Cael woke slowly.
Not to pain. That was the strange part.
But to the awareness of weight. The press of a blanket against his chest. The firmness of the bed beneath his back. The faint steady hum of healing wards doing what they believed had already been done.
He opened his eyes.
The ceiling above him was smooth white stone, veined faintly with sigils that glowed low and constant.
The medical wing.
He remembered that much. What he did not remember was feeling like this.
His body felt settled.
Not weak. Not sore.
Just wrong in a way that refused to organize itself into words. Like a limb that had fallen asleep and woken incorrectly. Circulation restored. Sensation present. But something essential misaligned.
He shifted, testing himself.
No sharp pain. No resistance.
Just a strange crawling awareness beneath his skin, centered somewhere in his chest, spreading outward like an echo that had not finished bouncing yet.
One of the healers noticed the movement and crossed the room.
"You are awake," she said pleasantly, consulting a chart without meeting his eyes. "Good timing."
"Did it work?" Cael asked.
She paused, then smiled.
"Of course it did."
That should have been reassuring.
It was not.
They cleared him within the hour.
The walk from the medical wing felt longer than it should have.
Cael moved slowly through the corridor, boots echoing softly against the pale stone of the academy halls. Every step landed clean. Balanced.
His body obeyed him perfectly.
Which only made the sensation under his ribs more noticeable.
It followed the rhythm of his breathing. Not pain. Not heat.
Just weight without mass.
He passed a pair of initiates whispering near a notice board. Their conversation faltered as he drew close, then resumed a moment later, quieter than before.
Cael did not look back.
He was used to that kind of reaction. The aftermath of public injury carried its own gravity.
Still, something tugged at him as he walked.
A faint pull.
Like the memory of a hand at his back, urging him forward even when he slowed.
He paused near one of the tall windows overlooking the outer yards.
Training continued below. Controlled bursts of flame. Instructors calling corrections. The orderly chaos of disciplined power.
Normally, the sight would have grounded him.
Fire made sense.
Motion made sense.
He reached inward again, carefully this time.
The heat answered immediately.
But instead of flaring outward, it curled.
Folded.
As if something had redirected it before it could finish becoming what it was meant to be.
Cael exhaled slowly and pulled back, pulse ticking faster than he liked.
"Later," he muttered to himself.
The echo beneath his ribs pulsed once in response.
Not stronger.
Not weaker.
Simply there.
He straightened and kept walking to his first class since the accident.
"Magical exhaustion," Instructor Vale said later, arms crossed as Cael stood at the edge of the training hall, dressed but unable to participate. "You pushed too hard. Happens to everyone eventually."
Cael opened his mouth to argue.
Then stopped.
Because when he reached for his magic, just to test it, the heat responded but wrong.
Like before.
Vale noticed the hesitation and misread it entirely.
"You will sit out today. Observation only. Tomorrow, we reassess."
A reasonable response to the panic he had caused the day before. Rules being followed.
Cael nodded, because that was what you did when authority spoke calmly and expected obedience.
But as he turned away, the itch beneath his ribs flared.
Not painful.
Just insistent.
This was not exhaustion.
It was interruption.
Ilyra felt the change before anyone said a word.
Instructor Vire did not scold her.
That would have been easier.
Instead, she adjusted.
"Ilyra," Vire said midway through the morning session, tone precise. "You will observe for the remainder of the week."
The room stilled.
Observation only assignments were not punishments.
They were recalibrations.
Quiet ones.
"Yes, Instructor," Ilyra replied at once.
Vire nodded, already turning back to the diagram.
"Watch carefully."
Ilyra folded her hands in her lap and did exactly that.
She tracked flow. Response time. The way one healer hesitated and another compensated.
She understood all of it.
She always had.
But when she let her awareness dip inward, when she brushed against her own magic just enough to feel its shape, it hesitated.
Like something listening past her instead of to her.
Her mark lay quiet beneath her robes.
Unseen. Unmoving.
But Ilyra could feel it now in a way she had not before.
Not active.
Not burning.
Just present.
As though it were aware she had noticed it.
That frightened her more than anything ever had.
Riven noticed Cael's absence without comment.
He noticed everything without comment.
Tactical Foundations unfolded as usual. Layered simulations. Shifting terrain. Outcomes hinging on decisions made seconds before anyone else realized they mattered.
Merrow's illusion formed carefully this time.
A defensive engagement.
Narrow corridors.
Structural weaknesses marked faintly in red.
Riven mapped it instinctively.
Then the central support pillar twisted.
Quietly.
As if the stone itself had decided to lean where it had not before.
Riven stilled.
The illusion corrected itself a moment later.
No one else reacted. No one else noticed the shift.
Merrow continued speaking, unbothered.
Riven noted the discrepancy, adjusted his internal model, and moved on.
Still, something about it lingered.
The map had been wrong.
It had shown something that was not supposed to be possible.
That evening, the academy corridors filled with the soft churn of routine.
Students moving between halls.
Voices low.
Footsteps echoing off stone worn smooth by generations of intent.
Cael leaned against a window alcove, watching the sky darken, heat restless but contained beneath his skin.
Ilyra passed two corridors over, satchel held close, attention fixed forward.
Riven crossed the central hall alone, already planning tomorrow.
They did not see one another.
But as each moved through the space, something subtle shifted.
A pressure without direction.
A sense of proximity without source.
Like standing too close to a struck bell and feeling the vibration long after the sound had faded.
None of them stopped.
None of them spoke.
Nothing else happened.
And that was what made the night feel wrong.