Alchemy of Shadows revealed itself slowly.
Not all at oncenot like the stories promised. No thunder, no spectacle. Just a gradual sense of wrongness, like the world had shifted a fraction to the left and expected everyone to pretend it hadn't.
The gates opened without sound.
Lira Veyne paused at the threshold, her trunk heavy in her grip, the iron sigils above her head faintly warm. The mountain air smelled sharp and metallic, like rain about to fall. Or blood.
Behind her, students murmured in awe.
Ahead of her, the school waited.
Its towers rose unevenly, stitched together with bridges that looked too thin to trust. Lanterns hovered in the courtyard, their blue-white light pulsing softly, as though alive. Shadows pooled where they shouldn't, stretching longer than the objects that cast them.
Lira felt it then that familiar tightening in her chest.
She had always been good at noticing what others ignored.
"El," she said quietly.
Her best friend turned, curls slipping loose from her braid, eyes bright with a kind of hope Lira had never learned how to carry. "You froze. You okay?"
Lira nodded, because that was easier than explaining the feeling that the school was already counting her bones.
"I'm fine."
Elowen smiled like she believed her.
They crossed the courtyard together.
The Headmaster's welcome speech blurred past Lira's earssomething about discipline, about cost, about transformation. Words meant to sound wise but felt more like a warning poorly disguised as tradition.
Magic, he said, was not creation.
It was exchange.
That night, Lira lay awake listening to the school breathe.
Stone expanded and contracted around her, faint creaks echoing through the North Wing dormitory. The lantern near her bed flickered, its light thinning, shadows stretching up the walls like reaching fingers.
Across the room, Elowen slept easily.
Her magic glowed faintly beneath her skin, a soft, steady pulse. Potential, the instructors called it. A rare depth of power.
Lira watched her chest rise and fall, unease curling tighter with every breath.
She didn't know why she sat up.
Only that something had changed.
The air cooled, suddenly and unnaturally, like warmth had been removed rather than lost. Lira's breath fogged. The lantern dimmed to a trembling ember.
Then she heard it.
A voicenot loud, not threatening. Gentle. Almost fond.
"Elowen."
Lira's heart stuttered.
She slid out of bed, bare feet silent against the stone. The door stood open, though she was certain it had been closed. The corridor beyond looked longer than it had before, lanterns spaced too far apart, their light failing to reach the floor.
The voice drifted ahead of her, pulling her forward.
She followed.
The chamber at the end of the hall should not have existed. Lira knew the school's layout she had memorized it obsessively since arrival. Yet here stood an arched doorway carved with old runes, their edges worn smooth with age.
The symbols glowed faintly.
Inside, Elowen stood perfectly still.
Her eyes were unfocused, her body tilted slightly forward, as if listening to something Lira could not hear. Behind her loomed a figure shaped like a woman and made of shadow and ash.
The Hollow Lady.
She was taller than any human, her form draped in tattered ceremonial robes that bled into darkness. Where her face should have been was an empty hollow, smoke folding endlessly inward.
Her hands rested over Elowen's heart.
Light spilled out in thin, trembling strandsmemories, magic, something deeper and unnamed. Not ripped away violently. Drawn out. Carefully.
Reverently.
Lira tried to scream.
The sound scraped out of her instead, broken and small.
The spirit turned.
For the first time, the Hollow Lady noticed her.
The void where her face should have been shifted, narrowing, focusing. Recognition bloomed.
Ah, the spirit whispered, voice curling directly into Lira's mind. You can see me.
Lira shook, terror locking her bones. "Stop."
The Hollow Lady tilted her head. You are not the one I came for.
Lira stumbled forward anyway. "Let her go."
The spirit studied her for a long, terrible moment. Then, slowly, she withdrew her hands. The light snapped back into Elowen's chest like a severed thread pulled taut.
Before dissolving into smoke, the Hollow Lady leaned closer.
You will remember, she murmured. That is your curse.
Elowen survived.
That was the part no one could explain.
She woke two days later smiling, laughing, asking why everyone looked at her like she'd died. Her magic was weaker at first, but it returnedsharper, colder, more precise.
Teachers said exhaustion. Hallucination. Overactive imagination.
They said myths did not cross wards.
They said souls, once taken, did not return.
Lira learned to stop speaking.
Years passed.
Alchemy of Shadows polished Elowen into something admired. Something untouchable. She gained a new constant at her side Seris Vale, all calm intelligence and careful glances.
They became a trio.
Lira became the quiet space between them.
She trained harder than anyone else, burying herself in shadow-alchemy, learning to see what light concealed. Insomnia became familiar. So did the fear that one day she would wake up and forget too.
That was when she noticed Kael Thorn.
He stood apart from others, always watching, never impressed. His magic bent differently controlled, dangerous, like a blade held too close to skin.
Their eyes met across a corridor one evening.
He didn't look away.
Something about that unsettled her more than the spirit ever had.
Later, he spoke to her without preamble.
"You don't sleep," he said.
Lira stiffened. "Neither do you."
A pause. Then, quieter, "You're waiting for something."
She laughed, brittle. "Everyone here is."
His gaze flicked past her shoulder, to the darker end of the hall. "Not like you are."
That night, the lanterns dimmed again.
The Hollow Lady returned.
She did not touch anyone this time. She simply stood at the far end of the corridor, watching Lira with patient interest.
You are still broken, the spirit observed.
Lira swallowed. "You didn't finish."
No, the Hollow Lady agreed. I began.
Footsteps echoed behind Lira.
Kael stopped beside her, breath shallow, eyes fixed on the impossible figure. "So the stories were wrong," he murmured.
The spirit smiled without a face.
When she vanished, the silence left behind felt heavier than her presence.
Kael turned to Lira slowly. "How long," he asked, "have you been carrying this alone?"
Lira's throat tightened.
"Since the first night," she said.
From deep within the school, something old stirred.
And for the first time, Lira was no longer the only one who remembered.