The dorm never truly slept.

  Footsteps thinned. Laughter broke off mid-sentence. Somewhere, a door clicked shut and stayed that way.

  Lanterns dimmed along the corridors, their glow reduced to a steady, watchful pulse.

  Lysara lay still, listening to the building settle around her. She counted the rhythm of patrols the way she once counted breaths in the Fog Forest—slow, unhurried.

  The door opened.

  She felt the disturbance before she saw it. Someone entered expecting space to rearrange itself.

  “Mm. No,” a girl said lightly. “That won’t do.”

  Lysara turned her head just enough to see her.

  The girl stood framed in the doorway, uniform already altered to sit better on her frame than regulation allowed. Pale hair fell neatly into place, untouched by travel or uncertainty. Her eyes skimmed the room, cataloguing.

  “That bed,” she said, pointing. “By the window.”

  The green-haired girl looked up from unpacking. “It’s mine.”

  The girl smiled, pleasant and certain. “It shouldn’t be.”

  A pause.

  “Assignments are fixed.”

  “So is my preference.” The girl inclined her head slightly. “Adeline Vaereth.”

  The name landed with weight.

  Lysara watched the exchange without interest. Her attention was already elsewhere—tracking time, counting the breaths between lantern pulses, rehearsing turns she would take later in the dark.

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  “We’ll revisit this,” Adeline said finally, already turning away.

  The door closed.

  The room resettled.

  Lysara closed her eyes.

  Three hours.

  At two in the morning, the Academy changed its posture.

  Lanterns dimmed further. The hum in the walls deepened, steadier now, like a held breath. Assumption replaced attention.

  Lysara dressed slowly, deliberately. Shoes soft-soled. Satchel light. Jacket, potion vial, dye components, knife.

  She slipped into the corridor and let the light lose her.

  It wasn’t a decision so much as a release. Her shoulders softened, her steps adjusted, and shadow took her. Her feet touched down lightly, weight held back until the stone accepted it.

  The first floor passed beneath her feet in steady cadence.

  The second followed.

  Her pulse climbed anyway—a measured rise. Here, mistakes didn’t vanish into soil or leaf litter. Stone carried sound.

  At each intersection, she closed her eyes for a single breath. Sound told her when to move.

  Then she moved again, close to the walls, skimming angles, threading herself through the thin places where lanternlight weakened and eyes slid past without catching.

  The Academy was awake.

  When she reached the Alchemy Wing, she slowed.

  Light bled beneath several doors, pale and steady. Low voices murmured inside—focused, absorbed. Sleeves rolled back. Glass chimed softly against glass. Second-years, maybe. A few third-years. The air carried the faint bite of heated reagents—clean, sharp, familiar.

  Lysara shrugged into her jacket and let it hang wrong on her shoulders. She pulled a folded set of notes from her pocket, creased and overhandled, and scanned them as she walked, brow pinched in practiced irritation.

  They looked tired, behind and slightly miserable.

  She adjusted her pace to match the corridor’s rhythm—quick enough to suggest urgency, sloppy enough to excuse mistakes. A student racing a deadline. A late-night obligation. Nothing worth watching.

  No one looked up.

  They didn’t need to. Nothing here asked for attention.

  She passed beneath the lights with her head bowed, eyes flicking between the page and the floor, breath shallow, posture closed. Another figure caught in the same quiet grind.

  The doors stayed shut.

  The voices didn’t falter.

  Her footsteps faded into the background noise of glass, breath, murmured numbers.

  No pause. No glance.

  She didn’t slow.