A S H R I E L

My oath pulls me here like a hook under my skin. One second I’m halfway down the corridor, the next I’m standing before Draven’s door, frost crawling up the brass handle. The air tastes like iron, humming with something old.

The door opens by itself. Warm light spills out, but the warmth never reaches me. Her office glows with a firelight that doesn’t burn, just shines too white, too still. Ledgers lie open across her desk, their pages slick with rime, ink still glistening as if freshly written centuries ago.

Headmistress Draven doesn’t look up right away. Her breath clouds once, hangs in the air. When she finally speaks, her voice carries through the cold like glass sliding over stone.
“You feel it, Guardian? The first seal has broken.”

The words hit deep, echoing through the mark beneath my wrist. I nod once. There’s nothing to say. Every heartbeat hums with her name, and the ache that follows.

Draven’s gaze sharpens. “She’s coming. Stand where you are.”

Draven gestures to the chair across from her. “Sit.”
I don’t. My legs lock.

Her tone doesn’t change. “Still the obedient soldier.” She flips a ledger closed, the frost hissing at her touch. “Tell me, how close have you let her get?”

Pain sparks under my skin. The oath burns whenever I think of lying. I swallow it down. “Close enough to protect her.”

Her mouth curves. “Protection.” She tastes the word like it’s a sin. “You guard her too closely. The Rift notices.”

The frost on the window deepens. I feel it spreading through my chest.

Draven leans forward, calm as a hanging blade. “If the Rift promised her safety in exchange for your soul, would you take the bargain?”

I don’t answer. The mark thrums hard enough to shake my fingers.

She exhales, fog in warm air and smiles without warmth. “Good. Keep that silence. When she enters, you will not speak.”

Draven opens another ledger. The pages are pale as bone, corners flaking, handwriting layered in different inks and hands. Some names are smudged out, others underlined so hard the parchment nearly tears.

“These ledgers predate Ravenshade,” she says softly. “Records from the Lucent Circle, back when they called this place the Sanctuary.”

Her finger stops on an entry scrawled in rusted ink: Seal-bearer: lost. Guardian: failed. A date I can’t read, centuries old.

“They thought sealing the Rift meant peace,” Draven murmurs. “It meant delay.” She turns another page, drawings of frost spirals, sketches of mirror shards, a girl’s silhouette labeled only Elowen.

The cold twists deep inside me.

Draven glances up, eyes bright with a kind of terrible pity. “Every generation, the pattern repeats. Until the girl dies… or the Guardian does.”

Her hand lingers on that page before she closes the book, and frost laces the cover like a signature.

Draven studies me like she’s testing glass for cracks. “Do you care for her?”

The oath hums under my skin, dangerous territory. I clench my jaw. “My duty is to guard her.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

The pain flares sharp, like fire beneath ice. The mark on my wrist burns through the glove. I can almost feel it glowing.

Draven watches the reaction with clinical interest. “Ah. Truth then.”

The frost along the window thickens, curling in the shape of a spiral.

“She’s unstable,” Draven says. “Her emotions trigger the Rift. Every blush, every tear… every heartbeat that quickens when you walk into a room.”

My breath catches. She knows too much.

“You think you can protect her by feeling less,” Draven continues, her voice quieter now. “But love isn’t absent, Guardian. It’s pressure.”

The word lands heavy, and the mark pulses once more. Frost beads along my fingertips.

I don’t answer. I can’t.

Draven leans back, eyes narrowing slightly. “You’ve heard it, haven’t you? The whisper that follows her. Not him.”

I freeze. The air tightens.

She folds her hands. “You think it warns against you, perhaps out of jealousy.” Her gaze drifts toward the frost spiraling across the wall. “But it’s older than you. Older than her.”

“What does it mean?” My voice comes out rough.

Draven smiles faintly, no warmth in it. “It means what it always has, the Seal must not choose before the Rift does. The last girl who did,  burned half this realm to ash.”

The fire hisses in its grate, white and hungry.

“So the Rift protects her by forbidding choice,” she says, eyes sharp on mine. “By turning her heart into a lock. And you…” she pauses, voice dropping to a whisper, “…you are the key it fears most.”

The frost cracks underfoot like a warning bell.

Draven rises, smoothing her robes. “You think this academy runs on discipline and charm, but it survives on silence.”

She crosses to a cabinet lined with scrolls and sealed reports. One by one, she stamps each with her signet ring. Frost melts where it touches, pages going blank.

“Every frost spiral you’ve seen on a desk, every mirror that twitches out of sync, cleaned before dawn, logged as fatigue or hallucination. We call it containment.”

Her tone doesn’t carry pride. It’s exhaustion, buried under control.

“You hide it from them,” I say quietly.

“Would you tell a school of children they’re living in the mouth of a god?” She shuts the cabinet hard enough to rattle glass. “No, Guardian. We hide it because truth breaks faster than bone.”

She turns back, perfectly composed again. “And yet… the cracks widen. Especially around her.”

Draven’s gaze flicks to the frost marking her ledger, the spiral flaring faint blue before dying.

Draven opens another volume, thinner, bound in black. The pages hum faintly, a heartbeat of their own. “You’ve read this one?” she asks.

I shake my head.

“It’s the Prophecy of the Final Seal. Most of it was lost. What remains…” She slides a single page toward me, ink faded but legible enough to make my stomach turn.

One Guardian will fall. One flame will break. The heart unchosen will open the Rift.

My pulse stutters. “That’s not a prophecy,” I whisper. “That’s a threat.”

“Call it what you want,” she says. “It names you both.”

Draven closes the book gently, like something sacred. “If the Seal loves too early, the Guardian dies. If the Guardian loves too deeply, the world does.”

I can’t breathe for a second. The room feels thinner, smaller, as if the frost itself listens.

Draven watches the panic flicker across my face and nods once, satisfied. “Now you understand why I asked you here.”

Draven moves back behind her desk, spine straight as iron. “The Harvest Ball approaches. The Rift stirs strongest under that moon. Emotions flare. Choices… crystallize.”

She studies me, then the fire, its flames paling to blue. “You will attend,” she says.

The words grind like gears in my chest. “To guard her?”

“To witness,” she corrects. “And you will not choose.”

The air seems to tilt. I take a step forward before I can stop myself. “You’re asking me to stand by while she..”

“I’m ordering you,” Draven cuts in. Her voice doesn’t rise; it doesn’t need to. “The prophecy demands her heart remain unclaimed. Not by him, not by you. Especially not you.”

The frost on the window explodes outward, a quiet bloom of white.

“If you love her,” Draven says softly, “you’ll obey.”

Her breath fogs again, the only movement in the room. “You will attend the Harvest Ball. And you will not choose.”

For a long time neither of us speaks. The fire pops once, then steadies. Draven’s face is carved from shadow and frost, unreadable.

When she finally looks away, I know it’s over. Conversation dismissed, judgment sealed.

I bow my head once, more habit than respect, and turn for the door. The air feels heavier with every step, like walking through frozen smoke. The mark under my skin still burns from her words. You will not choose.

At the threshold, her voice stops me. “Ashriel.”

I pause, hand on the handle.

“If you break this command,” she says quietly, “I will end you before the Rift does.”

No threat in it. Just the truth.

I nod once, not trusting my voice.

The door opens soundlessly. Outside, the corridor yawns wide and empty, every torch burning low. My reflection shivers along the black floor tiles, flickering one breath late.

Somewhere down the hall, faint and familiar, the Rift whispers my name.

Then softer, closer, almost against my ear.
If you love her, you doom her.

I walk until the corridor bends away from the office’s glow. The silence feels alive, filled with what I can’t say.

The oath still hums in my pulse, a low throb that won’t fade. I press my wrist to my chest, like it might drown the noise, but it only grows louder. Elle’s heartbeat answers somewhere far off in the stone.

Frost creeps along the wall beside me, tracing thin spirals that glint faintly in the dim light. Each curl forms faster than the one before, alive, deliberate. The same pattern that blooms on her scarf, her mirrors, her skin when she’s afraid.

I reached out. My fingertips hover over the frost, but the cold leaps first,  the spiral brightens, pulsing once like it recognizes me. Then it fades, leaving only a wet outline and my reflection staring back through the glassy wall.

Behind me, Draven’s door shuts with a quiet final click. Ahead, the corridor stretches toward the dorm wings and the night that waits for her. The mark at my wrist flares once more, sharp and electric.

The next time I see her, everything will break.