continued. "Test them. Those who pass are inducted. Those who fail—"
"Disappear."
"Yes."
Elara's stomach twisted. "And you?"
"I was born into it."
The confession landed heavily.
"My family doesn't ask if you'll join," he said. "They ask when."
"And you're okay with that?"
His jaw tightened. "I'm still here, aren't I?"
The journal pulsed again, brighter this time.
Lucien straightened sharply.
"It's responding to you," he said. "That shouldn't be possible."
Fear threaded through her spine. "Why?"
"Because it means the Collegium didn't just choose you," he said. "It marked you."
A knock sounded at the door—slow, deliberate.
Elara and Lucien froze.
From the hallway came a familiar voice.
"Miss Finch," Dean Ashcroft called softly. "We need to speak."
Lucien's eyes met hers, dark with urgency.
"You have one choice," he whispered. "Trust me—or trust the ink."
The journal's glow intensified, pulsing like a heartbeat.
Elara swallowed.
And reached for it.
END OF CHAPTER THREE