CELESTIA: CHAPTER 57 : The Window
Night had fallen over the Academy like a cloth too heavy.
The corridors were empty. The lights dimmed. The sounds of footsteps, laughter, arguments – everything that made the school's heart beat – had faded with the sun. Only the wind remained, and sometimes, very far away, the creak of a door forgotten open.
Cynthia was not sleeping.
She sat on her bed, back against the wall, knees drawn up under her chin. Her arm in its sling still bothered her, but she hadn't taken her medication. She hadn't taken much of anything, really – no dinner, no shower, not even the trouble of closing the shutters.
The window was open to the night, and the cold air entered the room, making the white curtain shiver, lifting the pages of a notebook left on the table. She didn't look at it. She looked at the sky.
There were no stars.
No clouds either. Just a gray void, a nothingness suspended above the rooftops.
She closed her eyes.
She didn't fall asleep. She remained there, eyelids shut, listening to the silence. Sometimes she thought she heard a breath – her own, perhaps, or the wind's. Sometimes she thought she heard a whisper.
A name.
She opened her eyes again.
"Liana…"
She had whispered. She didn't know why.
The window trembled. Not a gust of wind. A sharp tremor, as if someone had tapped against the glass with their fingertips.
Cynthia didn't move. She stared into the darkness.
There was nothing. Just the gray void.
A second knock. Sharper. More insistent.
She stood up. Her legs trembled – not from fear, from fatigue. She approached the window, placed a hand on the sill. The cold air bit her skin.
No one.
No one on the roof. No one in the courtyard. No one in the trees.
She was about to close the window.
She saw her.
Liana.
The little Djinn stood in the garden, about thirty meters away. She wore the same gray jumpsuit, sleeveless, her arms marked with needle scars. Her white hair floated in the wind, too light, too slow. Her golden eyes were fixed on Cynthia.
They did not blink.
Cynthia no longer breathed. She didn't scream. She didn't step back. She looked at Liana, and Liana looked at her.
"You don't exist," Cynthia murmured.
Liana tilted her head. A tilt too slow, too fluid, as if her vertebrae had forgotten how to stop.
And she smiled.
Not a child's smile. Not a joyful smile. A smile that wasn't a smile – a curve of lips without warmth, like a mark on the skin.
Cynthia blinked.
Liana had disappeared.
The courtyard was empty. The wind blew, the tree branches moved, the grass trembled. Nothing. No one.
She remained there, standing before the window, fingers cold, breath short. Then she gently closed the glass, locked the latch, and returned to sit on her bed.
She did not sleep that night.
She spoke of it to no one the next day. She told Zayn nothing. She told Blanche nothing. She told no one.
But all day, she felt a weight at the back of her neck, an invisible presence, something that watched her from behind walls, from behind windows, from behind the memories she thought she had buried.
That evening, she saw a silhouette again, in the reflection of a bathroom window.
She didn't turn around.
She dried her hands, put down the towel, and walked out.
The silhouette remained there, in the reflection, watching her leave.
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