PNU has seven Acacia trees, and each one holds a piece of the sky.
At least that was how Ma’am Teddy explained it to me when I was seventeen and frightened and still believed that good teachers could fix anything.
She walked me through the quadrangle one evening and placed my palm against each trunk in turn.
The bark felt rough and faintly warm, as if a heartbeat lived beneath it.
“These trees were planted by the first class,” she said.
“A hundred years of footsteps have crossed their roots. A hundred years of students have sat in their shade and told each other that the school would last forever. Memory gathers around a promise like that. Memory becomes a wall.”
I never forgot the lesson, though I forgot almost everything else about that year.
Now, nine years later, I stood in the quadrangle at dusk with my palm against the first tree, and I felt the wall trembling.
[Anchor 1: Stable. Ward integrity: 94%.]
The System offered the number whether I wanted it or not.
I let my hand slide down the trunk and stepped to the second tree.
[Anchor 2: Stable. Ward integrity: 91%.]
Reading an Anchor cost me nothing.
Only edits cost memories, and I intended to make no edits tonight.
I walked the circle slowly, my hood pulled low, my bag slung over one shoulder like a student heading to the library.
A group of freshmen passed me on the path, laughing about a quiz.
None of them looked up.
The third tree stood beside the fountain.
[Anchor 3: Stable. Ward integrity: 88%.]
The fourth leaned toward the Main Building, and its leaves had begun to curl at the tips.
[Anchor 4: Weakening. Ward integrity: 79%.]
I frowned and pressed harder against the bark.
The old warmth rose through my palm, slow and uneven, with a flutter in it like a pulse that skipped a beat.
Somewhere below the soil, the roots held a vast tangle of remembered afternoons.
The tangle felt thinner than it had last month.
The fifth tree stood near the bell tower.
I reached it just as the last light slid off the roof.
[Anchor 5: Weakening. Ward integrity: 71%.]
I lowered my forehead against the trunk and closed my eyes.
Seventy-one percent.
Last week it had stood at eighty-six.
A ward does not erode on its own.
Memory keeps a wall strong, and the wall has to lose that memory somewhere.
Something was drinking from these trees, patiently and quietly, and the thirst had grown strong enough to leave marks.
“Who are you,” I murmured to the roots, “and what do you want?”
The tree gave no answer.
A single dry leaf spun down from the branches and landed on my shoulder.
* * *
“Senior Aris!”
The call came from across the quadrangle, loud and cheerful.
I opened my eyes and pushed myself upright with a sigh.
Dominic Reyes jogged toward me with an enormous grin.
He wore the Student Council jacket over a sleeveless shirt, and his arms were wrapped in practice tape from knuckle to wrist.
At nineteen he already carried himself like a veteran, though a fresh scrape ran along his jaw, and a leaf was stuck in his hair.
“Dom,” I said.
“You have a tree in your head.”
“What?” He patted his hair and pulled out the leaf.
“Oh. Thanks. I tripped near the Hollows.”
“You tripped near the Hollows.”
“Briefly.”
Behind him walked two more figures.
Sean Ocampo strolled along with his hands in his pockets, his Student Council president’s sash folded neatly over one arm.
Sean had the sort of face that politicians and saints are born with, open and attractive and impossible to dislike.
Beside him walked Cheska Tan, who carried a tablet against her chest and watched everything through narrow, careful eyes.
“Aris,” Sean said warmly.
“You look terrible.”
“Thank you.”
“I mean it with love.”
“I know.”
Cheska gave a small nod, polite and measured.
“Senior. We have a report.”
I looked at the three of them.
Dom bounced on the balls of his feet, barely able to hold still.
Sean’s smile had thinned a little at the edges.
Cheska’s fingers stayed perfectly still on her tablet, and that stillness told me more than any words.
“Walk with me,” I said.
* * *
We circled the quadrangle slowly, in the dim blue evening, while students drifted toward the dorms and canteen.
Sean spoke in a low, even voice that carried no further than the four of us.
“Three nights ago we found a nest near the Intramuros wall. Eleven Hollows. We cleared it, and Pia patched up the scratches afterward. Normal work.”
“Normal,” I agreed.
“Two nights ago, we found another nest. Nineteen Hollows. Same section of wall.”
I stopped walking.
Nineteen was a lot.
Hollows were the foot soldiers of the Erasure, faceless and hungry, and they usually roamed in scattered clusters of three or four.
A nest of nineteen meant that someone had gathered them.
“And last night?” I asked.
Sean exhaled slowly.
“Thirty-four,” Cheska said.
Her voice was calm and clipped.
“They did not attack. They stood in formation along the wall for almost an hour. Dom counted three ranks.”
“Ranks,” I repeated.
“They were facing the campus,” Dom said, and for the first time all evening his grin disappeared.
“Senior, they did not move at all. Not once. They only stood there and faced the school, like they were waiting for a signal.”
A cold knot formed beneath my ribs.
Hollows did not wait.
Hollows did not stand in lines.
They hungered, and they fed, and they died.
Discipline of that kind implied something above them, a mind that taught them patience.
“Did you see any Hounds?” I asked.
“One,” Sean said.
“On the third night. It sat on top of the wall and watched us fight. It did not come down. When we looked back, it was gone.”
“A scout,” I murmured.
“That is what Cheska thinks.”
I glanced at Cheska.
She met my gaze with perfect composure.
“Hounds track Awakened by scent,” she said.
“A Hound that stays on a wall and observes has been ordered to learn something. I believe the Erasure is searching for a specific person.”
“Which person?”
“I do not know.” She lowered her eyes to the tablet.
“Yet.”
I turned the information over in my mind.
The thinning wards.
The ranks of silent Hollows.
A scout that watched without attacking.
Each fact alone meant little, but together they formed a shape I did not like, the way three black dots on a page can form a face.
Something is coming, I thought.
And it knows where we live.
“Dom,” I said.
“Yes, Senior!”
“Double the night rotations along the Intramuros border. Two people per post. Nobody walks alone.”
“Yes, Senior!” He saluted, though I had told him a hundred times to stop.
“Should I take the first shift?”
“You should sleep.”
“I can sleep after the war.”
“Sleep before the war,” I said.
“A tired fighter makes mistakes. I should know.”
Dom blinked, and a flicker of awe crossed his face, as if I had handed him a sacred text.
I resisted the urge to rub my forehead.
He took everything I said as scripture, and I had never found a way to talk him out of it.
Sean laughed softly.
“Always sharing your wisdom, Senior.”
“Always collecting your ridicule, Sean.”
“It comes with the rank.”
* * *
Pia Lacson caught up with us near the fountain.
She walked slowly, with one hand pressed against her ribs, and the Council jacket hung loose on her thin frame.
Dark circles shadowed her eyes.
When she saw me, she smiled with all the warmth she could manage and lifted a hand in greeting.
“Senior Aris. You made the rounds?”
“Almost finished.”
“Are the trees all right?”
I hesitated.
Pia noticed the pause, as she noticed everything, and her smile wavered.
“They are holding,” I said.
“That sounds like a polite lie.”
“It is a polite lie.”
She laughed, a tired little breath, and sat down on the rim of the fountain.
Sean slid onto the stone beside her and offered a granola bar from his pocket without a word.
She accepted it with a grateful look and ate in small, careful bites.
I watched the exchange with a heavy feeling in my chest.
Pia was a Tier-2 healer.
Her power could close wounds and drive back poison, and each use cost her a piece of her memory, just as mine cost me.
She had been healing the Council for three years.
Her hands shook now whenever she thought nobody was watching.
I knew the signs.
I wore them myself.
They are children, I thought.
The Board sends children to stand on walls.
For a moment I almost said something aloud.
Then I remembered who I was supposed to be, and I swallowed the words.
* * *
By the time the Council dispersed, the sky had turned deep violet, and the lamp posts had come on one by one.
I climbed the stairs of the Main Building alone and walked along the second-floor corridor to the Faculty Wing.
At the end of the hall, a door with a brass plate waited in the shadows.
*Room 404.*
The summons had arrived at six o’clock in the oldest manner.
A folded slip of paper had appeared inside my notebook, in a handwriting I recognized.
Come tonight.
Alcantara.
I knocked twice and entered.
The office smelled of cedar and old paper.
Bookshelves lined the walls from floor to ceiling, and every shelf held leather spines in rigid, perfect rows.
A single green lamp glowed on a mahogany desk, and behind the desk, in an immaculate gray suit, sat Professor Alcantara.
He was a lean man with silver hair and a face carved from patience.
His fingers rested on the desk in a steeple, and his eyes followed me across the room without the smallest hurry.
“Mr. Valeriano,” he said.
“Please sit.”
I sat.
“I trust the Anchors are stable.”
“Four through seven are weakening.”
“Yes. The Board noted the same.” He tilted his head slightly.
“It requests an explanation.”
“I have none yet. Someone is draining them.”
“Someone.” His voice stayed even.
“A fair guess.”
I waited.
The professor lowered his hands and reached for a fountain pen.
“I have another matter to raise. The Board registered a lapse in your reporting this morning.”
My pulse skipped, though my face stayed still.
“The reporting window for new signatures is twenty-four hours,” Alcantara continued, tapping the pen lightly on a sheet of paper.
“The system detected a fresh Degree in the vicinity of the Normal Hall residence. Your name appeared on the sensor log as the nearest Archivist at the time. I would like to hear what you observed.”
I looked him in the eye.
I had faced Hounds, Hollows, and a Nullifier King, and none of them frightened me as much as the stillness of this old man.
“Nothing,” I said.
“I was asleep in lecture.”
“Asleep.”
“Most of the morning.”
The silence stretched long enough for the green lamp to buzz.
“A pity,” Alcantara said at last.
“The Board will be disappointed to hear it.”
“I can look into it.”
“Do.” He wrote a short line on the paper, blotted it, and set the pen down.
“The penalty review is postponed by seventy-two hours. Consider it a courtesy. You have been among our most reliable soldiers, Mr. Valeriano, and I should dislike to see that record damaged.”
“Understood.”
“And Aris.” He used my first name, a rare gesture.
“I taught you to think when you were a frightened boy with a burned past and no one left. You have always possessed a rare mind. I hope you remember who built it.”
I stood and bowed my head, and the words that rose in my throat stayed behind my teeth.
I remember, I thought.
Mostly.
* * *
I walked back across the quadrangle in the dark.
The wind had cooled, and the Acacia trees rattled their branches over my head.
The fifth tree showed more brown leaves than before.
I laid my palm on its trunk as I passed and felt the weak pulse flutter again.
Seventy-two hours, I thought.
Seventy-two hours to decide.
I knew what the Board wanted.
It wanted a name.
A single name would end the penalty, and it would also begin the process I had watched thirty-eight times, the careful, polite machinery of recruitment and wiping and the slow grinding of a person into a tool.
The girl in my History class had a laugh that sounded like something I had lost.
I owed her nothing, and I had no reason to protect her.
I stood under the tree for a long moment.
Then I looked up.
Across the quadrangle, the long shape of Normal Hall rose against the sky.
Most of its windows were dark.
On the second floor, one window held a golden glow, the soft shimmer of fairy lights, and in that window a small gray shape sat on the sill, a guardian keeping watch over a sleeping room.
Even at this distance I could feel its yellow gaze on me.
I see you, it seemed to say.
I see what you are weighing.
I raised two fingers to my brow in a lazy salute.
The cat sneezed.
Almost against my will, I smiled.
Then I turned away, pulled up my hood, and started toward the Intramuros border.
Nineteen was a number.
Thirty-four was a message.
If the Erasure planned to march on this school, I intended to see the first rank with my own eyes.
Behind me, the wind shook the Acacia leaves, and in the root-dark beneath the fifth tree, something very old and very patient took another long, quiet drink.
[Anchor 5: Weakening. Ward integrity: 70%.]