The bells did not ring.
Freya surfaced from sleep expecting the low, familiar chime that always rolled through the dormitories at dawn. It never came. The silence lingered just long enough to feel wrong.
Then the corridor detonated.
Doors slammed open in rapid succession. Footsteps pounded against stone. Voices overlapped in sharp, confused bursts that ricocheted off the walls.
"Why didn't it ring?"
"Did we oversleep?"
"No, look at the time. It's past first bell—"
Freya swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood, her pulse already quickening. Inky lifted his head from the windowsill, eyes half-lidded but alert. She didn't need to say anything. Something had shifted.
By the time she stepped into the hallway, students were pouring out of their rooms in various states of disarray. Uniform jackets hung half-buttoned. Hair was hastily tied back. A knot of bodies had formed at the corridor's end around the central notice board, tension humming in the air like a live wire.
Freya slipped into the current and let it carry her forward.
The parchment pinned to the board bore the academy seal in deep, unmistakable ink. The script was crisp and formal, each line measured.
All standard classes are suspended until the conclusion of the House League.
Students are to dedicate this period to training and event preparation.
This year's League will proceed under the observation of a global top ten contractor.
Further details to follow.
For a heartbeat, the corridor held its breath.
Then the silence shattered.
Noise crashed in from all sides. Laughter burst out, sharp and incredulous. Someone let out a low whistle. Names were already being thrown into the air, half-whispered and fiercely debated.
"A global top ten? Here?"
"They even shut down classes for this? This is amazing."
Freya read the notice again, her eyes tracing the words as if repetition might dull their edge. Suspended. Observation. Global top ten.
The academy's familiar scaffolding had been stripped away overnight. Lectures, schedules, the steady rhythm of routine. Gone. In their place stretched open time and a single, towering focus.
The House League.
Around her, students were vibrating with sudden freedom and pressure in equal measure. Some were already planning out loud, voices tumbling over each other.
"We should grab Arena Three before the Pyros filths takes it."
"No chance. They'll be there already."
"Then we run drills outside. We're not wasting this."
The knot around the board dissolved into motion. Bodies peeled away in urgent streams, flooding toward stairwells and exits. The corridor that had been clogged with confusion moments before transformed into a river of intent.
Freya stepped back, letting the surge pass. The air tasted different. Charged. Alive with possibility and expectation. If a global top ten contractor was truly coming, the House League had just become something else entirely. Not just an internal proving ground, but a stage.
Her chest tightened, not with fear, but with clarity.
No classes meant no hiding inside routine. No borrowed structure to soften the edges of her days. Just training. Just effort. Just the long, unbroken stretch between where she stood and where she wanted to be.
Inky hopped down from the windowsill and landed lightly beside her. His tail flicking while his gaze swept the thinning corridor.
Freya turned away from the board and started toward the stairs at a jog.
The dormitory emptied into the open air in a rush. Morning light spilled across the academy grounds, catching on unfurled house banners that stirred in a restless breeze. Students were already scattering toward the training fields in determined clusters, their earlier confusion burned away by focus.
By the time Freya reached the main grounds, the transformation was complete.
Training arenas that weren't usually busy on normal days were now packed shoulder to shoulder. The sharp crack of practice strikes split the air. Instructors moved through the chaos with clipped efficiency, redirecting traffic, assigning spaces, barking corrections that carried farther and hit harder than usual.
Verdant students had claimed a section near the central ring. Freya slipped into formation without a word. The moment her feet hit the marked stone, the noise of the wider academy faded into a distant roar. Muscle memory took over. Stances. Transitions. Controlled bursts of motion.
Sweat beaded quickly at her temples. Her lungs burned in a way that felt clean and honest.
Between drills, fragments of conversation cut through the rhythm.
"Do you think they'll announce who it is?"
"They have to. You can't just drop that and not say."
"My brother says it might be—"
"Shut up and focus," someone snapped, though their grin took the sting out of it.
Freya let the speculation wash over her without grabbing hold. The identity of the observer didn't matter. What mattered was the simple, undeniable fact that the academy was watching itself more closely than ever.
And she was not going to stand still in the middle of that.
When the drill reset, she pushed harder. Every movement sharpened. Every correction etched deeper. The world narrowed to the space her body occupied and the next step she had to take inside it.
Classes were halted.
The League was coming.
And Freya trained like the distance between the two was already gone.
By the time Freya left the training grounds, her limbs felt carved from warm stone.
The academy was still roaring behind her. Even as she crossed back into the dormitory wing, the distant percussion of practice strikes and shouted instructions pulsed faintly through the air. It felt wrong to step away from it. Like she was slipping out of a current everyone else had surrendered to.
But her muscles were beginning to tremble at the edges. Pushing past that now would dull tomorrow.
She climbed the stairs to her room on unsteady legs and shut the door softly behind her. Silence folded in, thick and welcome. The sudden absence of noise rang in her ears.
Inky leapt onto the desk in a single smooth motion and circled once before settling. His eyes tracking her as she crossed the room and sank into the chair opposite him.
Freya pulled her sketchbook from the drawer with hands that were still faintly shaking. The familiar weight of it steadied her. She flipped it open to a blank page and let the pencil hover.
For a moment, nothing came.
Then lines began to flow.
She sketched the arena from memory. The raised platforms she'd seen being assembled. The narrow corridors. Angles layered over angles. Her pencil moved faster as she overlaid formations on top of the terrain. Arrows curved and intersected. Small figures bloomed into existence, marking positions and transitions.
"They'll try to choke the center," she murmured, voice rough from disuse. "Pyros always does."
The pencil scratched sharply as she redrew the lines.
"But Aurelith won't meet them head-on. They'll fold the edges. Force them to stretch."
She paused, studying the page. Rumors from the training grounds drifted back to her. Talk of perfectly synchronized squads. Talk of fighters who could dominate entire matches alone.
She sketched both possibilities over the same terrain. Clean formations. Violent interruptions.
Her jaw tightened.
"You can't let one person set the tempo," she muttered. "If they control the rhythm, everything collapses."
The admission hung in the quiet room. She stared at the tangled web of graphite until the shapes blurred.
"And I'm not even in it," she added softly.
The words slipped out before she could catch them.
Frustration flickered, sharp and brief. She pressed the pencil harder than intended, darkening a line until it nearly tore the paper. Then she exhaled and forced her grip to loosen.
"Fine," she said, more firmly. "Then I learn from it. Every match. Every mistake."
The tension in her shoulders eased by a fraction. She added a final set of notes in the margins, small and cramped. Observations. Reminders. Questions to chase later.
When she finally set the pencil down, her eyelids felt heavy. The adrenaline that had carried her through training was draining fast, leaving behind a deep, bone-level fatigue.
"Let's take a short nap," she murmured.
Inky's ear flicked.
Freya stretched out on the bed without bothering to change, the sketchbook still open on the desk. The moment her head hit the pillow, sleep dragged her under.
Once more, the nightmares arrived without warning.
Fire bloomed behind her eyes. Heat pressed against her skin. The air filled with the choking scent of smoke and something metallic beneath it.
She was home.
The hallway stretched ahead of her, warped by flickering light. Shadows writhed along the walls. A voice called her name from somewhere distant, thin and desperate.
Her feet would not move.
The sound of splintering wood cracked through the air. A figure stumbled into view, movements wrong and jerking. Familiar. Horribly familiar. Flames licked along their arms like living things.
Her chest locked as her breaths refused to come.
Behind the figure, another shape collapsed. A body hitting the floor with a dull, final sound.
Her mother.
The world narrowed to that single point. To the unbearable certainty of what she was seeing and the paralysis pinning her in place. The figure turned toward her, eyes empty and burning.
Freya tried to scream.
Nothing came out.
The heat surged. The hallway folded in on itself. The figure lunged—
She tore awake with a ragged gasp.
The ceiling of her room swam into focus. Darkness pressed close on all sides, broken only by a thin blade of moonlight slicing through the window. Her heart hammered against her ribs hard enough to hurt. Sweat clung cold to her skin.
For a few disoriented seconds, the nightmare clung to her like a second skin. The smell of smoke lingered in her nose. Her hands shook as she pushed herself upright.
"It's not real," she whispered hoarsely.
The words scraped her throat. She repeated them, quieter and steadier.
"It's not real."
Her breathing came in shallow bursts. She forced it deeper, counting each inhale and exhale the way one of her instructors had taught her. The panic receded in slow, reluctant increments. The room settled back into its familiar shapes.
Inky sat at the foot of the bed, eyes reflecting the thin moonlight. He hadn't moved. His presence was always a small, solid anchor in the dark.
Freya dragged a hand down her face. The echo of the nightmare still throbbed faintly in her chest, but it no longer threatened to swallow her whole. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood, crossing to the window.
The academy lay quiet outside. Training grounds empty. Banners stirring gently in the night breeze. For a moment, she simply watched them, letting the cool air seep into her lungs.
Tomorrow would come. The League would come. The memory would come with it, as it always did.
She would still be here.
The thought settled into her bones with quiet certainty.
Freya returned to the bed and slid beneath the covers. Her heartbeat had slowed to something manageable. The nightmare's edges were already dulling, retreating into the place where it would wait for her again.
She closed her eyes.
Sleep took her gently this time, and the night passed without fire.