The healing ward resisted order.

  Spells settled unevenly here, like dust that refused to lie flat. Diagnostic sigils flickered instead of locking, their light dimming faster than they should have. Even the air felt strained—too still in places, too cold in others—as though the room itself were holding its breath and failing.

  Lira stood just inside the threshold, fingers curled against her sternum, fighting the instinct to retreat. Her gift pressed outward without permission, drawn to the wrongness pooling around the beds. It wasn’t pain she felt first, or fear. It was lack. A thinning where something vital should have been anchored, as if the ward were trying—and failing—to remember what living people felt like.

  Ten beds lined the chamber. Seven were occupied now, three more prepared for arrivals still on the road. Everybody within them breathed. Every heart still beats. And yet, to Lira’s senses, they read like echoes—present, responsive, but fundamentally incomplete.

  Guru Devika moved between patients with brutal efficiency, hands glowing faintly as she assessed vitals, stabilized failing systems, poured what little mana she could spare into bodies that leaked it away like water through cracked stone. Her face was drawn tight, shadows under her eyes, round cheeks hollowed by exhaustion and something closer to fear than Lira had ever seen on her.

  "Lira," Devika said sharply, not looking up from the young woman she was treating—Eastern robes, barely conscious, skin so pale it looked translucent. "This one. What are you reading?"

  Lira forced herself to step closer, to open her gift wider despite every instinct screaming to shut it down, to stop feeling, to make the pain stop.

  She let her awareness stretch toward the woman.

  And immediately wished she hadn't.

  Hollow. Empty. Drowning.

  The woman's emotional signature was barely there—a flicker, faint and fading, like a candle guttering in the wind. But underneath it, threading through the emptiness where vitality should have been, was something else. Wrong. A residue. A stain. Like oil floating on water, slick and dark and utterly foreign.

  "She's fading," Lira said, voice hoarse. "Fast. Maybe an hour. Maybe less."

  Devika's jaw clenched. "And the others?"

  Lira moved to the next bed. Then the next. Each time, the same crushing weight. The same hollow absence. Some stronger than others. Some already so far gone she could barely sense them at all.

  By the time she reached the seventh bed—a boy, maybe sixteen, Eastern student markings faint on his wrists—her hands were shaking.

  "This one," she managed. "He's... he's fighting. There's still will there. Anger. He's not letting go."

  "Good," Devika said grimly. She moved to the boy's side, hands already glowing brighter. "Anger keeps people alive longer than hope sometimes."

  Lira wanted to argue. Wanted to say something optimistic, something that sounded like the Lira who believed in patterns and solutions and the idea that broken things could be fixed if you just understood them well enough.

  But the words died in her throat.

  Because standing at the far end of the ward, isolated behind layers of shimmering containment wards, was the body.

  The one that shouldn't still have mana.

  Dhama, one of Swarit's team mate had arrived an hour earlier—pulled ahead of Swarit's team through emergency transit when her preliminary notes confirmed the anomaly. Iravati hadn’t argued. Anything that could still hold mana after hollowing demanded ward-craft before it demanded answers.

  Dhama stood beside it, hands moving in precise, deliberate patterns, pulling at invisible threads as she tested the ward-integrity for the fifth time in an hour. Two other specialists flanked her—older students, advanced ward-craft, faces tight with concentration.

  Aresh stood just outside the containment circle, staring.

  He hadn't moved in twenty minutes.

  Lira could feel him from across the room—the tight, controlled spiral of his emotions: fascination, horror, recognition. Like he was looking at something he'd seen before but couldn't remember when or where or why it mattered.

  His fire flickered faintly along his forearms, barely visible, responding to something none of them could see.

  "Aresh," Dhama said quietly, not looking away from the body. "You need to step back."

  He didn't move.

  "Aresh."

  "I can feel it," he said, voice distant, rough. "The mana. It's not just residual. It's active. Like something's still..."

  He trailed off.

  "Still feeding," Dhama finished grimly. "We know. That's why it's in containment. Whatever did this—" She gestured at the body, at the faint, wrong flicker of mana that pulsed irregularly beneath the wards. "—it's not done. The harvesting process was interrupted, not completed."

  "Can you stop it?" one of the other specialists asked.

  "I don't know," Dhama admitted. "I've never seen anything like this. The mana signature is... it's not human. Not creature. Not even elemental. It's—"

  "Hungry," Aresh said softly.

  Kavya's gaze snapped to him. "What?"

  "It feels hungry," he repeated, still staring at the body. "Like it's reaching. Searching for more."

  A chill ran down Lira's spine.

  Dhama studied Aresh for a long moment, expression unreadable. Then she turned back to the containment wards and began reinforcing them with additional layers. "If you're right, we need to make sure it can't find anything to feed on. Including you."

  Aresh finally looked away from the body. His hands curled into fists, flames extinguishing. "How long can you hold it?"

  "As long as we need to," Dhama said. But the tightness in her voice said she wasn't sure.

  ---

  Across the ward, in the bed closest to the windows, Headmaster Saira stirred.

  Devika was beside her in seconds, hands hovering over the broken arrow still embedded in her shoulder. "Don't move. The mantra-inscription is still active. If it shifts—"

  "I know," Saira rasped, voice barely audible, each word dragged up from somewhere deep and painful. Her eyes—sharp once, Lira imagined, the kind that could pierce through lies and politics with equal efficiency—were clouded with pain and exhaustion. "How many?"

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  "Seven survived the initial transport," Devika said gently. "Seven more are coming. You're the most stable."

  Saira's mouth twisted into something that might have been a bitter smile. "Lucky me."

  "Headmaster Saira," a voice cut in.

  Headmistress Iravati stood in the doorway, flanked by Vedant and Professor Amar. Her expression was calm, controlled, but her eyes were hard as stone. "I need to know what happened."

  Saira's gaze shifted toward her. For a moment, she just stared—taking in Iravati's composed face, the Institute beyond, the fact that she was here, alive, when so many weren't.

  Then she spoke.

  "It came with the fog," Saira said, voice rough, halting. "Three days ago. Maybe four. Time... stopped making sense." She swallowed, throat working painfully. "At first, we thought it was natural. Weather. Eastern Veil gets foggy. But this was wrong. Too thick. Too cold. It pressed against the wards like it was testing them."

  "And the wards held?" Vedant asked.

  "Yes." Saira's eyes went distant, haunted. "For a while. Then people started... disappearing. One by one. We'd find them later. Sitting. Standing. Eyes open. But empty. Like something had reached inside and taken everything that made them alive."

  Lira felt her chest tighten. Across the room, she saw Aadyan stiffen, hand moving instinctively toward the ward-cuff on his wrist.

  "How did it take them?" Iravati asked quietly.

  "I don't know," Saira admitted. "We never saw it. Not directly. Just the fog. And when it cleared, there'd be another body. Another hollow shell." Her breathing hitched. "We tried to fight. Tried to track it. But you can't fight what you can't see. Can't ward against something that doesn't touch you."

  "But you survived," Amar said, not unkindly.

  "We sealed the Veil from inside," Saira said. "Locked ourselves in with it. Thought if we could contain it, keep it from spreading—" Her voice cracked. "We were wrong. It was already inside with us. And sealing the Veil just gave it more time to feed."

  Silence pressed down like a physical weight.

  "The survivors," Iravati said carefully. "Why them? Why not everyone?"

  Saira's gaze dropped to her hands—scarred, trembling, still gripping the bow she'd refused to let anyone take from her. "I don't know. Some of us fought harder. Some of us..." She trailed off, jaw tightening. "Some of us it just... didn't finish with."

  "Didn't finish," Vedant repeated slowly. "You think it was interrupted?"

  "Or saving us for later," Saira said flatly. "I don't know which is worse."

  The words hung in the air, cold and terrible.

  Lira's hand pressed harder against her chest, trying to block the surge of fear radiating from everyone in the room—patients, healers, mentors. It crashed over her in waves, the smell of fear and horror drowning her, pulling her under.

  Too much. Too much.

  She stumbled backward, vision blurring.

  Strong hands caught her shoulders. Steadied her.

  Aadyan.

  "Breathe," he said quietly, voice low and grounding. "You're here. You're safe."

  "They're not," Lira gasped, gesturing weakly at the beds, at the hollow signatures bleeding fear and pain and resignation. "They're dying, Aadyan. I can feel them dying."

  "I know." His hands tightened fractionally. "But you can't save them by drowning with them."

  She wanted to argue. Wanted to say that it was better than standing on shore and watching. But her legs were shaking and her gift was screaming and she didn't have the strength left to do anything but lean into him and try to remember how to breathe.

  Two hours later, the alarm bells rang again.

  Swarit had arrived.

  The courtyard was quieter this time—fewer people, less chaos, just grim, exhausted acceptance as the khāras padded through the eastern gates with their cargo of barely-living refugees.

  Lira stood at the edge, Aadyan beside her, watching as the Eastern transport-creatures came to a careful, deliberate stop. Their dark eyes swept the courtyard—wary, grieving, ancient—before lowering their heads to let the healers approach.

  Seven more stretchers. Seven more hollow signatures.

  Swarit dismounted from the lead khāra, movements stiff, face drawn tight with exhaustion. His usual righteousness—the intense sincerity that made people trust or resent him in equal measure—had been worn down to something rawer. More human.

  His gaze found Lira across the courtyard.

  For a moment, neither moved.

  Then he crossed the distance, stopped a pace away, and said quietly, "You're helping in the ward."

  It wasn't a question.

  "Yes," Lira said.

  Swarit nodded once, something that might have been approval or just understanding. "Good. Devika will need you. This—" He gestured at the stretchers, the khāras, the refugees who were technically alive but barely. "This is worse than anything I've seen. And I've seen a lot."

  "What happened there?" Lira asked quietly. "Inside the Veil?"

  Swarit's jaw tightened. "The village was silent. Like sound itself had been taken. We found bodies everywhere. Just... sitting. Standing. Eyes open. All of them hollow." He paused, swallowed. "The survivors were huddled in the central hall. Barely conscious. If we'd been a day later—"

  He didn't finish.

  "Headmistress Iravati will want your report," Lira said softly.

  "I know." Swarit glanced toward the tower where Iravati's office sat, then back at Lira. "Be careful in there. Whatever did this—it's not done. I could feel it. Even after we sealed the Veil. It's still there. Waiting."

  A chill ran down Lira's spine.

  Before she could respond, Guru Devika's voice cut through the courtyard. "Swarit! I need you. Now."

  He turned without another word and followed her toward the healing ward.

  Lira watched him go, Aadyan's presence steady beside her, and tried not to think about what waiting meant.

  ---

  In the archives, three levels below ground, Jiv sat surrounded by scrolls and books and records so old the ink had faded to ghosts on parchment.

  Sama Kaul stood across the table from him, arms folded, expression sharp and assessing.

  "You said you recognized the pattern," she said quietly.

  "I did."

  "When?"

  Jiv didn't look up from the scroll he was reading—old script, almost illegible, detailing something that had happened in the eastern territories long before AstraVana existed. "Three hundred years ago. Give or take."

  Sama's eyes narrowed. "That's before the Veil system was formalized. Before the Institutes."

  "Yes."

  "What was it called?"

  Jiv's hands stilled on the parchment. For a long moment, he didn't answer.

  Then, quietly: "We didn't have a name for it. We just called it the Hollow. Because that's what it left behind."

  "And you fought it?"

  His voice was flat, empty. "We failed."

  "And how did it end?"

  "It didn't," Jiv said. He finally looked up, green eyes sharp and ancient and utterly devoid of humor.

  "It just... stopped. Went dormant. We thought it was dead. We were wrong."

  Sama studied him for a long moment. "If it's back—"

  "Then we're all in a lot more trouble than Iravati thinks," Jiv finished.

  "What does it want?"

  Jiv looked back at the scroll, at the faded words describing villages found empty, people hollowed out, the world itself seeming to drain away wherever it passed.

  "Everything," he said quietly. "It wants everything.”