Chapter 13 #2
I push through the double doors into the dining hall, which is already bustling with activity.
It's surreal how normal everything looks, considering we were all nearly obliterated yesterday.
The tables are filled with darkbloods talking in hushed tones, their eyes occasionally flashing with that subtle shadow I'm starting to recognize as the Ide presence.
“JAX!”
The shout comes from the far corner of the hall, and I spot Amelie waving frantically at me, her short, spiky hair sticking up in at least five directions. Next to her, Joseph Vargas hunches over a protein shake, his massive shoulders tensed like he's expecting an attack from behind.
I weave through the tables, grabbing a tray of food on my way—a pile of omelettes and fried vegetables, and enough coffee to drown in. When I reach their table, Amelie launches herself at me, nearly knocking me over with the force of her hug.
“You absolute asshole!” she says, punching me in the arm. “You were dead, and now you're not, and you didn't even text me!”
“Sorry. My phone was kind of out of reach.”
“Well, you look good for a corpse.” She drops back into her seat. Her eyes gleam with a mixture of relief and curiosity. “So? What was it like? Being basically dead and then... not?”
I slide into the chair across from her, immediately shoveling omelette into my mouth. I ate a ton last night but I’m genuinely hungry again. “Honestly? I don't remember much. Just darkness, then... here I am.”
“Fascinating from a necromantic perspective,” Amelie muses, tapping her fingers against her chin. “I have so many questions about the transition state. Did you experience any phantom sensations? Lingering connection to the spirit realm? Unusual cravings for brains?”
“Leave him alone, Amelie,” Joseph mutters. “He just got back. Doesn't need you turning him into one of your experiments.”
I shovel in a forkful of omelette. “Thanks for the concern, Joe. Good to see you too.”
Joseph's shoulders relax slightly, though his fingers keep twitching against his cup. “Yeah, well... it's good to have you back. The gym's been almost quiet without you hogging the weights.”
I finish the rest of my omelette while Amelie peppers me with questions about the “necrotic transition state” of my resurrection. I'm not sure what to tell her. The truth—that my father's spirit is somehow lodged in my brain—isn't an option, thanks to his insistence on secrecy.
“So this Ide thing,” I say, changing the subject. “How's it working out for you guys?”
Amelie's eyes light up. “It's weird, right? Like having a second shadow that nobody else can see.” She leans forward. “Mine hasn’t talked, but I could feel it when I worked on my necromancy earlier this morning. It's almost like... having training wheels I never asked for.”
“Mine actually spoke to me,” Joseph says.
He tenses his jaw. “Weird as shit. Says his name is Casius but doesn’t seem to remember much more about himself.
Ancient blood mage, apparently.” He pulls a small blade from his pocket—one of those ceremonial silver ones we use in basic blood magic classes. “Look at this.”
He pricks the pad of his thumb and a single bead of blood wells up, but instead of blooming into a messy smear, it holds its shape like a perfect ruby marble.
He hovers his hand over the table, and the blood begins to…
stretch. It elongates into a needle-thin wire of crimson. The silverware on the table rattles.
“Casius showed me this,” Joseph grunts, his brow furrowed in concentration. “Usually, for a blood-bind this tight, you’d need a catalyst—quartz or at least a grounded sigil. But it’s like he just... pushed, and somehow I was able to do it.”
The wire of blood suddenly snaps into a complex, three-dimensional geometric shape, a polyhedral cage that floats an inch above the wood. It’s translucent, glowing with a rhythmic pulse. Amelie gasps, leaning in so close her nose almost brushes the magical construct.
“It’s a containment lattice,” she whispers, her eyes wide. “Joseph, that’s high-level defensive warding. You haven't even finished the intermediate blood-arts module.”
“I know,” Joseph says, his voice sounding strained.
He flicks his wrist, and the lattice dissolves back into a simple drop of blood that sinks into his skin, leaving no trace of the cut.
“Seems my Ide just knows how the blood wants to move. It’s like.
.. muscle memory for a muscle I didn't know I had. It’s amplified. Faster. Stronger.”
I feel my father stir in the back of my mind. “Crude,” he murmurs. “The guy is forcing the flow. He’ll burn through his iron levels in an hour if he keeps using his own life-force as a battery for the Ide’s hunger. Tell him to anchor the pull to the ambient energy of the room instead.”
I hesitate. If I start dishing out pro-tips from a dead Master of the Coven, the 'I'm just a normal resurrected guy haunted by a low-key Ide' act is going to fall apart fast.
“Uh, I’d be careful not to overdo it,” I say instead. “You’re a mortal channeling some insanely advanced magic. That kind of channeling takes conditioning you haven’t built up to.”
Joseph rubs his chest. “Yeah, it’s a heavy pull. I feel it. Like doing a… max-rep deadlift with your soul? If that makes sense. But the result...”—he looks at his hand, a flicker of something that might be pride—or fear—crossing his face—“is pretty incredible.”
Before Amelie can launch into her own warning about the biological toll of Ide-enhanced hemomancy, the bench next to me groans under fresh weight.
“Move over, zombie boy,” Nyv says, sliding in beside me. She looks exhausted, the dark circles under her eyes contrasting sharply with her pale skin, but there’s a new sharpness to her movements. Ridge and Isola follow her, looking equally worn but oddly energized.
“Great,” I mutter, scooting over. “The whole crew. We just need a campfire and some ghost stories.”
“We got the ghosts already,” Isola says, though her smile doesn't quite reach her eyes. She slides a thermos across the table to me. “Your mom intercepted me, asked me to give this to you. Her special brew. She said you'd need it.”
I unscrew the cap and the rich, spicy scent of my mother’s restorative tea hits me. It smells like home and safety and a thousand childhood memories.
“Thanks,” I say, taking a sip. The warmth spreads through me, easing muscles I didn't even realize were tense.
Isola looks at my tray. “You going to eat those tomatoes, or are they just for decoration?”
I push the tray toward her. “Help yourself. I’m pretty sure my stomach is a bottomless pit today, anyway.”
“Resurrection hunger,” Amelie says, nodding sagely. “The body is trying to replace the mass lost to cellular decay during the dormant period.”
“I wasn't decaying, Amelie.” I sigh. “I was in a spirit-stasis field. By the way, where’s Brynn?” I direct the question at my cousins.
Nyv shrugs. “Probably stalking the woods for Chad. Not seen her this morning.”
Chad. That was one of the weirdest developments that happened while I was out. He’s… half demon? Dude hid that well. Though I’d always thought there was something kind of sketchy about him...
Ridge leans back, his eyes tracking the room with a hunter’s focus. “The mood's weird in here. Half the coven looks like they've won the lottery, and the other half looks like they're waiting for the floor to open up again.”
“Can’t blame them,” Nyv mutters, picking at a piece of toast. “My head feels… crowded lately. It hasn’t spoken but… I keep feeling this bizarre urge to visit the old crypts under the east wing. Like there’s something it wants to see.”
“Yeah,” I say. “That’s a hard no from me.”
“Don't,” Ridge warns Nyv. “At least not alone. We still don't know what these things really want.”
“They want to live,” Amelie says simply. “Wouldn't you, after being trapped in a gray nothing for centuries?”
Isola exhales. “Dominic said it gets easier, at least,” she says, though she sounds like she’s trying to convince herself. She glances at me. “How’re you doing, Jax? How’s your… passenger?”
My younger cousin’s curious eyes suddenly feel heavy. She’s looking at me, searching for an answer I can't give. I can feel my father’s presence, a shadow lurking just behind my eyes, watching them through my pupils. It feels like an intimate, suffocating secret.
“It's manageable,” I say, choosing my words carefully. “It's a weight, sure. But I’m trying not to overthink it.”
“Good,” Dad says. “Keep it vague.”
“Typical Jax,” Nyv snorts, squeezing my forearm. “Man literally crawls out of death and still plays it cool. I missed your dumb face.”
“I missed yours too, Nyv,” I say. “You’ve got ash in your hairline.”
She curses under her breath, rubbing her forehead. “This stuff is everywhere. I’ve showered twice and still feel like I’m made of charcoal.”
The conversation drifts into the more mundane—the state of each of our training grounds, which teachers survived the breach, who’s currently in the infirmary.
It’s a desperate attempt at normalcy, a thin veil of small talk draped over a world that has fundamentally shifted on its axis.
We’re all pretending we aren’t sharing our bodies with ancient specters.
We’re pretending the ash outside isn’t the remains of our enemies.
Suddenly, the chatter in the hall dies down. It’s a wave of silence that rolls from the entrance to the back of the room.
I look up. Standing at the head of the hall is a man I’ve seen in passing many times but still never shared a class with.
Professor Burr. He is a legend at Darkbirch and a mountain of a man, his dark robes trimmed with the silver sigils of a high-ranking combat master.
They say he can literally punch a hole through stone.
His sleeves are rolled up, revealing forearms corded with muscle and covered in ritual scars.
His hair is a shock of white, and his eyes—normally a piercing blue—now shimmer with that unmistakable Ide-glint.
He doesn't need a microphone. When he speaks, the air itself seems to carry the sound.
“Finish your meals,” Burr says, his voice a low rumble.
“The old curriculum is dead. The war we fought yesterday was just the beginning, and the power you now carry is a blade that cuts both ways. In thirty minutes, all darkbloods of training age are required to report to the Central Gymnasium. No exceptions.”
He pauses, his gaze sweeping the room, landing for a second on our table. It’s the weirdest thing, but I swear I feel the Ide in him—something ancient and sharp—briefly touch the Ide in me. My father tenses in my mind, a sudden, defensive spike of energy that makes my vision flicker.
“We have been given a gift,” Burr continues, his tone hardening. “But a gift without discipline is a disaster. You will learn to wield your Ides, or you will be consumed by them. The transition period is over. Now, we begin the integration.”
He turns and sweeps out of the room, his robes snapping like a whip.
“Consumed by them,” I repeat, staring at the empty space where he stood a second ago. “Pretty sure that wasn’t part of Dominic’s intro speech?”
Ridge frowns. “Well, sort of. He said we need to learn to work with them or else it’ll be a draining, uphill battle.”
Nyv scrapes her chair away from the table. “Either way, I'd rather not find out what happens if we're late.”
“Yeah,” I say, our new reality sinking deeper into my bones. Is this going to be our life forever, from now on? All of us stuck with Ide passengers? I’m not complaining about having my father back, but I can’t imagine this being everyone’s new life, for the rest of our lives.
Guess it’s one step at a time. Survival first. Comfort second. As it’s always been for us.
As we all stand and head toward the hall’s exit, I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the polished surface of a serving counter.
For just a second, I see my father's eyes staring back at me—something hidden, something watchful. A little input right about now would be useful? But he doesn’t speak to me. For now, he stays quiet.