Alina Valen shut the new door behind her and pressed her back to the cool wood, letting the silence of the upper dormitory wrap around her shoulders like a cloak too heavy to wear. She had climbed three flights of stairs and still felt the climb in her lungs—Core Bloom 1 badge warm against her collarbone, heart louder than the distant practice-yard bells.
She crossed to the window, fingers brushing the sill, when the latch clicked again—soft, deliberate. Kael Ravenhart stepped inside without ceremony, boots quiet on polished cedar, the faint scent of windsteel oil trailing behind him. He closed the door with two fingers, the click swallowed by the room's held breath.
For a heartbeat neither moved. Alina turned, arms folding tight across her chest, eyes narrowing.
"Did you forget to knock, Ravenhart?"
Kael lifted both hands, palms open. "Your door was ajar. I brought questions, not apologies."
Alina's mouth curved—half challenge, half exhaustion. "Then ask them before the silence eats us."
He stepped closer, voice low enough to brush the windowpanes.
"I keep hearing her name in the corridors—Serena Valen, like a bell that won't stop ringing. They say she dragged the Valen crest into the sea and drowned it with her."
Alina's fingers curled against the sill.
"My father still places her plate at the table, still rehearses speeches about 'the lost prodigy.' I hate that even absence has her voice."
Kael's jaw tightened.
"I still remember my mother talking about the marriage that never was—how a Ravenhart heir was meant to 'steady her darkness.' I hate that weakness was ever spoken like a virtue."
Alina's laugh cracked like thin ice.
"So we both carry ghosts that refuse to stay buried."
Kael stepped until their shadows almost touched.
"If she ever claws back into the story, we write her out first."
Alina's eyes flashed.
"Same chapter, different pens."
The wind outside the window stirred; neither looked away.
Kael's whisper came last, soft as the candle's dying flame.
"Do you really think she's dead?"
The question hung between them, colder than moonlight.