Chapter 2 The First Proof He Has Changed
Some things disappear quietly.
Others change so subtly that you don’t realize they’re different until it’s too late.
On the twenty-ninth day after Ardan vanished into the storm, something shifted again.
Not outside.
Inside.
At first, it was small.
A photograph in the hallway—one Anil had passed a thousand times—now showed different students.
Same uniforms. Same hallway.
Not the same faces.
She stared at it, waiting for her memory to bend, to reshape around what she was seeing.
It didn’t.
“So you see it too,” Cael murmured.
Lucien blinked at them. “See what?”
“The photo,” Cael said quietly.
“It’s always been like that,” Lucien replied without hesitation.
“No,” Anil whispered. “It hasn’t.”
Lucien only frowned, certain of a memory that had been rewritten beneath him.
That was the first sign.
Later that evening, Anil stood brushing her hair in the mirror.
Everything behind her looked normal—the window’s reflection of the dark outside, the bed, the lamplight, the curtains.
But not her.
Her reflection lagged a fraction behind her movement.
Barely a heartbeat late—yet unmistakable.
Her breath caught.
Cael saw it.
Lucien did too.
But when she blinked, the mirror behaved.
Cael’s wings tightened; Lucien’s expression sharpened.
“That’s not illusion,” Lucien said softly. “That’s distortion.”
“Meaning?” she asked.
“Meaning someone is testing how much of reality they can bend before anyone breaks.”
More distortions followed.
A girl swore the moon had risen red—but no one else remembered.
Another insisted a door used to be on the right, not the left.
A teacher forgot the name of a class he’d taught for over a decade.
No one panicked.
They couldn’t—not when their memories adjusted to the changes as if nothing had shifted at all.
Except them.
Except the three who had once felt fate crack open.
One morning, Cael didn’t speak. Not because he couldn’t, but because he wouldn’t. Lucien watched him all day, rare tension etching lines into his face. Cael wasn’t sick. Or frightened.
He was listening to something they couldn’t hear.
Later beneath the elm tree, Lucien said it aloud:
“He’s feeling him more than we are.”
“You feel him?” Anil whispered.
Cael didn’t look up. “He isn’t searching for us,” he murmured. “He is summoning us.”
The wind shifted—intentional, breath-like.
“Are we in danger?” she asked.
Lucien shook his head. “Not yet.”
A beat.
“But someone else is.”
That evening, a girl screamed in the dormitory.
Not from pain.
Not fear.
Recognition.
“I—I remember him,” she choked. “From a dream— from a life— from a—”
Her memory collapsed mid-sentence.
She froze, blinked, and whispered:
“What was I saying?”
She didn’t recall the scream.
But Anil, Cael, and Lucien did.
Someone had tried to remember Ardan.
And the world had edited her.
Lucien’s voice dropped low. “He used to be an echo in your past. A memory tied to your other lives.”
“But now?” Cael whispered.
“Now,” Lucien murmured, “he is becoming a shadow in your present.”
None of them slept.
In the hour before dawn, Anil heard it—
not a voice, not a call, but a knowing:
You are not running.
You are being led.
She sat up. Lucien was already awake. Cael stood at the window like he’d been carved there.
They had all felt it.
The moment when fear shifted…
from remembering him
to knowing he had never left.
The first rule of Blackthorn used to be simple:
Magic obeys rules.
Rules keep you safe.
By the thirty-second day after Ardan vanished, that rule had shattered in quiet, persistent ways.
Books appeared on the wrong shelves.
A clock stopped at the same minute every night.
The east wing door creaked exactly once each evening, though no one went near it.
“Old buildings,” some students shrugged.
“Residual magic,” others said.
But Anil, Cael, and Lucien recognized the pattern.
A heartbeat.
Slow.
Measured.
Growing stronger.
It started in History of Realms.
Professor Harglow, ancient enough to remember when angels still walked openly among humans, shuffled into class with his cane and three unnecessary layers of robes. His lecture dragged through the history of celestial accords—until he hesitated.
His voice faltered.
He stared at the chalkboard.
Then, very softly, he asked:
“Has this date… always been here?”
The board was blank.
The class exchanged confused glances.
Harglow’s hand trembled.
“Students,” he whispered, breath catching, “someone has rewritten the—”
The lights flickered—hard.
Every window went black.
And in the glass pane beside Anil’s desk, a reflection appeared.
Not hers.
A man’s silhouette—tall, motionless, familiar in a way that hollowed her.
He looked directly at her through the reflection.
And then he whispered, without sound but unmistakably:
Soon.
The lights steadied.
The reflection vanished.
Professor Harglow’s chalk snapped in half.
And Cael, pale and shaking, whispered:
“Anil… he wasn’t looking at the room at all.”
He swallowed.
“He was looking at you.”
