The dining hall at night was different from the dining hall in the morning.
The same long tables. The same wooden benches. The same high ceiling with its shadows that never quite reached the lamps. But the light was different—softer, yellower, the kind of light that made everyone look older than they were. The children sat in the same silence, eating the same simple food, their faces blank and tired. But in the evening, the silence felt heavier. As if the day's lessons had drained something out of them, and they were too exhausted to pretend anymore.
I carried my steel plate to an empty spot at the end of one of the long tables. The food was the same as breakfast—idlis, sambar, a small cup of dark coffee—but it had been reheated, and the edges of the idlis had gone hard. I ate without tasting, my mind still full of Amara's words about trust, about kindness, about the scars that never healed.
Halfway through my meal, a shadow fell across my plate.
I looked up.
Rohan was standing at the other side of the table, his steel plate in his hands, his carved-wood face unreadable. He did not ask permission to sit. He simply sat, across from me, his back to the wall, his eyes scanning the room in that same watchful way before settling on my face.
"You're the new one," he said.
"You're the one who watches everyone."
Something flickered across his face—not quite surprise, not quite amusement. Something in between. "Aanya told you about me."
"She told me your name. Nothing else."
"Good. There is nothing else worth knowing."
He began to eat. His movements were efficient, mechanical, the same as every other child in this room. But there was something different about the way he held his spoon. Tighter. As if he was afraid someone might take it from him.
I watched him for a moment, trying to decide whether to speak or to let the silence stretch between us like a rope pulled taut.
"Why do you watch everyone?" I asked.
He did not look up from his plate. "Because watching is how you survive."
"Survive what?"
"Survive everything." He set his spoon down and looked at me. His eyes were the colour of nothing at all—not brown, not black, not grey. Just empty. Like two windows in an abandoned house. "You have been here for two days. You have already had a session with Hargreaves. You have already spent time in the library with Vidya. You have already touched imprints that would have sent other children to the Calming Chamber."
"How do you know all that?"
"I told you. I watch."
I felt a chill run down my spine. Not because he was threatening—he was not, not exactly. But because of the way he looked at me. The way his empty eyes seemed to see past my face, past my words, past the walls I had built around myself.
"What do you want?" I asked.
"I want to know what you are going to do."
"What do you mean?"
"You are a Null Aegis. The first one in three hundred years. You can absorb imprints that would kill anyone else. You can release them, too—Vidya told me that. She said you let Rani's fear pass through you like water through a sieve." He leaned forward, his voice dropping. "So I will ask you again. What are you going to do?"
I set my spoon down. My appetite had vanished.
"I don't know what I'm going to do. I don't even know why I'm here."
"You are here because Hargreaves wants to use you. The same way he wants to use all of us. The same way he used Amara. The same way he used Arjun. The same way he will use you until there is nothing left."
"Then why do you stay?"
Rohan was quiet for a long moment. He looked down at his plate, at the half-eaten idlis, at the small cup of coffee that had gone cold. When he spoke again, his voice was softer. Almost gentle.
"Because I have nowhere else to go. My family sent me here when I was nine. They said I was dangerous. They said I would hurt them if I stayed. They were not wrong." He held up his hands. They were large hands, strong hands, the hands of someone who had learned to break things before he had learned to write. "I broke my father's arm when I was seven. Just a hug. Just a little too much love. He still has the scar."
I looked at his hands. They were steady. No trembling. No shaking. Just hands.
"My father died when I was two," I said. "I don't remember him. But I have been told he was kind."
"Kindness is not the same as goodness."
I blinked. Those were Amara's words. The same words I had read in her journal less than an hour ago.
"That is what the first Null Aegis wrote," I said. "In her journal."
Rohan nodded. "I have read her journal. Many times. She was right about many things. But she was wrong about one thing."
"What?"
"She said that trust always leaves a scar. That is not true. Trust leaves a scar only when it is broken. If it is not broken, it leaves something else. Something that looks like hope."
I did not know what to say to that. I did not know this boy, this Sunder with the carved-wood face and the empty eyes. I did not know why he was telling me these things, or what he wanted from me, or whether I could trust him.
But I remembered what Aanya had said. Rohan is not dangerous. Not to you.
"Thank you," I said.
"For what?"
"For telling me the truth."
He picked up his spoon and resumed eating. "The truth is the only thing I have left. I gave up everything else a long time ago."
We ate in silence after that. The children around us finished their meals and carried their plates to the bin, their footsteps soft on the marble floor. The oil lamps flickered. The shadows danced. And somewhere in the distance, a bell rang—the same bell that had rung after breakfast, signaling the end of another meal, another hour, another day.
Rohan stood up. He picked up his plate and mine, stacking them together, and carried them to the bin without being asked.
When he returned, he looked down at me for a long moment.
"Do not trust Hargreaves," he said. "Do not trust Vidya. Do not trust Aanya. Do not trust anyone who tells you they know what is best for you."
"Then who should I trust?"
"Yourself. And only yourself." He turned and walked away, his bare feet silent on the marble floor, his white kurta disappearing into the crowd of children who were leaving the dining hall.
I sat alone at the table for a long time after he left.
The lamps flickered.
The shadows danced.
And I thought about trust.
About kindness.
About the boy with the carved-wood face who had told me to trust no one but myself.
He was wrong, I thought. Not about Hargreaves. Not about Vidya. Not about Aanya.
But about himself.
Because in the moment he had stacked my plate with his own, in the moment he had carried it to the bin without being asked, he had done something that looked like kindness.
And kindness, I was beginning to understand, was not the same as goodness.
But it was not the opposite of goodness either.
It was something in between.