Chapter Five: Whispers and Shadows (ii)
1409 Words
St. Eden University was still damp from last night’s rain, the ivy crawling up red-brick buildings glittering with droplets like strings of glass beads. The sky hung low and gray, the air cool enough to bite but not freeze.
Ava adjusted her backpack straps and joined the slow current of students heading toward the lecture halls. Snatches of conversation floated around her, weekend plans, assignments, gossip but her attention was elsewhere.
She kept feeling eyes on her.
Every time she turned, there was no one.
Inside the biology lecture hall, she chose her usual seat in the back row. The room was cavernous, the air faintly metallic from old vents. She pulled out her notebook, trying to focus on the scrawled notes from last class, but movement caught her eye a few rows down.
Mia.
The girl’s waist-length braids gleamed in the fluorescent light, her green scarf shimmering like wet leaves. She sat alone, sketching in a small leather notebook, her expression distant but calm.
Then the whispers began.
Two girls a row behind her giggled, leaning close.
“Look at her; what is that scarf? Is she auditioning for Lord of the Rings?”
“Right? And those braids, who even does that anymore?”
Their laughter was small, sharp, the kind that cuts without leaving visible marks.
Ava’s jaw tightened. The sound of it pulled something raw in her chest; memories of whispered words from past foster homes, mocking tones that never quite left her head.
Before she could second-guess herself, she stood and walked down the steps.
“Mind if I sit here?” she asked, stopping beside Mia.
Mia looked up, surprise flickering in her golden eyes before she smiled faintly. “Please do.”
Ava dropped into the seat beside her. “Those girls are idiots.”
Mia’s pencil paused. “They’re bored.”
“Doesn’t make it okay.”
Mia studied her for a beat, then nodded once. “Ava, right? Scholarship student.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m Mia Everen.” She smiled again, soft and real this time. “You didn’t have to sit here, you know. I’m used to it.”
“I’m not,” Ava said simply.
For a moment, their eyes held. Ava noticed how bright Mia’s were, liquid gold, catching the light like sunlight through honey. There was something too still about her, a grace that didn’t seem entirely human.
The professor began the lecture then, breaking the moment.
Halfway through, Mia slipped her a folded note:
Thanks. Coffee after class?
Ava scribbled back, Sure. My aunt owns the Eden Brew.
Mia grinned and sketched a tiny doodle of a coffee cup crowned with vines.
Ava found herself smiling back, the knot of tension in her chest loosening for the first time that morning.
***
By midday, the sky had darkened to the color of old pewter. The courtyard glistened with puddles that mirrored the gnarled branches of the ancient oak in the center.
Ava sat beneath it, unwrapping the sandwich Maeve had packed, turkey and cheddar, a quiet comfort. She ate slowly, the cold air numbing her fingers.
Footsteps approached, soft on the wet pavement.
She looked up and froze.
The copper-haired boy stood a few feet away, hands in his hoodie pockets, eyes the deep, smoldering orange of banked coals.
He didn’t speak right away. Just looked at her as if confirming something.
Ava’s pulse stumbled again. “You’re...”
He raised an eyebrow, waiting.
“You were at the café,” she finished. “Yesterday.”
“Yeah.” His voice was low, rough around the edges.
“You ordered a black coffee. No room.”
That earned the faintest twitch of a smile. “You remember that?”
“I remember everything,” she said before she could stop herself, then grimaced. “Sorry. That sounded creepy.”
His smile deepened, not unkind. “It’s fine.”
They stood there for a beat too long, the silence charged not awkward, but dense, like static before lightning.
Then Ava said it, quietly: “Do you feel it too?”
He blinked. “Feel what?”
“The… hum. Like the air’s charged.”
Something flickered behind his eyes. For the briefest moment, they glowed brighter, fiery, molten before dimming again. He looked away, jaw tightening. “You shouldn’t talk about things you don’t understand.”
“Then explain it.”
“I can’t.”
Before she could press him, a bright voice interrupted.
“Ryder! There you are!”
A girl with golden hair bounded across the courtyard, her energy like sunlight breaking through the clouds. She was dazzling her laugh quick, her movements fluid, the mirror opposite of his quiet gravity.
When her gaze landed on Ava, her grin widened. “Oh! Didn’t mean to interrupt. I’m Skylar. Ryder’s sister. And you are ?”
“Ava.”
“Nice to meet you!” Skylar nudged her twin. “You didn’t tell me you were making friends.”
“I wasn’t,” Ryder muttered.
Skylar ignored him. “You’ll get used to him. He broods, but he’s harmless.”
Ryder sighed. “You talk too much.”
“That’s what sisters are for.”
The campus bell chimed, deep and resonant, scattering the moment. Students began to drift toward their next classes. Skylar waved cheerfully. “See you around, Ava!”
Ava lifted her hand in reply, but her gaze lingered on Ryder’s retreating back. He looked like someone carrying a storm inside him and somehow, she could feel its echo in her own pulse.
***
The rest of the day passed in a blur of lectures and notes she barely absorbed. By dusk, she found herself in the library again, tucked deep between the shelves where the air smelled of dust and secrets.
Her fingers brushed over the cracked spine of Legends of the Veil. She carried it to a table in the far corner and opened it.
An illustration sprawled across the page: a figure with eyes like amethyst, hands outstretched, surrounded by swirling light. Aetherborn, the caption read. Children of balance, wielders of the unseen. Extinct since the Great Schism.
A chill ran down her spine. Her own reflection stared back faintly from the glossy paper, violet eyes catching the lamplight.
“You shouldn’t read that one.”
The voice was soft, musical. Mia slid into the seat across from her, the faint scent of rain and wildflowers clinging to her.
Ava arched a brow. “You followed me?”
“Call it concern.” Mia’s gaze drifted to the open page. “Half those stories are lies, written by people who were afraid of what they didn’t understand.”
“So they’re not myths?”
Mia smiled, a little sad, a little knowing. “Some myths start with truth. Some end with it.”
Ava tilted her head. “You talk like you’ve read the real version.”
“Maybe I have.” Mia leaned back, eyes glinting gold in the dim light. “Coffee? You still owe me.”
Ava closed the book slowly. “You’re… strange.”
“Pot, meet kettle.”
That made Ava laugh, soft but genuine. The sound startled her as much as it seemed to please Mia.
As they left the library, the wind had picked up, carrying the faint scent of ozone. The lamps along the path flickered once, twice. Ava hesitated, looking up.
“You see that?”
“See what?” Mia asked, though her tone was too casual.
“The lights.”
“Old wiring,” Mia said smoothly. “Come on. I’ll race you to the café.”
But when they walked past one of the lampposts, Ava could have sworn she saw it bend slightly toward her, drawn by something unseen.
***
Later that night, after Maeve had gone to bed and the café was dark, Ava sat by her window, watching the rain streak down the glass.
Her chest felt tight again, not painful, but alive. The dreams whispered just behind her eyelids, fragments of voices and firelight.
When she looked at her reflection in the window, her eyes glowed faintly violet.
Not human violet.
Celestial.
And for the first time, she didn’t look away.
She just whispered, to the darkness, “What are you?”
The answer came not from her reflection but from the hum beneath her ribs, steady and sure.
Something that remembers.
- Writer
