They left the orphanage with the sort of satisfaction that sat heavy in the chest — useful, unshowy, and warm in a way coin could not buy. The student council’s approval had come quicker than Kana had expected; papers had been signed, promises had been made in clipped, competent tones. It felt, for once, like something real had been accomplished.

  The conversation on the way back rode the cold like a second passenger, practical and fretful. Funding, everyone agreed, was the hinge on which the whole thing turned: how long would the Duke keep sending coin? If so, would the crown step in if the project proved successful? Could the academy itself be persuaded to sustain the effort beyond a season? Each question bent toward the same worry — the orphanage’s life was not guaranteed by good intentions alone.

  Kana listened. She heard the numbers, the grant conditions, and the plan of drafting lists of promising children who might one day enter the academy.

  But as the carriage rattled over the frozen road, another thought slid into her head with the lightness of something dangerous. It was not elegant. It was not noble. It came with the blunt appetite of someone who had learned to take what she needed.

  What if she brought monsters to the orphanage grounds, she thought. Not to invite terror, but to control it — bait them into a pen, clear them one by one, and let the children watch the lesson end safely with them in their party. A few kills, a few careful fights, experience gained for those who fought with her and of course the benefits of experience multiplier.

  The idea was clean, efficient, and useful. It made the blood in her fingers go colder in a way that felt almost pleasant. It made strategic sense. It would accelerate their levels. The academy had no choice but to acknowledge them as promising students.

  Then she remembered, very clearly, the faces that had greeted her at the orphanage — small hands gripping the rail, sleepy eyes that trusted her because she had promised them a place to wake up safely. She saw Lily standing in the doorway, cheeks flushed from the stove, and the way Shar’s laugh had fallen into the room like sunlight. The children had come to her because she had offered shelter. They had not come to learn how to strike first and ask questions later.

  Kana’s jaw tightened. The plan folded on itself, a paper bird crushed by a careful hand. The orphanage had been built because the world was not kind to them. . If she could give them a roof and a chance to read and to learn, that would be enough. If she could keep them safe without teaching them to enjoy the sound of other people breaking, that would be better.

  So she let the thought pass, a tool put back on the rack. Useful for the future maybe, dangerous for the present.

  The carriage drew closer to the city. Suri munched on something, hands sticky with pastry, and Boris hummed tunelessly, across him was Elle York and the other student council members.

  ….

  The academy day wound down the same as always—bells ringing, footsteps echoing across stone, students retreating to their dorms while the professors moved like tired shadows through the halls. Kana split from Suri at the crossroads; her friend would be occupied for hours at the night assembly. Kana, by contrast, slipped back to her quarters with no plan other than a bath, a book, and maybe a few stolen moments of silence.

  The door to her dorm creaked open. She froze.

  Her eyes swept the room in a heartbeat—bed neat, window sealed, shelves untouched. Only one thing was out of place.

  On the desk lay a single roll of parchment.

  No seal. No ribbon. Just resting there, waiting for her.

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  Kana closed the door softly, almost reverently, and approached. She pressed her fingertips to the wood of the desk before she picked up the parchment, as if grounding herself, as if daring whatever lay inside to leap at her.

  The paper was rough, hand-cut, not academy stock. She broke the fold and let her eyes skim the words.

  Then her lips curled. Not into amusement. Not quite satisfaction either. Something sharper.

  “Finally,” she whispered, a grin crept up to her face without her knowing.

  She rolled the parchment back up and tapped it against her palm, her grin widening.

  There was only one person bold enough—reckless enough—to leave her something like this. One person who would send her a written challenge right under the nose of the academy’s wards and watchers.

  She set the parchment back down, but her red eyes lingered on it, gleaming faintly in the lamplight.

  ….

  Chelle Pint’s knees knocked together like they were trying to find some rhythm her head could not. The classroom smelled of chalk and cold breath and something else she hadn’t been able to name since the night Suri woke her up with a single, flat punch or was it put her to sleep? She had not slept properly since then.

  Suri stood in the doorway. The smile she wore now was the wrong kind of bright—too clean. It did not reach her eyes. It made Chelle think of winter glass and the way a pond looked when the light slid across its face and nothing underneath stirred.

  “You look like you want to go home,” Suri said, and her voice was a smooth thing, but the words were soft enough that everyone turned to listen. That was part of Suri’s skill—she could say a small thing and make a whole room tilt. Chelle felt the tilt.

  “We didn’t do anything,” Chelle said. Her voice sounded thinner than she expected. A few heads in the room turned away, pretending to be absorbed in notes.

  “I know,” Suri said. “No one’s going to report you if you don’t want them to.” She came forward two steps. Up close, the red in her hair looked like a warning flare.

  Suri folded her hands in front of her, casual, polite, whispering, “I need your skill.”

  “What do you want?” Chelle asked. It was the simplest of questions and she could hear how raw it sounded. She found that even now her palms were damp.

  Suri’s smile thinned, and the smile was gone. “I— No, we may need your help,” she said. “There is a guy that we want you to prevent from using his skills.”

  Chelle’s mouth formed the word a dozen times and never let it out. Her skill—what they called [Nullify Zone] in the books, though she had always thought the phrase sounded clinical for what it felt like—was cruel.

  “It works best on mana-users,” Chelle said, because she had to say something. “[Rogue], [Swordsman]—melee fighters—aren’t much stopped. They’re still dangerous on their raw strength alone. You should know that.”

  “Doesn’t matter as long as you prevent the guy from using skill.” Suri said.

  There was a slow motion in Chelle’s thoughts. Because Suri did not ask for much.

  “What do I get?” Chelle said, because the world was not kind to charity and because she wanted to know if this was a set-up. If she was about to be pushed through an invisible door and find herself in a worse room.

  Suri smiled then. It was almost warm, but it caught oddly at the corners. “You help me. And I won’t report your ambush. You should know the consequence of attacking a fellow student.”

  “All right,” she had no choice. The word came out tight but steady. “One job and we’re done.”

  The room narrowed to the two of them. The rest of the class went back to their own classes. The bell for the next period would ring in minutes.

  Her mind ran a checklist: reputation, punishment, the girl who had watched her twist another’s skill into silence a few nights ago. She remembered waking, of the ward ceiling, of the raw ache in her stomach where something had hit them. She had dreamed of Suri’s fist. She had woken to find it familiar.

  Suri’s smile widened in a way that almost looked human. “Good. I will tell you when it will be. Soon. Just wear dark. Don’t let anyone follow you.”

  Chelle’s head swam with the smallness of the world now. You said yes and things snapped into motion. You said no and they did too. She stood up on hands that trembled. Suri’s palm brushed her shoulder in a passing touch — not tender; not cruel — and it was a transfer, a small weight moved from one person to another, like setting one stone in a wall.

  Chelle opened her mouth to answer and found it empty. She followed the silhouette of Suri’s retreating back with her eyes until the girl vanished into the corridor and Suri’s bright hair became another splash of color among dozens.

  When Chelle walked back to her desk, the atmosphere changed. The classroom resumed its small, petty concerns with the new wave of students: who sat next to whom, who had copied whose notes, the usual strangeness of young lives. But Chelle felt as though she had stepped across a threshold.

  She had chosen. There was no going back. It was also a good source. Of information about them.