They clashed like titans.
The ground shattered beneath them, cobblestones splitting like eggshells under the force of their blows. Every impact sent tremors through the courtyard—bones breaking, blood spraying in thick, arterial arcs across the stones. The air itself seemed to scream where their fists met, the sound of flesh striking flesh like war drums in the hollow of Ezra's skull.
Rowan moved like a storm given form—relentless, untamed, his strikes brutal and efficient. A hammer fist to the collarbone that cracked like dry kindling. A knee driven upward, catching Soren in the ribs hard enough to lift him off his feet. Blood flecked Rowan's teeth as he grinned, wild and feral, his knuckles split to the bone.
Soren took every hit and gave it back.
He twisted midair, landing in a crouch before surging forward, his elbow slamming into Rowan's throat. Rowan gagged, staggered—but didn't fall. He spun, his boot connecting with Soren's jaw hard enough to snap his head back. Teeth clattered to the ground. Soren spat a mouthful of crimson and laughed, the sound guttural, wrong, like something scraping at the inside of a coffin.
Then—
Soren's shadow moved.
Not just stretching, not just following—lunging. It wrapped around Rowan's ankle like a noose and yanked, sending him crashing onto the broken stone. Rowan rolled with the impact, coming up in a spray of blood and debris, just in time to meet Soren's descending fist.
The impact echoed like a cannon shot.
Rowan's head snapped back. His nose broke with a wet crunch, blood sheeting down his chin. He didn't cry out. Didn't falter. He dug his fingers into the cracks in the ground and heaved—
—and the earth itself erupted.
Chunks of stone and dust exploded upward as Rowan tore free a jagged slab of cobblestone and swung it like an executioner's blade. It caught Soren across the temple, sending him reeling.
Silence.
Then—
Soren stood.
Blood painted half his face, his left eye swollen shut, his breath coming in wet, ragged gasps. His shadow writhed at his feet, twitching like a living thing.
Rowan grinned, his teeth pink with spit and blood.
And they charged again.
—until fire erupted between them.
A wall of blue-orange flame exploded across the shattered courtyard, so intense the stones glowed molten at its edges. Rowan barely twisted away in time, the heat nearly singing his eyebrows. Soren recoiled, his shadow hissing as it retreated from the blaze.
The inferno died as suddenly as it appeared, leaving the air shimmering with heat.
"That's enough for now."
The voice was calm. Precise. Like a surgeon's scalpel.
A young man stepped through the fading flames, untouched by the fire. His spectacles gleamed in the sunlight, lenses flashing opaque for a heartbeat before clearing to reveal cool, calculating eyes. Every strand of his near-black hair—dark as deep ocean water—lay perfectly in place. His uniform was immaculate, not a single thread out of order despite the destruction around him.
At his side, a girl yawned, stretching like a cat waking from a nap. Her wild copper curls seemed to move with a life of their own, framing a face of striking contrasts—patches of vitiligo like pale constellations across her umber skin. She examined her nails, utterly unbothered by the carnage.
Rowan wiped blood from his mouth. "Really?, Atlas."
Soren's shadow twitched, restless. "We weren't finished."
The spectacled man—Atlas—adjusted his glasses with one slender finger. "You've made your point. The courtyard looks like a butcher's floor, half the first-years are in hysterics, and Professor Kray is taking notes for your disciplinary hearings."He gestured to where a gaunt figure indeed stood in the shadows, parchment in hand.
The redheaded girl snorted. "Let them fight, Atlas. I had money on Soren."
Dain shot her a look. "You don't gamble, Nora."
"I do when it's entertaining." She grinned, all sharp teeth, and nodded at the combatants.
Dain sighed. "Enough. Clean yourselves up. The Headmaster wants to see you."A beat. "Separately."
For the first time, something like unease flickered across the fighters' battered faces.
As Atlas turned to leave, Nora lingered just long enough to wink at Ezra. "Stick around, new blood. Things are just getting interesting."
Then they were gone, leaving only scorched stone and the heavy scent of blood in their wake.
"Where are you going?" Ezra called after Silas as the golden-haired boy slipped through the dispersing crowd like a ghost.
Silas didn't answer. He simply moved, his footsteps soundless against the cracked cobblestones. Milo adjusted his slipping glasses and hurried after him, Ezra close behind.
They wound through Blackspire's labyrinthine halls—past classrooms humming with hushed lessons, down corridors where the shadows seemed to breathe, through archways carved with warnings in dead languages. Seniors lounging in alcoves gave them withering looks as they passed, but Silas paid them no mind.
Finally, they arrived at a secluded dormitory wing, its architecture older and more ornate than the Iron Quarters. The air smelled of dried herbs and something faintly metallic. Silas stopped before an unmarked door and knocked once—a precise, practiced rhythm.
No answer came.
He entered anyway.
Beyond lay a courtyard Ezra had never seen—a hidden pocket of tranquility walled in by ancient stone. Vines heavy with midnight-blue flowers climbed the walls, their petals shimmering with faint bioluminescence even in daylight. At its center, Rowan sat sprawled against the base of a withered oak, his head tilted back to stem the blood still gushing from his broken nose. His face was a mess of bruises—blues and purples blooming across his skin like some macabre painting.
Silas sighed.
Without a word, he crossed to Rowan and knelt beside him. His slender fingers hovered just above the worst of the damage, not quite touching. Then he began to murmur—words too soft for Ezra to catch, their rhythm more melody than language.
The earth responded.
Jasmine petals rained down like blessings, each one bursting into golden pollen where they touched broken skin. The oak's roots hummed beneath them, pumping liquid sunlight into every wound. Even the moss between the cobblestones stretched upward, stitching flesh with emerald threads.
Rowan arched as his nose reset with a satisfied click. The bruises melted away like morning frost. His split knuckles bloomed with new pink skin as tiny white flowers pushed through the cracks between stones to brush against his hands.
Vines uncoiled from the walls with serpentine grace. Flowers blossomed in impossible colors, their petals brushing against Rowan's wounds as if in benediction. Ezra watched, transfixed, as the swelling around Rowan's eye receded, as the jagged cut across his cheekbone stitched itself closed. Even the blood staining his shirt seemed to fade, absorbed by the hungry roots now twining around his fingers.
The more life he gave, the more the courtyard gave back - vines growing lusher, flowers brighter, the oak's leaves unfurling in impossible shades of gold. Where his fingers lingered, Rowan's skin healed smoother than before, as if the wounds had never existed.
"Showoff," Rowan muttered, flexing his hands.
Silas's smile was the quiet contentment of a forest after rain. He plucked a single white orchid from where it had sprouted in Rowan's hair - the blossom impossibly perfect, its petals still glistening with morning dew despite the afternoon sun - and tucked it behind his own ear with practiced ease.
Ezra and Milo stood frozen, their breaths caught somewhere between wonder and terror.
Milo's glasses slid down his nose, forgotten. His lips moved soundlessly, as if trying and failing to name what he'd just witnessed. Ezra's hands hung limp at his sides, his mind scrabbling for purchase against the impossible truth unfolding before him.
The orchid shouldn't have existed. Not here. Not in this season. Not growing from human hair like it belonged there.
Yet it did.
Just like the vines that had moved with purpose.
Just like the moss that had stitched flesh like a master tailor.
Just like Silas, who stood there glowing faintly with borrowed sunlight, looking for all the world like he'd simply asked the earth for a favor and it had happily obliged.
A shudder ran down Ezra's spine.
He wasn't the only one with secrets at Blackspire.
The realization struck like a knife between the ribs - sharp and sudden and terribly cold. All this time, he'd been so consumed with hiding his own past, his own shame, that he'd failed to consider:
The academy didn't just harbor monsters.
It cultivated them.
And Silas, with his golden hair and quieter-than-snowfall footsteps and flowers that grew where he willed them -
Silas was one of them.
Rowan stretched his newly healed arms above his head, bones popping. "You're getting better at that, Si"
Silas smiled . He simply turned those unsettling, emerald-green eyes on Ezra and Milo, the orchid behind his ear pulsing faintly with something that wasn't quite light.
The message was clear:
You saw nothing.
You know nothing.
And if you value that fragile skin of yours, you'll keep it that way.
Milo gulped audibly.
Ezra clenched his fists so tight his nails drew blood.
And somewhere beneath their feet, the earth laughed soundlessly.