(Luna) I don’t make it far.
The path down toward the Undercroft is blocked before I even reach the entrance.
Two senior wolves stand posted at the mouth of the stairwell, arms crossed, faces carefully neutral in a way that tells me arguing won’t get me anywhere.
The air around the entrance already feels different too, tighter, humming with reinforced wards that weren’t there two nights ago.
I can practically taste the new magic layered over the old, sharp and metallic against my tongue.
“Nobody’s allowed down there,” one of them warns, clipped and final, before I can even open my mouth.
“Academy’s on lockdown until further notice.
You’ll want to head to the courtyard.
Everyone’s being called together.” I don’t have much choice but to turn back, my jaw clenched tight as I follow the flow of students already moving toward the main courtyard.
Every step away from that stairwell feels wrong, and my stomach twists harder with each one, like I’m leaving a piece of myself behind.
By the time I arrive, most of Hollowcrest has already gathered, a sea of anxious faces under the afternoon sky.
Whispers ripple through the crowd about Maren, about the Undercroft, about wards that shouldn’t be cracking after a thousand years of holding steady.
I catch fragments of conversation as I push through.
Someone’s cousin swears the wards haven’t so much as flickered in a century.
Someone else insists Maren was seen wandering the east corridor alone the night before she disappeared.
My hands curl into fists at my sides.
Sage finds me near the back, slipping her hand into mine and squeezing once.
I squeeze back, her palm cold against mine.
Seraphina appears at the top of the courtyard steps, and the entire crowd falls silent almost instantly, drawn to her the way I imagine every crowd she’s ever stood in front of has been drawn to her.
“I know you’re frightened,” she announces, her voice carrying easily across the courtyard, calm and measured without her needing to raise it.
“I want you to know that every resource this Academy has is being used to find Maren, and I have every confidence she will be found safe.
I ask that you trust in that, and trust in the wards that have protected this school for centuries.” Her violet eyes sweep slowly across the crowd, steady, warm, utterly certain.
My shoulders loosen before I can stop them, the tension bleeding out of me despite everything I already know, despite the door I watched crack open with my own hand two nights ago.
It frightens me how easily she smooths over the cracks, how willingly my body believes her even while my mind refuses to.
“Classes will resume as scheduled tomorrow,” Seraphina continues, her tone firm now, final.
“The Undercroft will remain sealed and guarded until we understand exactly what we’re dealing with.
I ask for your patience, and your trust.” The crowd disperses slowly after that, murmurs of relief mixing with lingering worry.
I plant my feet and stay put.
Trust isn’t something I can afford right now, not when I already know more about that door than Seraphina admitted to the entire courtyard.
Sage still grips my hand tight beside me, and I lean close to her instead of following the others toward the dormitories.
“I need to find another way down there,” I murmur, low, urgent, meant only for her ears.
“Or at least find out what they’re not telling us.” Sage’s eyes widen, but she doesn’t argue.
“The east archive,” she offers, thoughtful, already working through the problem.
“There are records on the wards, old ones.
If anyone’s cracked before, it would be written down somewhere.” We split off from the crowd and cut across toward the library instead, moving quickly before anyone can question where we’re headed.
The archive room is locked, though, a thick chain looped through the door handles that wasn’t there yesterday, and a small ward-sigil glowing faint blue against the wood.
Sage swears under her breath.
“They locked this too,” she mutters, frustration sharpening her words.
“They’re locking down everything.” I press my palm briefly against the door anyway, feeling for some echo of the pull I felt at the Undercroft, some sign that the two are connected, but there’s nothing, just cold wood and colder magic that has no interest in answering me.
I let my hand fall, my fingers curling shut against the emptiness.
“We’ll find another way,” Sage says, uncertainty threading through her voice, and neither of us speaks again until we’re well clear of the library.
I find Kael later that evening, near the training grounds, and I don’t waste time before telling him what happened: the pull, the whisper, the door, the breath on the other side of it, and the locked archive that gave me nothing.
He listens without interrupting, his expression unreadable, but I notice the way his hands go still at his sides, like he’s forcing himself not to react until I finish.
His reaction isn’t what I expect.
He goes pale first, the color draining from his face fast enough that I actually reach out to steady him before I catch myself.
Then something darker moves across his expression, something close to anger, though it isn’t directed at me exactly.
It’s aimed somewhere further off, somewhere I can’t see.
“Stay away from there,” he warns, his voice dropping low and hard.
“Why?
What is it?” I press, my chin lifting.
“It doesn’t matter what it is.
It matters that you stay away.” His jaw tightens, the anger folding itself back down under a wall of careful control I’ve seen him put up before, usually right before he shuts a conversation down entirely.
“Promise me, Luna.” “I can’t promise you that if you won’t tell me why,” I answer, my arms crossing over my chest.
“Then we’re done talking about this,” he snaps, already turning away before I can push any further, leaving me standing there with more questions than I had before I found him.
I watch him go, the rigid set of his shoulders making my stomach twist, and I almost follow.
My feet actually carry me two steps after him before I stop myself, some instinct warning me that chasing him down won’t get me anything but another locked door, another wall thrown up between us.
So instead I climb back to my room, restless, unwilling to simply wait but out of moves for the night.
That’s when I see him from my window overlooking the Moonpool, moving fast and purposeful across the grounds, heading in the exact direction of the Undercroft entrance, the same place he just warned me off with something close to fear in his voice.
My breath catches.
Part of me wants to run down after him, to demand answers, but something rooted and heavy keeps me anchored to the window instead: the memory of those two guards, the locked archive, the certainty that I’d be caught before I made it halfway there.
I press my palm flat against the cold glass, watching until his shape disappears into the dark toward the very thing he told me to avoid.
I stay at the window long after he vanishes from sight, watching the empty dark where he’d been, half-expecting him to reappear, dragged back by the same guards who turned me away hours earlier.
He doesn’t.
The minutes stretch, and I pace the small width of my room instead, back and forth, unable to settle, unable to make myself lie down while he’s out there doing whatever he swore me away from.
Twice I return to the window, certain I’ve heard something, footsteps, a shout, the groan of old stone, but there’s only silence and the pale shimmer of the Moonpool below.
Eventually I give up on catching sight of him again and sit on the edge of my bed instead, still fully dressed, still listening, my whole body wound tight around the question of whether he’ll come back at all.
My phone rings just after midnight, and this time, I answer it.
“Hey,” Jace says, his voice rough with worry, and it hits me harder than I expect it to.
“Hey,” I answer, sitting down on the edge of my bed, phone pressed tight to my ear like I can somehow close the distance between us just by holding on hard enough.
“I’ve called like six times,” he says, frustration cutting sharp through the concern.
“I know.
I’m sorry.” I press the heel of my hand against my eyes.
“It’s been a lot here.” “You could tell me, you know,” he offers, gentle, no accusation in it, just quiet hurt underneath the words.
“Whatever it is.
I want to understand, Luna, even if I can’t fully get it.” “I don’t even know how to explain it,” I admit, letting out a shaky breath.
“There’s this whole world here, Jace, and it doesn’t make sense in a way you can just talk through over the phone.
I don’t even understand half of it myself.” “Try me,” he says, steady, patient.
I do try, a little, stumbling through pieces of it: the training, the mark, the strange pull that led me underground two nights ago, careful to leave out the parts that feel too dangerous to say out loud even to him.
He listens, quiet and patient, and when I finally run out of words, he’s quiet a moment longer.
“I don’t know how to explain the visions either,” he admits, soft, thin with something like fear.
“They just happen.
I see pieces, and I don’t know what they mean until after, and it scares me, Luna, not knowing if what I’m seeing is something that already happened or something that’s about to.” “I’m scared too,” I whisper, and saying it out loud, even just to him, loosens something tight in my chest that’s been wound there for days.
Neither of us says anything for a moment, just the quiet hum of the call between us, two states apart and further than that in every other way that matters right now.
“I miss you,” he says, finally, his voice cracking just slightly on the words.
“I miss who I was when I was with you,” I answer, honest before I can soften it into something easier to hear.
The silence on the other end of the line stretches long, heavy, and I press my fingers against my sternum like I can hold my own chest together from the outside.
But hearing his voice, even now, even through all this distance and everything unsaid between us, steadies something in me that Hollowcrest hasn’t managed to touch since the night I arrived.
It’s honest.
And it hurts.