Vidya did not open the wooden box again.
Instead, she walked to a different shelf, one tucked into the darkest corner of the library, where the light from the invisible skylight barely reached. She ran her fingers along the spines of the books until she found what she was looking for—a small leather pouch, no larger than my palm, tied with a leather cord that had gone stiff with age.
"This pouch belonged to a child who was here fifty years ago," she said, carrying it back to the desk. "Her name was Rani. She was nine years old when she arrived. She was a Echo—she could hear the last words of dying things. Plants, animals, people. It did not matter. If something had died, she could hear its final breath."
"What happened to her?"
"She grew up. She learned to control her gift. She left Astraea when she was eighteen and became a doctor in a small town in Kerala. She delivered hundreds of babies. She held the hands of the dying. She listened to their last words and carried them home to their families." Vidya set the pouch on the desk between us. "She died last year. Cancer. Her last words were 'Tell my mother I am not afraid.'"
I looked at the pouch. It was ordinary—brown leather, stained and worn, the kind of thing you might find in a flea market or an old cupboard. But as I looked at it, I felt something emanating from it. Not warmth, not exactly. A presence. The feeling of being watched by someone who was no longer alive.
"This pouch contains an imprint," Vidya said. "Not of Rani's death. Of her first day at Astraea. The fear she felt when she walked through the gate. The loneliness of being separated from her mother. The confusion of a nine-year-old who did not understand why she could hear the screams of the vegetables her grandmother chopped for dinner."
"You kept it for fifty years?"
"I kept it because it is a small grief. A manageable grief. A grief that you can practice on without drowning." She untied the cord and opened the pouch. Inside, I could see a single object—a hair clip, plastic, pink, the kind a child might wear to hold back her bangs. "This was Rani's. She dropped it in the corridor on her first night. One of the older children picked it up and gave it to me. I have been using it to teach ever since."
"To teach what?"
"To teach young Awakened how to feel without absorbing. How to let an imprint pass through them like water through a sieve. How to acknowledge someone else's pain without making it their own."
She held the hair clip out to me.
"Take it."
I hesitated. "What if I absorb it?"
"Then you absorb it. And we will deal with the consequences together. That is what I am here for, Nyra. Not to prevent you from making mistakes. To be with you when you make them."
I took the hair clip.
The imprint hit me immediately—not like a wave, not like a flood, but like a single drop of water falling into a still pond. Ripples spread outward from the point of contact, through my fingers, through my palm, through my wrist, up my arm and into my chest where the door waited.
Where is my mother?
The voice was small. High-pitched. Terrified.
I want my mother. I want my mother. I want—
The door opened. Just a crack. Just enough to let the fear in.
I felt my own breath quicken. My own heart began to race. My own eyes filled with tears that were not mine. I was not nine years old. I was not in a strange building with strange children and strange rules. But the fear was so real, so present, so overwhelming that I could not tell the difference.
"Breathe," Vidya said. Her voice was calm, steady, a rope thrown into a rushing river. "Breathe, Nyra. Do not fight it. Do not hold it. Let it pass through you."
"I can't," I gasped. "It's too strong."
"It is not too strong. You are stronger. You have always been stronger. You just do not know it yet."
I closed my eyes. I found the door inside my chest. It was open wider now—not much, just a sliver, but enough to let the fear pour through. I could feel Rani's terror pressing against the walls of my own body, trying to find a place to stay, trying to find a home.
No, I thought. You cannot stay here. You are not mine. You were never mine.
I pushed.
Not hard. Not violently. Gently, the way you might push a child toward a door, toward a parent, toward safety.
Go back, I thought. Go back to the clip. Go back to the pouch. Go back to Vidya. You do not belong inside me.
The fear resisted.
For a moment—just a moment—I felt it try to dig in. To find purchase. To make itself at home in the dark corners of my heart.
But I pushed again.
And this time, it went.
The door closed.
I opened my eyes.
The hair clip was still in my hand. My fingers were no longer trembling. My breath was steady. My heart was calm.
And the fear was gone.
"What did you feel?" Vidya asked.
"Terror," I said. "She was so scared. She just wanted her mother."
"And what did you do with that terror?"
"I let it go."
"You let it go," Vidya repeated, nodding slowly. "Do you understand how remarkable that is? Most Null Aegis cannot let go of anything. Once an imprint enters them, it stays. It becomes a part of them. It weighs them down until they cannot move."
"Then why could I let it go?"
"Because you are not most Null Aegis. And because you have something they did not have."
"What?"
"Practice." Vidya smiled, and this time the smile reached her eyes. "You have spent sixteen years pretending you did not feel the imprints around you. That is not nothing, Nyra. That is training. Every time you ignored a whisper, every time you looked away from a shadow, every time you told yourself that the warmth in your pocket was just a feather and not a message—you were learning to close the door. You just did not know it."
I looked down at the hair clip. It seemed smaller now, less frightening. Just a piece of plastic that had once belonged to a frightened child.
"What do I do with it now?" I asked.
"Put it back in the pouch. Tie the cord. Return it to the shelf." Vidya gestured toward the dark corner where she had found it. "And then we will try again. With something harder."
"Something harder?"
"Rani's fear was small. Manageable. But the world is full of larger griefs, Nyra. Griefs that will try to swallow you whole. You must learn to let them pass through you too. Not because they are easy. Because they are necessary."
I tied the cord around the pouch and carried it to the dark corner. The shelf was cold against my fingers, and the other objects on it—a broken locket, a dried flower, a child's drawing of a house with smoke coming out of its chimney—seemed to watch me as I returned Rani's grief to its resting place.
When I turned back, Vidya was holding another object.
This one was larger. A book. Leather-bound, with a cracked spine and pages that looked like they might crumble at a touch. But the imprint coming from it was not small. It was not manageable. It pressed against my skin like a fever, hot and insistent and full of something that felt like rage.
"This belonged to a boy named Arjun," Vidya said. "He was fourteen when he came to Astraea. He was a Sunder. He could break anything he touched—stone, steel, bone. He broke his father's arm when he was seven, just by hugging him too hard. He never forgave himself."
"What happened to him?"
"He lost control. He broke a wall in the meditation hall, and the wall fell on another child. A girl. She was nine years old. Her name was Priya. She did not survive."
I felt my stomach turn. "They sent him to the Calming Chamber."
"They did. And when he emerged, he could not break anything anymore. He could not feel anything anymore. He was empty. The doctors called it a success." Vidya's voice was flat, empty of emotion in a way that felt more terrible than anger. "Arjun stayed at Astraea for three more years. Then, one night, he walked out into the garden and did not come back."
Just like my father.
"The book," I said. "Is it his?"
"It is his journal. He wrote in it every day for the three years after the chamber. He wrote about what it felt like to be empty. To remember feeling but not be able to feel. To see the world in grey when you had once seen it in colour." Vidya held the book out to me. "This imprint is not like Rani's. It will not pass through you easily. It will try to stay. It will try to fill the emptiness inside you with its own emptiness."
"Then why do I have to touch it?"
"Because you cannot only practice on small griefs. The world will not give you small griefs. It will give you Arjun. It will give you your father. It will give you the children from the mill, and the children from the Calming Chamber, and the children who will come to you in the years ahead with wounds so deep that you will want to look away."
Vidya stepped closer.
"You do not have to touch it today, Nyra. You do not have to touch it tomorrow. But you must touch it eventually. Because one day, someone will come to you with a grief like Arjun's, and they will not be able to carry it alone. And you will have to decide whether to help them or to walk away."
I looked at the book.
The rage pressed against my skin. Hot. Demanding. Desperate.
"I will touch it," I said. "Not today. But soon."
Vidya nodded. She set the book on the desk, away from me, away from the door inside my chest that was still open, just a crack.
"That is enough for today," she said. "You have done well. Better than I expected."
"I let one imprint pass through me. That's all."
"That is everything." She walked around the desk and placed her hand on my shoulder. Her fingers were cool and dry, like old paper, and they steadied me in a way I did not expect. "You are learning, Nyra. Slowly. Painfully. But learning. That is more than most people ever do."
I stood up. My legs were shaky, but they held me.
"The journal," I said. "Amara's journal. You said I should read it with someone. Will you read it with me?"
Vidya's eyes softened. "I would be honored."
"Tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow."
I walked toward the doorway that had been a wall. Before I stepped through, I turned back.
"Vidya?"
"Yes, child?"
"Thank you. For not treating me like a specimen."
She smiled. It was a sad smile, the kind that had seen too much and hoped too often.
"You are not a specimen, Nyra. You are a girl. A girl who is learning to carry the world without breaking. That is not something to study. That is something to witness."
I stepped through the doorway.
The wall closed behind me.
And somewhere inside my chest, the door waited.
Not open. Not closed.
Waiting.