Phoebe asked before they reached the stairwell.

"Why the first-year block?"

Ash kept walking. "There’s someone I need to find."

"That’s not really an answer you know." 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

"It’s all I have right now."

They took the east stairwell down two floors and the academy changed around them. It was loud and less organized. The sound of students who didn’t know where they stood compared to each other. The upper years had a rhythm to them, the daily patterns of people who had sorted themselves into a hierarchy and moved accordingly. Down here the sorting was still happening. Groups formed and broke and reformed around different centers and reasons. Arguments ran hotter and resolved faster.

Someone had taped a hand-drawn map of the building to the wall at the landing with several corridors labeled wrong.

Phoebe looked at the map as they passed. "They’ve got the equipment rooms on the wrong side."

"They’ll figure it out."

The first-year dormitory corridor ran longer than the upper-year blocks, the rooms were smaller and ceilings slightly lower. The walls looked clean, like they hadn’t been subject to abuse yet. There wasn’t any dried adhesive where posters had been, or initials graffitied onto doors and places academy administrator’s wouldn’t look. Everything still looked like it belonged to the academy rather than to the people living in it.

The Shade pull was stronger here.

It had been a lower on the upper floors and easy to locate without concentrating. Down here it hit with weight behind it, drawing attention before the mind caught up to why. He slowed his pace down.

Phoebe matched her pace to his.

"What is it?" she said.

"What do you feel?"

She blinked. "I’m doing better, thank you. The last few days have—"

"I said what do you feel." He wasn’t looking at her. "Not how."

Phoebe went quiet. Her eyes lost focus for a fraction of a second before tracking back to the corridor ahead of them.

"I don’t—" She stopped. Her brow drew together. "Ah! There’s a student. Down there, around the corner."

"Yeah, I think we’re about to see him."

"It’s like—" She pressed her lips together, searching for the right word. "It’s like standing at the edge of a drop with no visible bottom. I can feel it pulling down."

"Good. Remember that."

They came around the corner walked into the common area.

The first-year common room was noisier than its upper-year equivalent. More furniture pushed out of place and what looked like a backdoor card game running in broad daylight. In the middle of all of it, at a small table near the window with a tray of food and a textbook propped against his water glass, sat a first-year eating alone.

He was smaller than the students around him. Not noticeably so at first glance, but he moved with precision. The fork lifted at a measured pace, the page turned with a hand that checked its position before committing. His uniform was slightly too large at the shoulders, either a deliberate choice or the only size available.

The Shade hit Ash at thirty feet like walking through a pressure change. Not outward. Inward. The mass was dense enough to bend the air around it. Two students crossing the common room went two feet wide of the first-year’s table without discussing it or appearing to notice they’d done it.

Phoebe put her hand on Ash’s arm.

Her grip was tight. He looked at her. Her face had gone pale, not from fear but from the focused compression. Her eyes were fixed on the first-year at the table.

"That’s him," she said, her voice just above a whisper.

"Yeah. That’s him alright."

"How long have you known about this?"

"Since last week."

Phoebe looked at Ash, then back at the first-year, then at Ash again. "How could you tell?"

He didn’t answer that in full. "The same way I knew about you."

The first-year looked up from his textbook then took a glance around the room to see its current status. His gaze was direct, defaulting to an open trust. He saw them standing at the common room entrance and didn’t look away.

Ash crossed the room.

"We’re looking for the advanced theory seminar block," he said. "We’ve been going in circles."

The first-year set his fork down. "Its on the third-floor, east side. The signage is wrong on this level. The arrows point north but the block runs northeast. You have to go up one floor first before you can cut across."

"We came from the east stairwell. Didn’t we Phoebe?"

"Huh?" Phoebe blinked then looked at Ash. "Oh yeah, that’s right."

"Then you went past it." He picked up a napkin and drew a quick sketch, three lines and a box. "Here. The junction looks like a dead end but there’s a door on the left side. It’s not labeled."

Ash took the napkin and put the sketch up close to his eyes. "How long did it take you to figure that out?"

"About three days." he said with a slight shrug. "I got lost a lot my first week. The building makes more sense from the outside than it does from inside it."

"You transferred in late?"

"At the end of the first month. I was at the regional satellite campus, before. My family needed to be in the city so I moved my enrollment. The intake process takes longer for transfers so I missed the orientation week. Still catching up on the layout."

He picked his fork back up.

"Thanks," Ash said.

"Sure." The first-year was already reading again.

"Sora." A student called from the card table across the room. "Are you in or not?"

Sora yelled back, "Give me five minutes."

They left him to it.

Phoebe said nothing until they reached the corridor outside. Then she stopped walking and turned to face Ash with her folder held against her chest.

"That’s not a normal Shade," she said.

"No."

"That’s... I’ve felt A-ranks in the seminar block. I’ve felt the professors expert Shade control during assessments and demonstrations." She shook her head. "Whatever that is, it’s not an A-rank. It’s not anything I have a comparison for."

"He doesn’t know."

Phoebe looked back at the common room door. Through it, just audible, someone was complaining about the card game. Sora’s voice solved the dispute efficiently and calmly, without being asked to. The table settled down.

"We need to tell a faculty member about this."

"No, I’m going to take care of this myself, Phoebe."

"How many times have you done this?" Phoebe said.

Ash looked at her.

"What you did for me," she said. "You’ve done it before. And now... You’re here to do it again."

"Yes."

She absorbed that without filling the silence. The open uncertainty she’d carried since the classroom shifted, hardening into a quiet, inward calculation.

"Does it hurt?"

"No," Ash said. "The opposite, at least... You feel good? Right?"

She looked at him for another moment. Then she looked at the common room door.

"What do you need from me?"

"I just need you to stay close and protect me."

They went back into the common room. Sora was at the card table now, one chair pulled slightly back from the group, playing his hand with the same careful economy he applied to everything else. The students around him were louder, leaning in. Sora moved through it effortlessly, like he had learned how to be useful in groups without needing the group to notice.

Ash reached the table. He set the napkin sketch down in front of Sora.

"I think we went wrong here," he said, pointing to the junction. "Can you show us where to go from this point please?"

Sora leaned forward and took the napkin.

"Oh yeah, I see what’s wrong. I drew the layout wrong. That’s on me." His hand moved to correct the drawing. He reached towards his breast pocket where a pen was stashed.

The back of his hand was right there.

The hunger oriented. The void reached through the contact and seized the moment it found Sora’s Shade. The massive inward pull, compressed down to a single point, the years of weight gathered at the center of a person who had never been given permission to set any of it down.

The realm opened.

And Ash was gone.

Phoebe stood at the card table with the napkin in her hand and watched Ash go completely still beside a first-year student who hadn’t noticed yet. His eyes were open. He was breathing, but he looked like a person who had been switched off at the base of the skull.