It was too quiet.
Not the kind of quiet that meant peace or rest.
The dorm felt… wrong. Smaller. Like the air itself had thickened and congealed around them overnight, trying to press them into the stone.
Asli sat with his back against the cold wall, knees drawn to his chest.
The others had long since passed out.
Cassian sprawled in a mess of limbs, half-snoring, his jacket tossed over his face like it could block the world out.
Silas slumped where he sat, chin tipped forward, breathing shallow. Still holding posture even in sleep.
And Rin… she hadn't moved since dusk. Curled up like a creature trying to vanish, only her eyes visible — open, half-lidded, glowing faintly when the moonlight caught them. But she wasn't awake. Not fully.
No one really was anymore.
Asli looked down at his wrist.
Opened his hand. Closed it.
Again. Again.
The mark had spread.
Not violently. Not glowing like some prophecy in fire and gold.
Just… deeper.
It seeped through him like ink in old parchment, slow and hungry, wrapping itself around the tendons of his being like it belonged there. Like it always had.
He hated it.
But he didn't stop staring.
He tried not to think about it.
But the memory was still there — the four of them in a circle, frost blooming on their skin, hands stacked in a useless promise.
One chance, they'd said. It had felt brave. Now it just felt desperate.
Still… he'd meant it.
Rumors were snapping like dry twigs across the Academy.
Ezra's name was in all of them.
The Communion. The moon. The way the sky had turned red and the sparrows had fallen silent.
No one spoke it aloud — not really — but the glances said enough.
Ezra was gone.
And something else had answered in his place.
And Asli… Asli had always been too close. Too still. Too strange.
They looked at him like maybe the Trial had already started with him.
He leaned his head back against the wall. Let the chill of the stone bite into his skin.
It never gave. It never softened.
The Blood Moon Trial had always been a myth. A whisper.
"If you're marked, you go," they used to say.
Didn't matter your age. Your class. Your house.
Didn't matter if you were top of your cohort or barely scraping by.
If the mark chose you, that was it. You were Reaped.
And now?
Now the stories had teeth.
The mark pulsed again, steady and slow — a drumbeat counting something down.
The Trial didn't take you in your sleep.
It didn't ask permission.
When it came, it tore you out. Whole.
Mind, body, soul — dumped you into someplace else.
Someplace broken.
Someplace where resonance didn't obey the rules and monsters wore old gods like skins.
Ten years. Ten years it had slept.
And now it was hungry again.
He glanced toward the cots.
Cassian. Silas. Rin.
All marked.
All going.
No choice.
Maybe that was fate.
Maybe that was the point.
He exhaled — quietly. Carefully.
Then moved.
Silas's arm had gone limp across his ribs. Cassian's foot was somehow tucked under his thigh. Rin's leg lay draped over his ankle like a weightless shackle.
They were too warm.
It felt… wrong. Like fever heat. Like something inside them was burning slow.
He eased out of their tangle, inch by inch, like a thief slipping out of his own life.
Pulled the blanket higher over them once he stood — not because it would help, but because it was something he could still do.
Then he crossed the cold floor barefoot, the stone biting up through his soles.
Each step felt louder than it should've — like the dorm wanted to remember this moment.
Like the world had just become more real.
The hallway was dim.
The torches flickered like they were breathing too fast.
Everything felt… hesitant. Held together by threads.
He pulled out his phone.
No signal.
Waited.
One bar.
He dialed.
Voicemail.
Again.
Voicemail.
He stared at the name glowing on the screen.
Eli H.
Father.
It looked foreign. Like a name he'd memorized but never really known.
His thumb hovered.
"Hey, Dad—"
Backspace. Backspace.
Too raw. Too open. Too him.
He rewrote it:
Hey Eli. I know you've been busy. But I think I'm one of the Reaped. Call me when you can.
He stared at the message for a long time before hitting send.
No read receipt.
Of course not.
The phone sat cold in his hand. Useless now.
He sighed and leaned against the hallway wall.
Really, life sucked.
His powers sucked.
He wasn't special. Not like Ezra. Not like Rin.
Just a blindfolded boy with a voice that sometimes saw too far.
His shadow slithered beside him — flickered across the wall with too many teeth.
Even it seemed annoyed.
He smiled without meaning it.
Eli was probably in the throne room.
Halfway through a scroll of royal decrees. Nodding solemnly beside the King.
Drinking expensive wine and pretending like the sky wasn't bleeding overhead.
He was the King's right hand.
The one who made sure the kingdom didn't fall apart every time a noble spat sideways.
And Asli?
Asli was an afterthought.
A whisper on voicemail.
A footnote in the margins of Eli's weekly reports.
They hadn't spoken in over a year.
Not properly.
Not since the messages turned into apologies.
Into empty "love you"s sent past midnight.
Into promises that never landed.
And if the Trial was really coming?
If he was really one of the marked?
Then maybe there wouldn't be time to fix it.
Maybe there never was.