The abandoned maintenance room smelled of dust and old furniture—dry, stale, untouched. It was a scent almost universally recognizable. People might disagree about the smell of rain or the scent of forest air, but ask anyone about an old, forgotten room, and they will describe the same thing: stillness, age, neglect.
Greystone House was no different.
Places like this always had rooms that were left behind, hollowed out by time and disuse. And, Caelum thought, communities were much the same. For every group, for every system, there were always the ones pushed to the edges—left in corners, overlooked, abandoned long before anyone noticed.
Tonight, three such people occupied the forgotten room. Tonight, the air hung thicker than usual.
….
Talwyn stood near the cracked window, the faint moonlight casting bars across his face like a cage. His arms were folded tightly, jaw clenched so hard a muscle twitched at his temple.
Mara leaned against the wall, still as a carved statue. Her eyes tracked nothing and everything at once—a quiet, heavy kind of watching.
Julian paced the room, shoes scraping softly against the old concrete, his expression pulled tight with anger he kept trying—and failing—to swallow down.
They'd been like this for nearly ten minutes. The room had an unspoken rule: no one talked until they were certain they wouldn't regret what came out.
Finally, Julian broke.
"This place eats people," he said under his breath. "And no one on the outside even notices."
Talwyn didn't look at him. "That's why we're here."
Julian scoffed. "Are we? Because it feels like we're waiting to be next."
Mara's voice rose softly from the shadows. "One of us already is."
Silence stretched, heavy and sharp.
Julian stopped pacing. His hands curled into fists.
"…Lina."
Her name landed like a stone thrown into deep water.
Talwyn exhaled shakily—as if saying her name out loud made the loss real. "Sixteen years old. Quiet. Empathic magic. She never caused trouble. Never fought back. Never gave staff a reason to take her."
"But they did," Mara said. Not accusing—just stating the truth no one wanted to hear.
Julian rubbed his face. "Gone without a slip or a log or even a transfer form. They wiped her existence. And they expect us to pretend we didn't notice."
Talwyn finally turned from the window. "We can't let this go."
Julian gave a tired, bitter laugh. "What do you propose? March into the front office and demand answers? They'll put us in solitary for a week."
"We don't need to confront the staff," Talwyn said quietly. "We need someone who can see what we can't. Someone who listens to things we don't hear."
Julian's scowl deepened. "You mean him? The Ministry's favorite anomaly?"
"He's more than that," Mara murmured.
Julian shot her a look. "He's unpredictable."
"He's observant," she corrected.
Talwyn stepped fully into the dim lamplight. "He's our best chance."
Another long silence settled in. Dust drifted lazily through the air, turning in the faint glow.
Julian grimaced. "…Fine. You're lucky I'm desperate."
Talwyn didn't smile. But something eased in his shoulders—relief, or maybe resolve.
"Then we bring him in," he said quietly.
….
hey found Caelum where they always found him—curled in the library's quietest corner, surrounded by towers of repaired books and broken-spined grimoires no one else touched.
He didn't look up when they entered. He didn't need to.
"You've lost someone," Caelum said, voice steady, fingers resting lightly on a page he wasn't reading anymore.
Talwyn stopped in front of him. "We have."
Caelum closed the book with a soft thud. "How long?"
"Since midnight," Talwyn said. "No announcement. No transfer slip. No escort record."
Julian folded his arms harshly. "No body, either."
Mara lowered herself onto the edge of the opposite seat. "Just gone."
Caelum's golden eyes lifted, meeting Mara's first, then Julian's, then Talwyn's.
"Who?"
"Her name was Lina," Talwyn answered. "Sixteen. Empathic magic. Quiet."
Caelum stood without hesitation.
"What do you know so far?"
Julian held out a parchment. "The staff logs were altered. They claim she was relocated for 'health concerns.' But the medical room never received her. No room reassignment. Her chart vanished."
Caelum's jaw tightened. "They wiped the trail."
Mara nodded, eyes darkening. "And they'll do it again. To someone else."
Silence settled for a moment.
Caelum rose to his feet.
It had been a year since he woke in a white bed with no name, wrapped in bandages and silence. At six years old, the staff still called him a child — but no one inside Greystone treated him like one anymore.
He had earned that.
"What do you want from me?" he asked.
Julian stepped forward. "You're not Circle. But you watch everyone. Every blind spot. Every hallway. Every shift change. You see the patterns even we don't."
Caelum didn't deny it.
Julian continued, tone dropping. "We need to know where she went. If she was transferred… or erased."
"All right. I'll help."
Julian blinked. "That easy?"
Caelum's mouth pulled into a faint line. "If they can erase someone like a misplaced document… then none of us are safe. And I won't wait to be next."
Talwyn offered him a folded piece of parchment. "The Circle meeting records. Everything we have on her movement the last week."
Julian added, "And we need cover. Someone to make noise while you slip through places we can't."
Caelum nodded once. "I'll move tonight."
…
As the words settled in the stale air of the maintenance room, another thought uncoiled quietly in the back of his mind—one he had been avoiding for months.
Caelum had previously believed that all he needed to do was prove to the Ministry that he was harmless. Behave. Comply. Keep his head down. Let them see a quiet, cooperative child while he quietly sharpened himself in the shadows.
He would train, learn, gather information—maybe uncover some proof of negligence or a loophole buried in the regulations. Something small but useful. Something that could shorten his stay here and grant him a way out. The same thing these three had been fighting for in their own way.
But this—this missing report—was something else entirely.
It was not bureaucratic oversight.
It was deliberate erasure.
And if they could wipe a girl from the records without a ripple… then Greystone House was not merely a government affiliated facility. It was hiding something darker. Something illegal enough that they couldn't risk the truth slipping into the wrong hands.
How bad?
Caelum inhaled slowly.
He would find out.