He woke in the insect-hour, some unidentifiable sound peeling open his senses.

At first, only the usual building noises registered, pipes in the wall, a distant cough, perhaps a laundry chute somewhere shifting its load. On the second listen, he heard it again: a faint, deliberate scuff, and the softer sound of bare feet on stone.

He waited, counting the breaths between movements, then rose with practiced quiet.

Cassian's bunk was empty. The door, slightly ajar.

Soren eased into the empty corridor. To the left, the hall bent twice before ending in communal washrooms and a service stair; to the right, it traced a line through four other dorms before terminating at the glass-walled upper lounge.

Something moved at the extreme end, the lounge, or just before. He followed, careful not to let the floorboards under his feet betray him.

At the cut-glass flexion before the lounge, Soren slowed. A thread of blue light flickered ahead, ghostly, almost electrical, and moving with intelligent rhythm.

He closed the distance, slow as frost.

There, in the pool of blue, a figure in an oversized robe traced faint lines onto doorframes with a chalky tip. The insignia on the sleeve marked them as Arcanist, though not a student, the cuffs were edged in black, the badge vertical rather than horizontal.

Soren recognized Instructor Veyra immediately; she moved like a dancer, all liquid muscle and no wasted gesture.

Veyra finished the sigil, then pressed her thumb to it, eyes closed in momentary concentration. The blue line flared, then vanished without a trace.

She moved to the next door, ignoring the possibility of watchers. Soren guessed she could detect anyone attempting to sneak up on her, or at least would consider it a test worth failing.

He watched in absolute silence as she marked three more dorms, each time burning the pattern into the frame, each time more rapidly than before.

The last sigil, on the west-most door, drew a pulse of something through the corridor, like a pressure drop, as if all the oxygen had been momentarily evacuated and returned.

Veyra left without looking back.

Soren trailed her, not close but not losing sight. She doubled back toward the staff offices through a narrow utility shaft, then vanished into an arched passage. When Soren followed, the air was empty except for the chill aroma of burned ozone and the faintest trace of lavender chalk dust.

He stood there for a full minute, considering the logic of the marks, or at least of being seen making them.

"Even sanctuaries have watchers," Valenna's whisper came, this time with a blade's thin satisfaction. "Especially sanctuaries."

On the way back, Soren counted five total sigils, all on first-year doors, all erased as soon as marked.

He returned to the dorm and found Cassian sitting cross-legged on his bunk, eyes barely open. The candle stub guttered in its dish, the new wax having guttered and suffocated itself.

Cassian said nothing as Soren entered, but Soren knew from the angle of his head that he was already awake. The silver hair gleamed in the dark, like filament waiting to catch a spark.

Soren lay awake until sunrise, reconstructing the pattern.

The next day broke in the teeth of a wet, sleet-heavy storm. Drills were canceled; the entire cohort was shunted into the east common room for enforced "study and reflection," which everyone interpreted as a chance to sleep or trade damaging rumors.

Soren claimed a corner by the window, a battered leather-bound tactics book unfolded on his lap. He kept his gaze on the lawns below, watching the wind paste sheets of sleet against the Academy's glass roofs. Tiny refraction patterns zigzagged across the grounds, creating ghost images of those who hurried between the halls.

At the lounge's center, Cassian had assembled an audience of six or seven, all listening with the intentness of people primed for entertainment. He spoke easily, never raising his voice, each word calculated to land as either a joke or a challenge. The effect was always the same: people laughed, then glanced aside, then sat up a little straighter.

Seren Avelle detached from the edge of the group and drifted over to Soren's spot by the window. She wore her hair tightly braided, rainwater still trapped in the ends. She carried a copy of the same textbook Soren had, but hers was covered in marginal notes, some standard, some so angry the ink dented the page.

She stood over him, silent until he looked up.

"Care to share your conclusions?" she asked, touching the book's edge.

Soren flipped the page to the siege at Lathrim Heights. "The winning side didn't win by force. They just cut the supply to the rear."

Seren nodded. "And the Arcanist instructor in charge neglected to account for the low walls on the south approach."

"Veyra?" Soren asked, voice low.

Seren's mouth pulled tight, suppressing something between a laugh and a snort. "She's been here forty years, never forgets a mistake."

"Do you remember her walking halls last night?"

Seren ducked her head, glancing up through thick lashes in a way that made the question seem less loaded. "I heard the doors. Never got up."

Soren said, "She marked five dorms."

"Why?" Seren asked, and Soren appreciated that she skipped speculation.

He shrugged. "Security? Surveillance?"

"Or something needs to be contained," Seren supplied.

They sat in mutual silence for several minutes, the only sound the rattle of sleet against the stained glass and, now and then, a heated snatch of Cassian's banter.

Finally Seren rose. "First-years get hazed every year. The only thing that changes is how creative the staff get at pretending it's for our own good." She left the last part, You might be the reason, or at least the excuse, unsaid.

As she moved back toward the circle, Soren watched the way she walked: not arrogant, but unbowed. He found it reassuring.

Hours later, the cohort broke for lunch, and Soren found himself at a table in the refectory with Kale Trennor and the same rotating cast of joking, scheming initiates as always. The conversation stuck to safe topics: which instructor had the worst temper, whether second-years got secret privileges, which dormitory was most haunted.

Kale, always more open than smart, leaned in and asked, "You ever see Veyra when she's not teaching?"

No one answered at first. Then Mara, of all people, volunteered, "She sleeps in the upper tower. Never eats with the staff." It sounded gossipy, but Soren logged it away.

Cassian walked past, trailing his audience. He placed a delicate hand on Soren's shoulder in what could have been either camaraderie or warning.

"Careful, Vale. Too much knowledge is as dangerous as too little here." The voice was even, but the words had a microscopic trace of threat. "Curiosity got my brother dismissed in his first term. Hope you're better at balancing."

Soren let the hand drop from his shoulder, finished his meal, and exited to the quad.

Outside, the storm had snapped to mere rain. The sky was a slab of mercury, clouds braided so tight no sunlight could squeeze through.

He stood on the stone porch, watching the steam rise off the sodden lawns, considering what he'd seen and what he needed to learn.

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