ShadowBound: The Need For Power

The rest of the school day passed with the usual exhaustion of classes approaching exam season. Students were sharper, tenser, and more easily irritated than they had been even a week before. Theory exams waited in a week, and the practical exams would follow the week after. No official format had been announced yet, which meant every student had started inventing possibilities in their own head.

When lessons finally ended, the academy bells rang across the grounds with a low, steady sound that rolled over the corridors, courtyards, and dormitory paths. Students poured out of classrooms in waves, talking louder than they had in the morning, either relieved to be done for the day or annoyed that their evening would still belong to studying. Liam moved through them without joining anyone, his books and assignment materials held beneath one arm as he made his way toward the dormitory side of the academy.

Only then, with the day’s observation finished, did his thoughts settle fully on the report.

’Too much needs to be cut,’ Liam thought as he crossed beneath one of the outer archways. ’If I include everything Nyxie showed me, Lady Seraphina will know I used a method beyond normal observation before she finishes the second page.’

That might not be a problem on its own. The assignment had not forbidden the use of familiars, summons, or magic-assisted observation, at least not explicitly. But Tactical Espionage was never only about following the written instruction. Seraphina wanted to see how they interpreted limits, how they hid methods, how they weighed risk, and how well they understood what their own results revealed about them.

A perfect report could be more suspicious than a flawed one.

’The sleeve habit can stay,’ he thought. ’The staff hall timing can stay. Professor Vale’s document transfers can stay if I keep it general. The red wax should be removed. The storage corridor hesitation... maybe implied, not stated clearly.’

He adjusted his grip on the books as he stepped outside.

The cold hit him immediately.

Liam’s expression darkened by a fraction.

Late autumn had sharpened overnight. The air was colder than it had been the previous week, more biting, more determined to make itself known. It moved across the academy grounds in thin, hard currents that slipped beneath collars and pressed through clothing with irritating persistence. The sky above had already begun fading toward evening, though the sun had not fully disappeared. Its light looked pale and useless, stretched across the dark stone of the academy without warmth.

Students reacted as they crossed the grounds. Coats were pulled tighter. Scarves were lifted over mouths. A few students hurried toward the dormitory buildings with their shoulders hunched. The first-years complained most openly, though even some second-years looked displeased by the sudden drop in temperature.

Farther ahead, a group of students from Crescent walked through the cold with far less discomfort, their expressions mildly amused by everyone else’s suffering.

Liam drew a controlled thread of fire-aligned Myst through his body.

Heat bloomed inwardly, moving from his core into his channels, then through muscle and skin without igniting outward. It helped like always. But helping was not the same as fixing. The cold still existed, still pressed against his face, still dragged across his ears and the back of his neck like an insult repeated by the weather itself.

’Annoying,’ he thought. ’It was not this cold last week.’

He continued walking, irritated by the simple fact that the academy required crossing open ground to reach any place worth being. His mind returned briefly to the report, partly because thinking about Tactical Espionage was somehow less irritating than thinking about the temperature.

’Lady Seraphina will probably notice the method is incomplete,’ Liam thought. ’But if it is believable enough, she cannot question every detail without admitting the assignment is testing method more than observation.’

Kaine would likely approach it differently. He would look for impracticality, overconfidence, and failure to account for discovery. The report had to show restraint. It had to look like Liam understood that observation was not only about how much could be gathered, but what could be gathered without exposing the observer.

’Leave enough imperfection to look real,’ he thought.

A voice called out before he reached the main path toward his dormitory.

"Liam."

He turned his head.

Sheila stood near one of the covered walkways leading toward the eastern dormitory side of the academy. Her white hair moved lightly in the cold wind, and unlike most students nearby, she did not seem particularly bothered by the temperature.

Her coat was fastened properly, but not drawn tightly around her. The cold touched her without making her shrink from it, which made sense. Crescent’s weather was far harsher than Tempest’s, and with her affinities for ice, water, and light, she had always seemed more comfortable in colder air than Liam thought any reasonable person should be.

She approached with calm steps, though her expression carried a seriousness beneath the polite greeting.

"Good evening," Sheila said.

Liam inclined his head slightly. "Evening."

For a brief moment, she seemed to study him, her blue eyes moving over his coat, the faint tension in his shoulders, and the way his expression had become even flatter than usual in the cold.

"You look irritated," she said.

"It’s cold."

Sheila glanced around as if only then remembering the weather was supposed to be unpleasant. "A little."

Liam stared at her.

A small, almost apologetic smile touched her face. "Right. More than a little for you."

He did not answer because there was no useful response to that.

Sheila’s smile faded into something more thoughtful. "Do you have time for a talk?"

Liam studied her.

She had not asked casually. The question was too carefully placed for that. Sheila did not look anxious, exactly, but there was a prepared quality to her posture, as if she had thought about this before approaching him and still had not decided the easiest way to begin. That meant the conversation had a purpose.

’She wants something,’ Liam thought. ’Or she is worried about something.’

"Fine," he said. "But we are not talking outside. For some reason, today is colder than last week."

Sheila looked at him for a second, and this time her smile returned with faint amusement.

"Then we can go to my room," she said. "It would be private, and it’s warmer."

Liam’s enthusiasm for the detour was nonexistent, especially since he had been heading toward his own dorm and still needed to revise the report. But standing outside was worse, and Sheila clearly intended to speak with him one way or another.

"Fine," he said again.

They began walking toward the second-year dormitory building where Sheila’s room was located. The path was not long, but the cold made every extra step feel unnecessary. Sheila walked beside him with composed ease, her hands resting lightly inside her coat pockets, while Liam kept his fire-aligned Myst moving steadily through his body.

Around them, students crossed in different directions. Some noticed the two of them together and looked twice, but most were too focused on escaping the cold or reaching dinner to care for long.

The silence between Liam and Sheila was not hostile, but it was not completely comfortable either.

They had spoken in groups over the past two months. They had exchanged practical words, shared tables, discussed class matters, and occasionally been pulled into the same conversations by Dylan, Charlotte, or Ariana. But they had not truly spoken alone in some time. Not properly. Not the way they had during the period before Nalim, when leadership, Crescent, Percy, and Liam’s own position among the second-years had all pressed close enough that silence could no longer hold them.

Sheila seemed aware of that.

Liam was aware of it too, though he would not have called it meaningful.

They entered her dormitory building, and the warmth inside immediately made the detour feel less unreasonable. The entrance hall carried the same general design as Liam’s dorm building, but Sheila’s floor had a quieter rhythm to it. Students moved through the lounge in casual clothes, some greeting Sheila with respectful familiarity as she passed. She responded with small nods and calm smiles, never lingering long enough to invite conversation. Liam noticed how naturally she handled it. There was no performance in the way she acknowledged people, but no uncertainty either.

People watched her because she had become someone worth watching.

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