I lost most of the next day to a hand I couldn't stop checking.
Every time the burn seemed better, I opened my fingers too wide and proved myself wrong.
So I read. I ate. I practiced the breathing without moving any Aether, which felt ridiculous until I caught myself holding my breath again.
By the sixth morning, the red mark had faded enough for me to hold a pen normally.
I could work with that.
The practice room had been cleared as requested. Someone had left a second lamp near the wall fixtures, along with a folded sheet listing their controls. The maintenance woman wasn't there.
I read the instructions before touching anything. Then I read them again and decided the floor was plenty of equipment for today.
Three careful attempts carried the cold as far as my elbow. On the fourth, it caught beneath my ribs.
I stopped.
Stopping was becoming the part I disliked most. My body gave me one small success, and my head immediately started spending it on the next five.
I waited until my breathing settled, then left with most of my reserved time unused.
The corridor beyond the practice room continued toward a set of tall windows. Sunlight crossed the carpet in pale rectangles. Farther along, a woman stood on a short wooden step, dusting the top edge of a picture frame.
I almost turned back.
Then I saw the empty space beside it.
There were portraits along both walls. Men in formal coats. A woman seated beside a narrow table. Two children in clothes stiff enough to make standing look uncomfortable.
Between two larger frames, a clean rectangle showed against the patterned wall.
The wallpaper inside it was darker. A small hook remained near the top.
I stopped under it.
Something tightened in my throat.
No warning. No thought before it.
My right hand lifted slightly, fingers half open, and I had the absurd urge to turn toward the window instead of looking at the wall. I lowered my hand. The feeling didn't go away.
I knew grief. I knew how a room could bring it back before I understood what I had noticed.
But I had never stood in this corridor before.
There was no chipped bowl here. No school bag, no cheap microphone, nothing that belonged to my life.
Just a patch of wallpaper.
"Young master."
The woman had come down from the step. She held her cloth in both hands.
I made myself look at her.
She had put the step between herself and the wall. Without thinking, I moved closer to the empty space, and she shifted it out of my way.
"Leave that," I said.
Her hand tightened around the top rail.
I meant she didn't need to move it for me. I could hear how it had sounded only after she stopped.
"I'm looking at the wall."
She nodded and stepped aside anyway.
I was used to being the person who moved when someone needed to pass. Here, the corridor had become empty around me without my asking.
The strange feeling in my chest made it difficult to decide what to do with that. I kept my eyes on the darker wallpaper and tried to make the next question ordinary.
"Was this taken down recently?"
Her gaze moved to the empty space.
"No, young master. It's been some time since the little..."
She stopped.
I waited.
"Since the frame was removed," she finished.
The words came faster that time.
"Where was it put?"
"I don't handle the stored pictures."
It was a reasonable answer. She had a dust cloth, not an inventory.
Except she hadn't needed to look at the gap to know which one I meant.
I looked back at the hook.
My chest hurt in a way that had nothing to do with the morning's practice.
Was I borrowing a reaction from this body? Had I seen the corridor in a scene I couldn't consciously remember? Was I simply exhausted and looking for a reason to be frightened?
Any of those would have been easier to handle with less pressure behind my eyes.
"Who ordered it removed?"
The woman rubbed one corner of the cloth between her fingers.
"The steward would know, young master. I could ask him to attend you."
The steward.
Someone with a reason to speak to my father.
I could hear the report already. Your son has been asking about an empty space on the wall. He seemed upset. He didn't appear to remember what used to hang there.
I had been careful for six days.
Now I was about to announce a gap in Cedric's memory because my stomach disliked the wallpaper.
"No need."
She gave a small bow.
I should have left then. Instead, I looked at the nearest portrait. The frame was plain dark wood, unlike the gold edges on either side of the gap.
"Were the others moved as well?"
"These have been here since I was assigned this corridor."
She hadn't answered the question. She had given me the part she could safely say.
I recognized the difference because I had been doing the same thing all week. "Finish your work."
"Yes, young master."
I walked to the windows rather than retracing my steps immediately.
Outside, two gardeners were moving a long ladder. One wanted the front end raised. The other apparently disagreed. I couldn't hear the words through the glass, but I understood the gestures.
Ordinary argument. Ordinary work.
I watched until the tightness in my throat eased.
When I finally turned back, the woman was dusting the bottom of the same frame.
She didn't look up. I kept my pace even all the way to my room.
Only after closing the door did I press a hand against my chest.
"What was that?"
The room offered no answer.
I didn't call the Ledger.
It could tell me the rank of my core. That didn't mean it could explain every unpleasant feeling I had inside someone else's skin.
And I wasn't in the mood to stare at another sealed line.
I sat and wrote down what had happened before my head started improving the details.
Empty space between portraits. Old enough for the covered wallpaper to remain darker. Servant began a word, corrected herself. Offered the steward instead of an answer.
Then, on a separate line: Strong reaction before I understood anything.
I refused to turn that into a recovered memory.
I hadn't seen a face. I hadn't heard a name. There was nothing to recover except a feeling I couldn't place.
My pen hovered over the paper.
In the game, Cedric's family was mostly a reason for other people to tolerate him. An old bloodline. A dangerous father. Wealth enough to make his mistakes everyone else's problem.
There had been rooms behind him during conversations, but I usually watched the dialogue choices.
Maybe a portrait had been missing in those scenes too.
I couldn't honestly say.
I tried anyway, closing my eyes and calling up the estate backgrounds. Dark wood. Tall windows. Cassian's desk. A corridor before one of Cedric's bad endings.
The more I looked for a rectangle, the easier it became to imagine one.
That was not helping.
I opened my eyes and wrote: No reliable game memory of this wall.
There. An answer I actually trusted.
The inventory lay beside my elbow, its loose marker sticking out near the back.
I opened it to the transfer entry. This, at least, was something I could copy.
VOID-RELATED MATERIAL. SEALED STORAGE.
Destination: Astral Zenith Academy.
I copied the reference exactly, including the little stroke separating the storage code from the transfer number. Then I checked each mark against the original.
No guesswork. No missing voice. Just ink someone else had put on a page.
If the academy kept a receiving record, I might find a clearer description there. It was a possibility, not a promise, but it gave me somewhere to look that wasn't directly beneath my father's roof.
A knock interrupted me.
I put the copied sheet under the primer.
The attendant came in to collect the inventory for the clerk. "Has he asked for it?" I said.
"He hoped to finish the updated equipment list this afternoon."
I removed the marker before handing over the book.
"The practice room was ready. Tell him that."
"Yes, young master."
He hesitated near the door.
I looked up.
"Was anything else required?" he asked.
For a moment, I considered the obvious question.
He worked near Cedric's rooms. He might know more than the woman in the corridor. I could ask casually. Mention the frame as if I already knew what it contained.
Then he might answer with a name.
Then I might ask one question too many.
I looked at the small burn on my palm.
I had ignored a clear warning once this week because I wanted to understand something faster.
"No."
The door closed behind him.
I sat without moving until his footsteps faded.
Leaving the question alone felt worse than I expected. The corridor was nearby. I could go back whenever I wanted. I could order the steward to bring every stored frame in the house.
Cedric's name might even make him obey.
And Cassian's name would make him explain why.
I folded the note about the wall and placed it beneath the older pages.
On the sheet with the academy reference, I added one line.
Check after arrival, if records are accessible.
Then I opened the primer to the page I still hadn't mastered.
The corridor would have to wait.