That’s the first thing in my head as I step into History of Realms, a low-ceilinged room that always smells faintly of dust and candle soot. Shelves sag with scrolls and maps older than Ravenshade itself. Morning light spills through the arched windows, slicing across the desks in thin, perfect lines. Everything here feels rehearsed, frozen in its own kind of performance.
So does he.
Calloway greets us with that too-smooth smile. His voice is warm, inviting even, but it hides something sharp beneath it. Every sentence sounds memorized. Every pause is too precise. Like he’s already decided what parts of history we’re allowed to remember.
Elle slips into the seat beside me. Her scarf is wound so tightly it nearly hides her mouth, a habit she falls into when she’s anxious. Her fingers tremble as she opens her notebook. There’s already a faint film across the top sheet, thin as breath on glass. Not dust. Not ink. Frost.
She notices it too. Quickly wipes at it like she can pretend it isn’t there.
Calloway picks up a stick of chalk and turns to the board. “Today,” he says smoothly, “we revisit the Fifth Rift Surge.”
The chalk screeches as he writes:
1323 A.E.
My stomach twists. That’s not the right year.
We covered this months ago, Nan drilled it into us. The Fifth Surge wasn’t in 1323. It was 1301, the year the Lucent Circle fractured. The year the first Seal-bearer died sealing the breach. The year the Sovereign Order rose.
Behind me, I hear a pen stop mid-scratch. I glance back.
Rowan’s frowning, his pen hovering over his parchment. He notices too. His eyes dart from the board to Calloway’s back, his expression tightening like he’s calculating how much trouble it’d cause to correct him out loud.
Calloway keeps talking, oblivious or pretending to be. He strolls across the front of the room, coat tails brushing the chalk dust. “The Fifth Surge,” he says, “was a minor breach, quickly sealed by Lucent operatives. Barely disrupted the provinces. Nothing compared to the Third or Sixth, of course.”
His tone is casual. Too casual. Like we’re talking about weather patterns, not world-altering disasters.
Elle’s breath catches beside me.
When I look down, my pulse jumps. Her notebook is… wrong. The page under her hand isn’t blank anymore. Frost trails across it in looping patterns, curling around the lines of her notes. The date Calloway wrote on the board 1323 is etched in ice on her paper, bleeding outward like ink that refuses to dry.
It’s like the Rift itself is rejecting the lie.
Her hand shakes. The pen slips from her fingers and hits the floor with a soft clatter that sounds deafening in the quiet. Heads turn. She bends fast to grab it, but I see her other hand press hard against the frost as if she can hold the truth in place.
No one else notices. Just me. And Rowan, his gaze locked on her with the same wary awareness I feel crawling up my spine.
Calloway doesn’t flinch. He keeps his tone pleasant, strolling past rows of students like nothing’s amiss. “As always,” he continues, “legends distort facts. The Fifth Surge has long been exaggerated. My role is to return us to accuracy to strip away superstition.”
He taps the board once. The chalk creaks beneath his fingers.
“Truth,” he says, “is rarely as exciting as myth.”
He smiles. The kind of smile that makes you feel small. Like he’s already edited you out of the story.
Elle’s page is blooming now. The frost thickens, spreading like veins of light beneath her ink. Tiny white specks lift from the surface and shimmer in the air before fading. I can almost hear the whisper of cold, the same tone I heard the night she screamed in the east wing.
I inch closer, keeping my voice low. “Elle.”
She doesn’t look at me. Her eyes are fixed on her notes.
I slide a folded piece of parchment under her sleeve. She notices the movement, hesitates for half a second, then lets it disappear into her coat.
My message is short. Simple. Meet me at the elm tonight.
That’s all it says. That’s all it needs to say.
We haven’t met there in months, not since the whispers started. The elm was ours, before the frost crept in, before that silent new guy showed up and started watching her like he understood her better than I ever could.
She finally looks at me. Really looks. The frost light reflects in her eyes, bright and trembling. Panic and beneath it, a fragile spark of hope.
The bell rings, sharp as breaking glass. The sound makes everyone flinch. Calloway lowers the chalk and turns back to us, dismissing the class with a flick of his wrist. Students scrape chairs, shuffle papers, murmur half-hearted goodbyes.
But Calloway doesn’t erase the board. He wipes away everything except the date. 1323 A.E. stays. Glowing faintly under the light like it’s carved into the stone itself.
Rowan’s the only one who doesn’t rush out. He lingers, waiting until the noise dies down. His gaze moves between Elle’s notebook and the chalkboard. He looks pale now and troubled.
He steps closer. “He’s lying,” Rowan says quietly.
Elle blinks, startled. “About what?”
“The Fifth Surge,” he says. “That’s not what happened. That date’s wrong, and the Order never sealed it clean. They covered it up.”
I stiffen, my voice low. “You don’t know that.”
But Rowan just gives me that patient, infuriating look of his. “Don’t I? My uncle worked in Archives before they locked the lower levels. He said the year Calloway’s teaching 1323 was when the Sovereign Order opened a Rift, not closed it.”
Elle’s lips part in shock. “You mean..”
“I mean,” Rowan cuts in, eyes flicking to the board, “he’s rewriting what happened. Someone told him to. And if the Academy’s rewriting the wars…” He lowers his voice. “What else have they erased?”
Before I can respond, he’s already moving for the door.
Elle stares after him. I hate the look in her eyes, wide and curious, like she believes him. Maybe she should. But I can’t stand the idea of her trusting Rowan more than me.
I lean closer. “You don’t have to listen to him. Nan would tell you the truth if you asked.”
She doesn’t answer. Her gaze is fixed on the board.
The air is colder now. I can see her breath.
The chalkboard glistens, rimmed with frost that wasn’t there a minute ago. The date Calloway left 1323 is spiderwebbed with cracks. Frost spirals stretch outward from the numbers, carving into the surface.
The same pattern that shows up in her mirror. Her locker. The elm tree.
A sound moves through the room, faint and cold, almost like a sigh.
Every hair on my arms lifts. It feels like the walls themselves are listening, like they know something’s wrong even if we don’t.
The air hums with a strange vibration. My pulse quickens. “Elle,” I whisper, “we should go.”
She doesn’t move. Her fingers hover near the frost, close enough that her breath clouds around them.
“It’s trying to tell us something,” she murmurs. “Look.”
I look and wish I hadn’t. Beneath the frost, the numbers are changing. 1323 blurs into something else. A new date, faint but visible: 1301.
The real year.
The frost stops spreading, but the room feels wrong now. Heavy and alive.
Elle tears her gaze from the board, eyes wide with realization. “Luke… it knows.”
I grab her bag and pull her toward the door. “Then we need to move before it decides to show the whole class.”
She stumbles, half laughing, half breathless. “You think the Rift cares who sees?”
“I think,” I mutter, glancing back once more, “the Rift doesn’t like being lied to.”
The frost glows faintly behind us as the door shuts.
Outside, the corridor is warmer, but not by much. A shiver slips down my spine anyway. I glance at Elle. Her hand is still trembling.
I want to take it. I want to tell her that everything’s going to be fine, that she’s safe, that I’ll fix it somehow. But the words taste false, and I’m suddenly afraid the frost would know.
She exhales, eyes closing briefly. “The Rift’s rewriting history.”
“No,” I say quietly, because I have to believe it. “The Rift’s reminding us what’s true.”
Her eyes open. They’re bright, fierce, and a little afraid. “Then what happens to people who believe the lies?”
I don’t have an answer.
The silence stretches, full of things I can’t promise her.
Then she smiles faintly, tired but determined. “See you at the elm?”
I nod once. “Yeah. Tonight.”
But as she walks away, her footsteps leaving tiny prints of frost on the stone floor, I can’t shake the feeling that the truth, whatever it is, isn’t done with us yet.
That somewhere between myth and memory, something’s been watching. And it just woke up.
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