Bound to nothingness

Chapter 9:"The evidence. "

The moment Emily hit the edge of the eastern corridor, she realized the rhythm behind them was wrong. She skidded to a halt.

"Wait."

Lucien whirled around. Elsie, right on his heels, nearly slammed straight into his back.

"What is it?" Elsie hissed.

Emily didn't answer. She turned back toward the tree line, her eyes straining against the shadows. "Nyla."

They froze, staring out into the dark. Nothing moved except the high branches, whipped around by violent flashes of light deeper in the woods. Spells were still cracking out there, harsh, blinding bursts of blue and white as the professors fought to pin the creature down.

Nyla wasn't anywhere.

"She was right behind us," Elsie whispered. Her voice shook.

"I know."

Lucien's voice had dropped to a quiet, flat rasp.

Emily took a half-step back toward the barrier. "We have to go back for her."

Lucien grabbed her elbow, his grip tight. "We can't."

"She's our friend, Lucien!"

"I know."

"Then let go of me!"

Elsie pulled her gaze away from the woods, panic sharpening her voice. "If the professors are still out there, Emily, we're done. We'll get caught instantly."

Tears spilled over Emily's lashes, hot against her cheeks. "What if they already caught her?"

Neither of them had an answer for that.

A heavy detonation thundered through the forest, shaking the stone under their boots. Emily flinched hard, her voice cracking. "What if something took her?"

Lucien stared down the corridor toward the barrier line. For the first time since they had snuck out tonight, the arrogance was entirely gone from his face. He just looked terrified.

"We check," he said softly. "Just to the edge."

They crept back toward the turn in the eastern wing, sticking close to the wall. But before they could clear the corner, low, hurried voices echoed up the corridor.

Emily grabbed a handful of Lucien’s sleeve. All three of them locked up, holding their breath.

Two figures were standing under the dim torchlight further down the hall. Professor Voss, her robes torn open at the shoulder and smeared with soot, stood across from Headmistress Seraphina Veyre.

Seraphina’s hands were clamped behind her back, her posture so stiff she looked carved out of iron.

"Did you find anyone?" she asked.

Voss shook her head slowly, wiping a smear of grime from her forehead. "Not a single student."

"Are you certain, Voss?"

"I swept the entire eastern perimeter myself after the beast was pinned," she snapped quietly, exhausted. She gestured toward the shadows near the barrier. "There’s nothing out there."

Seraphina’s eyes narrowed into slits. "Then who triggered the barrier?"

"I don't know."

"You're telling me an ancient shadow-tier beast slipped its tether inside Veylcrest without human intervention?"

Voss let out a heavy breath, staring at the floor. "That's what's keeping me up."

Seraphina’s voice dipped, cold enough to freeze the air in the hall. "A spy."

Behind the corner, Emily felt Lucien instantly go rigid.

"It's the only logic," Voss admitted quietly. "Someone breached the outer grounds."

"Someone who knows how the wards work," Seraphina corrected. "Or someone inside who opened the door for them."

Emily’s heart was hammering so hard against her ribs she thought the professors would hear it. She looked at Lucien, her eyes wide with shock.

A spy. Not four students breaking rules. Not Nyla.

Emily had to clamp a hand over her mouth. Relief hit her so hard her knees almost gave out.

"Double the guards on the eastern wing," Seraphina ordered, turning on her heel. "No one steps a foot near the Forbidden Land until I figure out what walked out of it."

"Understood."

Their footsteps faded down the adjoining hall until the quiet returned.

Emily slumped against the stone, letting out a long, trembling breath. "They didn't see her," she breathed. "They didn't find her."

Elsie nodded, her eyes bright with nervous energy. "No."

"Then where is she?" Emily’s voice cracked again. "If she didn't get caught, Elsie, where did she go?"

Elsie reached out, taking Emily's shaking hand. "Listen to me. Voss searched the whole perimeter. If she was hurt out there, she would have found her."

"But—"

"It means she hid," Elsie insisted, her grip firm. "She got clear before they sealed it."

Emily wiped her face with the back of her sleeve. "You really believe that?"

"I do."

Lucien finally relaxed his shoulder against the wall, though his jaw stayed clenched. "Elsie's right. If Voss missed her, she made it out."

Emily swallowed down the lump in her throat. "She has to have."

None of them actually believed it one hundred percent. But the alternative was too dark to sit with, so they held onto it

They snuck back to the dorms without getting caught, but the room felt suffocating. Nobody pulled off their boots. Nobody got into bed.

Midnight bled into one in the morning.

Emily sat huddled on the windowsill, staring out into the pitch-black grounds. Elsie was curled sideways on the edge of the mattress, tapping her nails rhythmically against her knee. Lucien hadn't moved from the wooden chair by the desk, his arms crossed tight over his chest.

The pendulum on the wall clock ticked on.

1:47 AM.

"What if she's not coming back?" Emily whispered into the dark.

"She will," Elsie said softly.

"You don't know that, Elsie."

"I don't," Elsie admitted, turning to look at the door. "But I know Nyla. She's too stubborn to get caught by a bunch of trees."

Lucien let out a faint sigh from the corner. "Understatement of the year."

Emily managed a tiny, weak smile. "Yeah. Very."

"She'll show up."

At two in the morning on the dot, the heavy bronze latch clicked.

All three of them practically jumped out of their skin. The door slipped open just enough for a shadowy figure to slide inside.

"Nyla!" Emily was off the window seat in a second, throwing her arms around Nyla before she could even pull the door shut behind her.

"Hey—woah," Nyla muttered, stumbling back a step under Emily's weight.

Elsie scrambled off the bed, scanning her from head to toe. "Are you alright? Are you bleeding?"

Nyla shook her head, gently pushing Emily back so she could breathe. "I'm fine. Really."

Lucien stayed by the desk, his eyes narrowed as he took her in. There was no mud on her knees. Her breath wasn't ragged. "You were out there by yourself this whole time?"

Nyla caught herself before she blinked. "Yeah. I had to circle clear around the south wall to avoid the guards."

It was seamless, but Lucien’s posture shifted slightly. He didn't buy it.

Emily didn't care about the details. she was already wiping tears off her chin. "I thought they got you. I thought you were gone."

Nyla’s face softened, a flicker of genuine guilt crossing her eyes. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you."

"Don't you ever pull something like that again."

"I'll try my best."

Elsie crossed her arms, watching her closely. "How'd you bypass the ward at the south line? Voss said it was sealed."

Nyla looked past them, out the glass. "Found an old drainage gap near the base. Barely fit."

It wasn't an absolute lie, but it sure wasn't the truth. Karl's voice was still practically vibrating in her ears, cold and sharp: You don't say a word about tonight. To anyone.

She wasn't about to test him.

Lucien kept his eyes fixed on her face, searching for the tell. Nyla deliberately pulled off her dark coat and threw it over the back of a chair, breaking his eye contact.

"Can we just drop it and sleep?" she asked, her voice flat with exhaustion. "My legs are dead."

Nobody pushed her. But when the lanterns went out, the tension in the room stayed thick enough to cut with a blade.

At six in the morning sharp—

CLANG.

The iron emergency bell didn't just ring; it hit like a physical wave, rattling the glass in the window frames and violently shattering the quiet.

Every bed in Veylcrest emptied at once.

One.

Two.

Three times the heavy metal thundered over the courtyard.

Nyla bolted upright, her heart hammering against her ribs before her eyes were even fully open. Emily gasped, tumbling half out of her blankets.

"What is that?!" Emily yelled over the echo.

Lucien's face tightened. He was already at the door, tossing it open to the sound of frantic footsteps echoing up from the lower levels. "The alarm bell. It's the iron call."

Elsie jammed her feet into her shoes, her hands trembling. "What does that mean? Did the beast break loose again?"

Lucien’s face was grim. "It means someone called a full assembly. Something went horribly wrong."

Within ten minutes, the grand staircases were a choked river of half-dressed, panicked students spilling into the Great Hall. Professors lined the outer stone pillars like dark statues, their hands resting near their wands. Nobody was chatting. The usual morning noise was replaced by a tense, breathless murmur.

Nyla stayed glued to Emily's side, her body aching from the strain of the night before. As they moved into the crowd near the back, her eyes darted across the hall and caught Karl standing motionless against a pillar.

He was watching her. Not staring, just keeping his cold, dark eyes locked onto her face as the crowd shifted around them.

He didn't give a single thing away. But Nyla knew: he still thought it was her.

A sudden wave of silence washed through the Hall from the front doors.

Headmistress Seraphina Veyre stepped onto the raised dais. She didn't have her usual parchment or leather ledger. She just stood there, her cold gaze cutting through the room until even the breathing seemed to stop.

"Last night," Seraphina began, her voice carrying effortlessly into every corner of the vaulted ceiling, "the perimeter barrier protecting the Forbidden Land was violently breached."

A collective gasp rippled through the hundreds of students packed shoulder-to-shoulder.

"The creature that was awakened has been subdued and returned to its enclosure," she continued, indifferent to their reaction. "However... the individual who opened that boundary remains unaccounted for."

Nyla’s stomach dropped through the floor. Beside her, Emily’s hand twitched, reaching out to grab a fold of Nyla’s sleeve.

Seraphina took a slow step forward to the edge of the stone platform. "Someone standing in this room entered a zone that has been strictly off-limits to students for over a hundred years."

Her eyes swept over the sea of faces like a searchlight.

"I am going to offer one opportunity for truth," she said quietly. "Who crossed the barrier last night?

Dead silence.

No one breathed. No one shifted their feet. The air in the Great Hall grew suffocatingly heavy.

Seraphina waited five agonizing seconds. Ten.

"Very well," she said softly. She looked toward the side archway. "Andrew."

A younger assistant professor stepped out from the shadows of the side aisle, holding a heavy wooden case bound in black iron.

Seraphina's tone didn't lift an inch, but it felt like a trap springing shut.

"We have evidence."

The iron latches on the box snapped open with a sharp, brutal clack.

"Andrew," Seraphina commanded. "Bring it forward."