Aveline was pulled back into the moment so abruptly that it almost hurt.

Yes. She needed to do something.

But first...

"You came back for me?" she asked, her voice soft with disbelief.

She had thought he had run. Thought he had fled when the danger became real. But he had returned. Right when she needed him most. Just like he had in the tavern. Just like he seemed to appear when she was about to break.

Aelion’s clear blue eyes settled on her, and for a brief moment, that otherworldly calm on his face gave way to the faintest twitch at the corner of his mouth.

"How dumb are you?" he asked.

Aveline pouted instantly, displeased by the insult, but she did not have the luxury of sulking for long.

A roar tore through the corridor.

The creature had recovered from the lightning attack. 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

Not fully, but enough.

It surged forward again, and something dark spilled from within it. Not blood. Not flesh. Shadow. It poured out in writhing currents, thick and glistening like living smoke, spreading low across the floor as though the darkness itself had learned how to crawl. Wherever it touched, the light dimmed, and the air seemed to grow heavier, fouler.

Aveline’s expression hardened.

She was tired of this.

She did not know whether Theron was safe. She did not know what was happening to him. And this creature, this relentless thing, was still here in front of her, refusing to die.

"I’ve had enough," she muttered under her breath.

Then she forced herself inward, past the fear, past the panic, past the noise of the corridor and the pounding of her own heart.

The world blurred.

Her thoughts quieted.

And in that strange, still place where everything within her went silent, something answered.

Darkness surged inside her, hot and fierce, like fire hidden beneath cold water. It did not feel foreign this time. It did not feel like fear. It felt like recognition. The shadows around the creature sharpened in her sight, no longer a shapeless mass of dread, but something she could see clearly. Something she could reach.

Aveline lifted her hand.

Her fingers curled slowly, and the shadows obeyed.

It didn’t feel like control.

It felt like something that had always been hers... finally remembering.

She could feel them bend, feel the creature’s own darkness twist under her will as if it had suddenly found a master it could not resist. There was no hesitation now. No uncertainty. Only a raw, furious intent that rose from somewhere deep inside her and took shape in the air.

The shadows tightened. It fought.

For a moment, the darkness strained against her... and then it yielded.

Crushed.

The creature shuddered as its form began to collapse inward, its body melting into thick, viscous darkness that lost all structure beneath her grip. It twisted, thinned, and finally unraveled, until what had once been a monstrous shape was nothing more than diluted shadow spilling uselessly across the floor.

And then the shadows vanished.

"For Helena..." Aveline whispered under her breath, the name slipping from her lips as if it belonged to someone she could protect with her own trembling heart.

She drew in a long, shaky breath and blinked, as though waking from something half-dreamed and half-felt. The corridor slowly returned to itself. The heavy, suffocating wrongness lifted. Sounds began to seep back in from the classrooms—the scrape of chairs, the murmur of voices, the faint rhythm of a lecture continuing as if nothing extraordinary had happened at all. Bit by bit, the world settled into place again.

Whatever veil had separated her from everyone else seemed to dissolve.

Aveline turned toward Aelion, wonder and unease stirring together in her chest. She had so many questions. How had he been dragged into this with her? How had he seen what others could not, heard what others never even sensed?

He looked like someone who had stepped out of a dream himself, yet the reality in his face made her hesitate.

Because his expression was wrong.

Fear had stripped away all that ethereal calm.

It was there in his eyes, raw and unmistakable, as though he had looked into something that had reached past his skin and touched the oldest part of his terror.

Aveline’s heart gave a small, startled jolt. She had endured so many strange things since coming here—so many tests, so many suspicious looks, so many people treating her like something unnatural, something to be examined rather than understood. Everyone had looked at her like she was an aberration.

Everyone... except Theron.

And now even the Ermine man looked at her that way too.

Didn’t she just save them both?

Then why did he look as though he had just seen a nightmare?

Aelion was truly frightened.

At first, he had thought the Noctyrr was after him. That was why he had run when he first sensed it, because he knew what it did to those who came too close, what vengeance it carried for those who had tried to destroy it and failed. He had hunted it before. He had failed before. So when the creature appeared, he had assumed it had finally come to answer him.

Only to realize, too late, that it had come for her.

And then he had seen the drifting silk-like ribbons of shadow curling around her, moving as though they listened to her breath, obeyed her silence, recognized her in some way he could not explain.

In that instant, he had thought she was one of the Vantaris family’s people, and that was what had made Kael’s interest in her make sense. That was why he had stepped in, why he had chosen to protect her while she was distracted and unaware.

But now...

Now the truth had shattered every assumption he had managed to hold together.

What she had done was beyond explanation.

The creature that had withstood hunters, savants, and warriors for decades, the monster that healed itself too quickly for most people to even strike twice, had been reduced to nothing in a matter of seconds. Not beaten in a long struggle. Not worn down. Not outmatched through careful force.

Gone.

As if it had been nothing more than shadow and she had simply reached out and scattered it.

Aelion’s throat tightened.

His heart was pounding so hard it almost hurt.

He stared at her as though seeing her for the first time, as though the girl who had rushed toward him with careless familiarity a few minutes ago had suddenly stepped out of one world and into another entirely.

"Who are you?" he asked at last, his voice low, shaken, and stripped of all pretense.

The question struck deeper than it should have.

Aveline froze.

That look—

She had seen it before.

Not here. Not now.

Somewhere else.

Flashes broke across her mind...

Faces.Eyes wide with fear.People stepping back... as if she were something they didn’t dare touch.

Her breath hitched.

Pain lanced through her head.

Aveline staggered, her fingers clutching at her temple as the fragments slipped through her grasp.

"Why...?" Her voice trembled.

The shadows at her feet stirred.