The man in the corner didn't move, yet the room felt like it was shrinking. He was tall, his silhouette blurred by a cloak that seemed to swallow the moonlight. This was an Inquisitor of Ebonveil a man whose job was to cull the "weeds" of the magical world.
"How did you get in here?" Lyra's voice was a jagged shard of glass. She backed away until her heels hit the bedframe, her hand instinctively clutching the mark on her wrist.
"Walls are a suggestion to those who serve the Academy, child," the man replied. He stepped forward, the floorboards not making a single sound beneath his boots. "I am High Proctor Vane. And you are a walking death sentence."
Downstairs, the sound of a heavy door splintering echoed through the house. Leo screamed a high, sharp sound that cut through Lyra's heart.
"LEO!"
Lyra lunged for the door, but Vane flicked his wrist. A whip of solidified shadow lashed out, wrapping around her waist and slamming her back against the wall. The impact knocked the wind out of her, leaving her gasping as the shadow-binds tightened, bruising her ribs.
"Patience," Vane hissed, his face finally coming into the light. He was pale, with eyes the color of old coins. "The extraction process is delicate. We cannot have the asset damaging itself before the Ranking."
"I'm not an asset! I'm a person!" Lyra thrashed against the shadows, her vision tunneling with rage.
"You ceased being a person the moment that mark surfaced," Vane said coldly. He looked toward the door as two armored Enforcers marched in, dragging her younger brother by the collar of his nightshirt.
Leo's eyes were wide, his face streaked with tears. "Lyra! They said... they said you're a monster! Tell them they're wrong!"
"Let him go!" Lyra screamed.
The mark on her wrist began to throb. Not with the soft pulse from before, but with a violent, rhythmic heat. It felt like her blood was being replaced with boiling ink.
"Interesting," Vane murmured, leaning closer as the violet glow began to bleed through the fabric of Lyra's cloak. "Most F-ranks take weeks to trigger a resonance. Your blood is... eager."
One of the Enforcers raised a gauntleted hand, ready to strike Leo for struggling.
"Don't touch him!"
Something snapped inside Lyra. It wasn't a spell; it was an explosion.
The shadows binding her didn't just break they were consumed. A shockwave of cold, lightless energy erupted from Lyra's body, shattering the windows of her bedroom and throwing the Enforcers back into the hallway. The air in the room died. The candles went out. The temperature plummeted until Lyra's breath came out in a thick white cloud.
Vane was the only one who stayed upright, though he had been forced to throw up a shimmering gold barrier. He looked at the frost forming on his sleeves with an expression of pure, hungry greed.
"Death-type mana," he whispered. "The Nocturne line hasn't produced a Vessel this potent in three centuries."
Lyra scrambled toward Leo, pulling him into her arms. "I've got you. I've got you."
"Lyra... your eyes," Leo whispered, his voice trembling.
Lyra didn't need a mirror to know. She felt the hollow coldness behind her sockets. She felt the way the shadows in the room were now bowing toward her, as if she were their queen.
"Take her," Vane commanded, his voice dropping all pretense of civility. "Kill the boy if he interferes again. We only need the girl."
"No!"
Before Lyra could summon the cold again, Vane moved with blinding speed. He pressed a small, silver needle into the side of her neck.
"Sleep, little reaper," he murmured. "The Academy is waiting."
The world didn't go dark all at once. It dissolved into a blur of grey. As Lyra was lifted by the armored men, the last thing she saw through the shattered window was her village.
Ashenwood wasn't quiet anymore. The houses were being marked with black crosses, and the villagers the people she had grown up with were standing in the streets, watching her being carried away with eyes full of terror and hate.
She wasn't their neighbor anymore.
She was the curse that had finally come home to roost.