Aevelle’s fourth week at Ilvermorny began with an unexpected stillness.
The bitter wind that usually swept across the hills and stone towers had stilled overnight, leaving the world wrapped in a hushed quiet. Students still bustled through corridors, clutching scrolls and spellbooks, but there was a peculiar gentleness in the air, as though the castle itself was holding its breath.
In Magical Creatures Field Studies, Professor Olbridge had them observe frost moths—tiny, shimmering insects that only appeared during a specific phase of winter and could vanish in a blink of snow. Aevelle watched them cluster around her fingers, their wings like shards of moonlight, and found herself thinking of the chamber below Ilvermorny again. The way it felt to be near it—like time itself thickened, like memory breathed.
At lunch, Ruby plopped beside her, her cheeks flushed and eyes sparkling. “Guess what?”
“Toby’s owl responded?” Aevelle asked teasingly.
Ruby turned scarlet. “No! I mean—yes, but also—he asked if I wanted to join the Herbology club with him next week. Said they’re growing whispergrass and that it might help with memory spells.”
“Whispergrass?” Serene raised a brow. “Careful. That stuff hears better than you do.”
They laughed, and Aevelle couldn’t help the warm twist in her chest. Ruby was glowing. Serene, too, looked lighter these days. She and Cassandra had been paired during last week’s dueling exercise and, despite a slightly scorched desk, had emerged laughing and whispering as though they'd known each other for years.
Aevelle was happy for them—more than happy, really. But under it all, that sense of something hidden still pulsed beneath everything. And it wasn’t long before it found her again.
That evening, Aevelle wandered into one of the unused classrooms on the third floor. She’d been searching for a quiet place to study, but what she found instead was Soren.
He was standing at the far end of the room, chalking strange, curling sigils onto the blackboard. They weren’t from any language she recognized—except one.
A glyph. Faint, but unmistakable.
She stepped closer. “Is that from the parchment?”
Soren turned, not startled. Expecting her. “Not exactly. This one appeared in my dream.”
That pulled her up short. “You’re dreaming of them too now?”
“Only fragments. But last night, I saw one forming above the Chamber—etched in light, as if someone wanted me to see it. When I woke up, I remembered the shape perfectly.”
Aevelle sat beside him. “The dreams used to come only to me. Now you. How long before it spreads further?”
Soren looked grim. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
They worked in silence after that—Soren sketching theories, Aevelle flipping through borrowed books from the restricted shelf. At some point, she glanced at him and asked, “Why are you helping me?”
He didn’t answer immediately. When he did, his voice was quiet.
“Because I saw you in that library, trying to unravel something no one else even noticed. Because you looked scared—and angry. And because I’ve been waiting for someone else to see it too.”
Aevelle looked down at her notes. “What happens if we find the truth and no one believes us?”
Soren gave her a thin smile. “Then we do what all great spellcrafters do. We prove it.”
That night, she returned to Thunderbird Tower late, her parchment ink-smudged and her thoughts brimming. The dreams were spreading. The symbols were growing bolder. And somewhere beneath it all, the truth waited—sleeping, maybe. But not for much longer.