By the time I made it back to my dorm, I was no longer walking.
I was migrating.
Slowly.
Painfully.
Like an injured animal trying to return to its burrow before being eaten by something with better cardiovascular health.
The door to my room creaked open, and I stumbled inside with all the grace of a dying chair before collapsing face-first onto my bed.
For a few seconds, I knew peace.
Beautiful, soft, mattress-shaped peace.
Then my brain ruined it.
Carlos Strega.
The God Tree trip.
The Western Branch.
Two days.
I groaned into the sheets.
"Can the world not end on a more convenient schedule?"
No one answered.
For once, the room was quiet.
Knight was gone. Sleazy was gone. Bloody and Lazy had not bothered showing up since morning.
Good.
Excellent.
Perfect.
I could finally sleep.
I closed my eyes.
Then Carlos's face appeared in my mind.
Quiet. Polite. Normal.
You should rest.
My eyes opened.
I hated him.
Not because he had done anything wrong yet.
That was actually the problem.
The future villain of the world had looked me in the eye and told me to take care of myself.
Villains were not supposed to do that.
Villains were supposed to cackle, kick puppies, and make the moral choice simple.
Carlos Strega, unfortunately, had decided to be inconveniently human.
I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling.
I already knew the griffin attack would happen.
Tier-three griffins would descend during the Western Branch study. Students would scream. Professors would rush to protect the group. Carlos Strega would be taken in the chaos.
That had been my original opening.
Follow close. Use the confusion. Kill him before the academy found him.
Simple.
Except simple had started to feel wrong.
Carlos was not the monster yet.
And worse, something about killing him too early felt dangerous.
The cult had not simply waited for a random accident.
They had arranged a beginning.
If I wanted to stop Carlos properly, I needed to understand what began there.
I sat up slowly.
My body complained.
I ignored it.
There was one ghost whose memories touched Manus Fati directly.
One ghost who had heard things no ordinary student should have heard.
Sleazy.
I already knew he had been part of Manus Fati.
Not guessed.
Knew.
I had lived pieces of his life before. I had seen the coded meetings, the concealed rooms, the smiling lies, the bloodless rituals, and the way everyone in that cult spoke like they were already standing at the end of history.
Sleazy had not been one of the true leaders moving the cult's body from the shadows.
But he had been close enough to one.
Close enough to hear things.
Close enough to survive things.
Close enough to ask questions he should not have asked.
I exhaled.
"Great. Time to crawl through the soul of the shadiest version of myself."
A navy mist spilled from the corner of the room.
Of course.
Sleazy appeared upside down in the air, coat hanging in a way that completely ignored gravity.
"My, my," he said, smiling. "Calling for me so passionately? Seer, I'm flattered."
"I didn't call you."
"You thought about me."
"That is different."
"Is it?"
"Yes."
He rotated upright and landed soundlessly near my desk.
His smile was as fake and warm as ever, but his abyssal eyes watched me carefully.
"You want to look again."
I didn't bother pretending otherwise.
"I need to go through your memories."
His smile thinned.
"Looking for what?"
"Anything connected to Carlos, the Western Branch, griffins, or Manus Fati."
"That is a wide net, Seer."
"Good. I'm fishing for something ugly."
Sleazy stared at me for a moment.
Then he chuckled softly.
"I don't remember every conversation I ever had."
"You don't need to," I said. "Your soul does."
The smile on his face did not disappear.
That was how I knew he hated the answer.
A purple mist appeared above my bed.
Lazy slowly materialized, floating horizontally with one arm tucked behind his head.
"If you two are going to violate someone's privacy, do try to do it louder. I was resting."
"You are always resting," I said.
"And yet I am always tired. A tragedy."
Black sparks gathered near the door.
Knight appeared next, his expression already grave.
Then Bloody emerged beside him, arms crossed, red eyes narrowed.
"Finally," Bloody said. "Something interesting."
I looked at all four of them.
Wonderful.
The council of terrible versions of myself had assembled.
Knight's gaze moved to Sleazy.
"You know what happened during this trip?"
Sleazy smiled.
"Know is a generous word. I heard things. Saw things. Survived things."
"From Manus Fati?" Knight asked.
Sleazy's eyes slid toward him.
"Among others."
Bloody clicked his tongue.
"One of the cult's dogs."
Sleazy's smile warmed.
His eyes did not.
"Careful, blood man."
Bloody grinned.
"Did I hurt your feelings?"
"No," Sleazy said. "You reminded me you still have poor manners."
Before they could start threatening each other, I raised a hand.
"No. Not today. I am too blood-deficient to deal with ghost drama."
Lazy nodded.
"A valid medical excuse."
I ignored him and looked at Sleazy.
"I'm going in."
For once, Sleazy did not immediately make a joke.
His gaze sharpened slightly.
"You understand my memories are not clean."
"None of yours are."
"That is not what I meant."
The room quieted.
Sleazy's smile was still there, but there was something under it.
A tension.
A warning.
Not for me.
For himself.
"I was not raised like you," he said lightly. "Do not be surprised if my soul has poor manners as well."
"That's fine," I said. "I'm not exactly visiting for tea."
His smile returned in full.
"How cruel."
I laid back on the bed and closed my eyes.
My Origin Spell, Soul Diver, was not a door.
That would have been convenient.
A door opened. A door closed. A door took you from one place to another without forcing you to experience several emotional crimes along the way.
Soul Diver was not like that.
To reach someone else's soul, I first had to pass through my own.
Which meant going back into the sea.
My sea.
The grey sludge waiting beneath my skin.
I breathed in.
Calm.
Contain.
Conceptualize.
The room dissolved.
My bed vanished beneath me. The ceiling disappeared. The ghosts became distant smears of colour at the edge of my awareness.
Then I fell.
Not into darkness.
Into myself.
The grey sea opened beneath me, thick and endless, stretching beneath a black sky with no stars, no moon, and no horizon.
Only one light source existed.
A silver glow far below the surface.
My light.
My origin.
The place where every crack began.
I hovered above the sludge and stared down.
Last time, this place had nearly swallowed me.
This time, I did not hesitate as long.
That did not mean I was safe.
It did not mean I had control.
It only meant I was getting used to drowning.
What a wonderful sign for my mental health.
I dropped into the sea.
The surface closed over me.
Cold pressure wrapped around my body, thick and oily, dragging at my skin like hands that had forgotten how to let go.
The first layer came quickly.
Faint memories.
Soft touches. Half-remembered laughter. Warm meals. Sunlight through curtains. A hand on my shoulder. A smile I could not place.
They brushed against me like bubbles rising through water.
I pushed past them.
The second layer hit harder.
Pain.
A blade through my ribs.
Fire across my back.
A broken arm bending wrong.
Teeth tearing into flesh.
A head separating from a body.
Not mine.
Mine.
Not mine.
Mine enough.
My jaw clenched.
I kept moving.
The pain did not fade.
I was just faster at ignoring it.
That was worse, somehow.
Then came the third layer.
Nothing.
The sea stopped moving.
No currents.
No sound.
No memories.
No pain.
Just blankness.
The kind of empty that did not feel peaceful.
It felt hungry.
Last time, this place had scared me more than the pain.
Pain at least proved something was still there.
The nothingness asked why anything needed to be there at all.
My thoughts slowed.
My name almost slipped.
Kamrik.
Kamrik.
Kamrik.
I repeated it again and again, forcing the word through the blank water.
I was Kamrik.
I was not Bloody.
I was not Knight.
I was not Lazy.
I was not Sleazy.
I was Kamrik.
The thought felt thinner than it should have.
I moved faster.
Not because I had mastered the nothingness.
Because I knew what it wanted now.
And I was not letting it have me.
Eventually, the pressure thinned.
Not disappeared.
Never disappeared.
But loosened enough that I found a small pocket of stillness in the sea, a place where the sludge did not pull quite as hard and the nothingness did not whisper quite as loudly.
I curled into a ball and heaved deep breaths.
Pointless breaths.
There was no air here.
Not really.
But my body remembered needing it.
I could still feel the fires licking my back. I could still remember the stab wounds through my abdomen. I could still feel teeth closing around flesh that had not belonged to me until the memory decided it did.
My hands shook.
My stomach twisted.
Shamefully, it took me a little while before I got out of my pathetic ball and moved down toward the cracks.
Some grand soul explorer I was.
Five minutes into my own Origin Spell and I was already folded up like discarded laundry.
Eventually, the sea changed.
The blankness cracked.
Thin fractures of light spread beneath me, silver lines running through the grey like broken glass under dark water.
The cracks.
The damage in my soul.
The places where lives that were not mine had forced themselves into me and kept me from breaking completely.
I followed them down.
At the center of it all was the indent.
A depression in the sea.
A pool of silver light resting inside the grey sludge.
My pool.
My life.
My memories.
The epicenter of the fracture.
All the cracks reached toward it. Some touched it. Some pierced it. Some vanished beneath its surface like roots sinking into soil.
The first time I reached this place, I had almost drowned in everything.
My life.
Their lives.
Pain.
Death.
Regret.
The end of the world, repeated over and over until meaning itself began to rot.
This time, I stopped at the edge.
I did not step into the silver pool.
Not fully.
I was not here to relive myself.
I was here to find a path.
My eyes moved across the cracks.
Red.
Black.
Purple.
Navy.
And farther away, dimmer fractures of pink, yellow, and green remained sealed, resisting me like closed eyes pretending not to see.
I ignored those.
My focus settled on the navy crack.
Sleazy.
The fracture shimmered like dark silk stretched beneath oil.
Even here, his soul looked like it was smiling.
Disgusting.
I reached down and touched it.
A slick sensation crawled over my fingers.
The moment I made contact, memories pressed against the other side.
Incense.
Gloved hands.
A woman's voice.
A child's silent scream.
A smile practiced in the dark.
I swallowed.
Sleazy's memories.
Not the whole life.
Not yet.
Just the current.
I could follow it.
Maybe.
Probably.
Hopefully.
I glanced back at the silver pool.
For a second, my reflection looked up at me from inside it.
Pale.
Exhausted.
Silver-eyed.
Cracked.
I wondered how many more times I could do this before the reflection stopped looking like me.
Then I grabbed the navy crack and pulled.
The silver pool rippled.
The grey sea groaned.
And I dove into Sleazy's life.
The first thing I felt was silk.
Smooth fabric against my wrists.
A collar at my throat.
Gloves over my hands.
The smell of incense, old stone, and something sweet enough to be nauseating.
My body was not mine.
Taller.
Smoother.
Calmer.
Sleazy's body moved through a memory.
No.
Through fragments.
A hallway flashed by.
Then another.
Then a room with no windows.
A child's wrist held in a woman's hand.
A navy coat too large for small shoulders.
A voice whispered, "Smile. People trust beautiful lies."
The memory broke.
Water filled my mouth.
I sank deeper.
A ritual circle.
A silver knife.
A boy standing very still while adults spoke over his head.
Not to him.
Over him.
Like he was an object.
A tool.
A successful acquisition.
The woman's hand rested on his shoulder.
Gentle.
Possessive.
Wrong.
The memory cracked again.
Academy corridors.
Hidden doors.
Messages written in harmless ink.
A laugh behind a fan.
A dead man in an alley.
A student smiling as he handed over information that would eventually kill someone else.
Sleazy's life moved like oil through water.
Every memory slipped away the moment I tried to grasp it.
Carlos.
Western Branch.
Griffins.
Manus Fati.
I pushed those thoughts through the navy current again and again.
The memories did not obey.
They dragged me deeper.
Then I saw black stone.
A corridor beneath somewhere I did not recognize.
No torches.
No windows.
Only thin veins of blue light running through the walls like sickly nerves.
Sleazy's boots clicked softly against the floor.
Older now.
Not a child.
Not the smiling student from the earlier fragments either.
His steps were quieter than they should have been.
Measured.
Careful.
Like he had learned exactly how loudly a person could exist before someone punished them for it.
His smile rested on his face like a mask nailed into place.
In one gloved hand, he held a thin folder sealed with black wax.
There were names written on the front.
Most were blurred.
One was not.
Carlos Strega.
My stomach tightened.
Ahead, a door waited.
Plain.
Unmarked.
Wrong.
Everything about it felt too ordinary.
Sleazy raised a gloved hand and knocked three times.
Pause.
Two times.
Pause.
Once.
The door opened by itself.
Inside was a room lit by pale candles.
No decorations.
No altar.
No dramatic cult banners.
Somehow, that made it worse.
At the center of the room sat a woman behind a wooden desk.
I could not see her clearly at first.
Not because the memory was damaged.
Because Sleazy had refused to look directly at her.
His body remembered her before his mind did.
Fear.
Hatred.
Obedience.
Familiarity.
And something painfully close to attachment.
She was not his mother.
But his body remembered her like one.
That made the hatred worse.
"Late," the woman said.
Her voice was calm.
Soft.
The kind of soft that had never needed to raise itself to be obeyed.
Sleazy bowed, one hand over his chest, the folder held neatly at his side.
"My apologies. I was deciding whether the news was more tragic, inconvenient, or entertaining."
The woman turned a page in the book before her.
"And?"
Sleazy smiled.
"Inconvenient. Tragedy requires cleaner motives, and entertainment requires me to be less involved."
"Report."
"So direct. I missed that about you."
"No, you did not."
His smile widened.
"No. I did not."
He stepped forward and placed the folder on the desk.
Not too close.
Never too close.
Even his fear had manners.
"Carlos Strega's movement pattern has stabilized," Sleazy said. "The academy has lost him. The churches have condemned him. The noble houses are pretending they were never interested in him, which is how one knows they are terrified."
The woman did not touch the folder.
"And the hero?"
"Still alive."
"That was not the question."
"It was the most optimistic answer."
The page stopped moving.
Sleazy's smile stayed exactly where it was.
"Their bond fractured," he continued. "Not cleanly. Not completely. Enough to hurt. Enough to matter."
"Hatred?"
"Growing."
"Admiration?"
"Still present. Unfortunately."
"Good."
Sleazy tilted his head.
"That is one word for it."
The woman finally looked up.
I still could not see her face.
Only the suggestion of one.
Pale skin.
Dark eyes.
A smile that felt like a hand closing around a throat.
"You disagree?" she asked.
"I rarely disagree. I merely arrange my agreement in ways that make people uncomfortable."
"Useful habit."
"You taught me."
Something in her smile changed.
Affection.
Pride.
Ownership.
"Do not become sentimental."
Sleazy's fingers curled inside his gloves.
Only slightly.
The woman noticed.
Of course she noticed.
"There is a note in your report," she said.
Sleazy's smile did not move.
"There are many notes in my report. I am thorough."
"You circled back to the Western Branch."
"History has a habit of becoming relevant at inconvenient times."
"No," she said. "You wanted the shape explained again."
Sleazy said nothing.
That was answer enough.
The woman closed the book.
"The academy recorded the matter as a beast incident. A griffin pack attacked the Western Branch study. Several students were injured. Professors intervened. One student was taken."
"Carlos Strega," Sleazy said.
"Yes."
His voice remained light.
Too light.
"And from there, everything became inevitable?"
"Do not use that word carelessly."
"I learned it from very serious people in very dark rooms."
"Then you should know better."
Silence stretched between them.
The candles did not flicker.
Not once.
Sleazy looked toward the folder on the desk instead of at her face.
"The report confirms what you wanted. Strega is moving exactly as designed. Combat Department. Hero proximity. Party entanglement. Public collapse. Hatred and admiration twisting together in that wonderfully poisonous way everyone here seems to enjoy."
He smiled.
"Congratulations. Your monster is ripening."
The room went still.
My skin crawled.
The woman's voice softened.
"Careful."
Sleazy bowed his head.
"Always."
"Never."
The correction slid under his skin like a needle.
I felt the sting of it.
Then his smile returned, polished and perfect.
"Then allow me one careless question."
"You always do."
"The Western Branch. What did it leave in him?"
The candle flames leaned toward her.
"You know enough."
"That has never been my favorite amount."
"It is the amount that kept you alive."
Sleazy's smile warmed.
His eyes did not.
"How generous of ignorance."
The woman studied him for a long moment.
Then she said, "The branch bore what it should not have borne."
A chill crawled through me.
Sleazy did not move.
"The God Tree?"
"What remained of it."
"That is vague."
"That is intentional."
"And Carlos found it."
"Carlos was brought to it."
The difference mattered.
I felt it in the memory.
Sleazy felt it too.
His pulse stayed steady.
Mine did not.
"Most who received what the branch offered died," the woman said. "Some survived long enough to become useful."
"And Carlos Strega?"
Her smile sharpened.
"Carlos Strega was not most."
The words sank into the room.
Into Sleazy.
Into me.
"So the boy was taken," Sleazy said. "The academy panicked. The professors retrieved him. Everyone called it survival. Luck. A tragedy avoided."
"Yes."
"And no one asked why the griffins took him somewhere useful."
"Some asked."
"Did they survive?"
The woman smiled.
Sleazy hummed.
"There is my answer."
She opened the folder at last.
Her eyes moved across the first page.
"The Strega boy was not harmed beyond recovery. The professors believed his survival was luck. The students believed his abduction was an accident. The academy believed the Western Branch was simply unsafe."
"And the griffins?"
"Guided."
"Controlled?"
Her smile sharpened.
"Encouraged."
That word was somehow worse.
Sleazy looked toward the candles.
"And after he returned, he began moving."
"Yes."
"Toward the Combat Department."
"Yes."
"Toward the hero."
"Yes."
"Toward the party."
"Yes."
Her voice grew softer with every answer.
"Proximity mattered. Bonds mattered. Hatred mattered. Admiration mattered. A vessel did not become suitable in isolation forever. The world had to shape him, wound him, praise him, and corner him. Only then did the door open properly."
A vessel.
The word struck hard even though I already knew pieces of it.
Carlos Strega.
Future vessel.
Not yet.
But soon.
In this memory, maybe already.
Sleazy's mouth moved before I could think.
"And if someone had interfered earlier?"
The woman went still.
The room followed.
No candle moved.
No breath sounded.
Then she said, "Then fate would have corrected."
My skin crawled.
Sleazy laughed lightly.
"A comforting answer."
"It was not meant to comfort you."
"Few things are."
The woman looked back down at the report.
"You were warned once."
Sleazy's smile faded.
Only slightly.
But I felt the memory tighten around the absence.
"I was warned about many things."
"Before the Western Branch. Before the boy was taken. Everyone assigned near Carlos Strega was told the same thing."
Sleazy's fingers went still.
"Do not touch him."
"Yes."
His voice became softer.
"Because some doors open when knocked."
The woman looked up again.
For one terrible second, I thought I would see her face.
I did not.
"And some," she said, "open wider after the first mistake."
The memory cracked.
The room split apart into navy fragments.
I reached for more.
For her face.
For her name.
For what the branch bore.
For what Carlos found.
For how long he was missing.
For why he survived when others would have died.
But the memory slipped.
Sleazy's emotions surged.
Fear.
Irritation.
Curiosity.
Obedience.
And beneath all of it, hatred so old it had become part of his posture.
Then, under that hatred, something uglier.
Attachment.
I almost reached for it.
Then the navy current snapped shut.
The memory shattered.
I woke with a sharp gasp.
My room returned all at once.
The bed beneath me.
The ceiling above me.
The ghosts surrounding me.
My heart was beating too fast.
Sleazy stood by the desk, his expression carefully blank.
That was far worse than his smile.
Lazy floated near the ceiling, fully awake for once.
Knight's hand rested on his sword.
Bloody's red eyes glowed with interest.
For a moment, none of us spoke.
Then Bloody grinned.
"Well. That was vile."
I sat up slowly, pressing a hand against my forehead.
"The griffins were never the real problem."
Knight's expression hardened.
"You already knew about them?"
"Enough. The attack was always supposed to be my opening."
I swallowed.
"But the kidnapping isn't what makes him dangerous. It's where he's taken."
Lazy's eyes narrowed.
"The destination."
I nodded.
"The branch still bears what it should not. Whatever that means."
"Controlled?" Knight asked.
"Not exactly. She said guided. Encouraged."
Sleazy's voice was quiet.
"That usually meant something worse than control."
I looked at him.
He did not elaborate.
Fine.
One problem at a time.
"Carlos gets abducted," I continued. "The academy treats it like a beast incident. Professors retrieve him later. He comes back alive."
"And changed," Lazy said.
I nodded.
"After that, he starts moving toward the Combat Department. Toward the hero. Toward the main cast."
Bloody crossed his arms.
"So kill him during the chaos like you planned."
The room went silent.
Simple.
Clean.
Obvious.
Too obvious.
Knight looked at me.
"Young man?"
I stared at my hands.
I thought about Carlos looking at me in the lecture hall.
You should rest.
I thought about the woman's words.
The branch bore what it should not have borne.
What remained of it.
Most who received what the branch offered died.
Carlos Strega was not most.
Then I thought about one more thing.
Do not touch him.
Because some doors open when knocked.
I wanted this to be strategy.
I wanted to pretend I was hesitating because killing Carlos too early might trigger something I did not understand.
And maybe that was true.
But it was not the whole truth.
I had sat beside Carlos Strega.
I had watched him answer a history question, stare out a window, and tell me to rest.
I had looked at the future monster and seen a person.
That was the problem.
"No," I said.
Bloody's eyes narrowed.
"No?"
"If I kill him during the chaos, I still don't know what happens."
"He dies," Bloody said. "That is generally the point of killing someone."
"Unless he doesn't."
That made even Bloody pause.
I looked up.
"This isn't normal. The cult planned this around him for a reason. The executive called him a vessel. Not a recruit. Not a candidate. A vessel."
Lazy's expression sharpened.
"You believe there may already be something connected to him."
"I don't know. Maybe. Maybe not. But that warning…"
I swallowed.
"Do not touch him before the incident. Some doors open when knocked."
Knight's face darkened.
"A trap."
"Or a condition," Lazy said. "Perhaps killing him too early activates something. Perhaps physical contact, hostile mana, or soul interference could accelerate the process."
Bloody scoffed.
"Cowardice dressed as theory."
I glared at him.
"Strategy dressed as not being a suicidal idiot."
Sleazy chuckled softly.
"There's our Seer."
I ignored him.
My mind was moving now.
The exhaustion was still there, heavy and miserable, but beneath it something sharper had awakened.
I had been treating Carlos's kidnapping like an opportunity.
But what if it was not just an opportunity?
What if it was the beginning?
Carlos did not become the villain simply because he was kidnapped.
He became the villain because something was waiting for him where the griffin took him.
Something growing where it should not.
Something meant for him.
I had been treating Carlos like a crime that had already happened.
But sitting beside him made one horrible thing clear.
He had not committed it yet.
So stopping the kidnapping was not enough.
Killing him before I understood the conditions was not enough either.
I needed to be there before he found it.
Knight seemed to read my expression.
"No."
"I haven't said anything yet."
"You do not need to."
Lazy sighed.
"He's going to get abducted."
Bloody barked a laugh.
Sleazy's smile returned, slow and delighted.
I pointed at all of them.
"Technically, I am going to allow myself to be included in an already scheduled kidnapping."
Knight closed his eyes as if praying for strength.
"Young man."
"It's the only way."
"It is absolutely not the only way."
"It's the only way to see where Carlos is taken."
"You could follow from a distance."
"Tier-three griffins."
"You could inform the professors."
"And say what? Hello, Professor Ludwig, I crawled through the soul of my cult-raised alternate self and discovered your study trip is about to become a kidnapping route arranged by a supposedly extinct organization?"
Lazy raised a finger.
"That would likely get you detained."
"Thank you."
"You are welcome."
Knight's expression remained grim.
"You are severely exhausted, blood-deficient, barely trained, and planning to be taken by tier-three beasts."
I nodded.
"Yes."
"Do you hear yourself?"
"Constantly. It's awful."
Bloody grinned.
"I like this plan."
"That makes me hate it more," Knight said.
Sleazy tilted his head.
"You understand that getting taken does not guarantee you land near Carlos."
"I know."
"You understand that if the griffin drops you, you die."
"I know."
"You understand that if whatever is waiting for Carlos notices you, something worse may happen."
I paused.
Then nodded.
"I know."
Sleazy watched me carefully.
His smile faded again.
"Then why?"
For once, he sounded genuinely curious.
I looked toward the window.
Outside, the academy sky shimmered faintly, beautiful and false.
Somewhere beyond it was the real world.
The God Tree.
The Western Branch.
The place where Carlos Strega would begin walking toward the end of everything.
"Because if something is waiting for Carlos on that branch," I said, "then I have to reach him before he reaches it."
No one answered.
Even Bloody went quiet.
I hated how dramatic that sounded.
Unfortunately, it was true.
I leaned back against the wall and exhaled.
"Besides, if Carlos gets kidnapped alone, he comes back changed. If I get kidnapped with him…"
Lazy finished the thought.
"You become a variable."
"Exactly."
Knight looked deeply unhappy.
"You are gambling with your life."
"Yes."
"With your soul."
"Probably."
"With the future of the world."
"That one was already ruined when I got here."
Bloody laughed.
Sleazy smiled.
Lazy sighed.
Knight looked like he had aged ten years despite already being dead.
I clapped my hands together weakly.
"Alright. Then it's decided."
"It is not decided," Knight said.
"It is emotionally decided. Logistically pending."
Lazy floated lower.
"We need information. Griffin behavior. Western Branch layout. Guard formations. Professor assignments. Emergency protocols."
I nodded.
"Agreed."
Sleazy raised a hand.
"And perhaps a method to ensure you are taken with Carlos instead of eaten immediately."
"That would be helpful, yes."
Bloody's grin turned sharp.
"And blood."
I looked at him.
"No."
"You will need Bloodrend."
"I am not bleeding myself again today."
"You are weak."
"I am alive."
"For now."
"I hate how you say that."
My head fell back against the wall.
In two days, I had to attend an outdoor study trip, avoid suspicion, stay close to Carlos, survive a griffin attack, somehow get kidnapped, avoid being eaten, discover what the cult had arranged, and kill Carlos before he reached whatever was waiting for him.
All while recovering from self-inflicted blood loss.
Perfect.
Completely manageable.
A normal academic week, really.
I closed my eyes.
"First," I muttered, "I sleep."
Knight's voice softened.
"A wise choice."
"Second, we plan."
Lazy hummed.
"Also wise."
"Third…"
I opened one eye.
"We figure out how to get kidnapped without dying."
Sleazy's smile returned in full.
"Now that sounds fun."
"No," Knight said immediately. "It does not."
Bloody laughed.
For once, I agreed with Knight.
But the decision had already settled in my chest.
In two days, Carlos Strega would be taken by griffins.
Originally, that was where I planned to kill him.
Now?
Now I needed to follow him long enough to learn what made him worth killing.
And the worst part was, I was starting to hope I wouldn't find it.