THE WEIGHT OF WHAT REMAINS
The day passed the way days do when nothing extraordinary happens.
Delorne's class was exactly what Khushi had predicted—two hours that stretched out to feel like four. Liu sat in her usual seat with her notes laid out in front of her, writing down exactly what was required and nothing more. The magic theory felt incredibly distant today. It was like reading about a language she used to speak fluently, but had completely forgotten the syntax of.
Lunch was loud, the way lunch always has. Khushi complained endlessly about Professor Delorne. Harley corrected something Priya said without even looking up from her plate.
Priya laughed softly at a joke Kirti muttered under her breath, while Zia ate quietly, observing everything around them.
Liu just ate her food and listened.
Dinner was quieter. The long day had drained everyone, and the conversation came in much smaller, disjointed pieces.
Khushi yawned dramatically three times before they had even finished their plates. By the time they finally returned to the dorm, tiredness had settled over the entire academy like a heavy blanket.
Khushi fell asleep almost immediately. Her breathing evened out within minutes—slow, deep, and completely unbothered.
But Liu lay flat on her back, staring blankly at the stone ceiling. Sleep didn't come. It never really did anymore.
After a long time of lying completely still in the dark, she sat up slowly, careful not to make a sound. She pulled on her outer layer, pushed her feet into her shoes, and slipped out of the dorm room quietly, closing the wooden door behind her without a single click.
Outside, the night air was cool and perfectly still. The pathway stones looked pale and ghostly under the open sky, and the residual magic running through Sablethorne's grounds glowed faintly in the dark—barely visible, but just enough to see by.
The bench near the courtyard was completely empty. Liu sat down.
The school was quiet in a way it never was during the day. No rushing footsteps. No loud voices. No magic flickering casually through the air. There was only the sound of the wind moving slowly through the trees at the edge of the grounds, and a faint, rhythmic humming sound in the distance that she still couldn't name.
She sat with her hands resting in her lap, letting the quiet settle around her.
And then, the parallel world came rushing back.
It always did when she had nothing left to distract herself with. The misty street. The flickering lights. The dandelion lady. The woman who looked exactly like the woman in the flames, yet spoke with a warmth that had no right to exist.
And the other Liu—the girl with her exact eyes and her exact nose, but brighter. Happier. Unburdened in a way our Liu had never been, and didn't even know how to want.
She didn't know what to do with any of it. She didn't know if it was real, or if it even mattered whether it was real. She didn't know what it means that somewhere—in some impossible world that looked like hers but wasn't—there was a version of herself that someone had actually chosen to keep.
Liu looked down at her pale hands. And then—without consciously deciding to—she reached for it.
Her magic.
It was there.
It was stronger than it had been when she first felt it that morning. It was still faint, still incredibly fragile, and nowhere close to the immense power she used to wield.But it was undeniably there.
A distinct warmth bloomed deep behind the seal, steady in a way the fleeting flicker from the morning hadn't been. It felt as though the dying ember had finally caught onto a small piece of kindling, refusing to go out.
Liu's breath came out in a slow, shaky exhale.
She wanted it back. She knew that with a crushing certainty that sat heavy and unmoving in her chest.
She wanted it the way a person wants a piece of themselves that has been violently torn away—not out of greed, not out of ambition, but out of the simple, desperate ache of missing a part of her own identity.
But then, the memory of the courtyard slammed into her mind. Priya's foot slipping. Her own hand shooting forward. Levitation— and then, disaster.
The magic had answered her call, but it had answered wrong. It was twisted, uncontrolled, and violent.
Liu's hand curled tightly into a fist in her lap as an old saying from her childhood echoed bitterly in her mind:
"A weapon does not choose its target; it only knows how to break what it touches."
What if her magic came back entirely wrong? What if wanting it this badly was exactly the problem? What if the desperation itself was what made the energy dangerous—what made her dangerous?
She had almost severely hurt Priya. Not an enemy. Not a cruel noble. Priya. The girl who sat across from her at breakfast, who gently teased Khushi, and who smiled through her tears. The girl who had unknowingly become a part of her life—a part which she refused to lose. Priya had come into her life simply as Kirti's friend, and had ended up becoming the beloved crybaby of their group.
If she couldn't control it, then her magic wasn't a gift. It was just a blade waiting to cut the only people who had ever shown her kindness.
"A weapon does not choose its target..." she whispered into the freezing night air, her voice cracking under the weight of the realization. "And right now... I am the weapon."
What if the magic returned and she couldn't hold it? What if she couldn't even hold herself together?
The warmth behind the seal pulsed gently against her spirit—patient, waiting, asking for nothing in return.
Liu closed her eyes. She sat there in the dark with the wanting and the doubt resting side by side in her heart, not choosing either, not resolving a thing. She just held onto both of them, the way a person holds onto something too fragile to put down, yet far too heavy to keep carrying.
After a long time, she deliberately pulled her consciousness back from the magic. Not because the energy had vanished. But because she chose to stop.
She opened her eyes. The grounds were exactly the same. Cool air. Pale stones. The faint, bleeding glow of magic through the dark. She sat there a little longer, letting the cold numb her fingers.
Up above—
In an arched window on the upper floor of the east dormitory, a lone figure stood perfectly still in the shadows.
Diana hadn't been sleeping either.
From her high vantage point, she watched Liu sitting on the isolated bench below. She noted the absolute stillness of the kid she used to tease.
She saw the way Liu's hand had curled into a tight, tense fist, and then slowly, painfully released. She watched her sit there, carrying something invisible and enormous, yet refusing to break under the weight of it.
Diana's sharp expression didn't change, but her eyes stayed locked on Liu for a long time.
So, Diana thought quietly to herself, her gaze narrowing into the darkness. Just who are you? There is something about you that I can't understand... maybe just you.
She didn't move away from the window until Liu finally stood up from the bench and went back inside.
Even after Liu left, Diana sat quietly in a chair in her dorm, watching the empty courtyard from the glass for a long time. She was completely lost in thought, turning over questions that kept her mind racing in the dead of night.
Liu. Just Liu.
After some long thinking diana finally stood up and went to bed. It was already past middle of night.