Eris didn't scream.
She wanted to—her heart pounded, her muscles screamed to move—but she didn't. Screaming was what someone unprepared did. Screaming was what they expected.
She faced the Watcher in silence.
He stood outside her window—no ledge, no support—forty stories above the ground. Cloaked in white, his hood shadowed his face, but Eris could see the shimmer of magic rippling from his form. Protective sigils. Concealment glyphs. He didn't want to be seen.
Too late for that.
His voice was calm. Unnaturally so.
"Eris Thorne. By order of the Circle, you are summoned for immediate transfer to the Sanctum of Inquiry."
Eris's breath caught. "Transfer," she repeated. "Not arrest?"
"Compliance ensures dignity."
"And if I say no?"
He didn't blink. "Then you will be... guided."
Her hand dropped slowly to her side, fingers curling near her focus ring—the thin metal band worn by Collegium mages to cast structured spells. But as her skin brushed the sigil on her collarbone, it pulsed.
No.
The ring felt wrong. Too small.
Too… limited.
"You're here alone," she said. "Why?"
"I was chosen. I volunteered."
"Because you thought I'd go quietly?"
"Because I don't like what they'll send after me."
Something flickered in his tone. Not cruelty.
Pity.
That scared her more than a threat.
"I haven't broken any laws," she said. "I've done everything the Circle wanted."
"You were never supposed to exist," the Watcher replied. "That alone breaks the Circle."
He took a step closer, his foot not touching the ground but floating an inch above it. The glow of Spiralis magic shimmered around his ankles.
"You don't understand what you are," he said softly.
"I'm beginning to," she whispered.
A pause.
Then, as if reluctant: "The Ninth doesn't obey the rules of the world. It rewrites them. And it never stops at one bearer."
"It spreads."
Eris blinked. Her thoughts raced. That wasn't in the book. That wasn't in the whispers.
"You're not here to bring me in," she said slowly. "You're here to see if it's already started."
The Watcher tensed.
A second too late.
She raised her hand.
Not to cast.
To release.
The room around her groaned as the sigil flared—not in light, but in silence. Every candle in the dormitory went out. The protective glyphs etched into her walls burned black.
The Watcher's wards fractured with a sound like breaking glass.
He staggered back—but not far enough.
Eris didn't speak. Her will did.
Fall.
The air beneath him vanished.
The wind howled as he dropped—twenty floors before he caught himself mid-fall, spiraling into the dark.
Eris stood at the shattered window, her chest rising, magic crackling along her skin like sparks through ice.
Then, without thinking, she whispered to the night:
"I didn't mean to."
But the sigil had.
Far below, the Watcher landed on a spire.
He clutched his ribs, breath shallow, eyes wide with something he had not expected to feel.
Terror.
Behind him, a voice emerged from the shadows.
"Report?"
He didn't turn. "It's real."
"Will she comply?"
"No," he said. "She doesn't need to."
He looked to the sky.
"She's not learning the Ninth, anymore."
"It's learning her."