Ayra had mastered the art of control.
She controlled rooms with a glance. Conversations with a breath. People with less than a sentence. It wasn't magic — not entirely. It was posture, presence, the way she tilted her head slightly before destroying someone's pride.
Control had always been her sanctuary. Her weapon. Her crown.
But lately… it was slipping.
And it wasn't loud, this slip.
It wasn't chaos.
It was a slow, quiet unraveling.
It started with the way her focus frayed during lectures. Professors would call her name, and she'd blink twice before responding — as if pulled back from somewhere far.
Nowhere obvious.
Just a corner of the room.
A shadow near a window.
A boy with dark hair and darker silence.
He never made a scene.
Never sat near her again, either.
He shifted his seat each class — sometimes front, sometimes back, but always out of her line of sight. It felt deliberate. Like he knew she was watching… and wanted to make her chase with her eyes.
Ayra hated that.
She started changing her seat too. Always arriving early, always positioning herself somewhere she could see him, no matter where he went.
She never looked too long.
Just long enough.
Just enough to feel that sting of being ignored. Again
She didn't even know his name.
And she couldn't ask.
Asking would mean caring. Asking would be an admission — not of interest, but of weakness.
Instead, she listened.
To the way people spoke about him in whispers.
"He's not in any of the dorm registries."
"I heard he doesn't eat in the main hall."
"The enchantments around him glitch sometimes. Like… he's not fully here."
No one spoke to him. No one touched him.
It was like the boy existed behind an invisible veil.
And yet… Ayra saw him clearly.
Saw the way he wrote without lifting his head.
The way he walked — slow, precise, like each step was a choice.
The way he stood still, even when thunder cracked the sky outside.
Unshaken.
Unreachable.
Untouched.
And it drove her mad
By the end of the second week, Ayra found herself alone in the dueling chamber long past curfew. The torches flickered low. Her pulse beat hard against her ribs.
She didn't know why she was there.
She told herself she came to practice.
But the truth sat quietly in her chest.
She came because she was angry.
Not at him — but at herself.
At this feeling that kept blooming inside her like a cursed flower, soft and dangerous and entirely out of her control.
He wasn't even trying. That was the worst part.
He hadn't flirted.
Hadn't teased.
Hadn't done anything except exist.
And still, he was under her skin.
Like a spell she never meant to cast — one she couldn't undo
That night, she wrote his name in her journal — not because she knew it, but because she didn't.
Just a blank space.
An empty line.
Over and over