The world didn't feel the same after Sarah touched the empty frame.
It was like something had been stolen from the air, the sound, the light, even the weight of the room.
The art hall felt hollow, emptied out.
All she could hear was the thin, high ringing in her ears, the kind that usually came after a loud sound, except there had been none.
Her fingers still tingled where they'd brushed the frame, a ghost of heat that shouldn't have been there.
She didn't remember leaving the West Wing.
One second she was staring at the frame, and the next she was already in the hallway, walking without direction.
Her body moved on its own while her mind drifted somewhere else, as though it had been emptied of thought and filled with nothing but silence.
By the time she reached the main path outside, the familiar sounds of the academy had returned.
The faint chatter of students, the wind sliding along the walls, footsteps crunching on gravel, but they didn't sound real anymore.
They felt recorded, played back on a loop over something deeper.
Something she couldn't hear, but could feel pressing against her.
A silence that didn't belong to nature.
She didn't know how long she walked.
The sun was pale and cold, hanging low in the sky like a washed-out coin.
Her path curved away from the clipped lawns and the tall dormitories that looked like watchtowers.
She let herself drift toward the forgotten edges of the campus, the parts that didn't seem to belong to the rest of Blackwood.
Here, the grass grew in wild, uneven patches. The trees were older, their branches twisted into shapes that looked almost human caught in pain. The gravel turned to damp earth, soft and dark, carrying the smell of rain that had fallen days ago but hadn't yet left the soil.
And then she saw it.
The chapel.
It rose from a small hill, half-shrouded in mist. The same dark stone as the main academy, but here the stone looked heavier, as though it sagged under the years.
The roof climbed sharply toward the sky, ending in a cross that leaned slightly to one side, as if exhausted from holding its place.
The stained-glass windows were black from the outside. They didn't catch the light or give it back.
Whatever stories lived in them stayed hidden.
The doors were thick, weathered wood bound with rusted iron handles.
It didn't look like a place you went to be comforted.
It looked like a place you went when there was nothing left to say.
Sarah stood there for a moment, feeling the mist cling to her face and hair.
Something about it pulled at her. Not curiosity in the safe, innocent sense.
This was heavier.
The same pull she'd felt in the art hall, standing in front of the empty frame.
She climbed the hill slowly. Up close, she noticed the moss between the stones and the fine cracks in the steps leading to the doors.
That was when she saw they weren't fully shut.
They were slightly open.
Just enough to let a thin strip of darkness spill through.
It didn't feel accidental. It felt like an invitation, though the kind you might regret accepting.
Her hand started to rise toward the door...
.....and then she saw him.
Julian.
He wasn't praying.
He wasn't kneeling.
He sat on the floor in the middle of the aisle, his back to her, still as a carving. His shoulders curved inward slightly, as if holding off some invisible weight.
Beside him on the stone floor lay his sketchbook, closed. His hands rested loosely on his knees.
He wasn't making anything.
He wasn't moving at all.
He was just… letting the silence take him.
Sarah stopped in the shadow of the doorway.
The air inside felt different, cold, heavy, and damp in a way that it clinged to the skin.
It smelled of wet stone, old wood, and something faintly metallic, like the ashes of candles that had been put out long ago.
Her eyes adjusted slowly, and then she saw the statues. They stood on either side of the pews like silent witnesses.
None of them were whole.
An angel was missing its head, the pale stone of the break almost too clean, as though the damage had been recent.
A saint had lost its fingers, the smooth stumps frozen in the shape of a prayer it could no longer finish.
One figure lay toppled on its side, face turned toward the wall, robe split by deep cracks.
They didn't feel holy.
They felt like victims.
Her gaze slid to the altar at the far end. It was split by a long, jagged crack that nearly broke it in half.
She couldn't tell if something had smashed down on it or if the stone had simply given way after years of holding too much weight.
Julian's eyes were locked on that altar.
The ache in her chest was sharp, but it wasn't fear.
It was recognition.
She knew what this was.
It was the same thing she'd done, sitting at the piano with her hands above the keys, not to play, but to face the part of herself that had stopped working.
The part that wouldn't be fixed by force.
The part you could only look at and say, I see you.
Her mind flickered to the last time she had done it.
She was thirteen, sitting in her family's small, dim living room. The piano keys were cold under her fingers, her reflection faint in the glossy black wood.
Her father's voice had been sharp in the next room, her mother's quiet one even sharper in its silence.
She had stared at the keys for so long her eyes blurred.
She couldn't remember what piece she had meant to play. She just remembered not being able to start.
And now here was Julian, doing the same thing in his own way.
A part of her wanted to go to him.
She could imagine walking down the aisle, each step echoing softly in the cold air.
She could imagine sitting beside him on the floor, not touching, not speaking, just letting him know that someone else understood what it meant to be broken.
Her muscles even shifted like she was about to move.
But then she remembered his eyes in the art hall, the way they had hardened when she saw the drawing of herself screaming.
His voice, telling her to stay away. It hadn't been meant to scare her.
It had been meant to protect the raw space inside him.
She knew now this was one of those spaces.
Some silences weren't meant to be shared.
So she stayed.
Julian didn't move.
Not even a twitch of his shoulders.
He sat among the statues as though he was one of them, something that had once been whole and now wasn't.
She thought about the summer after her mother left.
She had been fourteen.
She'd gone to the small neighborhood church alone, not for God, but because it was empty.
She had sat in the very last pew, hands folded loosely, staring at the altar until the light through the stained glass began to fade.
She remembered the weight of that quiet pressing down, heavy but somehow comforting, because it was hers.
And because no one tried to take it away.
That was what Julian had now.
Slowly, Sarah stepped back.
Her shoes made no sound on the damp earth outside.
She didn't want the hinges of the chapel door to creak.
It felt like leaving a gravesite, something you did slowly, with respect.
She walked down the hill without turning back.
She didn't need to.
The picture of him was already burned into her mind, not like his sketch of her.
This was different. This wasn't a creation, it was the truth.
A boy sitting in a ruined place, keeping company with his own ruins.
The mist clung to her hair and skin as she moved through it.
The fear and confusion from the art hall were still there, but now they were joined by something else.
A heavy understanding.
She hadn't called his name.
She hadn't crossed the distance between them but she had seen him.
Really seen him.
And without a single word, she felt he had allowed it.