Miriel
Rain glazed the flagstones, turning the academy courtyard into a shallow mirror of grey light and boot prints. The first bell had rung late. The sky hung low, colorless, indifferent.
I kept to the margins of the hall while the others shuffled into the eastern wing. No one looked my way. I didn't mind. I slipped into a rear bench, my cloak dripping in silence, hood still raised. Around me, fresh-faced students murmured and jostled—bright-eyed, untested, clinging to the idea that the world could be mastered with charts and rules.
The air in the classroom smelled of damp parchment and the fine dust of chalk. A slate board stretched across the front, already marked with three empty circles. Then Professor Guang entered, trailing the scent of wet wool and the rhythm of rain. His robes were frayed. His face was lined like old stone. He looked out of place in a room of the young.
"Today," he began, voice low but steady, "we begin with mana."
The room quieted.
"Mana is not a tool. A gift, and like any gift, it can run dry. It punishes greed. It unmakes fools."
He marked a triangle on the board—three sides, three dots on each, precise and deliberate.
"Three forms: Natural. Light. Dark. No more. No less. Believe otherwise, and you're misled. Or worse—cursed."
He paused, letting the words settle. My fingers twitched against the underside of the bench.
"Natural mana comes from the living world. It answers only clarity, not need. It will feed your crops, bring the rain, and calm the wind. But it does not love you. It never will."
He tapped the first dot.
He listed examples, but I barely registered them. Words like weathercall, verdancy, and beast-speech. Neat categories to dress up something wild.
"Light magic," he continued, "is cold and exacting. You'll find it in temples. And in tombs."
Healing. Warding. Purging. The language of saints and mourners.
Then he stopped at the third dot.
"Dark magic," he said, with no inflection, "is whispered more than taught. Most of you will never wield it. Most of you shouldn't."
Curses. Drains. Shields that eat impact and return nothing.
A scoff from the front row. Elion said nothing.
"Magic does not seek your virtue. Mana does not care for your kindness. You shape it. It reshapes you."
He turned and wiped the board clean.
"Class ends when I say so. Not before."
No one moved. A few scratched notes. Others stole glances. I remained still.
The dull ache in my fingers returned—familiar, insistent, pulsing like a half-remembered spark. I dug my nails into the bench plank until the tremor eased. No glow today—only the memory of it.
Thunder grumbled, distant.
I rose before dismissal, slipped out into the rain, and didn't look back.
Mid-corridor, Cai stepped from an archway and fell into stride beside me. Rain traced silver lines across his collar.
"You'd better not get caught," he said, voice pitched just above the downpour.
"If you stay here you'll drown," I muttered, moving past.
"Right… I know a place. Come with me."
"No."
He gave a small, unreadable smile. "Thought so."
I edged around him, but he shifted, blocking the path—gentle, immovable.
"No—really," he said, eyes steady, rain ticking on stone. "You should come."
The silence between us tightened like a drawn bowstring. Somewhere overhead, thunder answered.
I stalled in the hallway, rainwater pooling at my cuffs. Yet Cai only tipped his head—an invitation that sounded like a challenge.
"Miriel," he drawled, "five minutes. Trust me."
Trust you? Hardly. But I disliked being thought predictable even more. With a curt nod, I followed.
We stepped into heavy rain. Cai moved ahead; I stayed close.
A plain black door with a violet mark signaled the zuzhin. Bass rolled from inside. Cai knocked twice. A slit opened, checked us, then the door swung inward.
Inside was warm, smelling of cardamom and metal. Brass grids pulsed with light. People in varied outfits glanced over; none reacted to Cai.
He led me up metal stairs to a small booth—an iron table, two chairs, one blue candle. He gestured for me to sit. I didn't.
"All this for what?" I asked.
"Opportunity," he said.
Lightning flashed through a skylight, lighting our faces.
"Four minutes," I said. "Show me."
"I will," Cai answered.
Cai didn't move right away.
Instead, he reached into the folds of his coat and produced a key—small, worn, with teeth like a broken jaw. He turned it in the candlelight, then slipped it into a narrow slot in the wall behind the booth. A click answered. Then another. Then a low whir, like gears uncoiling beneath the floor.
The wall to our left shifted.
It wasn't dramatic—no secret panel swinging open on command—but a quiet tilt, a seam that widened into a narrow stairwell descending into shadow. Cold air rose from it, dry and still, untouched by the storm outside.
Cai glanced at me once, then descended without waiting. I hesitated, listening to the last echo of his boots vanish into silence.
Then I followed.
The stairs were iron, but the steps didn't echo. Below, the passage gave way to a long corridor veiled in copper mesh. Behind the mesh—rooms. Dozens. Most dark. A few lit dimly with blue lanterns that hummed low, like held breath.
Cai paused before one of the doors—plain steel, bolted at the sides. He tapped a pattern across its surface. The bolts retracted with a hiss.
Inside was not a room. It was a map.
No, many maps. Layered over one another like translucent skins. Magical lattices. Trade routes inked in blood-red thread. A blown-up chart of the Acacian borderlands, marked with glyphs I didn't recognize. Notes etched on vellum scraps. Polaroids. Dossiers. Faded sigils. Even an old academy class photo, the names scratched out except one: mine.
Cai stepped aside to let me in.
"This," he said, tone neutral, "is what your instructors will never teach. What your priestesses pray stays buried."
I walked slowly into the room. A desk sat at the far end, strewn with papers. A board above it held pins and string like a spider's court. Somewhere, a clock ticked with ruthless precision.
"What is this place?" I asked.
His answer came quietly. "The Observatory."
A pause.
"Not the one under the stars," he added. "The one under power."
He gestured toward the array of information. "Names. Secrets. Leverage. Anyone with ambition and enough recklessness to chase it ends up here—or against it."
"And me?" I asked. "What am I doing here?"
Cai's expression shifted—subtle, unreadable, then sharpened with something like admiration. Or warning.
"You're being recruited."
I didn't move.
The air in the room was too still, too knowing. Every parchment, every pinned sigil seemed to tilt toward me, waiting for my breath to shift the balance. The weight of it all—the names, the unseen strings, the memory of my name alone left unscathed in the photograph—pressed like a second storm beneath my skin.
Cai didn't speak.
He leaned against the wall, arms crossed, gaze lowered—not passive, but deliberate, like a wolf pretending to nap.
I stared at the board. There were faces I half-recognized. A merchant who vanished last year. A court official was once tried for treason and then released. The head of the herbarium wing—her eyes circled in ink.
None of it made sense, yet it made too much sense.
"I didn't ask to be part of this," I muttered.
"No one does," Cai replied, voice gentler than I expected. "But you are."
I turned to him, jaw tight. "And if I walk out?"
"You will. For now." He straightened, uncrossing his arms. "You should. It's too much at once. That's on purpose."
He walked past me, brushing a finger along the edge of the board without touching the threads. "But you'll come back, Miriel. Because you're smart enough to know something's wrong, and stubborn enough not to look away from it."
He moved to the door and opened it. Dim blue light spilled into the threshold.
"You get one week," he said, stepping aside. "No pressure. No follow-up. Decide alone. But once you know—once the veil drops—you can't unknow it."
I remained still, listening to the clock.
"Why me?" I asked quietly.
"Because you asked that question." He didn't smile. "And because your magic doesn't burn when it should. It waits."
That unsettled me more than I let on.
Cai raised the collar of his coat. "Upstairs leads back to rain. And your room. And the fiction you've outgrown. Choose the lie, or start digging toward something worse."
I turned toward the board one last time.
The web didn't tremble. But I did.
I climbed back up the stairs alone.
Each step sounded dull, like walking on soaked velvet. The passage behind me hissed shut—the seal reengaging, the quiet conspiracy folded back into shadow. As though it had never opened. As though I'd imagined it.
Upstairs, the zuzhin pulsed with music again, low and throbbing, the kind that echoed in the ribs. Laughter rolled like smoke through the lounge, thick with clove and steam. No one looked my way.
I pushed through the door and stepped back into the rain.
It hit me like a memory: cold, sharp, real. It clung to my cloak and hair, blurred the streetlamps into pale ghosts. Thunder rolled above the rooftops. The academy's eastern tower blinked distantly through the storm.
I walked slowly.
The cobbled paths shimmered with shallow pools. Lamps flickered behind rain-warped glass. Somewhere, boots splashed and voices argued over umbrellas and spilled tea.
But it all felt quieter now. Not calm—hollow.
My fingers still itched from the room below, from the strange weight of the photograph. My face—my name—the only one left.
The urge to peel that image from the board and tear it in half hadn't left me. But I hadn't moved. I hadn't spoken.
I hadn't refused.
Back in the dormitory wing, the halls were half-lit, dripping at the windows, the scent of old stone and wet wool trailing under the doors. I passed may doors—quiet. Then the atrium. Then mine.
Inside, I stripped off my cloak. The drip of water pooled on the tile, echoing like a clock I couldn't stop.
On the desk, my journal sat open. I hadn't touched it in days. A half-written entry waited like a wound.
"They think I'm forgettable. They're almost right. Until I stop playing their script."
I shut it.
Then sat.
Then stared.
The candle burned low, casting flickers against the wall, carving my shadow into unfamiliar shapes.
Beneath my ribs, the ache stirred again—soft, electric. Not pain. Not yet.
Just a question.
And outside, the rain fell harder, as if to drown the silence I couldn't name.
—-------
Morning came late.
The rain had passed, but left behind its scent—mineral, green, heavy. Mist clung to the edges of windows like breath that refused to fade. Beyond the glass, the sky was the color of chalk, smudged and wide.
I hadn't slept.
Not well. Not fully. I remembered fragments—feet on stairs that didn't echo, blue candlelight blinking like a pulse, Cai's voice saying "your magic waits." It tangled in my dreams and didn't untangle when I woke.
I dressed in silence.
The academy bell rang a half-beat behind the hour, a strange delay that set my nerves on edge. I caught my reflection in the brass of the basin—eyes rimmed dark, a cut at my temple I didn't remember getting.
Outside, the halls were already moving.
Students shifted in herds—bright robes, chatter about assignments and seating charts, someone murmuring about a lightning strike near the temple grove. No one mentioned the zuzhin. No one mentioned me. At the mess hall, I sat alone. Spoons clinked. A girl at the next table was crying quietly over a sealed letter she hadn't opened. Her friend didn't ask why.
Cai was nowhere.
Good.
Or bad.
I couldn't decide.
After breakfast, we gathered in the eastern lecture chamber. Professor Guang was absent. In his place stood a woman with silver hair braided with black cord, eyes like cracked topaz. She wore a pin in the shape of a falling branch—familiar, though I couldn't place it.
She took roll.
She turned to the board and began to speak of bloodlines and resonance, of the price of legacy. The lesson spiraled upward into theories I could not follow and downward into implications I dared not question. A few students whispered guesses about Guang's absence—illness, travel, or demotion.
Mid-lecture, my fingers began to ache again, low, rhythmic, like a drum played behind stone. I curled them into my sleeve, kept my head down.
The woman's voice never wavered.
She paused only once, scanning the class until her eyes landed on me.
Only a second. A flicker. Then she moved on.
Three days passed.
No summons. No messages. No further signs of doors opening where doors shouldn't be. Cai vanished the way only someone practiced in watching can disappear—cleanly, without a trace or a rumor. Even the zuzhin seemed different now. Its door bore a different mark. I walked past it twice without meaning to. The bass was quieter.
The ache in my fingers hadn't left.
Neither had the thought of that board. That photo.
By the third evening, I stopped pretending to focus in class. I left before the bell, wandered the stone courts where ivy grew too thick, where instructors rarely lingered. The storm had passed, but a grey hush clung to the academy like a skin that hadn't shed.
Then, near the southern cloister, he was there.
Sitting on the edge of the dry fountain, coat draped over one knee, a small metal puzzle turning in his hands. Simple-looking, but old. Rust kissed its joints.
Cai didn't look up when I approached. He finished a movement on the puzzle—click. Then paused. Waited.
"You said one week," I said.
"I lied," he replied, setting the puzzle aside. "Or maybe I hoped you'd come sooner."
Silence.
The wind moved through the dry grass, stirring the brittle petals of the academy's dying hedge flowers. Something about the air tasted metallic.
I didn't sit beside him. I didn't speak.
Finally, Cai looked up. His gaze wasn't smug. Not curious. Just waiting—in that way water waits in a still pool before something breaks its surface.
"Well?" he asked.
"I haven't decided."
"You have," he said softly. "But you're afraid of what it means."
I looked away. The courtyard was empty. A crow circled once overhead, then vanished behind the old bell tower.
"What happens if I say no?" I asked.
Cai didn't answer right away. He toyed with the puzzle again, then snapped the two halves apart with a careless twist.
"Then the world continues," he murmured. "But not for you. Not the way it was."
"You said I'm being recruited."
"I did."
"And if I refuse?"
He held up the broken puzzle piece. "Then you spend the rest of your days wondering who else sees you coming."
The words landed like a key slipped into the wrong lock—soft, misfitting, dangerous.
"You're not convincing me."
"I'm not here to," he said. "I'm here because I told you the truth—and people don't forget that. Even if they try."
The fountain creaked faintly under his weight as he rose. He didn't reach for me. Didn't press.
"There's another meeting," he said, already turning. "Three days from now. Same door. Violet mark. If you're not there, your name's burned."
"Burned?"
"Erased," he clarified. "But burned sounds better, don't you think?"
Then he left.
No parting look. No warning.
Only the faint scent of cold metal, and the slow rustle of dried leaves as his footsteps faded.
Sleep did not return.
I stayed seated on the edge of the bed long after the sky began to pale, listening to the wind push softly at the panes. My cloak still hung by the door, edges stiff with dried rain. I hadn't washed it. I hadn't dared.
My fingers ached again.
I flexed them in the dark, watching the joints press pale against the skin. The pain wasn't sharp—it was rhythmic now, like something pacing inside my veins, waiting for permission.
By midday, I'd sat through two lectures and remembered none of them. Words floated past like silt in floodwater—useless, shifting, fast. When asked a question, I answered automatically, voice flat. No one noticed.
No one ever really does.
At dusk, I walked the outer path behind the herbarium alone, where the air smelled of scorched nettles and the ground turned soft underfoot. A student passed me and nodded. I didn't return it.
There was a time I wanted this place to feel like home.
Now it felt like a stage after the curtain has dropped—everything still in place, but empty. Unlit. Waiting for a script I no longer believed in.
Cai's words gnawed at the edges of every silence:
You're being recruited.
Your magic waits.Choose the lie, or start digging toward something worse.
And worst of all—
You'll come back.
I hated how sure he sounded. I hated how much of me believed him.
Back in my quarters, I lit a candle. Watched it flicker.
Opened the journal. Closed it again.
Then, without planning to, I began to draw the board. From memory. The string, the sigils, the glyphs. Faces I shouldn't remember, symbols I shouldn't understand. My hand moved faster than my thoughts.
When I finished, I stared at the ink-stained page.
My name wasn't there.
Not this time.
But I knew it was waiting. Just out of frame.
The candle burned low, its flame thin as a whisper.
I hadn't meant to remember. But memory came anyway.
Not as a scene, but as scent.
Clove smoke rising from the market alleys of Varu. The sharp bite of resin wafting from temple altars. Wet stone after a monsoon. Things no one ever taught you to miss—but the body did. Bones remembered what the mind tried to bury.
I saw the river, wide and silver, winding past the citadel like a promise no one kept. I saw the violet banners fluttering from the palace gate, the ones stitched by hand, fraying from wind and ritual.
My fingers curled against the journal's edge.
I had left.
Not escaped. Not vanished. Left.
A decision wrapped in urgency and sealed in silence. I told no one. I ran with nothing. Because staying would have meant something worse.
And yet…
I could still see it—the high walls, the mango trees thick with green fruit, the echo of bells during dusk prayer. The taste of river salt clinging to wind.
I told myself the kingdom was behind me. That it no longer mattered.
But it did.
It always would.
They didn't know I was alive. Not truly. To them, I was ash, or gone, or worse—a traitor who turned her back.
I hadn't.
Not really.
The kingdom still lived in the angles of my voice. In the cadence of how I said no. In the way I refused to kneel when professors spoke of fate and order and the shape of power.
They'd forgotten me.
But I had not forgotten them.
One day, I would return.
Not in shame. Not in secrecy.
When the time is right, I'll come back—not as a student. Not as a daughter. But as someone they cannot ignore.
And if I must walk through these shadows—Cai's secrets, the Observatory's games, the academy's masks—to carve the path?
Then so be it.
I closed the journal. My fingers no longer trembled.
The flame bowed low and held.