(Luna) I find Sage at breakfast the next morning.
The moment she sees my face, she sets down her fork.
“Okay, what happened,” she demands, her tone sharp with alarm.
I tell her.
Not everything, I leave Jace’s vision out entirely, because explaining that means explaining Jace, and I’m not ready to untangle any of that in the middle of the Great Hall with half of Hollowcrest close enough to overhear.
But I tell her about the pull, the whisper, the staircase I’d never noticed before, the door covered in cracking runes, the breath on the other side of it.
My hands shake a little as I speak, and I press them flat against the table to steady them.
Sage goes pale, then paler, her fork forgotten completely on her plate.
“You touched the door,” she whispers, her voice hushed and urgent.
“Luna, that’s the Undercroft.
Do you understand what that is?” “Not really, no,” I admit, my throat tight.
“The wards on that door are ancient.
Older than the Academy itself, older than most of the bloodlines here.” She glances around the hall, lowering her voice even though nobody’s paying attention to us.
“If they’re cracking…” “Something’s coming through,” I finish for her, my stomach twisting at the thought.
“Or something’s trying to,” Sage says, her dark eyes wide with worry.
Underneath that worry, I catch something else, the same stubborn determination I’ve seen in her since the night she showed up at my door with cookies and a blanket, refusing to let me sit alone in my misery.
It steadies me a little, seeing that same fire now.
“We have to look into it.
Carefully.
Not alone, and definitely not at night when half the wards are down anyway.” “Agreed,” I say, a rush of relief loosening something in my shoulders at not having to carry this by myself, even though the fear hasn’t gone anywhere.
“Together, then.” “Together.” She reaches over and squeezes my hand once, firm and steady.
“We’ll figure out what’s going on down there.
I promise.” I want to believe her.
I let myself, just for a moment, because the alternative is unbearable.
Kael doesn’t go easy on me that afternoon.
If anything, he pushes harder than he has in weeks, correcting my stance with sharper words, demanding I try to feel for my wolf over and over until sweat soaks through my shirt and my legs shake from holding position too long.
Every failed attempt scrapes against nerves already raw from the night before, and by the third hour, I’m not sure whether the shaking in my limbs comes from exhaustion or barely restrained tears.
“You’re still grabbing,” he says, his tone worn thin with repetition, for what feels like the hundredth time.
“Then show me something new,” I snap, frustration cracking through my voice.
“Because whatever we’ve been doing for two weeks clearly isn’t working.” I plant my feet and drop into the stance he taught me, teeth gritted, and instead of waiting for his instruction, I shove, not my body, but whatever lives underneath it, some desperate lunge toward the thing I can never quite reach.
Pain lances behind my eyes.
The silver mark on my forehead burns hot enough that I gasp, and the ground beneath my feet actually trembles, a low groan of stressed earth.
“Luna, stop,” Kael barks, alarm sharpening his voice, his hand closing around my arm, hard, hauling me back a step before whatever I’d cracked open can finish cracking.
“Are you trying to hurt yourself?” “I’m trying to *do something*!” The words tear out of me, raw and furious.
“Two weeks, Kael.
Everyone else shifted the first week, some of them the first night, and I’m still standing here failing in front of an audience that whispers about me every time I walk past.
What if it doesn’t come?
What if I never shift, and the mark on my head was some kind of mistake, and I’m just going to stand in this circle for the rest of my life waiting for a wolf who isn’t there?” Something shifts in his face, the careful composure cracking for just a moment.
“You think you’re the only one asking that question?” he says, his voice low, almost bitter.
I go still.
“What?” “I don’t have an answer for you, Luna,” he admits, his jaw tightening, and for the first time since I’ve known him, he looks less like an unshakable instructor and more like someone standing at the edge of his own uncertainty.
“I’ve trained cubs for six years.
I know what a slow shift looks like, and I know what a stuck one looks like, and I don’t know which one this is.
That terrifies me more than I want to admit, because if I don’t know how to help you, I don’t know what happens to you.” The admission lands harder than any correction he’s given me all afternoon.
I open my mouth to argue and find nothing waiting there, only the uncomfortable weight of two people equally lost.
“That’s not exactly reassuring,” I say, my voice quieter now, some of the fight draining out of it.
“I didn’t say it to reassure you,” he says, his tone quiet but firm.
“I said it because it’s true.” He steps closer, and neither of us backs away this time, both of us breathing hard, close enough now that I can feel the heat radiating off him.
“You’re the strongest cub I’ve ever trained.
That’s not flattery, it’s a fact.
But strength alone isn’t going to get you through this, and I don’t have a map for whatever you actually are.” “So what do we do?” I ask, barely above a whisper.
“I don’t know,” he murmurs, his voice softening, something in his expression shifting too, the guardedness he usually wears easing back for a moment.
His hand comes up, slow, and brushes a strand of hair back from my face, his fingers lingering against my cheek a beat longer than the motion requires.
My phone buzzes against my hip, sharp and insistent, and some distant part of me registers Jace’s name flashing on the screen before I shove the thought away.
Not now.
I can’t carry both of these things at once, and Kael’s hand is warm against my cheek, and the training grounds around us have gone quiet, the argument forgotten, the space between us shrinking without either of us deciding to close it.
His amber eyes hold mine, and for one long, suspended second, I forget every reason I have not to lean into his hand.
The phone falls silent in my pocket, and I let it.
“Luna!” Sage’s voice cuts through the moment like a blade, and I jump back from Kael so fast I nearly stumble.
Sage jogs up to us, breathless, her braids swinging, silver beads catching the afternoon light.
“Sorry, I know I’m interrupting something,” she says, her words rushed and urgent, “but you need to hear this.
One of the cubs is missing.
Maren.
Nobody’s seen her since last night.” My stomach drops straight through the floor.
“Missing since when exactly?” I ask, my voice tight.
“They think sometime after midnight,” Sage says, her tone trembling.
“Her roommate woke up and her bed hadn’t been slept in.” Her dark eyes are wide, frightened, and I know without either of us saying it out loud that we’re thinking the exact same thing.
I turn instinctively toward the far edge of the grounds, toward the direction I know, without needing a map, leads down into the Undercroft.
Something in my gut settles cold and certain.
That’s where she went.
My phone buzzes again, and this time I pull it out.
One missed call from Jace, and beneath it, a text.
*Jace: Something’s wrong.
I can feel it.
Call me.* Guilt flashes through me, sharp and immediate, but Maren’s face, a girl I’ve barely spoken to, a girl who might be down in the dark right now because of what I did, crowds out everything else.
I don’t have time to explain a vision I don’t understand to a boy three hundred miles away.
I slide the phone back into my pocket without answering.
I turn and head straight for the Undercroft instead.