Chapter 83 Information Feeds
ZARA’S POV
Silence had a sound at the academy.
It wasn’t quiet. Quiet implied peace. This was something else. A held breath stretched too long. Footsteps that stopped just before corners. Doors that closed a fraction slower than they should.
The kind of silence that waited for you to make a mistake.
I felt it before I saw anything wrong.
The training hall looked the same when we were summoned at dawn. Same pale stone floor. Same mirrored walls etched with sigils that reflected not faces but intentions. The same scent of metal and magic layered so thick it coated the back of my tongue.
But the air pressed closer today.
Kai walked beside me, close enough that our arms brushed with each step. He hadn’t said much since morning. His presence in the bond was steady but guarded, like he was holding something behind his ribs and making sure it didn’t show.
Mira and Luna were already inside. Too quiet. Too still.
Dr. Voss stood at the centre of the hall, hands folded behind her back, posture immaculate. Professor Ajax leaned against the far wall, arms crossed, silver eyes unreadable.
Something about the way he watched us made my skin prickle.
“Good,” Voss said as the doors sealed behind us.
“You’re punctual. That suggests fear. Or discipline.”
Neither, I thought. We were curious. Curiosity was dangerous.
“This is not punishment,” she continued smoothly.
“This is training.”
Kai’s jaw tightened. I felt it through the bond.
Voss gestured, and the floor beneath our feet shifted. The stone softened, rippling like water before hardening again. Lines carved themselves into the surface, forming a circular arena.
My devourer stirred, alert but confused.
“Today,” Voss said, turning her gaze to me.
“We test restraint.”
My pulse slowed. That word never meant what she pretended it did.
“Zara,” she said, smiling slightly.
“You will not consume.”
The mirrors flickered. There are no reflections now, but scenes. Faces. Wolves. Hundreds of them. Thousands. Harvested.
Frozen in moments of terror, rage, surrender.
My breath caught.
“You feel them, don’t you?” Voss asked softly.
“Every soul you’ve touched. Every echo you’ve left behind.”
I swallowed. The room tilted, just slightly.
“Yes,” I said.
“Good,” she replied.
“Then this will be educational.”
She raised her hand. The sigils flared.
Pain hit like a remembered injury.
Not fresh. Not sharp. Old. Layered. The kind that lived in bones long after wounds healed.
I dropped to one knee before I could stop myself.
Zara, Kai’s voice cut through the bond, tight with control. Breathe.
“I am breathing,” I said aloud, though my lungs burned.
“Are you?” Voss asked.
The mirrors shifted again.
Now I saw myself.
Not as I was. As I could be.
Power unrestrained. The devourer is fully unleashed. Cities collapsing inward like they were being swallowed by night. Wolves kneeling. Worlds dimming.
A monster wearing my face.
My hands shook.
“This is what you become if you fail,” Voss said calmly.
“If you choose hunger over harmony. Instinct over evolution.”
“That’s not training,” Kai snapped.
“That’s coercion.”
Voss didn’t look at him.
“Everything is coercion when power is involved.”
She turned back to me.
“Stand.”
I forced myself up. My legs trembled, but they held.
“Do not consume,” she repeated.
“Do not take. Do not silence the pain by ending it.”
The devourer screamed.
It hated this. Hated restraint. Hated being shown a future where it was only destruction.
I closed my eyes.
“Zara,” Ajax said quietly from the wall.
I looked at him.
Something in his voice felt… older than the room.
“You’re allowed to feel this,” he continued.
“Pain is not proof of failure.”
Voss shot him a sharp look. He ignored it.
“You are not what you fear becoming,” Ajax said.
“You are what you choose when fear is loudest.”
The words settled strangely in my chest.
Voss sighed.
“Professor Ajax, if you’re finished undermining the lesson....”
“I’m correcting it,” he said mildly.
The air shifted.
Not dramatically. Just enough.
Like a tide turning.
Voss’s smile tightened.
“Control yourself.”
He inclined his head, but his gaze never left me.
“Show them,” he said softly.
“Not how to consume.”
I opened my eyes.
The pain was still there. The memories. The echoes.
But beneath them, something else stirred.
Not hunger. Connection.
I reached out, not with my teeth, not with emptiness, but with presence.
The devourer resisted, then hesitated.
I imagined giving instead of taking.
Light flowed.
The mirrors flickered violently. Some of the frozen faces softened. One exhaled.
Voss stepped back, just a fraction.
“Interesting,” she murmured.
The floor cracked.
Kai moved instantly, crossing the arena to my side, hands hovering near me without touching.
“You’re doing it,” he said quietly.
“Slow. Steady.”
“I don’t know how,” I whispered.
“Then don’t know,” he replied.
“Just choose.”
The pain eased, not gone, but reshaped.
Voss’s expression hardened.
“Enough.”
She snapped her fingers.
The mirrors went dark. The floor stilled.
The silence rushed back in.
“Well,” she said after a moment.
“That was… unexpected.”
Ajax straightened from the wall.
“So was the test,” he said.
Voss’s eyes narrowed.
“Careful.”
He smiled. Not kindly. Not cruelly. Knowingly.
“Evolution is never careful,” he said.
My pulse raced.
Something about the way they looked at each other felt like a fault line.
Voss dismissed us with a flick of her wrist.
“Go. Rest. Tomorrow, we escalate.”
As we turned to leave, Ajax’s voice reached me one last time.
“Zara,” he said.
I paused.
“When the moment comes,” he continued quietly.
“You will be asked to choose between ending a cycle and becoming its final victim.”
I met his gaze.
“What if I refuse both?”
His smile deepened, ancient and sad.
“Then you will surprise us all.”
The doors opened.
As Kai guided me into the corridor, the bond hummed with unease.
Behind us, unseen, something old and vast shifted its attention.
And for the first time, I wondered if the academy wasn’t watching us anymore.
If it was waiting.