The next morning, Leo lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling.
The stone above him was ordinary, with faint cracks, a discoloration near the corner where moisture sometimes gathered, but it refused to stay only that. When he blinked, the ceiling fractured into other surfaces: marble veined with gold; tiles arranged in circles that turned without moving; a sky that did not end but folded inward on itself.
He squeezed his eyes shut.
The images did not go away.
They rearranged instead.
The sea of clouds rolled beneath his thoughts, luminous and slow, as if time itself had thickened there. The dark sphere hovered again in the back of his mind not an object, not a void, but something watchful. And always, always, the shadow by the door: too shaped to be darkness, too deliberate to be chance.
His breath came shallow.
Then the captain's words returned, sharp and precise, cutting through the haze like a blade drawn clean.
Do not speak of what you've seen. Not yet.
Sometimes the words sounded like instructions.
Sometimes they sounded like regret.
Leo turned his head to the side, pressing his cheek into the pillow. The fabric was cool, real, grounding. He focused on the small sensations: the weight of the blanket, the ache in his shoulders, the distant echo of footsteps somewhere in the academy.
Morning had arrived whether he was ready or not.
A knock struck the door.
Not loud. Not urgent.
Still, his body reacted before his mind caught up. His pulse jumped, and for an instant the knock layered itself over another sound, a hollow click, like stone aligning, like something deciding.
"Leo?"
The voice was Eliza's.
He exhaled and pushed himself upright, the room settling reluctantly back into place. The visions retreated, but they did not vanish. They waited, coiled beneath his thoughts.
He crossed the room and opened the door.
Eliza stood there, already dressed for the day, her posture straight and alert. Morning light caught in her hair, giving her the look of someone fully awake, fully present. Behind her, Jack leaned against the wall near the entrance, arms crossed, while Ralph adjusted the strap of his gear with practiced ease.
"Hey," Eliza said, glancing past Leo into the dim room. "Are you still sleeping?"
Her tone was light, but her eyes were sharp.
"Don't you want to join us today?"
Leo hesitated.
The words gathered at the back of his throat, yes, of course, give me a minute, but before he could speak, another image slipped between thought and speech.
Warm marble under bare feet.
A whisper curling around his name.
The feeling of being counted, measured, and recognized.
His fingers tightened around the doorframe.
He wanted to go with them. Wanted the normal friction of people moving together through a shared task. Wanted the reassurance that the world still worked the way it always had.
But the pull inward was stronger.
"I don't think I can join you today," he said carefully. "The captain gave me a lot of work yesterday."
The lie landed between them.
Eliza's expression shifted almost immediately.
The brightness in her eyes dulled not fully, not dramatically, but enough that Leo noticed. Her lips parted, as if she were about to say something sharp or questioning, then pressed together instead. For a heartbeat, disappointment crossed her face, quick and restrained, like a door closing quietly rather than slamming shut.
"Oh," she said.
Just that.
She folded her arms, weight shifting back on one heel. The energy she'd brought with her thinned, leaking away into something more guarded.
"Right," she added, after a moment.
Behind her, Jack raised an eyebrow slightly, glancing between them. Ralph said nothing, but his jaw tightened, the way it did when plans changed unexpectedly.
"Take care, then," Eliza said at last.
Leo nodded.
The door closed between them with a soft click.
Eliza stood there for a moment after the door shut, staring at the wood as if she expected it to reopen.
Jack was the first to break the silence.
"That didn't sound like 'work,'" he said.
Ralph snorted quietly. "Didn't sound like Leo, either."
Eliza exhaled through her nose, slow and controlled. "He's lying," she said.
Jack tilted his head. "That was fast."
"He didn't meet my eyes at the end," Eliza replied. "And he always does. Especially when he's trying to convince himself."
Ralph adjusted his strap again, fingers restless. "You think it's about last night?"
Eliza didn't answer immediately. Her gaze flicked once more to Leo's closed door, then away.
"I think something happened," she said finally. "Something he doesn't know how to explain. Or something he's been told not to."
Jack grimaced. "Captain?"
"Maybe," Eliza said. "Or maybe not."
She turned and started down the corridor, boots echoing softly against stone. Jack and Ralph followed, their footsteps falling into step beside her.
"We keep an eye on him," Jack said.
Eliza nodded. "Quietly."
Inside the room, Leo rested his forehead against the door.
He listened to their footsteps fade, then to the distant murmur of the academy waking fully voices, movement, the steady rhythm of routine.
For a moment, he thought he heard something else beneath it all.
A breath that did not belong to him.
He pushed away from the door and crossed the room.
The bed looked as though he had never truly slept in it, sheets twisted, pillow dented, as if his body had merely paused there while his mind wandered elsewhere. He sat on the edge and rubbed his palms together, half-expecting the Vorak syllables to rise unbidden to his tongue.
They didn't.
But the pressure beneath his ribs returned.
It settled there with quiet certainty, like something that had found its place and intended to stay.
When he closed his eyes, memory fractured into shards.
Stone rotating without sound.
Light bends around invisible corners.
A whisper near his ear, not words, but intention.
Welcomed.
The word brushed his thoughts again, softer this time.
Leo opened his eyes sharply.
The room was unchanged. Lamp. Desk. Window. Morning light spilling in, obedient and pale.
Still, his skin prickled.
He reached into his jacket and pulled out the folded merchant's paper, smoothing it flat across the desk. The ink was dull in daylight, unremarkable. Yet when his finger traced the ferry routes, his skin tingled faintly, as if recalling motion it had not made.
"Still here," he murmured.
The words echoed strangely, as though the room had listened.
He retrieved the red volume from beneath the bed and placed it beside the paper. The spine creaked as he opened it, pages settling into familiar places. Margins crowded with hands long dead. Symbols scratched with desperation, with faith, with fear.
He scanned the pages slowly.
Then he saw it.
A mark that had not been there before.
Not ink. Not graphite.
An indentation pressed into the paper near the phrase about mirrors and exchange. Wings. A descending line like a blade.
Leo's breath slowed.
He hadn't drawn it.
As his fingers hovered above the mark, something brushed close to his ear.
Not a voice.
Not sound.
The shape of speech.
Center holds, it suggested.
Hinge remembers.
Leo closed the book gently.
Too gently.
The room felt occupied now, not crowded, not invaded, but aware. As if it knew he had noticed.
Somewhere beyond the walls, drills began. Boots struck stone. Commands echoed. Ashton counted seconds.
Above the clouds, something waited.
Leo sat back, fingers resting on the red cover, and made a decision that felt small and irreversible.
He would not speak.
Not yet.
But he would listen.
And next time the door opened, he would not pretend he hadn't heard what whispered first.
The room held its breath with him.
Leo stayed seated for a long moment, hands resting on the red volume, as if moving too quickly might disturb whatever fragile balance had settled there. The silence felt layered now not empty, but stacked, like thin sheets of glass pressed together. Each breath he took slid between them.
He rose at last and went to the small basin near the window.
The water inside was still. Too still.
He leaned over it, bracing his hands on the stone rim, and looked down. His reflection stared back familiar, tired, shadows gathered beneath his eyes, and for a second, relief loosened his shoulders.
Then the reflection blinked a fraction of a second after he did.
Leo straightened sharply.
The delay was so slight it could have been imagined. He stared again. The surface of the water trembled, reacting to his movement, and the reflection followed properly this time. Ordinary. Obedient.
He exhaled.
"Get a grip," he muttered.
Yet the words rang hollow. He had stood on a terrace that did not exist on any map. He had felt stone that remembered him. He had heard something shape itself around his name. Whatever rules governed this place, ordinary was no longer a guarantee.
He splashed water on his face. Cold. Real.
As droplets slid down his skin, another sensation followed, not pain, not pressure, but a faint pull, as if something beneath the surface of his thoughts were testing its reach. Images flickered again, sharper now, less dreamlike.
A hand hovering above a mosaic.
A ring turning one notch too far.
A figure standing where no shadow should fall.
He gripped the basin harder until the stone bit into his palms. The images scattered, leaving behind a low hum that seemed to vibrate through his bones rather than his ears.
Leo stepped back.
The room looked unchanged, but his awareness of it had shifted. Corners felt deeper. Distances felt imprecise. Even the light carried a different weight, as though it were passing through more than air before reaching him.
He returned to the desk and began sorting through the papers he'd gathered old notes, copied ledgers, fragments he hadn't yet assembled into anything useful. He worked methodically, forcing himself into the habit of routine.
Name.
Route.
Date.
Annotation.
His hand moved faster than his thoughts, and for a while, that helped.
Until he reached a scrap of parchment, he didn't remember placing it there.
It sat between two sheets he knew he'd copied the night before, the merchant's ledger on one side, an academy shipping register on the other. The parchment itself was blank, yellowed with age, edges worn soft.
Slowly, Leo lifted it.
Nothing written.
Yet when he tilted it toward the light, faint impressions surfaced not letters, not symbols, but the ghost of something that had once been pressed hard against it. Circular. Layered. Familiar.
Concentric rings.
His pulse thudded once, heavy.
"No," he whispered.
The parchment slid from his fingers and landed soundlessly on the desk. He stared at it, waiting for it to change further, to reveal more.
It didn't.
But the whisper returned, closer this time, not at his ear, but inside the space behind his eyes, where thoughts usually formed.
Not words.
Direction.
Later, it seemed to suggest.
Not now.
Leo pushed back from the desk so abruptly that his chair scraped against the floor. The sound echoed too loudly in the small room, snapping the moment like a thread pulled too tight.
He paced.
Back and forth. Back and forth.
Each step grounded him, but the sense of being observed did not fade. It wasn't hostile. That almost made it worse. There was patience in it. Confidence.
Whatever had welcomed him above the clouds did not fear being forgotten.
At the far end of the room, the window rattled softly as a breeze slipped through the narrow gap. Leo turned toward it and froze.
For just a heartbeat, the glass reflected something else behind him.
Not his own shape.
Not fully formed.
A suggestion of wings. A darker line where a blade might fall.
He spun around.
Nothing.
The room stood empty, stubbornly mundane. The window reflected only stone walls and pale light. No movement. No shadow.
Leo stood there, heart pounding, long enough for the moment to pass.
He laughed once under his breath, a short, brittle sound that didn't reach his eyes.
"Memory," he told himself. "Stress."
The words felt thin, but he clung to them anyway.
He gathered the papers into a neat stack and slid them back into his jacket, leaving the red volume on the desk. As his fingers brushed the cover, warmth flared briefly beneath his skin, not heat, exactly, but recognition, like a pulse answering another pulse.
He withdrew his hand.
The academy bell rang in the distance, calling others to order, to structure, to a day that would make sense when followed correctly.
Leo did not answer it.
Instead, he sat back down and opened the red volume again, turning not to the passages he knew, but further deeper to pages he had always avoided because the notes grew erratic there, the handwriting unstable, as if the writers had begun to lose agreement with themselves.
A line near the margin caught his eye.
The first crossing is never the danger.
It is the second, when the hinge remembers you.
Leo traced the sentence with his finger.
Somewhere far above the academy, beyond clouds and sky and any map he had ever trusted, something shifted not in impatience, but in quiet approval.
Leo felt it like a pressure behind his sternum.
He swallowed.
Then he turned the page.