---
It started in the place no one ever truly looked—a forgotten corner of the academy grounds where ivy swallowed the stone, and rust danced on iron locks like decay in slow motion. That corner belonged to the greenhouse, or what remained of it. Shattered glass panes hung crooked in their frames, and twisted vines crawled over its ribs like nature reclaiming a corpse. Most students believed it haunted. Syvra Labelle believed it beautiful.
She wasn’t like the rest of them, never had been. Where others drifted through the halls of Lysoria Academy whispering about bloodlines and ballgowns, Syvra kept to the shadows, soaking in the solitude. She was quiet, yes—but not meek. There was something feral in her stillness. Something people didn’t notice until it was far too late.
It was on a Monday. The kind of Monday that dripped rain down her spine and made the world feel heavier. Syvra had crept out during lunch, black boots squelching through mud, clutching a notebook inked with half-formed poems and a feather pen chewed at the tip.
She didn’t mean to overhear anything. Gods, if she could’ve undone it later, she might’ve.
But fate is a bitter thing. It doesn’t care what you meant to do.
As she reached for the rusted door, she paused. Voices—two of them. Sharp. Urgent. Not meant for the wind to carry.
She stilled. The door had always been locked, but someone had unlatched it. She crouched low, knuckles whitening around her pen. Through a jagged glass shard, she saw them.
Professor Arden—head of the alchemy department. Stern. Immaculate. More marble statue than man.
And beside him, Aurien Vale—the academy’s golden boy. All perfect grades and perfect cheekbones. The kind of boy people built altars for.
Syvra’s breath hitched. She knew this wasn’t her place, this wasn’t meant for her ears, but something in the air tasted wrong. Coppery. Like secrets spilled just before a scream.
“You went too far,” Arden hissed, grabbing Aurien’s wrist. “She wasn’t supposed to bleed.”
Syvra’s eyes widened.
Aurien scoffed, pulling away. “She was in the way. She saw the vial. I panicked.”
“Panicked?” Arden’s voice cracked. “There are wards in place! We are two weeks from the Solstice and you nearly shattered *everything*—”
“She’s not dead.” Aurien’s voice lowered. “Yet.”
Syvra’s stomach twisted.
“What do you want me to do? Apologize?” he said with a cruel smile. “She should’ve known better than to sneak into the restricted wing. If she talks, we silence her. Like we did with Headmistress Talwyn.”
That name—Talwyn. She was *missing*. Not dead, not gone—just vanished. Everyone said she’d gone on sabbatical to the mainland. Syvra had never believed it.
Arden ran a hand down his face, fingers trembling. “The spell’s not ready. We need more energy, more blood. The girl’s accident won’t be enough.”
“Then we’ll find another. It’s not like this school is short on disposable nobility.”
Syvra’s head was reeling. Her lungs were tight with the weight of too many truths. A ritual? Blood? The *headmistress*?
A twig cracked under her foot.
Silence. Then—
“Who’s there?”
Panic sparked down her spine like lightning. Syvra turned and *ran*. Through the overgrown thorns, through the rain-soaked garden, lungs burning, notebook clutched to her chest like it could shield her.
They were chasing her. She could hear it—the crunch of boots, the thud of footsteps, the distant snarl of a spell igniting behind her.
She didn’t stop until she reached the old library—her sanctuary.
She slammed the door shut and wedged an iron candelabra against the handle.
Chest heaving, she fell to her knees. Everything was unraveling. Every illusion, every lie that draped the academy like silken banners—torn.
And she couldn’t un-hear it. Couldn’t forget the way Arden’s voice had trembled, or the hunger in Aurien’s tone.
She wasn’t safe. Not anymore.
---
That Night
Syvra didn’t sleep. Instead, she stayed curled in the upper loft of the library, ink staining her fingertips, candlelight flickering across furious pages. She rewrote everything she’d heard. Drew sigils. Mapped out timelines. She remembered seeing a girl being carried out of the infirmary yesterday—pale, eyes unfocused, bloodied sleeve. That must’ve been her. The one who “saw the vial.”
They would come for her next. She knew that.
But Syvra Labelle didn’t break. Not easily.
By morning, she had plans. She began slipping messages into hollow books. She bribed the ghost in the east corridor to spy on Arden. She enlisted the help of the dryad who lived in the courtyard’s old tree, promising her the greenhouse back in exchange for secrets.
And when Aurien cornered her in the dueling arena three days later, she didn’t flinch.
“Hello, Syvra,” he drawled, brushing nonexistent dust off his cuff. “Heard you’ve been...curious.”
She smiled—sharp and sweet. “Only about the things that rot in the dark.”
He laughed. “You think you can stop us?”
Syvra tilted her head. “No. But I can burn everything down before you win.”
Then she jabbed the sigil carved into her palm and whispered the word she’d pulled from the archives.
The wards around the arena *shattered*. Screams echoed through the halls as students began collapsing—those tied to the ritual. The dryad's vines burst through the floor, dragging Aurien back, roots coiling around his limbs like shackles.
In the chaos, Syvra walked calmly to the Headmistress’s old office.
Inside the headmistress’s old office, time felt frozen. Dust hovered midair like it feared settling. The desk was exactly as Talwyn had left it—half a cup of cold tea, a shattered quill, parchment yellowing beneath the weight of secrets no one had dared to read.
Syvra stepped inside like she belonged. Like the ghosts had been waiting just for her.
She laid the notebook on the desk, opened to the page inked in fury and sleepless nights—names, dates, sigils drawn in blood and defiance. She’d written it all. Every spell whispered in the shadows. Every student who’d vanished without explanation. Every lie the professors fed them like poisoned sugar. Every ritual carved into the bones of the academy itself.
Then she turned, slow and deliberate, and faced the portrait hanging above the hearth—Headmistress Talwyn, cloaked in emerald and secrets, eyes too knowing for oil and canvas.
Syvra raised her chin.
“Come out, come out, little monsters,” she whispered to the silence, her voice like frost against skin. “The girl who wasn’t meant to hear you… heard *everything*.”
The flames in the hearth surged higher—green, angry, alive. The shadows along the walls shifted, forming shapes too human to be tricks of light.
One stepped forward—**Professor Eiran**, the one who taught Astral Theory but always locked his desk drawers too tightly. Another figure followed—**Mistress Kael**, robes stained with herbs that didn’t grow in any normal garden. And behind them, others—staff Syvra had always suspected were more than they claimed. People who had built this school atop something ancient. Something that *hummed* beneath the floorboards.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Kael said, but her voice was thin. Fractured.
Syvra only smiled. Gods, she looked lovely when she smiled like that—like someone who had nothing left to lose and everything left to burn.
“Neither should Talwyn,” Syvra murmured, reaching into her coat pocket and pulling out a tiny glass vial.
The same kind Aurien had tried to hide.
Inside: a single silver-blue flame. Flickering. Trapped. Screaming.
“I found her,” Syvra said, and for a heartbeat the entire room *stopped breathing*. “Not her body. Her *soul*. You lot tried to use her as a tether, didn’t you? Part of your spell? A living seal for your little ritual?”
Eiran took a step forward. “You don’t understand what you’re doing.”
“Oh, I do.” Syvra’s voice turned low, laced with venom and a dangerous kind of calm. “You needed her power. Her authority. And when she got suspicious, you ripped her from her body and shoved her into this.”
She held up the vial. The flame inside flared in response, as if in recognition.
“But you made one mistake,” she continued. “You assumed no one would care enough to look for her. You assumed you were untouchable. Untouchable people forget how loud whispers can get.”
Eiran raised a hand, a spell gathering on his fingertips. “Give us the flame, Syvra.”
“Come take it, then.” Her voice was almost a purr. “But just so you know—this office is warded. Not by you. By Talwyn. And guess what? The wards recognize me now.”
There was a *snap*. A pulse of light shot through the floor, the walls, the very bones of the school. The spell she’d etched hours ago with ink, blood, and bone shimmered into place, and the professors *froze*. Locked mid-motion.
The room trembled with old magic reawakening.
She stepped forward, walking up to Eiran, whose face twisted in fury and fear as his body refused to move.
“You tried to tear the world open for power,” she said softly. “But I’m here to close the door.”
She poured the flame from the vial onto the desk.
It didn’t burn.
It *bloomed*.
Like a phoenix remembering its name.
And in that blaze, Headmistress Talwyn stepped forward—reborn in firelight, hair crowned in silver, eyes molten with wrath.
“You,” she whispered to Eiran. “You were supposed to *protect* them.”
He couldn’t speak. Couldn’t run.
Syvra stood beside her, shoulders squared, voice steady.
“This academy was built to teach magic. Not *feed* it.”
---
The school changed after that.
The corrupt professors were never seen again—some said they fled, others that the wards devoured them.
Talwyn returned to power, cloaked in rumors and rebirth, but her eyes always softened when they landed on Syvra.
And as for Syvra Labelle?
She didn’t go back to being quiet.
Now, people *listened* when she walked by.
Because some girls stumble into secrets.
But Syvra?
She *became* one.
And she was the kind you didn’t dare whisper about.
Unless you wanted her to hear.
React
