The moon hid shyly behind a bank of restless clouds, casting faint silver veins across the academy's rooftops. The air was cool but strangely heavy—charged with tension that Leon could neither name nor shake off. He stood alone at the edge of the training field, the faint smell of wet grass and pine swirling around him, but his thoughts were far from peaceful.
Every sound—the rustle of the leaves, the distant chatter of students, the creak of the old flagpole—seemed to carry Mia's voice in it. Her face, her scent, the way her hand had trembled in his, and the moment she'd pulled away before he could mark her—every detail looped through his mind like a curse he couldn't escape.
His chest rose and fell sharply. He tilted his head back and exhaled, trying to calm the storm inside him.
He had thought he understood pain before, but rejection, he was learning, wasn't just emotional—it was physical. It gnawed at his heart like an ache that refused to fade.
