-Alexia-
The High Spire didn't smell like the rest of Whisperwind. There was no scent of old parchment, dried lavender, or the comforting musk of the stone hearths that usually anchored me to the present. Up here, the air was sterilized, sharp with the scent of ozone and the metallic tang of blood—a cold, clinical aroma that reminded me more of a butcher's shop than a laboratory.
I was strapped into the "Attunement Chair," a seat carved from obsidian that felt like it was leaching the warmth directly out of my skin. Every time I breathed, the stone beneath me seemed to sip at my energy. My wrists were held by bands of violet light—Council dampening cuffs that hummed at a frequency that made my brain feel like it was being vibrated apart inside my skull.
"You're fighting it, Alexia," Elder Thorne whispered. He leaned over a table covered in glass vials and silver conduits, his movements precise and terrifyingly calm. "That's the mistake. Resistance only creates friction, and friction... well, it burns."
"I'm not… fighting," I rasped. My tongue felt heavy, like it was made of lead, and my throat was so parched it hurt to swallow. "I'm holding on."
Thorne turned, a glass vial in his hand. Inside, a thread of golden light swirled like a trapped nebula, pulsing with a rhythmic, frantic heartbeat. My light. He had been siphoning my connection to the school for hours, drop by drop, and with every bit he took, I felt a piece of my soul go quiet. It was like watching someone drain a lake I was currently drowning in.
"Holding on to what?" Thorne asked, his voice oily and patronizing. He stepped into my personal space, his shadow falling over me like a shroud. "To the boys who were too slow to save you? To a Headmistress who has been stripped of her title? Or to a school that is nothing more than a collection of rocks?"
He pressed a cold, silver sensor against the base of my throat. I flinched, the metal feeling like a brand, but the restraints held me fast.
"You don't understand," I managed to say, my eyes defiant even as my body weakened. "The school… it isn't just rocks. It's alive. And it knows you're a parasite."
Thorne's eyes flashed with a brief, ugly spark of anger. He twisted a dial on the obsidian chair, and a fresh surge of violet energy slammed into my core. I didn't scream—I wouldn't give him that satisfaction—but the world turned white at the edges.
"Let's see how much 'life' is left in you after this," Thorne muttered. He leaned in closer, his breath smelling of stale tea and copper. "Do you really think Asher is coming for you? The boy who handed you over to the Council the moment things got difficult? He's a coward, Alexia. He chose his own safety over your freedom once. What makes you think he won't do it again?"
The words stung worse than the magic. He was digging into the one wound that hadn't fully healed. I closed my eyes, picturing Asher's face—the way it had looked in the fortress, the way he had looked when he vowed to earn his place.
He's changed, I told myself. He's running through the walls right now. I felt him.
"You're trying to use my memories as a weapon," I whispered. "It won't work."
"It's not a weapon if it's the truth," Thorne countered. He began to chant, a low, dissonant sound that made the shadows in the corners of the room stretch and crawl like living things. The golden light in the vials began to pulse in time with his words, turning from a soft glow to a frantic, angry strobe.
My skin felt like it was being peeled back, layer by layer. The siphon was no longer a trickle; it was a flood. I felt the school's power being ripped through me, using my body as a conduit to drain the very foundations of the academy. I could feel the stones of the Spire groaning in protest. The school was crying out, and I was the mouth it was being forced to scream through.
Through the haze of pain, I reached out. Not with my hands, but with my mind. I searched for the heartbeat of Whisperwind, that deep, resonant thrum I had felt in the Great Hall.
Help me, I whispered into the dark of my own consciousness.
For a moment, there was nothing but the cold. Then, a faint, flickering warmth brushed against my mind. It was distant, muffled by the Council's dampening fields, but it was there. And it wasn't alone.
I felt a shadow moving through the vents. A scent of pine needles, wild earth, and old, familiar regret.
Asher.
I almost gasped his name. I could feel the wolf—the raw, predatory hunger to protect that drove him. He was in the veins of the school, a dark force that made the violet light of my cage feel a little less blinding.
"The readings are shifting," Thorne muttered, frowning at a glowing ledger on his desk. He tapped a glass gauge that was spinning wildly. "The school's resonance is spiking in the West Wing. What are those boys doing? They should be contained."
"They're coming for me," I said, a small, bloody smile touching my lips. "And they aren't coming alone. You've forgotten that the school doesn't belong to the Council. It belongs to the weavers."
Thorne sneered, slamming the glass vial into a brass housing on the wall. The housing was part of a larger machine—a massive, circular archway that stood at the back of the lab. As the vial clicked into place, the archway began to hum.
"Let them come," Thorne said, his voice rising over the sound of the machine. "By the time they breach these doors, the bridge will be complete. Gideon is tired of waiting, Alexia. He wants his masterpiece back, and he's willing to tear this school apart to get it."
The air in the room began to tear. A jagged, black rift started to form in the center of the archway—the same kind of breach we had seen in Shade's office, but this one was stable. It wasn't a wound; it was a door. It smelled of sulfur and the Void.
And on the other side, I could hear it. A slow, rhythmic tapping. The sound of a staff against stone.
Gideon.
I closed my eyes, leaning my head back against the cold obsidian. My magic was almost gone, my body felt hollowed out, and the man who wanted to rewrite my soul was stepping through the threshold.
But deep in the dark, the wolf was still running. The fox was still waiting.
"Asher," I whispered into the silence of my own mind, letting my head fall forward as the last of my strength ebbed away. "I hope you're as fast as you think you are."