The sky was bruised purple when Aira finally returned to the academy. The evening wind carried the scent of rain and metal—like the world was holding its breath. She clutched the silver box tightly in her arms the entire walk back, as if letting go might somehow make it vanish.
In the dorm common room, Josh and Zara were waiting, mid-argument over some assignment. Both turned when they saw her.
"Aira!" Josh gasped, half rising. "You're back already? The principal didn't lock you up for leaving?"
"She wasn't… happy," Aira muttered, placing the small box on the table. "But she let me go. Two days. I just… needed to see something."
Zara leaned closer, eyes catching the dull shine of the metal. "That's the thing you went home for? Looks ancient."
Aira nodded. "It belonged to my great-grandmother, Lilian."
The name made Josh blink. "Wait. Lilian? The same Lilian the officer mentioned?"
Aira didn't answer. Her fingers brushed the box's intricate carvings—spirals that looked like they were once glowing sigils but had long since faded.
"My grandmother said it never opened," she murmured. "That even Lilian couldn't open it. Not till the day she—" She cut herself off.
Zara frowned, sensing the heaviness in her tone. "Maybe it's better that way," she said softly. "You don't know what's in there. Could be anything."
"Yeah." Aira forced a laugh. "Maybe I'll just… keep it as a relic."
But she couldn't stop feeling it. The strange hum beneath her fingertips, like the metal itself was breathing. Watching. Waiting.
After a few more minutes of chatter, she excused herself. "I'm tired. I'll see you guys tomorrow."
....
Her room was quiet. Too quiet.
Moonlight lay thin across the dorm room, washing the walls in a pale, careless light. Aira sat at her desk, the silver box set before her like a small, impossible moon. For hours it had been quiet, its metal cool and indifferent beneath her fingers. She told herself she would close it and sleep. Instead she touched the lid again.
This time it answered.
A soft click, so small she almost missed it. The lid slid aside as if it had been waiting for her palm all along.
Violet mist spilled up and out, smelling faintly of ozone and old rain. The air in the room thickened, and the hairs on her arms stood up as if someone had walked past with static on their coat. The metal at the box's edge thrummed against her skin — not cold, not warm, but alive.
She should have shut it. Instead she leaned forward, because every piece of her that had been pulled toward Lilian tugged harder now.
The mist coalesced. Shadow took a shape. Then the room lost its small, safe edges and became something much larger, as if the walls had folded inward to make space for a single presence.
He stepped from the violet smoke.
Kyran filled the doorway like a sudden storm: taller, his coat a falling shadow threaded with violet, and those eyes—impossible, furious purple—burning through the dimness. The air around him tasted like metal and thunder. Time itself seemed to hesitate.
"You shouldn't have touched what was sealed," he said, low and cold. The words landed like a verdict.
Aira clutched the desk edge. "I—" Her voice trembled. "I didn't mean—"
"You never do," he snapped. Each step he took pulled the light in its path taut. "You dig. You pry. You wake things that were buried for a reason."
The violet light from the box flared like a heartbeat. In that reflection she could see the ruin in him: a man threaded through with grief and fury, the sort of fury that had learned how to be patient and merciless.
"You broke the seal," he said, and there was no patience left in the words. "You opened what should have stayed quiet. Do you know what that means?"
"No—tell me!" Her reply was instant, reckless. "Tell me what it is. Tell me why—"
"You'll learn the meaning of consequence," he said. The room tightened, the air went thin. "Not tomorrow. Not in whispers. Now."
She should have run. Instead adrenaline braided into defiance. "I won't be your victim," she said, voice shaking but steady. "I won't—"
A bitter laugh, like dry leaves. "You ask if I'll kill you as if it's a question." He stepped closer, the violet light coiling at his knuckles. "How can I forget— you are Lilian." He spat the name with contempt. "I thought you were different. I hoped you weren't her. But you are the same—greedy for what was forbidden, always clawing for more. You wanted her secrets and you opened them."
Aira's chest tightened as if struck. "I'm not her," she whispered.
"Lies," he said, voice flattening. "You are as selfish, as reckless. You ripped open what was sealed for a reason. And now you have to die." His eyes cut into hers with a cruelty sharpened by years. "I will be the one to kill you. I should have done it in the forest—when I saw you there but I left you because I thought you were not her. I gave you chances you never deserved. That was my mistake."
His hand rose. Violet flame gathered around his fingers, a blade of cold light humming with a sound like winter wind.
"You asked for consequence," he said. "Now face it."
He lunged.
Everything contracted to a white-hot point: the blade of light, the rasp of his breath, Aira's own heart hammering like a trapped bird. She saw the motion in a bright, terrible sliver—had time slowed or simply pushed out everything useless to watch this single stroke?
Then the dorm door burst open.
"AIRA!" Zara's voice tore through the charged air like a bell. She slammed into the room, wild-haired, eyes wide and furious.
Kyran's movement hit a shudder, as if the world itself recoiled. His hand faltered; the violet light stuttered. He looked at Zara—just for a second—and his expression twisted into something almost unreadable: irritation, amusement, contempt. The blade of light recoiled into smoke.
"You're meddling with things that were meant to sleep," he said, quieter now, venom cooling into a bored hiss. "We should have been rid of you before you grew curious."
He took one step back into the violet haze that still mussed the room. His form unraveled like ink in water, the edges of him dissolving into shadow and light. For a heartbeat his eyes found Aira's—something like hunger and something like regret—but then the room was empty save for the humming box and Zara's heaving breaths.
Aira knelt on the floor, every muscle trembling. The silver lid hung open, the mist dwindling into nothing. Her hands were slick with sweat. She had expected pain, blood, the worst; instead she had trembling, and the knowledge that she had come inches from being killed by the thing she had set free.
Zara hovered over her, panting. "Aira—are you okay? What the hell—what did you do?" Her voice was raw.
Aira looked up, fingers white on the desk. Kyran was gone, but his words—his rage—buzzed in her ears like a swarm. "He—he said I'm Lilian," she said finally. The name tasted like metal on her tongue.
Zara's face paled. "We're not telling anyone. Not the tutors. Not the principal. Not yet." She swallowed hard. "If he came back because of you—if he wanted to—" She couldn't finish.
Aira's gaze dropped to the box. The violet light was gone; the metal looked like ordinary silver again, secretive and innocent as ever. She closed her fingers around it like it was the last thing keeping her tethered to the world.
Outside, the academy hummed on as if nothing had happened. Inside her room, everything had shifted.
Kyran had said she would face consequences. She had no idea what that meant yet—but she knew one thing with a terrible certainty: whatever came next would not be soft.