Chapter 7

Cross drove with both hands on the wheel, eyes forward, giving me space I didn't know how to use.

"We need to stop at my house," I said. "I have to pack. And my dad..."

"I know."

"He was expecting me at the hardware store. We were going to fix a faucet."

It sounded stupid when I said it out loud. A faucet. Like that mattered compared to whatever was happening to me. But it did matter. It mattered because Dad had asked and I'd said yes and for one morning we'd been something like normal.

"I'll wait in the car," Cross said. "Take whatever time you need."

"What do I tell him?"

"The truth works best when you can manage it. Gifted student program. Immediate opening. Opportunity you couldn't pass up." She glanced at me. "Parents want to believe their children are special. It's not even a lie."

It felt like a lie. It felt like the biggest lie I'd ever told, and I hadn't even told it yet.

We pulled onto my street. The houses looked the same as always. Small yards, older cars, the quiet exhaustion of a place that used to be something and wasn't anymore. Dad's truck was in the driveway. He'd come home from the hardware store when I didn't show up.

"How long do I have?"

"We should leave within the hour. The access point I'm taking you to has a window."

"A window?"

"Portals aren't always active. This one opens at dusk and closes at midnight." She put the car in park. "Take your time, Eli. But not too much time."

I got out of the car and walked toward my house on legs that didn't feel like mine.

Dad was in the kitchen. Standing at the counter with his back to me, staring out the window at the backyard. He didn't turn around when the door opened.

"I waited for an hour," he said. "Called you six times."

"I know. I'm sorry."

"Your friend Shelby called here looking for you. Said something happened at the park. Said you collapsed and then some woman picked you up and drove away." Now he turned. His face was a mixture of things I couldn't untangle. Fear and anger and something older, something that had been waiting a long time to surface. "Who's the woman in the car, Eli?"

"She's a teacher. From a school."

"What school?"

"It's called Mudwick." The name felt strange in my mouth, like a word from a language I was only starting to learn. "It's for... gifted students. Special cases."

Dad's expression flickered. Something passed behind his eyes that I couldn't read, and for once I was grateful I couldn't read him. I didn't want to know what he was feeling right now.

"When did you apply to this school?"

"I didn't. They found me. She found me."

"That woman."

"Professor Cross. Yes."

He was quiet for a long moment. The kitchen clock ticked. The faucet dripped, the one we were supposed to fix together.

"This is about what's been happening to you," he said. "The thing you won't talk about. The reason you've been hiding in your room and flinching away from people."

"Yes."

"And this school can help."

"They say they can."

Dad pulled out a chair and sat down heavily. He looked older than he had this morning. Older than he'd looked in years, maybe since Mom died.

"Your mother," he started, then stopped. Pressed his hand over his mouth like he was trying to keep words from escaping. When he spoke again, his voice was rough. "Your mother used to talk about things. Feelings she had about people, about places. I never understood it. Thought maybe it was just how she saw the world, artistic or something. She was always more sensitive than me."

My chest went tight. "What kind of feelings?"

"She said some people carried their histories around with them. Said she could feel it sometimes, what someone had been through, just by being near them." He looked at me with wet eyes. "She worried you'd be the same way. She hoped you wouldn't be. But she worried."

All those times Mom had asked me questions I didn't understand. Do you ever feel things that don't belong to you? Do people seem too loud even when they're not talking?

I'd always said no. I'd always lied.

And she'd known. She'd known the whole time.

"Why didn't you ever tell me this?"

"Tell you what? That your mother had strange feelings about people? That she thought you might have inherited some kind of... I don't know what to call it. I don't have words for it." He spread his hands on the table, palms down, like he was trying to steady himself. "After she died, you were so fragile. You didn't need me filling your head with your mother's old worries."

"They're not worries," I said. "They're real. What she felt, what I feel, it's real. And there are other people like us. That's what this school is for."

Dad stared at me for a long time. I watched him trying to fit this new information into his understanding of the world. Trying to reconcile the son he thought he knew with whatever I was telling him I actually was.

"And you want to go to this school."

"I need to go. What's happening to me is getting worse. I can't control it. And if I stay here..." I thought about the grocery store, the stranger's grief knocking me to my knees. I thought about Shelby's hand on my arm and the flood that followed. "If I stay here, I don't know what happens. But it won't be good."

"When would you leave?"

"Today. Now. There's some kind of window, she said. For getting there."

"Today." He repeated the word like it didn't make sense. "You're telling me you want to leave today. Right now. Just pack a bag and disappear to some school I've never heard of, with a woman I've never met, and I'm supposed to just let you go?"

"I'm not asking permission."

The words came out harder than I meant them to. Dad flinched like I'd hit him.

"You're fifteen years old."

"I know how old I am."

"You're my son."

"I know that too." My voice cracked. I hadn't expected it to. "Dad, I don't want to leave you. I don't want to lie to you or sneak away or any of this. But something is wrong with me and this woman says she can help and I believe her. I don't know why I believe her, but I do."

Dad was quiet for a long time. The kitchen felt smaller than usual, the walls pressing in like they wanted to hear what he'd say next.

"Your mother ran from something," he said finally. "A long time ago, before I met her. She never told me what. Just that she'd made a choice to live a different kind of life. A normal life." He looked at me with an expression I couldn't name. "I always wondered if it would catch up to her. I guess I didn't expect it to catch up to you instead."

"You knew?"

"I didn't know anything. I suspected. There's a difference." He stood up and walked to the window again, looking out at the backyard where I used to play as a kid. "Go pack your bag. I'm going to talk to this professor of yours."

"Dad..."

"I'm not going to stop you. I can see that you've already decided, and you're right that I can't make you stay if you don't want to. But I'm going to look that woman in the eye and make sure she understands that you're my son. That someone will be paying attention. That you're not alone in the world even if you're going somewhere I can't follow."

I didn't know what to say. So I just nodded and went upstairs to pack.

My room looked different now. The rabbit stain on the ceiling. The water-damaged corner where the roof leaked. The photo of Mom on my nightstand. All of it felt like it belonged to someone else, some earlier version of me who hadn't yet learned what he was.

I grabbed a duffel bag from the closet and started shoving clothes into it. I didn't know what to pack for a magic boarding school, so I just took everything that seemed practical. Jeans. T-shirts. The one nice button-down I owned. Underwear and socks. A jacket for cold weather.

The card from Cross was still in my nightstand drawer. I almost left it there, but something made me slip it into my pocket. Maybe I'd want proof later that this had all been real.

What else? Toothbrush. Phone charger. The beaten-up copy of a fantasy novel I'd been reading when all this started, a bookmark still stuck at page 143.

And the photo of Mom.

I picked it up and looked at her face. She was younger in this picture than I ever remembered her being. Smiling at something outside the frame. Happy in a way that seemed almost foreign.

She'd felt what I felt. She'd known what I was. And she'd chosen to run from it, to live a normal life, to raise me in a dying Ohio town far from whatever world she'd left behind.

Had she been protecting me? Or hiding me?

I put the photo in my bag.

When I came back downstairs, Dad was standing on the front porch talking to Cross. Their voices were low, and I couldn't make out the words. Cross's posture was respectful but not submissive. She wasn't apologizing for taking me away. She was explaining something, making a case.

Dad's shoulders were tense. His hands were shoved in his pockets the way they got when he was trying not to yell.

I stepped out onto the porch and they both went quiet.

"Eli," Cross said. "Ready?"

"I think so."

Dad turned to me. His eyes were red at the edges but his voice was steady. "This professor says you'll be able to call. That there are phones and you can check in."

"I'll call every week. I promise."

"You're damn right you will." He pulled me into a hug before I could react. His arms around me, tight, the way he used to hold me when I was small and scared of thunderstorms.

I braced for the flood. For his emotions pouring into me the way everyone else's did.

But it didn't come. Maybe because I was too overwhelmed already. Maybe because some part of me knew I couldn't handle feeling what he was feeling right now.

"Come home if you need to," he said into my hair. "If this place isn't what they say it is. If anyone hurts you. You come home. Understand?"

"I understand."

He let go. Stepped back. Looked at me like he was trying to memorize my face.

"You look like her," he said. "Your mother. I don't think I ever told you that. But you do. Especially around the eyes."

I didn't know what to say. So I just picked up my bag and walked toward Cross's car.

At the curb, I turned back. Dad was still standing on the porch, one hand raised in something that wasn't quite a wave. The house rose behind him, small and tired, full of memories I was leaving behind.

"I love you," I called out. My voice cracked again. I didn't try to hide it.

"I love you too, kid. Now go learn whatever it is you need to learn."

I got in the car. Cross pulled away from the curb. And I watched my father get smaller and smaller in the side mirror until we turned a corner and he was gone.

We drove for two hours. West, mostly, into hills that got steeper as the Ohio flatness gave way to something older. The trees along the highway were turning, maples and oaks going red and gold in the October light. Summer holding on in patches while fall crept in at the edges.

Somewhere around the state line, I pulled out my phone.

Seventeen texts from Shelby. The first few were frantic. eli what happened. that woman just drove off with you. are you okay. please answer me. Then came the ones after she'd called my dad. your dad says youre going to some school? what school? eli what is going on. The last one, sent twenty minutes ago, was just: please.

I stared at the screen for a long time. The cursor blinked in the empty text field.

What was I supposed to say? I'm not crazy, I just read people's minds sometimes, and now I'm going to a magic school you've never heard of and I don't know when I'll be back?

I started typing. Deleted it. Started again.

I'm okay. I have to go away for a while. There's a school that can help me with what's been happening.

Send. Three dots appeared almost immediately. She was typing.

what school?? eli you collapsed in the park. you were shaking and your eyes went weird and then some random woman just TOOK you

she's a teacher. it's a special program. for people like me.

people like you?? what does that even mean

I didn't know how to answer that. How do you explain something you barely understand yourself?

I know this doesn't make sense. I'm sorry. I can't really explain right now.

can't or won't

Both, I thought. But I typed: Can't.

A long pause. The three dots appeared and disappeared several times. Finally:

you're scaring me. whatever's going on, you can tell me. we're friends eli. we've been friends for three years.

The words hit harder than they should have. Three years. Three years of her showing up because her mother told her to. Three years of me being a chore she'd learned to care about.

But she did care. I'd felt that in the park, underneath everything else. The obligation had become real somewhere along the way.

And I was repaying that by disappearing into a world she couldn't follow.

I know. And I'm sorry. I'll explain when I can. I just need you to trust me right now.

how am I supposed to trust you when you won't tell me anything

I didn't have an answer for that. I watched the screen, waiting for more, but nothing came. Eventually I put the phone away.

Cross glanced at me but didn't ask. I was grateful for that.

She explained things while she drove. I was grateful for it. The information gave me something to focus on besides the ache in my chest.

"Mudwick isn't somewhere you can just travel to by normal means. The school is built on a confluence. A place where so much happened, so many intense experiences accumulated, that the boundaries between locations got thin. Portals connect Mudwick to other saturated places. We're going to one of those access points now."

"What kind of place?"

"An old courthouse. Trials. Verdicts. Moments of justice and injustice. People left pieces of themselves there for over a hundred years. That's what makes it usable."

The highway gave way to smaller roads. The hills turned into mountains, or what passed for mountains in this part of the country. We crossed into West Virginia as the sun started getting low, painting the turning leaves in shades of copper and blood.

"Tell me about Mudwick," I said. "What's it actually like?"

"Old. Layered. The buildings were constructed by different people in different centuries for different purposes. You'll feel traces of everyone who ever passed through. Students, teachers, patients, prisoners. All of them left something behind."

"That sounds overwhelming."

"It is, at first. Most new students take a few weeks to learn how to filter. Some take longer."

"And some never learn at all?"

She glanced at me. "Some don't, no. But I don't think you'll be one of them."

"When does the semester end? How long until I'd come home?"

"First semester runs through December. You'd have winter break, then second semester through May." She kept her eyes on the road. "Though most students find reasons to stay for holidays. Once you're part of this world, the ordinary one starts to feel... distant."

I thought about Dad eating Christmas dinner alone. Thought about Shelby's texts going unanswered. Wondered if distant was another word for gone.

The light was gold now, slanting through the trees. We turned off the main road onto something unpaved, wound through forest that felt like it hadn't seen people in years, and finally stopped in front of a building that looked like it had been forgotten by time.

The courthouse was small. Stone walls stained with age. A bronze plaque by the door that nobody had polished in decades. Windows that were dark even though the sun was still up.

Cross got out of the car. I followed with my duffel bag.

"Stay close to me inside," she said. "First transit can be disorienting. Some people get sick. Some people feel like they're dissolving. Neither sensation lasts long."

"That's comforting."

"I'm not trying to comfort you. I'm trying to prepare you."

She led me up the steps and through a door that should have been locked but wasn't. Inside, the courthouse was even smaller than it looked from outside. A single room with wooden benches, a judge's platform at the far end, dust everywhere.

And something else. A pressure in the air I hadn't felt before. Not quite emotions, but something adjacent to them. The residue of people who'd stood in this room waiting for verdicts that would change their lives. Defendants sweating through their shirts. Witnesses choking on lies. Families in the gallery hoping for outcomes they couldn't control.

"You feel it," Cross said. Not a question.

"I feel something. People who were here. What they were going through."

"That's what makes this place useful. Strong emotions leave strong traces. Fear, hope, desperation. A hundred years of it, soaked into these walls."

She walked toward a door at the back of the room. I hadn't noticed it before. It was set into the wall at an odd angle, like someone had added it as an afterthought.

Behind the door, stairs led down into darkness.

We descended. The air got colder, danker. At the bottom was another room, this one carved from stone instead of built from wood. And in the center of the room, set into the far wall, was a doorway.

Not a door. Just a doorway. A frame of stone covered with carved symbols I didn't recognize, enclosing what looked like solid rock.

Cross put her hand on the stone. The air changed. I don't know how else to describe it. The pressure shifted, the way your ears pop when you change altitude, except it was happening everywhere at once.

"Stay close," she said again. "And whatever you feel, keep walking. Don't stop."

She stepped forward into the solid stone.

And vanished.

I stood there for three heartbeats. Four. Then I followed.

Transit felt like dying.

Not painful. Just wrong. Like being taken apart and put back together, except the person doing the putting wasn't quite sure where all the pieces went. I couldn't feel my body. Couldn't see anything but darkness. Couldn't hear my own breathing.

And then I was somewhere else.

A massive chamber. Stone walls rising high above me, lined with doorways on multiple levels. Balconies and staircases connecting them, students and faculty moving with purpose.

The Portal Hall.

I fell to my knees. The sensory overload was worse than anything I'd experienced before. Every person who passed was broadcasting their emotional state. Not just current feelings, but layers underneath. Their histories trailing behind them like shadows. Decades of students had walked through this hall, and every one of them had left traces that clung to the stones, residue of anxiety and excitement and fear and wonder. I couldn't separate the living from the echoes of the dead.

And the doorways. God, the doorways.

Each one pulled at me differently. Not the people, but the portals themselves. Faint tugs from a dozen directions, like standing in a room full of open windows with wind blowing through each one. I couldn't tell what I was feeling. Couldn't tell if I was sensing the places they led to or the accumulated passages of everyone who'd ever walked through them.

Too much. Too many whispers at once, none of them loud enough to understand.

Someone was saying my name. Cross. Her hand on my elbow through my jacket sleeve, not touching skin.

"Breathe. Focus on one thing. Just one thing."

I tried. Picked a flagstone at my feet. Gray stone worn smooth by generations of footsteps. I tried to see just the stone, not the people who'd touched it. Not the doorways pulling at me. Slowly the roar dimmed to something almost bearable.

"Better?"

"Not really."

"It will be. Can you stand?"

I could. Barely. My legs felt like they belonged to someone else.

Cross led me through the hall, navigating the chaos with practiced ease. Students glanced at us as we passed. Some of them looked curious. Others looked sympathetic in a way that told me they remembered their own first transit.

I felt every one of them. Fragments of who they were pressing against my awareness like strangers brushing past in a crowd.

We climbed stairs, passed through doorways, emerged into late afternoon sunlight that made me squint after the underground darkness.

The main building of Mudwick rose ahead of us.

It was exactly as Cross had described. Buildings that argued with each other. Colonial bones with antebellum additions and Civil War wings and sanitarium extensions and modern attempts to stitch it all together.

And I could feel the people who'd passed through. Not the buildings themselves, but everyone who'd ever lived and worked and suffered here. Students from a century ago, their anxieties somehow still present. Nurses who'd walked these halls when it was a hospital. Patients who'd never left. The human residue was so thick it was hard to tell where one life ended and another began.

The grounds stretched out in every direction, October trees dropping leaves onto paths that wound between buildings. Students crossed the lawns in groups, their breath visible in the cooling air.

"How do people live here?" I asked.

"You learn to filter. You build walls in your mind. You find the places that feel quieter and you rest there when you need to."

"What if I can't learn?"

Cross stopped walking. Turned to face me.

"You will," she said. "Because the alternative is going back to Ohio and waiting for your ability to break you. You can do this, Eli. I wouldn't have brought you here if I didn't believe that."

I wanted to ask her what she would have done if she didn't believe. Would she have left me in that park? Let me spiral until I couldn't function anymore?

But I didn't ask. I wasn't sure I wanted to know the answer.

The dormitory was in the east wing, first-year students on the ground floor. Cross walked me to my assigned room and handed me a key.

"Get settled. There's a welcome assembly for new students in an hour, then dinner. Someone will come get you." She hesitated, like she wanted to say something else. "The first few days are the hardest. After that, it gets easier. I promise."

She left. I stood in the hallway for a moment, holding my key, feeling the weight of a hundred years of students pressing in from every direction.

Then I opened the door.

The room was small. Two beds, two desks, two windows overlooking grounds that stretched toward dark trees. One of the beds was already occupied, or at least claimed. A backpack on the mattress, clothes scattered on the floor, the casual chaos of someone who'd been here long enough to stop caring about neatness.

The person those things belonged to was sitting on the other bed scrolling through his phone. He looked up when I walked in.

"You're the mid-semester transfer." Not a question. "Cross's project."

"I guess so."

"I'm Dao." He set his phone aside and studied me with open curiosity. "You look like shit, if you don't mind me saying."

"First transit."

"Ah. Yeah, that'll do it." He gestured at the empty bed. "That one's yours. Bathroom's down the hall, dining's in the main building, and if you need anything in the middle of the night, don't wake me up unless someone's actively dying."

I dropped my duffel on the bed. The mattress creaked. I could feel traces of everyone who'd slept here before me. Not the mattress itself, but the anxiety of first-year students who'd lain awake wondering if they belonged. Their worry had soaked into this space and I was swimming in it.

"You felt that," Dao said. He was watching me carefully now. "The room."

"The people who were here before. What they were feeling."

He nodded slowly. "Zant thing. My grandmother was the same way."

"Zant?"

"That's what we call ourselves. Short for cognizant. Aware of things other people aren't." He tilted his head. "Cross didn't tell you?"

"She called it being a reader. Talked about saturation and place-memory. Never used that word."

"Huh. Old school terminology, I guess. Everyone here just says Zant." He said it casually, like it was the most natural thing in the world. "You're a Zant. I'm a Zant. Welcome to the club."

Zant. One syllable. It felt better than "reader" or "practitioner" or any of the other words Cross had used. It felt like a name for what I was instead of just a description of what I could do.

"My grandmother was one of the strongest of her generation," Dao continued. "According to family legend, anyway. Though family legend also says we're descended from Filipino royalty and I've seen exactly zero evidence of that." He sat up straighter, giving me his full attention. "So. Mid-semester transfer. That's unusual. Cross must really want you here."

"She said I needed training. That what I can do is getting worse."

"What can you do? Besides feel the ghosts of anxious freshmen in your mattress?"

I hesitated. But there was something about Dao that made lying seem pointless. Maybe it was the way he looked at me, direct and unimpressed and not particularly interested in pretense.

"I read people," I said. "Not places. People. Their emotions, their memories, sometimes their whole histories. If I touch someone, it all comes flooding in and I can't stop it."

Dao whistled low. "That's not supposed to be possible. Standard teaching says place-memory is the foundation. People are too dynamic to read the way you're describing."

"Tell that to everyone I've accidentally read."

"Fair point." He leaned back against the wall. "So you're here because you can do something the textbooks say you can't do. That's going to make your academic life interesting."

"I'm starting to figure that out."

We sat in comfortable silence for a moment. The room still pressed in from every direction, all those accumulated anxieties from students who'd come before. But it felt less overwhelming with another person here. Less like drowning and more like treading water.

"I should warn you," Dao said. "I talk in my sleep sometimes. Also I snore. My last roommate requested a transfer after two weeks."

"I'm used to worse."

"Worse than snoring?"

"I grew up in a house that's three years deep in grief. A little snoring's nothing."

Something shifted in Dao's expression. Not pity, exactly. Recognition.

"Yeah," he said quietly. "I can work with that."

The welcome assembly was held in a room that had probably been a chapel once, back when Mudwick served different purposes. High ceilings, tall windows, rows of wooden chairs that had been sat in by generations of people waiting for news about their futures.

About twenty students filled the front rows. Some looked as shell-shocked as I felt. Others seemed merely bored, like they'd heard welcome speeches before and knew what to expect.

Dao had walked me over, then disappeared to find his usual seat. I found a chair near the back where I could see everyone without being too close to anyone.

The headmaster entered through a side door.

I'd expected someone older. Someone severe, maybe, or distant. The kind of person who ran institutions and didn't remember individual faces.

Headmaster Vane was none of those things.

He was maybe late forties, with the kind of face that probably smiled easily and often. When he walked to the front of the room, he moved like someone who was genuinely glad to be there. Not performing warmth. Just warm.

"Welcome to Mudwick," he said. His voice carried without effort. "For those of you who are new, I'm Aldric Vane. I have the privilege of serving as headmaster, which mostly means I handle logistics and try to stay out of the way of the people doing the actual teaching."

A few polite laughs from students who'd heard this joke before.

"I want to start by acknowledging something." He paused, scanning the room. When his eyes passed over me, I felt nothing unusual. Just a man looking at a group of students. "You're here because you're different. Because the world you grew up in didn't have a place for what you can do. That's a hard thing to carry, and most of you have been carrying it alone."

The room got quieter. I saw a few students shift in their seats.

"Mudwick exists because you shouldn't have to carry it alone. Because there are others like you, others who understand what it means to feel too much or know things you can't explain." He smiled, and it reached his eyes. "You're not broken. You're not crazy. You're just aware of things most people aren't."

I thought about all the years I'd spent wondering what was wrong with me. All the times I'd felt like a freak for knowing things I shouldn't know.

"First semester runs through December," Vane continued. "You'll learn the basics of filtering, of control, of understanding your own abilities. Some of you will struggle. That's normal. Some of you will excel in ways that surprise you. That's normal too." He leaned against the podium, casual. "What matters is that you try. What matters is that you ask for help when you need it. My door is always open, and I mean that literally. If you're having trouble and you need someone to talk to, come find me."

He went on to cover practical things. Class schedules, dormitory rules, the dining hall hours. I half-listened, still trying to get a read on him.

Nothing. He felt like exactly what he appeared to be. A competent administrator who cared about his students. Someone good at his job and comfortable in it.

After the assembly, he stood by the door shaking hands with returning students. He knew their names. Asked one girl about her summer. Remembered that a boy in the second row had been struggling with his reading assignments last year.

When I passed, he caught my eye.

"Eli Walker. Cross's mid-semester transfer." He didn't offer his hand, and I was grateful. "Welcome to Mudwick. I've heard interesting things about your abilities."

"Interesting good or interesting bad?"

"Just interesting." He smiled. "Give yourself time to adjust. The first few weeks are disorienting for everyone. If you need anything, my office is in the main building, second floor."

"Thank you, sir."

"Aldric is fine. Or Headmaster Vane if you're feeling formal." He nodded toward the door. "Go get dinner. You look like you could use it."

I walked out into the October evening, not sure what to make of him. He seemed genuine. Seemed like someone who actually cared.

But then, so had Cross.

An hour later, a knock at the door announced dinner.

Dao walked me to the dining hall, which was exactly as overwhelming as I expected. Hundreds of students, all of them broadcasting emotional states, all of them carrying their own accumulated histories. I kept my hands in my pockets and stayed close to Dao's shoulder like he was a ship I could follow through rough water.

We claimed a corner table. Two people were already there.

"Sasha Okonkwo," Dao said, gesturing at the girl with the textbook. "Possibly the smartest person in our year. Definitely the most annoying about it."

Sasha looked up. She had sharp eyes and sharper cheekbones and an expression that suggested she was constantly evaluating everyone around her. When her gaze landed on me, I felt like I was being measured.

"You're the mid-semester transfer. Cross's project."

"Does everyone know about me?"

"Small school. Word travels." She didn't offer her hand, which I appreciated. "First-generation Zant. Scholarship student. I'm here because I test well and someone decided to take a chance on me. What's your story?"

"I read people instead of places. Apparently that's unusual."

"Unusual is an understatement. That's theoretically impossible." She looked at me with renewed interest. "We should talk later. I have questions."

"Everyone has questions about me. I don't have many answers."

The fourth person arrived before Sasha could respond. He was tall and blond and moved with the kind of easy confidence that usually meant money. Old family money, the kind that came with expectations and obligations and a last name people recognized.

"Thaddeus Monroe-Whitmore," he said, sliding into the seat next to me. He offered his hand, then noticed me flinch and pulled it back. "Sorry. Dao mentioned you have touch sensitivity."

"Something like that."

"I'll be careful." His smile was warm and genuine. When I looked for the coldness underneath, the entitlement I expected to find, there wasn't any. Just kindness all the way down.

"Thaddeus is old family," Dao explained. "Like, old-old. His ancestors probably founded some of the portals. But somehow he turned out okay anyway."

"The family curse skipped me," Thaddeus agreed cheerfully. "I'm the disappointment who doesn't care about legacy or power. They sent me to Mudwick hoping it would fix me. So far it hasn't."

I looked at the three of them. Dao with his family's disgraced name and his grandmother's gift. Sasha with her scholarship and her sharp analytical mind. Thaddeus with his old money and his gentle spirit.

None of them quite fit. And somehow that made them fit together.

"So," Sasha said, turning back to her textbook. "Welcome to the island of misfit toys. Dinner's at six, breakfast at seven, and if you need help with the standard curriculum, I charge in favors."

"She's not joking," Dao added. "I owe her three favors and I'm terrified to find out what she's going to cash them in for."

"Knowledge is power," Sasha said mildly. "Favors are currency. Try the pasta, it's the only thing the kitchen doesn't ruin."

I got pasta. I sat with my unlikely new acquaintances. And for the first time since arriving at Mudwick, I felt something other than overwhelmed.

It wasn't belonging, exactly. Not yet. But it was the possibility of belonging. The first glimpse of a shape that might fit.

That night I lay in the dark listening to Dao breathe. He wasn't snoring yet, but the night was young.

The building settled around us. A century of students had slept in rooms like this one, and their presence lingered. If I let myself, I could almost feel them. Old worries about classes and friendships and futures. Old fears about whether they belonged, whether they were good enough, whether coming here had been a mistake.

I thought about Dad eating dinner alone in our kitchen. Staring at the newspaper he wasn't reading. Wondering if he'd made the right choice letting me go.

I thought about Mom, who had felt what I felt and chosen to run from it. Who had built a normal life in a dying town and never told me why.

I thought about Cross, who had promised to help me and who I still didn't quite trust.

I thought about the headmaster, who seemed so genuine it almost made me suspicious.

Tomorrow I would start learning what I was. Start training to control an ability that everyone said shouldn't exist. Start figuring out how to belong in a world I didn't know the rules of.

My phone buzzed on the nightstand.

Shelby.

just checking if you're okay. you don't have to explain anything. just let me know you're safe.

I stared at the message for a long time. The glow of the screen was the only light in the room.

She deserved more than I could give her. More than vague reassurances and half-truths. But I didn't have anything else to offer right now.

I'm safe. First day was a lot. I'll tell you more when I can.

The response came quickly.

ok. good night eli.

Good night, Shelby.

I put the phone down and closed my eyes.

The presence of everyone who'd come before pressed gently against my awareness. A hundred years of students feeling exactly what I was feeling right now. Wondering if they'd made the right choice. Wondering what they were becoming.

I wasn't alone. I was surrounded by the traces of everyone who'd ever been where I was, and somehow that was almost comforting.

Eventually, I slept.