Chapter 51 Kristen
I walked onto campus that morning with a knot in my stomach that felt like it had roots in every memory I didn’t understand. The air smelled like autumn rain even though the sky was stubbornly clear, like it was teasing me with normalcy. I should have been relieved to be back. To be awake. To not be tied to a chair in a warehouse somewhere with fear tucked into every breath. But normal days didn’t end with terror sculptures in your memory.
Anna walked beside me, her steps confident and calm, and I wished I could match her ease. She’d been my anchor and my unexpected reminder that someone in this world still cared about simple things like safety, warmth, laughter, and food that didn’t taste like ash.
We turned the corner into the humanities building, the same old brick and glass that probably looked the same every semester, every year. I half expected ghosts of my own past to materialize in the hallway, whispers rehearsing the things I didn’t want to hear. But the moment I stepped inside, I felt it — whispers, yes, but these were different. They weren’t echoing from some place inside me.
They were real.
Quiet hushes trailed us, heads turned in slow arcs that felt like judgment. Even without seeing their faces, I felt the eyes on my back, measuring me, questioning me. I tried to shrink into myself, to make myself smaller, invisible, harmless. But that had its limits in a crowd of people who had already seen too much.
“Hey,” Anna nudged me gently, her voice low, as if she had noticed it too. “You okay?”
I forced a nod, eyes forward. “I’m fine,” I said, though my voice came out thin and brittle.
We entered the classroom and the room fell into an uneasy silence. Chairs scraped softly against the floor. A new face stood by the board — a man tall, maybe early thirties, glasses catching the fluorescent lights, presence sharp and contained like he was every bit aware of how powerful first impressions could be.
He swivelled around as we slipped in, eyes meeting mine for a fraction of a second that felt too long.
“Care to explain why you’re late?” he asked, his tone crisp but not cruel. Just direct.
I blinked, startled. Seriously? This is college. I had been dragged through a living nightmare, barely alive, and this was happening. My first confrontation back was going to be classroom politics? I opened my mouth with a dry breath.
“This is my first day back after an incident,” I said, voice steadier than I felt.
He paused, and for a moment I thought I’d misread him — thought he might be one of those people who judged without knowing anything at all. Then he nodded slowly.
“Then welcome back,” Professor Dean said, eyes flicking briefly to Anna and then back to me. There was nothing probing or mocking in his tone. Just acknowledgment, a teacher dealing with an unexpected reality.
The classroom murmured as he moved to the desk and began class. I found a seat near the back, like I always did when I wanted to disappear into the shadows of lecture halls. Anna sat beside me, her presence warm and solid, a quiet reminder I wasn’t completely alone.
Halfway through the lecture, a girl near the front whispered something to her friend, eyes flicking my way. I caught a fragment of it — something like she should have been gone — and my fingers tightened around the pen in my notebook.
Breathe. Just breathe.
Class ended and students filed out quietly, but something about the atmosphere felt strange — like air that had shifted too fast and didn’t settle right again. A knot in my mind refused to loosen.
“So,” I said quietly to Anna as we walked down the hallway, “what happened to Professor Howard?”
Anna frowned, hesitating before she answered. “I don’t know,” she said with a shrug that didn’t reach her eyes. “No one does. Students act like he never existed.”
What? I stopped walking then, heart picking up pace.
“Never existed?” I repeated, disbelieving. “Like he was erased?”
Anna didn’t laugh. She didn’t joke. Her face was serious.
“Pretty much,” she said. “I mean, he was on the syllabus last semester. People talked about him. But now — nothing. It’s like he was never here. No office. No email. No social media. No name in the directory.”
My stomach throbbed with something that felt like dread clashing with curiosity and a sudden, unwelcome sense of déjà vu. There were gaps. Fragments of memory that didn’t make sense. People who acted like parts of my life had been rewritten.
And now this.
I should have been glad to be back in a classroom instead of a warehouse. I should have been relieved that I survived. I should have been able to think about lunch or homework or something normal.
Instead I felt like someone was pulling all the comfortable ground out from beneath me.
Anna and I walked in silence for a few steps until she grabbed my arm and pulled me into a quiet nook just outside the dean’s office.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said, voice low and tense.
That was Anna Speak When It Matters. I watched her eyes flick toward the dean’s door like she was about to pitch a plan I wasn’t ready for.
“If Dean Horowitz knows you’re an Ares,” she began, “then he knows more about your true powers than you do.”
An ache settled in my chest, heavy and persistent. My thoughts slid toward Leo, toward everything that had happened in the last few weeks. What happened to my powers? What happened to me that night? What had changed inside me when I was knocked unconscious and dragged into that hell?
I stared at Anna, uncertainty knotted deep in my stomach.
“We need to see your file,” she continued, tone low and urgent. “The one they’re not showing you.”
My breath caught. “My file?” I repeated, trying to make sense of it.
She leaned in closer, eyes earnest and fearless. “We get into his office. We find the file. We figure out what really happened that night.”
My heart thudded in my chest at the idea. The risk. The danger. The inevitable confrontation with truths I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. But the thought of living without answers felt unbearable in a way I hadn’t expected.
“It won’t be easy,” I said softly.
“No,” Anna agreed. “But it’s the only way.”
My pulse quickened, thoughts spiralling. If Leo was hiding something . . . if my aunt knew more than she’d told me . . . if the dean was lying to protect someone or protect a secret I hadn’t even begun to understand . . . then what else were they hiding?
The hallway buzzed around us, students moving between classes, conversations blurring into white noise. But in that moment, all of it faded into nothing. Everything seemed smaller, quieter, and somehow less important than the truth that was dangling in front of me like a blade.
I swallowed, uncertainty sharpening every breath I took.
And then I made my choice.
“All right,” I said, voice steady despite the quake in my chest. “Let’s find out what they’re hiding.”
Anna smiled, fierce and quiet, like she’d been waiting for this moment too.
We walked toward the dean’s office like students on a regular day, but neither of us was thinking about lectures or homework anymore. We were thinking about truth. About secrets. About whatever waited behind a locked door and a file they didn’t want me to see.
The moment felt quiet in its own way — like the air before a storm breaks — and I couldn’t help but think that nothing about this semester was going to be ordinary ever again.