Rumors And Revelations
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By the end of the week, the Mockery Games had already become legend.
Liora Vale—quiet, odd, unblooded—was now a name that traveled through Warborn's stone corridors like a ghost story. Whispers followed her footsteps. Some called her lucky. Others claimed dark magic. A few swore they saw her walk through a wall of fire without so much as a burn.
Liora ignored it all.
Rumors were dangerous things. They gave power—then drew attention. And attention in Warborn Academy was rarely a gift.
She stayed to the shadows of the halls, memorizing routes to every exit, noting the pressure plates hidden in the tiles, the runes etched faintly into the walls. This place was a fortress. A cage made to hold threats.
Made, perhaps, to hold someone like her.
---
It was during Spell Theory that the trouble began.
The classroom, shaped like a dome and filled with hovering glyphs, was lit by a single flickering crystal. Professor Merith droned on about containment circles, his ink-stained hands weaving slow patterns in the air.
Liora sat near the back, sketching diagrams into her notebook. She felt eyes on her, but that was nothing new.
Until she heard her name.
"...they say her whole family was cursed. Executed, even. Except her. Funny, right?"
She didn't turn.
Another voice, louder. "I heard she poisoned her last school's headmaster. That's why Wyrmere fell."
A third voice snickered. "Maybe Thornhart's sniffing around her because he likes cursed girls."
Liora's pen snapped in her hand.
Professor Merith didn't even pause.
She closed her eyes, drew a long breath, and stood.
The class fell silent.
She walked down the curved row of desks, her footsteps eerily calm. A few students shrank back.
She stopped at the second row, where a boy named Daemon Clive leaned against his seat, smirking.
He opened his mouth to speak—
—and she slammed her broken pen into the table beside his hand with a crack.
Ink exploded, dark and sudden, splattering across his books.
Not blood.
But close enough to silence him.
She leaned in, her voice a soft whisper that somehow carried through the room.
"Say my name again, and I'll show you what Wyrmere curses really do."
Her eyes burned—not with fire, but with cold restraint.
Then she turned and left the classroom without another word.
---
Later, in the Bladeward Tower, Riven Thornhart listened as Callan Clive recounted the story, half in laughter, half in disbelief.
"She threatened my brother with a pen," he said. "Ink, Riven. Who does that?"
"The kind who doesn't need to use a blade," Riven said.
Callan raised an eyebrow. "You're defending her now?"
"I'm analyzing her."
"She's making enemies. Fast."
"She's also making survivors second-guess themselves. That's rarer than you think."
Riven stood, stepping toward the window where the sun hung low over the mountains, casting shadows through the stone latticework.
Something was coming. He could feel it in his bones.
And Liora Vale was at the center of it.
---
That evening, Liora returned to the dorms to find her bed slashed. Her books torn. Her mattress soaked.
She stared for a long moment.
Then quietly knelt, picked up her journal from the floor, and turned its ruined pages. The ink bled like veins. Her diagrams were illegible. The family sigils she'd copied in secret now torn down the middle.
Amaris appeared in the doorway, mouth twisting. "Let me guess—Clive?"
Liora didn't answer.
Amaris crossed her arms. "They're scared of you. That's the only reason they lash out. No one throws rocks at something that doesn't shine."
"I don't want to shine," Liora muttered.
"Then you shouldn't have survived the Games the way you did."
Liora sat on the ruined bed. Her shoulders slumped, but her expression was unreadable.
Amaris hesitated, then added, "I have spare books. If you want them."
A beat of silence.
Then Liora nodded.
---
That night, the academy slept.
Liora did not.
She wandered the empty halls, her cloak wrapped tight, her steps silent. Down the spiral steps of the east tower, into the restricted archives. She knew the wards. Knew how to step between their pulses, how to breathe without disturbing the stillness.
She found the book buried beneath illusion—Bloodlines: Vanished and Surviving.
And there, on page 312, she found her truth.
> Vale: Noble house of Wyrmere. Custodians of the Flame Sigil. Executed for treason during the Uprising. Known to possess forbidden blood magic. All members presumed dead.
All.
But one.
She traced the sigil with her fingertip—the flame-encircled rose.
Her family had been wiped out.
But not erased.
---
From the shadows of the balcony above, Riven Thornhart watched her.
He had followed her after noticing the strange cadence of her footsteps leaving the dorms—too light for someone asleep. Too deliberate for someone lost.
He watched her now, alone, staring at a page like it held her soul.
The ward hadn't triggered.
She knew how to bypass it.
That wasn't normal.
That wasn't first-year behavior.
And when she closed the book and whispered a word in a language he didn't know—one that made the room shiver—he felt, for the first time in years, a true chill.
Not fear.
But recognition.
He wasn't the only monster in the school anymore.
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