Chapter 3 Everly
Day three is when everything went wrong.
I woke up determined to make it a good day.
Put on my new charcoal blazer over a clean yellow sundress—a compromise between who I was and who I needed to be—and even swapped my pink tennis shoes for a pair of black flats I'd found at the bottom of my suitcase.
Brittany gave me an approving nod on her way out, which felt like a victory.
Magical Theory was my third class of the day, and by the time I walked in, I'd already survived two hours of whispers, pointed stares, and someone "accidentally" spilling coffee on my bag in the hallway. But I was still standing. Still smiling. Still determined to prove I belonged here.
I took my usual seat in the front row, dead center, and pulled out my notebook.
"We're going to have a practical demonstration today," Professor Warrick announced as students settled in behind me.
"You'll each channel your magic into a testing sphere.
The sphere will respond to your natural affinity, allowing us to assess your baseline abilities and determine which magical discipline you're best suited for. "
She started passing out glass spheres etched with symbols I now recognized—a raven skull for Mors, a lightning bolt for Tempest, a black rose for Sanguis, and a pair of dice for Tumult. The four disciplines. The four paths my magic could take.
One by one, students took their turns. Shadow writhed inside one sphere, dark and hungry. Lightning crackled through another. A third glowed deep crimson, pulsing like a heartbeat. Purple light flickered and shifted in a fourth, never settling into one shape.
Everyone's magic knew what it was. Everyone's magic had a home.
Then it was my turn.
I cupped the sphere in my palms and pushed, the way I'd been practicing alone in my room every night—carefully, gently, just enough to see what would happen. I felt my magic stir, felt it rise up to meet the glass—
Shadow filled the sphere. Dark and cold, just like the Mors students before me.
Okay. Death magic. I could work with that. It wasn't my first choice, but at least I'd have an answer, a direction, a place to—
Lightning crackled through the shadow, shattering it.
What?
Then red flooded the glass, hot and pulsing. Then purple, flickering and wild. Then all four at once, swirling together like oil on water, fighting for dominance inside the sphere, and the glass was getting hot in my hands, too hot, vibrating so hard I could feel it in my teeth—
I tried to contain it. Cupped my hands tighter, pushed back, tried to force whatever was happening to stop. But it was like trying to hold back a flood with my bare hands.
The sphere cracked.
Then shattered.
I gasped as glass bit into my palms, shards scattering across my desk and the floor around me. Four colors of magic dissipated into the air like smoke.
Dead silence.
Professor Warrick had backed up three full steps, her face pale. Behind me, I could hear the whispers starting—shocked, confused, afraid.
"That's..." Warrick swallowed hard. "Miss Grey, that's not..."
"Not what?" I kept my voice steady even though my hands were shaking, even though I could feel blood dripping down my wrists and glass embedded in my palms. "Not normal? Not supposed to happen? Not possible?"
She didn't answer. Instead, she approached my desk slowly, like I was a wild animal that might bite. "Hold still."
She pulled a bone wand from her sleeve—a Stylus Mortis, I realized, recognizing it from Brittany's description.
Mors magic. Death magic. She muttered something under her breath and made a sharp gesture, and I watched as the scattered glass shards rose from my desk, from the floor, from my bloody palms—pulling free with tiny stings that made me hiss—and reassembled themselves in midair.
The sphere reformed, hovering between us.
But it wasn't right. The surface was a web of cracks, fracture lines running through the glass like a shattered windshield held together by sheer force of will.
And inside, faint traces of all four colors still swirled—shadow and lightning and red and purple, refusing to fade, refusing to separate.
Professor Warrick plucked it from the air and held it out to me.
"This is yours now, Miss Grey. Your responsibility." Her voice was carefully neutral, but I could see the way her hand trembled slightly. "You'll need to repair it before you can be properly assessed. I suggest you figure out how."
I took the sphere. It was warm in my bloody hands, and I could feel something humming inside it—my magic, still trapped in the glass, still fighting itself.
"How am I supposed to fix it?"
"That," she said, already turning away, "is something you'll need to discover for yourself. Class dismissed."
Students filed out around me, giving me an even wider berth than usual. I sat there for a moment, staring at the cracked sphere in my hands, blood still dripping from the cuts in my palms.
In the front row across the aisle, Callum Bolingbroke was staring at me with those ice-blue eyes. And for the first time since I'd arrived at Nyxhaven, I saw something in his expression besides cold disdain.
I saw fear.
He caught me in the hallway.
"Miss Grey."
I'd been trying to get to the bathroom to wash the blood off my hands, but his voice stopped me cold. I turned to find him standing a few feet away, immaculate as ever, looking at me like I was a specimen he couldn't quite classify.
"That's me." I was cradling the cracked sphere against my chest, trying not to drip blood on my blazer and failing. "Did you need something, or do you just enjoy cornering freshmen in hallways?"
Something flickered across his face—surprise, maybe, that I wasn't cowering. "Your performance in there was concerning."
"Really? I hadn't noticed, what with the dead silence and the professor looking at me like I was about to explode."
"You might be." He stepped closer, and despite myself, I stepped back.
There was something about him that made my hindbrain scream danger—not the overt threat of violence, but something colder, more calculated.
The sense that he was always three moves ahead and I didn't even know we were playing a game.
"The Bolingbroke family has studied magical anomalies for twelve generations," he said, his voice low enough that only I could hear. "What you just did—cycling through all four disciplines—that's not undifferentiated magic. That's something else entirely."
"Great. When you figure out what it is, let me know. I'd love to stop being everyone's favorite freak show."
"This isn't a joke." His eyes bore into mine, cold and sharp as winter. "Whatever you are, you need to get it under control. Before someone decides you're too dangerous to let roam free."
"Someone like you?"
He didn't answer, but he didn't need to. The threat was clear enough.
"Perhaps," he said finally, "you'd be better suited elsewhere."
I should have agreed. Should have nodded and walked away and started packing my bags. That would have been the smart thing to do—the safe thing.
But I've never been bullied before, and I wasn’t about to go down without fighting.
"Perhaps you'd be better suited minding your own business," I said. "I'm not going anywhere. And if you want me gone, you're going to have to do better than a vague warning in a hallway."
We stared at each other for a long moment. I could see him calculating, weighing options, deciding whether I was worth the effort of destroying.
Finally, something shifted in his expression—not warmth, exactly, but something that might have been respect. Or at least acknowledgment that I wasn't going to be easy to break.
"Be careful, Miss Grey." He turned and walked away, his footsteps echoing on the stone floor. "You have no idea what you're dealing with."
"Neither do you," I muttered at his retreating back.
If he heard me, he didn't respond.
I shoved the cracked sphere into my bag and walked outside, still fuming, still trying to process everything that had just happened. The sphere. The four disciplines. Callum's warning.
You have no idea what you're dealing with.
Neither did he. Neither did anyone. That was the whole problem.
The sky was clear when I stepped through the doors—a perfect September afternoon, blue and golden and warm. I took a deep breath, trying to calm down, trying to think.
Then the clouds rolled in.
Fat and black as a bruise, boiling up from nothing, centered directly over my head.
And I knew—I knew before the first drop of rain hit my face—exactly who was responsible.
The rest you already know.
Brittany is waiting when I squelch into our room, leaving a trail of water across the floor. She takes one look at me—soaking wet, blazer ruined, bloody hands clutching a cracked sphere, murder in my eyes—and sits up slowly.
"What happened?"
"Atlas Knox happened." I peel off the blazer and throw it in the corner. It lands with a wet splat. "He sent a storm after me. Chased me all the way to the roof of Bellamy Hall. So I tackled him."
She chokes on nothing. "You what?"
"He tried to fry me with lightning, so I ran straight at him and knocked him down before it could hit me.
It was that or die, but…" I start wringing water out of my hair over the trash can.
"He told me if he'd wanted me dead, I'd be dead, shoved me off him, and walked away. Oh, and before all that—"
I set the cracked sphere on my desk. Even now, hours later, faint traces of color still swirl inside the fractured glass—shadow and lightning and red and purple, refusing to fade.
"—I broke a testing sphere in class by channeling all four disciplines at once, and Callum Bolingbroke cornered me in a hallway to tell me I'm dangerous and should leave."
Brittany stares at the sphere. Then at me. Then at the sphere again.
"Give me your hands," she says.
"What?"
"Your hands. You're still bleeding." She's already reaching for the ritual knife on her nightstand—a small, sharp blade with a red gem in the hilt. "Hold still."
I extend my hands, palms up, and watch as she pricks her own finger with the knife. The gem glows faintly as her blood wells up. Then she presses her fingertip to my palm, and I feel—
Warmth. Not painful, just... warm, spreading through my skin like sunlight. The cuts tingle, then itch, then seal themselves closed, new skin knitting together like the wounds were never there.
"Blood magic," I breathe.
"Healing is the easy part. It's just moving vitality from one place to another.
" She wipes her finger on her black jeans and picks up the cracked sphere, turning it over in her hands.
The colors still swirl inside—faint, but visible.
"This is the part that's not easy. These things are designed to show one affinity. One. They don't do... this."
"Mine did. Professor Warrick put it back together, but she said I have to fix it myself. She wouldn't tell me how."
"Of course she wouldn't." Brittany sets the sphere down carefully, like it might bite her. "What exactly happened? Walk me through it."
So I tell her. The shadow first, then lightning, then the blood-red glow, then chaos purple.
All four, swirling together, fighting for space inside the glass until it couldn't contain them anymore.
The way Professor Warrick backed away. The way Callum looked at me after—like I was something dangerous. Something to be dealt with.
When I finish, Brittany is quiet for a long time.
"That's not undifferentiated magic," she says finally.
"Undifferentiated is when your magic doesn't have a clear affinity—it's weak, unfocused, not strong enough to declare for any discipline.
What you're describing is the opposite. You didn't fail to connect with any discipline. You connected with all of them."
"Is that possible?"
"It shouldn't be." She takes the bottle from under her bed, takes a long drink, and holds it out to me. "But you did it. And Callum saw it. That's why he warned you—he's trying to figure out what you are before anyone else does."
"And Atlas?"
"Atlas doesn't think. Atlas follows orders." Her eyes meet mine. "Someone pointed him at you, Everly. The question is who, and why."
I think about that. About the way the storm appeared seconds after my confrontation with Callum. About the way Atlas was waiting on that rooftop, like he knew I'd end up there.
"You think Callum sent him?"
"I think someone sent him. And I think whatever you did in that classroom scared them enough to want you gone before you could do it again."
I look down at my hands. The cuts are gone now, healed by Brittany's blood magic, but I can still feel the phantom sting of glass in my palms. I pick up the sphere and turn it over in my fingers. Four colors of magic. Four disciplines that aren't supposed to mix.
"What am I?" I ask quietly.
Brittany doesn't answer right away. When she does, her voice is uncharacteristically soft. "I don't know. But whatever it is, it's got the most powerful students on campus running scared." She pauses. "That's either very good for you, or very, very bad."
Outside, the sky is clear again—innocent blue, like nothing happened. But I can still taste metal on my tongue. Still feel the lightning gathering overhead. Still see Atlas Knox's cold blue eyes staring up at me as I pinned him to the rooftop.
If I wanted you dead, you'd be dead.
Two presidents. Two attacks. Three days.
And I still have no idea what I am—only that it scares them. Only that they want me gone.
Well, they're going to be disappointed. I'm not going anywhere. Whatever I am, I'm going to figure it out. And if Callum Bolingbroke and Atlas Knox want to stop me, they're going to have to try a lot harder than warnings and weather.
"Brittany?"
"Yeah?"
"Thanks. For healing me. And for the whiskey."
She snorts. "Keep picking fights with fraternity presidents and you're going to need a lot more of both."
"Probably."
But I'm smiling as I say it. Because for the first time since I arrived at Nyxhaven, I don't feel like a victim. I've been knocked down, targeted, humiliated, nearly killed.
And I'm still standing.
That has to count for something.