Night had settled over Helios Academy, the kind that came with its own particular quiet. Training fields empty under the moon, the windows of the dormitories dimmed to a handful of stray lights. At the top of the central tower, one office was still burning past curfew.
Headmistress Elara Vance hadn't moved in several minutes. The desk in front of her was buried in the usual — funding requests, incident reports, evaluations she was supposed to have finished hours ago — but her eyes had stopped tracking the words a while back. She rubbed at the bridge of her nose and let her chair tip back, just slightly, just enough to feel the weight she'd been carrying all day settle somewhere lower in her spine.
It had never been an easy job. Tonight it felt heavier than most.
Her gaze found the photograph on the far wall without her quite meaning it to. A younger version of herself, barely out of her academy uniform, standing beside a man whose presence dominated the frame even in stillness. Her father. Former headmaster, before her — the man whose own father had founded the school.
The academy had been his entire life. Every hallway in it, every training field, every student who'd ever walked through its gates — all of it carried some piece of what he'd built, whether the students knew it or not.
And now the whole weight of it belonged to her. She'd spent years convincing the right people she deserved this office. She still wasn't sure she'd convinced herself.
A knock cut through the quiet.
"Enter."
One of the night assistants stepped in, a small package held carefully in both hands. "Sorry to disturb you this late, Headmistress. This came to the front gate — no sender listed."
"Unlisted, and you brought it straight here?" she asked.
"Sorry, ma'am. The courier said it was urgent."
"You're new, so I'll let it slide." She looked him over once. "Give it here."
It was wrapped in plain black paper, small enough to fit in one hand, and there was something about it that made Elara hesitated before she reached for it. She couldn't have said what, exactly. She peeled the paper away anyway.
A single card sat inside. Black. The surface smooth enough to catch the desk lamp's light and throw it back. At the center, etched in silver, a circle — and across it, a dark crescent eating into the light.
An eclipse.
Her hand went still around it.
She didn't move for several seconds. The room seemed to drop several degrees, though nothing about the temperature had actually changed. What came up instead were old memories she hadn't let surface in years — a classroom long since gone, a handful of students who'd once naively believed, that they were all going to become heroes together.
And one of them who'd decided he wanted something else entirely.
"Headmistress?" The assistant had noticed something was wrong. He didn't know what, but he'd noticed.
"Where did this come from again?" Her voice was quieter than she meant it to be.
"The front gate, ma'am."
She looked up at him, and whatever he saw in her face made him take an involuntary step back. The composure she wore like a second uniform had gone somewhere else entirely.
Recognition, plain and unwelcome. Nothing more complicated than that.
She rose without answering him further and crossed to the window, the card still folded into her palm. Moonlight lay flat across the training fields below, the dormitories beyond them, filled with the few hundred lives that would hopefully be the future of the New Federation
"Is something wrong?" the assistant asked again, from somewhere behind her.
She didn't turn around.
"Go to the medical hall," she said. Steady. Controlled. The kind of voice that didn't invite a follow-up question.
He hesitated at the door. "But I feel—"
"Yes ma'am "
He didn't finish the sentence. He nodded instead, said something that might have been agreement, and turned toward the hallway.
The door clicked shut behind him.
Less than a second later, through the wood, Elara heard the sound of a body hitting the floor.
She didn't go to him.
She stood at the window with the card still in her hand. 18 years she'd spent trying to forget that time, and it was as happening again.
He was happening again.
She would have to tell the other others, eventually.
Finally, she sunk back into her chair and gave a deep sigh.
There was much to be done.