Chapter 31
JAX
Professor Burr's Ide training continues to leave me battered, bruised, but oddly energized. Each session pushes us further toward what he calls “collaborative consciousness”—the delicate balance of letting the Ide's power flow through us without surrendering control.
Most students struggle. I don't.
“You're adapting remarkably well,” Burr tells me after I successfully complete a series of kinetic redirection drills that would have normally snapped my wrists. “It's as if you’ve been doing this for decades, Salem.”
I don’t tell him that, in a way, I have.
“Good,” Dad says as I wipe sweat from my face. “You’re progressing.”
“Alright, pack up for the day!” Burr says to the entire class. “I sense we’ve reached our productivity peak.”
It’s 6 PM, so that’s just as well. I’m starved. I head for the exit before anyone can disrupt me or call out an evening assignment. I’m not even in the mood to wait for my friends or cousins. My mind’s still preoccupied by Dad’s journal and everything we didn’t manage to learn from it.
“How’s your memory coming along?” I murmur under my breath. “Any new pieces jogged?”
“I’m… working on it.”
I huff, grabbing my gym bag and heading for the locker room.
After a quick shower, I pick up a plate of food from the dining hall and return straight to my room to eat and sleep. I want an early night. I’m still recovering from weeks underground, after all. I’m not completely back to normal yet.
I pull off my shirt and sink onto the bed.
I'm exhausted to my bones, but while I eat, my mind keeps churning with questions.
Dad's journal. His cryptic notes. The way he doesn't want me talking to Esther or Blythe.
What exactly was he doing on that mission to Tarnhollow?
Why was there a last-minute change in protocol?
There's something bigger here, something he's not telling me. Something he doesn’t seem to even remember himself.
I push the empty tray aside and lie back. I stare at the ceiling, watching the shadows cast by my table-candle shift across the plaster. Even with exhaustion tugging at my limbs, my mind refuses to quiet.
I’m not sure what Brynn’s up to. I still haven’t seen her in classes. I’ll check on her tomorrow morning.
“You still awake in there?” I murmur.
His presence stirs. “I don't exactly sleep.”
“Right. Forgot about the whole 'eternal consciousness' perk.” I shift, my shoulder giving a dull, satisfying ache. “Must be boring as hell just waiting for me to pass out. What do you do in there? Sift through my old memories?”
“It isn't boring, Jax,” he says, his voice losing that tactical edge. It’s more like the voice from the backyard, from the years before his missions got longer. “I’m mostly just... getting used to the man you became. I missed a lot of growth spurts.”
“You missed the bad haircut phase, too. Trust me, the Ide veil spared you some trauma.” I stare at the dancing candle flame until my vision starts to blur.
I close my eyes, the darkness behind my lids feeling weirdly less empty with him there.
“Mom still has that old graveball trophy on the living room’s mantle,” I say.
“The one from the year you coached the junior league into the ground.”
“I didn't coach them into the ground,” he grumbles, and I can almost feel the phantom warmth of a smirk in the back of my head. “I taught them to work smarter than the other team. Your mother hated that trophy. Said it was too sharp for the living room’s ‘aesthetic.’”
“She kept it anyway,” I murmur. “She kept everything. Even those socks with the holes in the toes that you refused to throw out.”
A long silence stretches, the kind that reminds me of evenings when the house was quiet and the fire burned low. Sleep takes me before I can decide if this feels like having him back… or just borrowing something that isn’t mine anymore.
I yawn deeply, and darkness finally rushes in.
The dream starts simply enough. I'm walking through Darkbirch's hallways. But they're empty. No students, no professors, just endless stone corridors lit by flickering torches.
“Hello?” I call out, my voice echoing strangely. “Anyone here?”
Silence answers, but I feel watched. Eyes on me from every shadow.
“Dad?” I whisper.
No response from him either. For the first time since his return, it feels like I'm alone in my head.
The hallway ahead of me stretches farther than it should. The stone walls are slightly warped, the ceiling a little too high. Darkbirch, but not quite. Like someone rebuilt it from memory and got the proportions wrong.
My footsteps echo too loudly.
“Nobody here?” I try again, my voice bouncing down the hallway.
I squint into the darkness ahead. At the end of the hallway, where the stone corridor should terminate, stands a dark shape. Perfectly still. Watching.
My pulse quickens. But the shape doesn't respond or move. It's humanoid, yet somehow wrong. Too tall, its proportions stretched. My feet carry me forward despite the warning bells clanging in my head.
“Who’s there?” I ask. “Are you an Ide?”
“I prefer… a god of shadows,” a low, husky voice replies.
I stall in my tracks as the figure’s head tilts slightly.
Where its face should be, there’s nothing but darkness, a void that seems to pull at me.
And yet, within it, I can just make out the faint glint of eyes.
Eyes that tug at me, that feel like they’re reaching—craving, demanding something I don’t have the strength to refuse.
“I do wonder where your sister is,” he says.
It takes a moment to find my voice. “Wh-Which one?”
“The elder of course. The one who drew us back from the endless dark. She and I have unfinished business. Something that was… interrupted.”
I stare at him, my throat constricting. “I’ve no idea where she is. How would I? I only just got out of the ground.” And I wouldn’t tell… whatever you are, anyway, even if I knew. “What do you mean, something interrupted?”
“She hasn’t attempted any sort of communication with you, I assume,” he says casually, ignoring my question.
I shake my head.
“No, of course not. Or else I should have sensed it.” He releases what sounds something like an exhale.
“We lost track of her when the dragon snatched her,” he continues, his dark form moving slightly closer to me. “The beast did something to mask her trail… But no matter. She will return to us, to me, with or without your help.”
“Why do you want her?”
There’s a pause. “Want?” he echoes softly. “No… not quite. Some things don’t begin with wanting.”
Something in the way he says it makes my skin prickle. “That doesn’t answer the question.”
His dark eyes fix on me. “It answers more than you think.”
A sudden banging on my door jolts me awake. I sit bolt upright in bed, heart hammering, fragments of a dream already dissolving like smoke. Something about corridors... eyes watching me...? I struggle to piece together the details now.
The pounding comes again, more insistent this time.
“Jax! Open up!” Ridge's voice, urgent and strained.
I stumble out of bed, disoriented, and fumble with the lock. When I yank the door open, Ridge is standing there, his broad shoulders filling the frame. His face is tight with worry, jaw clenched in that way that means serious trouble.
“What's wrong?” I ask, rubbing sleep from my eyes.
“It's Nyv,” he says, running a hand through his already disheveled hair. “She's gone. Disappeared after Burr's class. I've looked everywhere. Her dorm, the dining hall, the training grounds. Nothing.”
My brain kicks into gear, sleep falling away. “How long has she been missing?”
“Almost four hours now.” Ridge's eyes are dark with concern.
Something tickles at the back of my mind—a memory from earlier. Nyv leaning across the breakfast table, her voice lowered as she pushed food around her plate.
“The crypts under the east wing,” I say. “Do you think she might’ve—”
Ridge’s tight face is enough of an answer.
Shit. Her Ide was urging her to go there. Maybe she’s still struggling to control it and gave in.
I grab a shirt from the floor and pull it over my head. I feel my father stir in the back of my mind, suddenly alert. “This is concerning,” he murmurs.
I snag my jacket from the chair and shove my feet into my boots.
“Let's go,” I say, following Ridge into the corridor.
The crypts under the east wing. Just thinking about them makes my skin crawl. They’re the oldest part of the academy, predating even the main structure by decades.
In first year history, I was taught they were built as a containment system.
After the Blood Wars—the great war that was supposed to drive dragons to extinction—and the Purification Crusade—one of the clearbloods’ worst crusades against our kind—our ancestors needed somewhere to store certain.
.. artifacts that couldn't be destroyed.
Things left over from wars and battles, like objects imbued with malevolent intent.
Weapons deemed unstable. Vessels that had housed spirits too dangerous to release.
Basically a supernatural toxic waste dump. And Nyv's probably down there somewhere.
We hurry through the academy halls until we reach the turn that deposits us at the entrance of the eastern wing. It’s deserted at this hour.
We head to the service stairwell that leads down to the basement and quickly descend the steps. The heavy iron door to the crypts comes into view at the bottom, its surface etched with ancient ward-marks that normally pulse with a dull red warning light.
But tonight, the wards are dark. And worse, the massive lock hangs open, the door slightly ajar.
A cold feeling settles in my gut. It’s not easy to open this door.
It shouldn’t have been possible for someone without high-level authorization or at least a rune-code.
Which means either someone authorized has come down here, just at this time, and left the door open—which would be completely against protocol—or…