Three months had passed since Riley first walked through the towering gates of the Imperial Academy.
The days had blurred into a rhythm — lectures, assignments, group projects — but she was no longer the uncertain newcomer who had clutched her schedule like a lifeline. She had learned the layout of the sprawling campus, found the shortcuts between buildings, even started exchanging polite greetings with other students in the corridors.
Her mandatory classes had gone smoothly, thanks in no small part to Ace. His presence was a strange mix of chaos and comfort: loud enough to fill any awkward silence, yet unexpectedly sharp when it came to reading people. Ace had a way of making space for her without ever announcing he was doing it. Even the professors, some of whom seemed to measure new students with skeptical eyes, warmed to her faster when she was next to him.
The elective class, however — War Tactics — had been an entirely different story.
When she first saw her name paired with Riel's on the roster, she'd braced herself for the worst. He was the top senior in the class, the kind of student whose reputation preceded him: precise, efficient, and not exactly approachable. She'd expected a silent, frigid partnership where her mistakes would be catalogued and quietly judged.
But to her surprise, their dynamic had been... functional. Even peaceful.
Riel wasn't a chatterbox — in fact, he was the opposite. He only spoke when necessary, his words carefully chosen and often laced with a depth of insight that made her scramble to keep up. At first, the silence between them had been stiff, a brittle thing filled with all the things they didn't know about each other. But with each meeting, it began to feel different. Less like silence, more like a quiet rhythm they had both fallen into.
Still, there was something about him that tugged at her, like a thread she couldn't quite reach. A familiarity that refused to be named. Sometimes, when she glanced up, she'd catch him studying her with a look that made her skin prickle — not in discomfort, but in... recognition.
And Riley felt it too. That odd, pulsing ache of déjà vu whenever their eyes met, as if she had seen him somewhere before — not here, not in this life.
Tomorrow would be the class's first War Tactics battle.
The rules were simple in outline but complex in execution: each team would be assigned a virtual army and a randomized terrain. Six teams would share the same map, but no one would know their opponents until the battle began. Victory wasn't about brute force, but elegance and efficacy — how well a team adapted to changing variables, how they anticipated unseen threats. The top twelve teams would advance, while the remaining twelve would become "unexpected variables," free to disrupt the strategies of those still in the running.
It sounded thrilling.
It should have been thrilling.
But instead, Riley's stomach was a knot.
It wasn't the strategy that worried her. Their plan was solid — airtight, even. Riel had been meticulous in every detail, his mind moving three steps ahead in every discussion. He'd explained the mechanics, pointed out potential weaknesses, and even drilled her on countermeasures. He had made sure she could follow, even when the concepts were advanced enough to lose her in the first five minutes.
And that was the problem.
She had contributed so little. Not nothing, but far less than she wanted to. And it embarrassed her.
When she tried to bring it up, he had only shrugged.
"I think the professor knew what he was doing when he made these teams. He wants the seniors to help the juniors. That's all."
But she could feel it. Even if he wouldn't say it out loud, Riel had been holding back for her. He slowed his explanations, repeated things without irritation, and listened seriously even when her ideas were raw and clumsy. He made room for her in a way that felt deliberate.
That night, she tossed and turned in her dorm bed. Every time she closed her eyes, the thought of the next day loomed larger — and so did the quiet, unreadable look in Riel's eyes.
Eventually, the slow, creeping pull of the Macht took her, as it always did.
And for the first time since arriving at the Academy, she dreamt of the boy again.
---
The boy was older now — seventeen, maybe eighteen — and moonlight wrapped around him like a shroud. He sat by a broad window framed in dark wood, the curtains drawn back to reveal a stretch of night sky littered with pale stars.
Riley did not recognize this room. It wasn't the room she had often seen in other dreams, nor the shadowed corridors where she had sometimes glimpsed him before. This space felt more confined, more personal — walls lined with shelves, the faint scent of old wood and something metallic lingering in the air. Was this... a dorm room?
He didn't move.
The stillness around him was almost unnatural, as if the air itself had forgotten how to stir. His shoulders bore a quiet weight that made her chest ache to look at. He gazed out at the night as if searching for something that wasn't there — or perhaps remembering something that was gone.
The silver light traced his profile in stark relief — the slope of his nose, the strong line of his jaw, the faint shadow beneath his eyes that spoke of sleepless nights. His hair fell untidily against his forehead, catching the glow in muted strands.
But it was his eyes that rooted her in place.
Blue. Not the icy, distant blue of polished formality, but something warmer and deeper — the color of a sky just before dawn, when the light is still fighting its way through the dark. And in those eyes was a weight so raw she could barely breathe under it.
It wasn't simply sadness.
It was longing — fierce and aching, stretched thin across years. The kind of longing that reached out without moving, that pulled at the air between them until she almost swayed toward him. She could feel it in her bones, in the slow, measured way his gaze held hers, like he was memorizing her all over again.
And then, he spoke.
"...Riley."
Her name left his lips like a secret, soft and fragile, as if the sound alone might be enough to break him. It was the way he said it — not rushed, not careless — each syllable carrying the reverence of something found after being lost for far too long.
The sound tore through her chest. Her pulse stuttered, her throat tightened.
She wanted to cross the distance, to answer him, to ask why her name sounded like a promise in his mouth. And when she reached out — instinctively, without thinking — the space between them seemed both impossibly small and heartbreakingly far.
But before her fingers could brush the fabric of his sleeve, the moonlight fractured. The stars blinked out, one by one, and the room dissolved into shadow.
---
She woke with a sharp gasp.
Her cheeks were wet. Her chest ached.
It wasn't unusual for her to cry in her sleep when the Macht forced those dreams on her, but this time was different. It wasn't fear. It wasn't pain.
It was longing.
She pressed the heel of her palm to her eyes, breathing out slowly. The weight in her chest wouldn't lift. That name — Riley — it couldn't be her. Could it?
She shook her head hard, forcing the thought away. She had a battle to prepare for.
---
The War Tactics room was already humming with tension when Riel arrived — partners clustered in quiet knots, murmuring final adjustments to plans. The scent of ink and parchment mixed with the faint tang of mana from the simulation crystals stacked on the instructor's desk.
He found Riley at their table, a stack of notes clutched in her hands. She looked composed at first glance — posture straight, uniform neat — but the faint shadows beneath her eyes betrayed her.
"You okay?" he asked.
She blinked as if pulled from somewhere far away. "Yeah. Just didn't sleep well. Got a weird dream."
Riel's gaze lingered a moment too long. "A weird dream," he repeated softly.
She said it lightly, but he knew better. He'd seen those small signs before — the faint redness around her eyes, the way her fingers tightened imperceptibly on the edge of the paper. Dreams were not just dreams for her. If her Macht had stirred, it wasn't something she would admit so casually.
And she wouldn't know that he understood. Not yet.
So he only nodded, letting the words hang between them without pressing further.
The professor began calling teams forward. They were halfway down the list when Riley's papers slipped from her grip and scattered across the polished floor.
"Ah—" She crouched immediately, gathering them with flustered haste.
Riel was already kneeling, sweeping the rest into a neat pile before she could reach them. "It's okay," he said, his tone low and steady.
Her hands stilled as he placed the papers back into her grasp. And before she could retreat entirely into her nerves, he reached out and patted her head — brief, light, deliberate.
It wasn't a habit of his. He didn't touch people without reason. But something about the strain in her voice earlier... he'd seen it before, years ago, when she was too close to breaking and trying to hide it. Back then, words hadn't been enough.
So he gave her something wordless. Something grounding.
"Leave it to me," he said simply.
Without waiting for her to protest, he stepped forward to address the class, the strategy already lined out in his mind. Clear, precise, steady. Enough to satisfy the professor's scrutiny, but not enough to draw unnecessary attention to her role.
When it was over, the professor gave a rare nod of approval. Riel returned to his seat without visible change in expression, but he caught the faint flicker of relief on Riley's face.
And as the next team took the front, he let his gaze rest on her for a fraction longer.
She still didn't know that when she said "just a weird dream," he could almost guess the shape of it.
And she couldn't know how much it mattered to him that she wasn't facing it alone — even if she thought she was.
---
"You're awfully quiet," Ace remarked over lunch, poking absently at his tray. "I thought today was the big tactical showdown?"
"It was," Riley said, still feeling the morning in her bones.
"And?"
"We made it through. Top twelve."
"That's awesome!" Ace grinned, then squinted at her. "So why do you look like you've seen a ghost?"
"I'm not sure," she admitted. "Everything went fine. Riel handled the presentation. The professor even complimented it. But..."
"But?"
"I think he's been holding back this whole time. For my sake."
Ace blinked. "Holding back? That guy?"
"He's way more capable than I thought," Riley said, her gaze dropping to her hands. "Looking back at all those meetings... the way he simplified everything, made sure I could follow... it's like he was—"
"Making room for you?" Ace offered.
She gave a small nod. "Yeah."
Ace leaned back, folding his arms. "That's... kind of nice, in a weird, Young Heir of Desillix way."
"I guess," Riley murmured.
But her mind wasn't on the battle anymore.
It was on the dream.
The boy in the moonlight. The weight in his voice when he said her name. That piercing blue, heavy with something unspoken.
And Riel — the steady hand on her head, the quiet reassurance, the way he'd said leave it to me with those same blue eyes she remembered from the day they first met. The way he'd first called her "Riley" — not like a name, but like something precious he thought he'd lost.
Familiar, but not.
Like a stranger she had always known.
She told herself it was nothing. Just coincidence.
But still... that shade of blue wouldn't leave her.