Chapter sixteen:
Miriel
Days have passed. I spoke with Raphael about Cai.
He didn't say much. Just a glance to the side, a slight shift in his jaw, like something sour had settled behind his teeth. He's never one to show unease, but there was discomfort there, buried, but real.
I kept pressing, but Raphael only muttered, "Be careful," before changing the subject.
It confirmed what I already feared.
Cai Huang is dangerous.
Not just in the way all the clever ones are. No, there's a precision to his silence, a sense that he's already counted the steps before you've even noticed the staircase.
So I did what I always do—I dug.
The name Huang leads to doors I should not be near. His full name is Cai Huang, the second son of Huang Xining, a noble whose family governs the northern reaches of Orion. The Huang trade routes are vast—salt, silk, ore. Silent power masked in ledgers. They're not just merchants. They're the lungs of the northern empire.
More importantly, Huang Xining is recognized by Empress Wei herself.
I found an old court document archived under the merchant registry: the Huang crest stamped beside the empress's seal, denoting "strategic loyalty." A term that might as well mean sanctioned corruption.
Cai doesn't need this academy. He plays within it. Manipulates its walls like they're paper screens, easy to slide through without being seen.
Can I run?
No.
Even if I could, I wouldn't. I came here to learn. And now—against all odds—I have that chance. He offered me the door. I just didn't realize I'd have to step through it with a blade between my shoulders.
Since then, I've tried to find a weakness in him. Anything. Old mistakes. Hidden affiliations. A shadow in the Huang family's empire. But I've failed.
Cai is clean—too clean.
He skips lectures without consequence. Professors let him. He ranks at the top of every discipline he bothers to engage in, and somehow, his absence only elevates his presence. People remember him even when he's not there.
There's a kind of power in that.
And I—what do I have?
A name I've buried. A magic I don't fully control. A journal full of half-truths and sketches of rooms I shouldn't have seen.
Still, I keep watching. Waiting. Something will give. No one moves like that without a flaw.
But the truth is this:
If I want to survive here—if I want to return to the kingdom that forgot me, not as exile but as reckoning—I might have to walk beside Cai Huang.
Even if I never trust him.
Especially if I never trust him.
The time he gave me has come.
Three days. That's what Cai said.
"No pressure. No follow-up."
And yet I've felt the weight of it every hour since.
The academy is louder than usual tonight. Lanterns burn long past curfew. Students buzz from courtyard to wing with festival clamor—the official opening of the zuzhins, marked as tradition demands: with banners, staged debates, and too much incense.
On the surface, it's a time of intellectual pride. Every house opens its doors. Zuzhins—those strange little lounges of specialization—display their studies, their artifacts, their curated obsessions. From botany to battlefield ethics, each discipline begs to be admired, misunderstood, and momentarily respected.
But I'm not here for any of those.
I walk alone, cloak drawn tight, slipping past knots of students too loud, too full of wine and curiosity. My path winds toward the west wing—older stone, colder halls. Less foot traffic.
Here, the lanterns burn lower. Here, no music follows.
Cai's instructions echo in my mind:
"Plain black door. Violet mark."
The zuzhin is listed publicly as History Reading Society—a name so benign it borders on absurd. I saw the entry on the student registry myself. A single room assigned to a dead branch of historical speculation: pre-Empire wars, forbidden texts, collapsed dynasties. No one attends. No one questions it.
But in reality, it studies a different kind of history.
Not the kind written in scrolls or spoken by professors—but the kind buried,forbidden,corrected. The history that holds the bones of revolution and the names of those who made the Empire bleed.
I found the door exactly where he said it would be.
No plaque. No windows.
Just a smooth black surface and a violet crescent scrawled near the bottom, half-faded like a bruise.
I raise my hand to knock.
And pause.
This is the step. The moment where silence ends. Where pretending becomes impossible.
Once I cross this threshold, I will no longer be just a student.
I will no longer be overlooked.
Whatever Cai is pulling me into—it's already too late to claim ignorance.
I knock twice.
A slit opens.
Then closes.
The door swings inward.
And I step inside.
The door opened.
Inside, the room was dim lit by blue candles perched in iron sconces, their flames too still, as if time itself hesitated here. Smoke coiled upward in thin strands, veiling the corners like waiting eyes.
Just past the threshold stood a red-haired boy, leaning slightly against the wall. His expression was carved from something strained—lips pressed into the shape of a smile that barely held.
Cai.
He didn't speak. Just looked at me with something like apology curled behind his eyes.
Painful. Familiar. Calculated.
I stepped past him without a word.
There were others—seven, maybe eight. Not many. Some sat, some stood. Most were silent, half-curious, half-bored. I could tell immediately who was here to listen and who was already a piece on the board.
At the front of the room stood a girl with long purple hair, parted sharply, cascading like ink over one shoulder. Her green eyes caught every flicker of candlelight as if they commanded it.
She spoke without hesitation.
"Our vision," she declared, voice clear, trained, loud enough to hush the restless, "is to help each other study our history."
A pause. Controlled.
"Not the history they hand us in gilded volumes. Not the one carved on stone tablets and sealed with the imperial stamp. But the history that lives in bloodlines. In ash. In silence."
No one clapped. This wasn't that kind of speech.
I remained near the back, rain still in my boots, hands buried in the folds of my cloak. My eyes scanned the walls—map fragments, diagrams of dynasties I didn't recognize, a weathered relic set under glass with no label.
Then Cai stepped closer.
"Have you decided?" he murmured.
My gaze cut to him. His voice wasn't smug. Just steady.
"I didn't come to perform," I said flatly.
His mouth twitched, almost a smile. "Neither did I."
The girl at the front had begun pacing now, drawing a shape in the air with her fingers—spirals intersecting lines.
"This place is only hidden," she continued, "because the truth is inconvenient. Not forbidden. Not yet."
I turned back to Cai.
"What is this?" I asked. "A resistance? A game?"
His answer was quiet. Careful.
"A record. A warning. A blade."
"And me?" I asked.
"You're still deciding," he said.
And I hated that he was right.
—-----
The speech ended with a single clap, slow, deliberate.
The rest followed, half-heartedly, as if out of obligation. Then the movement. Footsteps scraping against stone, whispers exchanged. One by one, the curious filtered out, slipping back into the illusion of normalcy, into the candlelit corridors where no one asked what lay beneath.
But I stayed.
So did a handful of others.
Cai moved to the door, locking it with a firm click. Then he traced a rune in the air with his fingertips, low and quick. A ripple spread through the wood, faint, shimmering. A warding spell. Clean, practiced. Final.
There were four of us left.
Cai turned, motioning us toward the center.
The purple-haired girl stepped forward again, her green eyes glinting as she raised both hands. Her voice dropped into an incantation—words I didn't recognize, sharp and ancient. The floor shimmered beneath us, a cold lurch pulling through the soles of my boots.
Then—
The room collapsed into light.
And reformed.
We stood in a new space.
The scent of old ink and wax struck first. Then the sound—nothing. No wind, no breath, only silence held taut. Around us, walls stretched high and circular, lined with massive scrolls and stitched parchments. Map after map, draped and layered like skin.
I recognized some from Cai's board. Others were stranger, written in dialects I barely understood, histories carved in lost tongues and sealed in geometric wax.
"So," the girl said, brushing her hands together. "She's joining us."
Her voice was more casual now. Almost amused.
"I'm Gwendolyn," she added. "Just Gwen."
She pointed lazily behind her.
"Ren. Ji'er."
Ren gave a curt nod. He was larger than Cai—broad-shouldered, with deep-set eyes and a scar trailing beneath his collar. Ji'er gave a small wave, barely older than a child, her frame slight, with dark braids and restless fingers. She reminded me of Priya—sharp, too quiet, too aware.
Then Gwen looked back at me. "Now let's make this simple—"
"What if I don't want to?" I said.
Everything stopped.
No spells. No movement.
Only silence. Eyes turning, fixing.
Gwen tilted her head. Her smile didn't reach her eyes.
"Well, princess, it looks like you don't get to choose now."
My breath hitched. The word carved through me.
I turned sharply to Cai. "Did you tell them?"
He didn't flinch.
"They already knew," he said calmly. "And sooner or later, someone else will too."
His tone cooled further.
"You're on borrowed time, Miriel. That magic of yours? That name? Once the Church confirms who you are, you'll be a pawn in white robes and golden chains. A banner for their cause. Or a sacrifice for someone else's."
I looked at them—all three. They weren't bluffing. They were offering me shelter wrapped in a threat. An open hand hiding a dagger.
This wasn't an invitation.
It was survival.
I looked between them—Cai, Gwen, Ren, Ji'er.
Their expressions didn't shift. They had already decided what I was. What I wasn't.
I could walk away now. Deny it all. Pretend I hadn't seen the board, the maps, the spells that cut through space like knives through paper.
But where would I go?
The Church would claim me. The academy would cage me. And my name—my true name—would rot on someone else's banner, its meaning rewritten in gold ink and dogma.
I straightened my spine. My voice came quietly, but certain.
"Fine. I'll join."
For a breath, no one moved.
Then Gwen raised a brow. "Just like that?"
"I'm not here to play at rebellion," I said. "If you want me to kneel, say it. If you want me to earn it, show me how."
A long silence followed.
Then Ren scoffed. "Told you she'd fold."
"Not folded," Gwen corrected. "Cornered."
She stepped closer to me. "And we don't trust cornered things. They bite without aim."
Her green eyes swept over me again, not appraising, dissecting. "You're not here because you believe in what we do. Not yet. You're here because you're out of moves. That makes you dangerous."
"Good," I replied. "You should be afraid of me."
Ji'er blinked at that. Then smiled faintly.
Cai said nothing.
Gwen circled me slowly. "We don't take oaths lightly. Names carry weight here. Yours more than most."
She stopped in front of me again, arms crossed. "We'll give you access. Not trust. That you'll earn."
Ren spoke from the side, arms folded. "You'll report to Gwen, not Cai. And we watch your movements. No second doors. No private copies. If you try to pull from this place—"
"I won't," I cut in.
"You will," Cai said quietly, finally stepping forward, "but only when you believe in what we're doing."
That stung more than it should have.
Gwen snapped her fingers, and a sigil lit beneath my feet—faint, violet, drawn like a thorned crown. Not binding. Not yet. But watching.
They will not kill you, the symbol seemed to say, but they will not save you either.
Not unless you prove you're worth the cost.