Chapter 14

The weeks between returning from break and the mission passed in a blur of planning and waiting.

January turned to February. Snow blanketed the grounds, softening the edges of everything, making the world feel muffled and slow. Classes continued. Drift practice continued. The rhythms of school life ground forward like nothing was wrong.

But something was wrong. Two more students had gone quiet since we got back. Not officially missing, not yet, but Sasha was tracking them. First-years who'd stopped showing up to meals. Who sat in the back of classes looking hollow. Who might be next.

We couldn't wait any longer.

The plan was set for February break. Most students would leave campus for the long weekend. Skeleton staff. Empty hallways. Our best chance to move without being noticed.

Two days before we were supposed to go, my phone buzzed.

Shelby.

hey so february break. some of us are going skiing but i could stay if you're around. haven't seen you since christmas and that was...

She didn't finish the sentence. Didn't have to. Christmas had been a disaster. The awkward dinner at Denny's where I'd lied about everything. The way she'd looked at me when she realized I wasn't going to tell her the truth.

Can't come home, I typed. Special program thing. Some of us are staying for extra training.

The lie came easier than it should have.

Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.

ok. be safe.

That was it. No follow-up questions. No demands for details. No memes or jokes or the Shelby energy that used to fill every text exchange.

She was pulling back. Protecting herself from whatever I'd become.

I noticed, and I hated it, and I didn't know how to fix it without telling her everything. And I couldn't tell her everything. So I just stared at those two words until my phone screen went dark.

ok. be safe.

Like she already knew I was doing something dangerous. Like she'd given up trying to stop me.

The night before the mission, we met one final time.

The empty classroom was cold. February had seeped into everything, and the old heating system couldn't keep up. We sat in our coats, breath visible in the dim light.

"Everyone knows the plan?" Sasha asked.

Nods around the room.

"East wing stairwell. Midnight. We go down, we document everything, we get out before anyone knows we were there."

"What about the approach?" Dao asked. "Security's been tighter since break started."

I spoke before I'd really decided to. "The east corridor will be clear. I just... know."

Everyone looked at me.

"Know how?" Marcus asked.

I opened my mouth to explain, then realized I couldn't. The certainty had arrived without logic. Like the building itself had whispered the route to me while I wasn't paying attention.

"I don't know. It feels like the building is telling me."

Dao and Sasha exchanged a glance. The kind of glance that said that's not how his ability works.

"Your readings are getting stranger," Sasha said carefully. "First the classroom. Now the building itself."

"I know. I don't understand it either." I shrugged. "But I'm right about the corridor. I can feel it."

A long pause. Then Marcus nodded.

"We trust Eli's reads. That's been the plan all along." He looked at me. "If you say east corridor is clear, we go east corridor."

I hoped I was right. I hoped whatever was happening to me was accurate, not just stress playing tricks.

But when I closed my eyes and reached out, the building answered. Cold stone and old wood and decades of students walking the same paths. The east corridor would be empty at midnight. I didn't know how I knew. I just did.

"Okay," Sasha said. "East corridor. Midnight. Everyone get some sleep."

Nobody moved.

"Right," she said. "As if any of us are going to sleep."

Midnight found us in the east wing corridor.

The building was different at this hour. No students hurrying to class. No professors trading gossip between offices. Just silence and shadows and the distant hum of whatever kept Mudwick running while everyone slept.

We'd arrived separately, trickling in from different directions. Sasha first, then me, then Marcus. Dao and Thaddeus came together, which probably defeated the purpose of staggering our arrival, but nobody commented on it. We were all too focused on what came next.

The corridor was empty. Just like I'd said it would be.

I tried not to think too hard about what that meant.

My dad was probably asleep right now. Back in Ohio, in our small house, no idea that his son was standing in a dark corridor about to cross a line that couldn't be uncrossed. I wondered if he'd feel it somehow. If something in him would wake up and know something was wrong.

Probably not. That wasn't how the world worked. People you loved did dangerous things and you slept right through it, and only found out later when it was too late to stop them.

"This is it," Sasha whispered, nodding toward a door that looked like every other utility door in the building. Gray metal, slightly rusted at the edges, the kind of thing you'd walk past a hundred times without noticing.

Dao pulled out his tools. The thin metal implements gleamed in the emergency lighting as he knelt by the lock.

"How long?" Marcus asked.

"Depends on how complicated it is." Dao was already working, hands steady despite the tension radiating off him. "Old locks can be tricky. Sometimes simpler is harder."

I watched the corridor while he worked. Reached out with my ability, feeling for anyone nearby. The building pressed against my awareness, full of sleeping students and empty classrooms and the accumulated weight of decades of ordinary school life.

Nothing alarming. Nobody awake. Nobody watching.

Just us, about to cross a line we couldn't uncross.

Thaddeus was holding something in his pocket. I could see his hand moving, fingers rubbing against whatever was in there. His token. A small piece of polished wood his grandmother had given him, anchored with generations of family protection. He'd shown it to me once, briefly. Said it helped him stay calm when everything felt like too much.

He wasn't the only one. Sasha had her token on a chain around her neck, tucked under her shirt. A silver coin from somewhere she'd never explained. Even Dao had something, though he'd never admitted what it was. I'd felt him reach for his pocket during tense moments, the same unconscious gesture Thaddeus was making now.

I didn't have a token. Hadn't been here long enough to anchor one. Hadn't found anything that felt right to carry that piece of myself in. Sometimes I wondered if that made me vulnerable in ways the others weren't.

"Got it." The lock clicked softly. Dao eased the door open an inch.

And that's when I saw the ward.

Thin lines of amber light traced the doorframe. Old magic, the kind you don't see much anymore. The lines pulsed once as the door moved, like a heartbeat or a warning.

We all froze.

"It's not triggering," Sasha said after a moment. Her voice was barely audible. "It's just recording."

"Recording what?"

"That someone opened the door. Old wards don't report in real-time. They just log. Someone will know we were here, but not until they check." She paused. "Which means we need to be done before anyone thinks to look."

Thaddeus glanced back down the corridor. "How long do we have?"

"No idea. Could be hours. Could be until morning. Could be until next week when someone does routine maintenance." Sasha squared her shoulders. "Only one way to find out."

Dao pushed the door fully open. The amber lines pulsed again, brighter this time, then faded to a dim glow. The stairwell beyond was dark. Industrial. The kind of space that existed purely for function, never meant for students to see.

Marcus went first. He'd been quiet all night, carrying the weight of his grandmother's warnings and whatever else he hadn't told us. But when it came time to move, he didn't hesitate. Sasha followed, then Thaddeus. Dao caught my eye and nodded. I went through. He came last, pulling the door closed behind us with a soft click.

One by one, we descended into the dark.

The first sublevel was storage. Boxes stacked against walls, old furniture draped in sheets, the forgotten debris of decades of school operations. Dust thick enough to taste. The air stale with neglect.

We moved in formation without discussing it. Something we'd developed over weeks of Drift practice and late-night planning sessions. Marcus on point because he knew where we were going. Sasha in the middle, documenting everything. Dao at the rear, watching for threats. Thaddeus and I filled the gaps, ready to support wherever needed.

I reached out as we moved, trying to read the space. Feel what it held. Sense its history.

Nothing.

Not empty-nothing, like a new building that hadn't accumulated anything yet. This was different. Wrong. The space felt scraped clean, like someone had taken everything it ever held and left behind a hollow. When I pushed harder, trying to find even a trace of what had been here, the emptiness pushed back. Made my head ache. Made my teeth hurt in a way that didn't make sense.

"You feel that?" I asked quietly.

Sasha nodded. "The saturation's gone. Completely drained."

"Could just be old," Thaddeus offered. "Maybe it faded naturally."

"Places don't fade like this. Not unless something takes from them." Sasha ran her hand along the wall and pulled it back quickly, wiping her palm on her pants. "Someone hollowed this level out. Deliberately."

Marcus's jaw tightened. We were all thinking the same thing. Professor Cross had warned us about Miriam Moss in that last conversation, her voice heavy with concern. About practitioners who didn't just drain places but destroyed them completely. Left them dead and empty, unable to hold anything ever again.

This felt exactly like what she'd described.

We kept moving.

Sublevel two was where things got strange.

The architecture shifted as we descended. Modern concrete gave way to older stone. The walls changed from institutional gray to something rougher, darker. The kind of masonry you'd expect in a medieval cellar, not underneath a school that was supposedly built in the 1800s.

"This is older than Mudwick," Sasha said, photographing everything. The flash on her phone made shadows jump and dance. "Way older."

Symbols carved into the walls caught the light. Not the clean geometric patterns we'd learned in class. These were different. Angular, almost aggressive. They made my eyes want to slide away, like they weren't meant to be looked at directly.

Some of them were still glowing. Faint amber light, the same color as the ward upstairs. Old magic, still running after who knew how many years. Still fed by who knew what.

Dao stopped in front of one. His face went pale.

"I've seen this before."

"Where?"

"My grandfather. Before he died, he showed me some of his old books. Family stuff. Things he said I should know about even if I never used them." Dao touched the carved stone without quite making contact. His hand hovered an inch from the surface, and I could see the faint shimmer of heat between his skin and the symbol. "This is old technique. Really old. The kind they don't teach anymore because it requires..." He stopped.

"Requires what?"

"Live contribution." His voice was flat. "You can't maintain symbols like this with just place-saturation. They need to be fed. Regularly. From people."

The implications settled over us like cold water.

"Miriam," Marcus said quietly. "The stories say she learned forbidden techniques. Things no legitimate practitioner would touch."

I reached out again, trying to read the space. This time I got something. Fragments. Flashes of fear so old it had faded to sepia, like photographs left in the sun too long. Students had come through here before. They'd been afraid. They hadn't understood what was happening to them.

One of them had been thinking about home. About a mother who didn't know where they were. The fragment hit me like a fist to the chest, and for a second I was that student, stumbling through this corridor decades ago, knowing something was wrong but not knowing what.

Then it passed, and I was myself again. Shaking. Colder than I should have been.

"Eli?" Thaddeus was watching me.

"I'm okay. Just... echoes. Old ones."

"You read places now?" Dao asked. His voice was sharp. "Since when?"

"I don't know. It's been happening more lately." I took a breath, tried to steady myself. "I read the fear. Just the fear. It's the only thing strong enough to still be here."

But that wasn't quite true. I'd also felt the walls. The stone itself, carrying memories the way people carried scars. Something was changing in me, and I didn't have time to figure out what.

We kept going.

The checkpoint appeared without warning. One moment we were moving through another stone corridor. The next, Marcus stopped dead, staring at a section of wall that looked no different from any other.

"There's a door here," he said.

I couldn't see anything. Neither could the others, judging by their expressions.

"How do you know?"

"I just... know." He stepped closer. Ran his hand along the stone until his palm found a spot that made him flinch. "Here."

The wall was warm where he touched it. I could see that much from the way his hand reacted, the slight surprise on his face.

"Is it safe?" Sasha asked.

"I don't think safety was ever the point." Marcus pressed his palm flat against the warm stone.

Something recognized him.

I felt it happen even though I couldn't see it. A pulse of acknowledgment, of welcome, of belonging. The wall knew his blood. Knew his family. The door didn't just open for the Holloway name. It opened for Holloway flesh and bone.

Stone ground against stone. A section of wall receded, then slid aside, revealing another corridor beyond. This one was lit by the same amber glow as the ward upstairs. Old magic, still functional after who knew how long.

Marcus pulled his hand back like he'd been burned.

"That shouldn't have worked," Thaddeus said.

"My grandmother told me the family name used to open doors." Marcus was staring at his palm. "She never told me it would feel like that."

"Feel like what?"

He didn't answer. But I caught a flash of something from him. Recognition he hadn't expected. The door had felt like coming home, and that terrified him more than anything we'd seen so far.

Because it meant his family hadn't just known about this place. They'd been part of it somehow. Had access that still worked, generations later.

He was already building a story in his head. I could feel him doing it. His ancestors had been investigators. Hunters tracking down whoever built this place. That was why the door recognized Holloway blood. Not partnership. Pursuit.

I didn't say anything. Let him have the story. We could sort out the truth later.

If there was a later.

The sublevel three entrance felt different. The old fear wasn't faded here. It was sharp. Recent. Someone had come through within the last few weeks, terrified and confused, and their terror still hung in the air like smoke.

I flinched back before I could stop myself.

"What is it?" Dao grabbed my arm.

"Someone was here. Recently." I took a breath, tried to steady myself. "They were scared. Really scared. And they came this way."

"Lucia," Sasha said quietly. "Or Jerome. Or both."

The name hit me in the chest. Lucia. The girl who'd bumped into me in the hallway, the one Kezia couldn't find. I'd felt her draining and hadn't understood what I was feeling.

Now I was standing where she'd walked. Feeling the echo of her terror.

"Keep moving," Marcus said. His voice was rough. "We're close."

The portal was exactly where his grandmother had said it would be.

An archway in the stone, taller than any of us. The space inside it shimmered, but wrong. Not the clean light I remembered from the transit that brought me to Mudwick. This was older. Unstable. The edges were frayed like worn fabric, and the light inside didn't stay steady. It pulsed. Slow and rhythmic, like breathing. Like a heartbeat.

Like something alive.

I reached out to feel it and immediately wished I hadn't.

The portal was saturated. Not with place-memory. With people. Thousands of transits had left traces, layer upon layer of fear and confusion and desperate hope. And underneath that was something else. A constant low pull, like standing at the edge of a drain. The portal wasn't just a doorway.

It was hungry.

And there was something else. Something that made my head spin when I tried to focus on it. The portal felt like all the Signs at once. Gate, obviously, that was what it was. But also Hearth, a twisted version of home and belonging. Thorn, boundaries being crossed and violated. Tide, endless change flowing in one direction.

Everything converging. Everything feeding into whatever waited on the other side.

I stumbled back a step. Dao caught my arm.

"Eli?"

"It's... it's too much." I tried to find words. "The portal. It's not just a door. It's connected to everything. All the Signs. All at once."

"That's not possible," Sasha said. "Portals are Gate artifacts. Just Gate."

"This one isn't." I was certain of that much. "This one is something else."

Something built to harvest from multiple sources. Something designed to take everything a practitioner had, no matter which Sign they belonged to.

The others looked at the portal with new fear.

"Miriam really did learn forbidden techniques," Marcus said quietly. "Things that shouldn't exist."

Things that were still working after sixty years. Still hungry. Still waiting.

Thaddeus pulled his token from his pocket. The polished wood caught the amber light as he pressed it between his palms, eyes closed, lips moving silently. Drawing on whatever his grandmother had anchored there. When he opened his eyes, some of the fear had faded from his face.

"Everyone ready?" Marcus asked.

I looked at the others. Sasha with her camera, documenting everything. Dao with his anger and his lockpicks. Thaddeus with his token clutched tight, his shaken faith buttressed by family magic. Marcus with his family legacy and all the questions it raised.

And me. Reader of people. And now, apparently, reader of places and portals and things I didn't have names for yet.

"Ready," I said.

The others nodded.

Marcus stepped toward the portal. Hesitated at the edge where the hungry pull was strongest.

"No turning back after this."

"There was no turning back the moment we picked that lock," Dao said. "Let's go find out what's on the other side."

Marcus took a breath.

And stepped through.

One by one, we followed him into the light.