"I plan to," I murmured quietly, unease coiling tightly in my stomach.
Despite my brave words, doubt crept quietly into the edges of my thoughts, slithering into the spaces between certainty and bravado. Lady Nyx's crimson eyes lingered like a ghostly echo in my memory, sharp yet unreadable, casting shadows that stubbornly refused to fade.
My parents, never content with half-measures, had dispatched spies to Arcanum immediately. Discreet, trained in shadows and silence, they slipped into the school unnoticed, blending seamlessly into the chaos. For days, coded letters arrived, carefully sealed in obsidian wax, each bearing tidings more unsettling than the last.
