The silence is thicker here. My kind of silence.
No clattering trays. No sugar-coated voices. No Ari, with her ridiculous questions and suspicious eyes.
I sit cross-legged on my bed, knees tucked under a worn blanket that still smells like detergent and nerves. My school uniform is draped haphazardly over the chair, and the tight braid I wore all day has finally unravelled, the strands falling over my face like a curtain. The glasses are off too—no need to wear the mask when no one's watching.
The illusion of Calla Myre is so much harder to maintain than Nyxshade ever was.
My sketchbook rests on my lap, open to a blank page. I don't hesitate. The pen glides across the paper like a scalpel across flesh, lines clean and intentional. A trip rune disguised as a constellation. A charm trap woven into the veins of a paper crane. A shatter ward nested in the stitching of a blazer collar.
Schoolgirl doodles if anyone asks. But I know the weight behind the ink.
Sometimes I draw the way the blood sprayed when I slit that hero's throat.
Not because I enjoy it—though maybe I do—but because remembering it helps me get the geometry of it right. The physics. The sound. His gurgled breathing. The twitch in his fingers. The light leaving his eyes like someone pulling the curtains closed.
There's a thrill to it. More than thrill. There's control.
But then… Ari's voice echoes in the back of my mind. Too curious. Too close. She looked at me today like she saw something, even though she couldn't name it.
She knows Nyxshade was bait.
And she suspects someone designed the trap.
I trace my finger over the margins of the page. The ink shifts slightly. A shimmer. The faint red of a sigil hidden beneath the sketch rises and fades. I prick my thumb with a sewing pin, just enough to wet the edge of the page with truth.
Blood magic likes secrets. So do I.
I tilt my head, eyes trailing to the wall—Ari's side of the dorm is neat, meticulous, everything folded in that too-perfect way. There's a box of colored pens on her desk. I borrowed one once. It drew like it was bleeding.
Would I kill her?
The question shouldn't hurt. It should be a tool. A calculation. An if and a when, not a what does that mean about me.
But it does linger.
If she gets too close, too clever, I'll have to make a choice. She's brilliant. She sees through things. Through me.
Maybe I want her to.
I shut the sketchbook. Whisper a phrase. The ink dries instantly. The blood sigils vanish like dust in moonlight. Another harmless school doodle.
Another weapon.
I lie back on the bed and stare up at the ceiling, my hand still faintly glowing from the bloodwork. It feels warm. Like something living.
Maybe that's the real mask. Not Calla. Not Nyxshade.
Maybe I'm just whatever the blood tells me to be.
But Nyx—Nyxshade—she's real.
She has edges.
And I think I like her more than I'm supposed to.
—
They called it a "Controlled Field Simulation."
Emphasis on controlled, like the headmasters needed to remind themselves of it.
A giant hexagram of reinforced mana gates, rigged illusions, safety protocols, aerial surveillance, and a medic team on standby. We'd be placed in squads of three, dropped into a fabricated ruin just outside the academy grounds — and tasked with extracting a "civilian" from the danger zone. Fake villains. Rubber blades. Blank spell rounds.
All supervised. All safe. All lies.
RULES OF ENGAGEMENT (As Posted):
No lethal force.Squad leaders must report status every 10 minutes via tele-sigil.Each squad will face one "obstacle" and one "enemy encounter" created by staff.Mission ends upon successful extraction or squad incapacitation.Illusion field will dissolve if real danger is detected.
"Team Seven: Myre, Juno, Ari."
Of course.
* * *
We stood just beyond the barrier line. Mana shimmered like glass under pressure. The instructors droned in the background. Juno tightened her gloves — already glowing with raw solar enchantment. She wore her uniform like it was armor. Radiant. Confident. Every muscle in place.
And next to her, Ari. Cheerful, sword bouncing on her back, eyes too sharp to match her tone.
Then me.
Glasses perched low, notebook clutched like a lifeline. I even added a stutter during check-in. For them. For the eyes watching. For the mask.
"Don't worry," Juno said, adjusting her ponytail. "Just follow my lead."
Follow.
I smiled politely. Nodded. Folded the venom in my chest like a scarf.
The gates opened. We stepped inside.
The illusion field was good. I'll give them that. Dense forest. Cracked stone roads. Muffled bird calls. Half the trees weren't real, just illusions anchored to sigils buried in the soil. Still — enough real mass to cause a concussion if you tripped.
We moved as a loose triangle, Juno taking point, Ari on flank. I took rear, pretending to struggle with my bag.
"She okay?" Juno whispered.
"She's scared of bugs," Ari whispered back.
I let my cheeks flush, eyes widen. Let them believe it.
Fools.
We encountered our first "obstacle" — a fallen tree over a ravine. Ari leapt it. Juno built a platform of hardlight.
I tripped. Landed awkwardly. My ankle twisted, because of course I had to sell it.
They backtracked. Helped me up.
Juno frowned. "You sure you're not a support mage?"
"Y-yeah. Illusions," I mumbled. "I… I'm n-not good at c-combat."
Another smile. Another step behind them.
Another sigil drawn into the dirt when they weren't looking.
Ten minutes in.
Then twenty.
Then the illusion cracked.
No announcement. No warning. Just a ripple in the air — like a bubble bursting.
All three of us froze. Ari's sword slid halfway out of its sheath.
"...Did they just end the sim?" Juno asked.
"No," I said, voice flat before I remembered to sound scared again. "I-I mean… I don't… know?"
Then the screams came. Distant, high, raw.
Real.
We broke into a run.
What we found wasn't part of the simulation. Two students from Squad Nine, burned and unconscious. Spell marks that didn't match academy codes. Mana distortion so thick I tasted it.
And then: the villains.
Four of them.
No masks. No theatrics. Just clean, armored uniforms, and magic pulsing off them like heatwaves.
I knew instantly they weren't here for fun. One of them held a device — cube-shaped, humming, feeding on ley energy. A tether anchored to the ground like a siphon.
They were stealing something.
Juno didn't hesitate.
She charged, bright and stupid, hardlight slamming into the ground as she formed a wall to shield the wounded. Ari moved beside her, fast, coordinated, twin swords drawn in a practiced dance of steel.
I stayed behind. Trembling.
But beneath the fear, my fingers were already tracing blood magic beneath the fallen leaves. A trigger sigil here. A reflective illusion there. A whisper for misdirection, a flicker to turn light into a false step.
One of the villains — a scout type — peeled off toward me.
Perfect.
I screamed, staggered, fell to the ground. His footsteps sped up. Fast. Careless.
The trap snapped shut.
He fell into the illusion — a sinkhole I'd drawn with mana-flux runes — and his legs twisted as if he'd been caught in vines.
He never saw the needle I flicked from my wristband. It sank into his neck. Paralysis potion. Slow, but permanent enough for this.
I dragged myself back, panting, tears in my eyes. "Juno! A-Ari! H-help!"
Juno knocked one of them out with a shattering punch that rippled with light.
Ari disarmed the third with a flashbang sigil mid-roll.
They thought they'd won.
But the fourth villain vanished.
No, escaped. With the device.
That was the part that worried me.
* * *
We regrouped beside the injured. Juno was glowing — proud and fierce and breathtaking in the way that made my stomach twist. I hated how she looked in the light. Hated how I wanted to stay in her orbit. Hated that I could never afford to.
"Calla," she said, beaming. "That was amazing. You trapped that guy with illusions? That was fast thinking."
I stammered something. Smiled. Shrugged.
Ari just watched me.
Too quiet.
Too long.
Later, when the teachers arrived, when the alarms blared across the campus, when the fake barriers all fell — they asked for a report.
I told them the truth.
Just not all of it.