I slept through most of the next day, slipping in and out of dreams that felt like they didn't belong to me. They scattered and dissolved the moment I would try and reach for them, like a memory I couldn't quite remember. The arched window of the room, let in the grey of the air outside, the silver veins on the wall of dark stone, glimmering lightly in the light.
When I finally woke, everything ached. Not the sharp kind of pain, but a deep, interior soreness, like something essential had been moved inside of me, while I wasn't awake to feel it. Even the air felt wrong, almost too clean and gentle, carrying a sweetness that didn't quite belong in a wing, built to hold Fear.
I stayed under the deep blue blanket for a long while, watching the silver filigree carved across the ceiling. Eventually, the ache of hunger in my stomach won. I pushed myself upright and stepped into the corridor.
The House of Fear folded around me in marble and shadow. Lanternlight crawled over the walls, illuminating veins of deep silver and blue pulsing faintly beneath the stone.
Dinner hour had begun , and student moved past in clusters – Anger's crimson flaring bright, Hopes gold feeling warm and steady as they passed by, Desire's violet flickering and drawing me in, like candlelight on a dark and chilly morning. They all looked certain of their place and identities in this strange world. I kept my eyes down, fingers brushing the wall, just to steady the feeling of anxiety running through me, as I tried to decipher the hallways of Velanor.
The faint sound of clattering plates, rising voices and the warm smell of food, gradually filtered through the bustling sounds of the hallways.
The Atrium.
It was even more overwhelming than I remembered. Light poured through the high windows, turning the marble floor to molten gold, glittering almost too brightly in the vast dining area. The air smelled of roasted herbs, fresh bread, and spice. For a moment I froze in the doorway, the noise and colour rising around me like, in a way that felt almost too overwhelming.
I found a seat near the end of a table and lowered myself onto it. Steam curled from the platters in front of me, vegetables glistening with oil, soup thick and fragrant and soft warm bread.
The first bite almost undid me.
It was simple bread, but soft and salted and impossibly warm. Suddenly I felt like I was standing in our old kitchen again, sunlight on the floor, my mother's hands dusted with flour, Eli laughing at something I couldn't remember.
The warmth twisted inside of me, turning sharp, and I swallowed hard before the tears came. I focused on the room instead. The laughter, the scrape of chairs, the hum of hundreds of lives blending together. I could see that people usually sat with the people carrying the same colours as them. Clustered and divided, almost like it had been law – but it wasn't. Lyla had mentioned that during our breakfast the day after I arrived.
And then I saw him.
He sat alone near the back of the hall, half-consumed by the shadows beneath one of the high arches where the sunset couldn't quite reach. Golden light spilled across the Atrium in wide, warm waves, but when it reached him, it fractured, dimming at the edges, like even the sun hesitated to touch him.
His uniform was the same cut as everyone else's – a white shirt, coloured rim and black dress pants. But there was something about him. The colour of his uniform was black, dark, like someone had carved it from obsidian instead of cloth and fabric. He wasn't doing anything. Not eating. Not reading. Not talking. Just sitting there, spine straight, one hand resting loosely on the table, fingers curled in a way that made the stillness look almost... deliberate.
The stillness shouldn't have been intimidating, but on him, it was.
Every line of him held tension. Not like the nervous kind, but the kind forged from vigilance. The kind a person only learned after breaking enough times, that they no longer allowed themselves to move without purpose.
His hair was dark, falling over his forehead in a way that softened him just enough to make the rest of him more dangerous by contrast. His jaw was sharp, shadowed by the way he tilted his head slightly down, gaze fixed somewhere on the table. He almost looked like something sculpted out of anger and restraint.
And no one sat near him. There was space around him, even in a dining space this full. A wide, instinctive circle that the entire room honoured without thinking about it. Laughter dipped when it drifted too close. Voices softened. Even the air seemed to bend around him, choosing paths that curved away from where he sat.
And still, he seemed completely at ease in it, as if solitude wasn't a punishment but a familiar companion.
I shouldn't have stared, but something about him pulled the breath right out of my chest. Not beauty. Not exactly. It was something else. Something sharp. A gravity made of silence and warning signs. Almost magnetic.
And then, as if he had felt me watching, he looked up.
Not quickly or surprised, just a slow, measured lift of his eyes. His eyes were unnaturally dark, matching the trim of his uniform. A gaze that didn't reach out or invite, but caught.
For a heartbeat the noise of the hall thinned. The golden light softened. My pulse stumbled. He didn't narrow his eyes or tilt his head or react the way a person normally would when catching someone staring.
He simply looked at me. As if taking measure. As if deciding what kind of threat I was. As if I were a book he had already read and put back down.
The moment stretched a little too long and something in my stomach tightened with the strange, unwelcome certainty that he already understood more about me, than I did right now.
And then, mercifully, he finally looked away.
The spell broke and the noise rushed back in. But my heartbeat didn't settle. The low hum of the Atrium pressed closer beneath my skin, like something inside me had stirred at the sight of him.
I didn't know his name.
I didn't know who he was.
But the space around him felt different from the rest of the world.
I didn't have time to gather my thoughts before the seat beside me filled with a burst of warmth and laughter that shattered the quiet like glass.
"Well," Lyla said, dropping her chin onto her hand with a grin far too knowing for my comfort. The light caught her curls instantly, strawberry-blonde spirals glowing like threads of molten gold. She smelled faintly of jasmine and something fresh, like she'd walked straight out of a sunlit garden. "That was... intense."
I blinked, pretending not to know what she was talking about. "What was?"
She nudged my elbow, eyes sparkling with mischief. "You were staring at him, like you were trying to set him on fire, or something."
Heat rose to my face. "I was not..."
"Oh please," she laughed, stealing a piece of bread off my plate before I could protest. "Everyone stares at him. They're just better at pretending they're not." Her voice was warm, soft, the kind of tone that made everything feel less sharp.
"He's hard not to notice," I admitted. "Everyone else seems to be pretending he doesn't exist."
Lyla followed my gaze. Her grin slipped into something gentler, shaded with caution. "That's Aren," she murmured, lowering her voice enough that it didn't carry. "Trauma Core."
The way she said it, careful and edged with something like respect, made the hair rise on my arms.
"Very rare," she added quietly. "And very unstable."
She hesitated before continuing, her eyes flicking back toward him. "He's the only one here."
Something in my chest tightened. "Does he ever talk to anyone?"
"Sometimes," Lyla said. "When he has to. Mostly to instructors though. No one really gets too close to him."
I looked at him again, still alone, still wrapped in that strange, quiet gravity. Something about the isolation tugged at me, almost too familiar to ignore, too sad to look at for long.
Lyla kept talking, filling the space between us with stories and jokes, and the occasional question about me, her eyes wide and curious at every answer. I tried to be present, to match her brightness, her laughter.
But my gaze kept drifting toward the darkened corner of the hall. To him.
Wondering if he too, felt like someone the world had decided to keep at a distance. Wondering if he had ever tasted belonging, or if solitude had always been the only place the world allowed him to stand.