Everything seemed to change in a single breath. What had minutes before been ordinary fear that she could name
, a panic she thought she understood fractured into something else: sharp, unreal, and close enough to taste. Lyanna found herself unable to name the feeling; it slipped away from language and lodged in her bones
Wherever that shadow moved, the hall felt smaller, like air being squeezed from the room. Creatures of light whispering feathers, pressed around her like a tide. She felt as though the very edge of the world was trying to swallow her.
She stared at the ravens, eyes wide. She couldn't tell whether the sensation trembling inside her was fear or something stranger. Without thinking, she leapt to her feet and ran straight and wild, toward the stairwell that led down to the lower halls where the younger children's classes met. Anything, she thought, to get away from that hungry darkness.
I'll take the lower halls , she told herself. I'll grab a teacher, gather help, then bring everyone up from the upper halls where the attack had started the place that had already turned blood red.
She darted down the stairs and almost collided with a teacher in the corridor. She fumbled words, breathless, ready to run for help. Then, from above, a shadow moved like fire.
From the bloodstained halls above erupted a blaze of fire. Yet it wasn't fire of mortal kind, but a dark, cursed shadow that had chosen to burn. Unlike Vaelith's radiant light, this was its opposite a deep black flame. Its cursed breath carried with it a storm of dust, and in an instant, a blast shook the halls. The upper rooms collapsed into ruin.
Lyanna felt the impact before she understood it. The pressure threw her to the floor; pain lanced through her limbs as if someone had struck her at many places at once.
The world cleaved senses unspooled, reason slackened, and then she saw nothing but a thousand confused edges.
And when she opened her eyes again, she was no longer in the ruined school. she was somewhere else entirely.
She stood no, stumbled into a place she did not recognize. Not the familiar dust and tile of school, but an enormous palace of impossible wealth: gold fretted walls, banners that swallowed the light, jewels glinting like trapped stars.
The air smelled of incense and distant, impossible spices. It should have dazzled her instead it widened the hollow inside her chest.
A banquet hall yawned ahead, set with mountains of food so vivid and fragrant it made her dizzy. A long table groaned under bread and roasted meats, fruits like lamps, dishes steaming with sweet and savory aromas.
No one sat at the table. The place was arranged as if a feast had just begun and its guests had vanished. Only a single chair sat at the very end of the feast as though prepared for someone unseen.
Confusion twisted in Lyanna's mind. So much food… yet only one seat? Who could this belong to?
But her hunger overcame her doubt. She reached for a piece of roasted meat, its surface still steaming, when she lifted it to her mouth and felt the world tilt as something grabbed her wrist.
She flinched, then found herself held not roughly but fast,
Lyanna almost fell, but the stranger caught her by the waist, steadying her gently. Her body landed against his chest, and when she lifted her gaze, she saw him
A tall figure in royal robes but his face was hidden behind a mask of burnished gold. Only his eyes were visible: deep, green, and unnerving in their stillness.
He spoke, his voice low and severe.
"You stole another's food, child. Do you understand what that means?"
Lyanna's throat closed. Her mind raced with protests, with the logic of a frightened girl this hall was empty, there was no one to feed and no one to starve, and yet the masked man's accusation pressed like a cold palm on her chest.
Lyanna froze, wide eyed, unable to respond.
The masked man continued, his tone sharp
"You lack wisdom. You take without asking. No restraint, no control do you know what price you must pay for attempting to steal my food?"
Lyanna's thoughts churned. So stingy! In a palace this vast, with treasure beyond measure, he begrudges me even a morsel? Such wealth, yet no kindness…
At last, she spoke boldly:
"Even if I did take some, why should it matter? You are clearly wealthy beyond imagination. Sharing would not diminish you. Do you truly mean to eat all this food alone? Or will you let it rot, untouched, while others starve?"
The man fell silent, his green eyes locked on hers, heavy with thought. Then, almost unwillingly he muttered:
"… Very well. Take it, then A gift A beggar's alms. Take this piece, beggar ..beggar Lyanna."
She gaped at him, bewildered, then finally found her voice. "Who are you? How do you how do you know my name?"
A slow, strange sound left him almost a laugh, almost a small, puzzled exhale. He lifted his head and the voice that came then sounded less like accusation and more like the naming of an old thing.
"I am " he began, and then corrected himself with a half-smile, as if the right word had been waiting for him. "Vaelith."
The name fell into the room and somehow felt as though it belonged to the place. Lyanna repeated it, tasting the syllables. It softened something inside her ,the sound of it was both foreign and oddly intimate, like a word someone uses when no one else is listening. before, it echoed inside her as if it belonged an intimacy she could not explain. She found herself softly repeating it:
"Vaelith…"
She placed the food back upon the table. But as she turned, Vaelith's voice called out once more
"Wait."
A sudden light burst forth around her, encircling her body in radiant glow. In the blink of an eye, the palace, the feast, the golden mask all vanished.
Suddenly, with the jolt of a snapped cord, she was no longer in the palace.
She gasped, and found herself in an ambulance, the world tilting and reorienting fluorescent lights, the smell of antiseptic, the close shape of a stretcher around her. Her body ached in many places.
Around her, people moved quickly paramedics, a police officer, faces she knew only by panic. Outside the ambulance's open doors she glimpsed the school: officers, neighbors clustering, and people tending to the others who had been hurt.
The families of those who had perished in the massacre .
She tried to sit up someone steadied her with a firm hand. Her mouth felt dry. Her head buzzed like a bell. There were sounds voices, the dull, bad fact of it all and a terrible attempt at understanding.
She remembered the palace, the masked man, the single piece of meat, the way Vaelith had said his name. She remembered his green eyes and the way he had looked at her as if he'd both expected and regretted her presence.
Someone asked her a question a paramedic's clipped, practical voice but the words smeared....