The crowd was still buzzing from the midterms.
Students laughed, compared grades, or quietly plotted their transfers to less stressful departments. Professors retreated to faculty lounges to nurse their headaches. Somewhere near the potions wing, someone summoned an ice cream golem in celebration. It collapsed after two steps. Still delicious, though.
Revantra stood near the practice arena's outer arch, quietly sipping from a borrowed fruit drink, the tiny paper umbrella still lodged awkwardly in the cup. Her hair was tied back from the earlier fire trials, and her sleeves still smelled faintly of ozone.
Elias bounced beside her, grinning.
"I can't believe you burned the scroll and still got full marks."
"I think they were too afraid to penalize me," she muttered.
"They should make you a professor. You could teach 'Incineration with Style.' Or 'How to Make a Dummy Question Its Life Choices.'"
She gave him a tired glare over her straw.
He wiggled his eyebrows. "What? You'd have the most popular class. I'd audit it just to fail on purpose."
"You are a failure," she muttered.
He beamed.
But behind her small smirk, her thoughts itched—uncomfortable and flickering. The burn mark on the scroll hadn't been entirely accidental. Something had surged in her. Like recognition. Like déjà vu lit on fire.
A name. A title. A throne.
Her cup began to heat in her hands.
She snapped out of it with a jolt.
"Careful!" Elias grabbed it before it melted. "What is with you and setting things on fire today?"
"I don't know," she said. "It's like something's…pressing on the inside of my head."
He frowned. "Do you need a healing scroll? Or tea? I can get you panic tea."
She waved him off. "I'm fine. Just tired."
"Okay. But if you start glowing, I'm grabbing the extinguisher."
They strolled toward the academy gates with the slow shuffle of people who'd survived something mildly traumatic and deserved hot food.
That was when it happened.
The man stood beside the arched column, half-shadowed beneath a draping stone ledge, as if trying not to be seen and also failing terribly at it. Cloaked, face low beneath a hood, posture too still.
Revantra didn't notice him until they passed by.
Then—
"Queen Revantra," he whispered.
Her heart stopped.
The words were soft. Quiet enough to be mistaken for wind, if not for the way they hooked into her skull like fishline.
She stopped mid-step.
Every hair on her arms rose.
The umbrella in her drink wilted.
Elias turned. "Rea?"
Her eyes were wide. Too wide.
The man had already turned away, vanishing into the crowd, dissolving like smoke. No one else seemed to notice. Or if they did, they didn't understand.
"Rea?"
She didn't answer.
Instead, she spun, grabbed Elias by the wrist, and ran.
They didn't stop until they reached the greenhouse behind the west dormitories.
A maze of vines, mossy stones, and enchanted mist screens kept it humid and near-empty in the evenings. Only a few crickets chirped beneath the shelves of glowing mushrooms.
Revantra slumped onto a bench made of petrified wood and stared at her hands.
Elias sat beside her, breathing hard. "Okay. So. That was a bit dramatic. Not judging. Just...did we commit a crime or something?"
"No," she whispered. "Someone remembered me."
His face shifted from confusion to worry in three seconds flat.
"What do you mean?"
She swallowed. Her lips trembled, just once.
"Someone...said it. The real name. Not Rhea. Not the cover. Revantra. They called me Queen."
Elias stared.
And then quietly reached into his sleeve and pulled out the tiny calming stone he'd borrowed from the infirmary after his last panic episode.
He pressed it into her palm.
She didn't even react to the cool touch.
"Do you know who they were?" he asked gently.
"No. But I think they knew me."
She was pale. The most unflappable girl in school—who had fire-walked her way through spell trials like she was brushing her hair—was trembling.
Elias leaned back, chewing his cheek.
"Okay. So. That's not...great. But maybe they're just a history nerd?"
"They didn't say it like a guess. They said it like a greeting. Like I'd remember."
Elias hesitated. "Do you?"
Silence.
Revantra stared at the moss-lined floor. Her fingers tightened around the stone.
"…I'm starting to," she said softly.
The greenhouse hissed with mist. A vine uncoiled somewhere in the corner.
Elias didn't move.
"I don't know when it started," she continued, voice quieter now. "Maybe after the bakery trip. Maybe before that. Just little things. A memory here. A feeling there. Spells I never studied. Reflexes I shouldn't have."
Her eyes rose to his.
"But now? It's not just instincts. It's...scenes."
He sat perfectly still.
"Scenes of what?" he asked, voice careful.
"Fire," she said simply. "Destruction. Thrones. Battlefields. I remember standing over cities, looking down, feeling...invincible. But cold. So cold. Like I'd lost something and burned the world trying to find it."
Her knuckles whitened.
"I remember standing alone."
Elias's stomach twisted.
"And now?" he asked.
She looked up. Her eyes shimmered. But not with tears.
With fear.
"I'm remembering everything—and it scares me."
A long silence followed.
Elias, to his credit, didn't panic. Or freak out. Or scream "I KNEW IT" like some dramatic novel hero.
Instead, he said:
"Do you want to sit here a while?"
She blinked. "What?"
"Just…sit. Not talk. Or talk, if you want. Or stare at mushrooms. Whatever helps."
She looked down.
A tiny puff of steam curled from her wrist.
"…You're not scared of me?"
He snorted. "You just outranked the faculty and possibly incinerated a divine grading rubric. If I was gonna be scared, that was the moment."
"But I was a tyrant. I destroyed kingdoms."
"Yeah," he said. "But you also make weird pancake faces when you're annoyed."
Her lips twitched. "Those are not on purpose."
"Still cute."
She rolled her eyes.
He nudged her knee with his.
"Look. Maybe you were scary once. But you're also the girl who adopted a half-dead squirrel last week and named it 'Lord Scruffins.'"
"He needed a title," she muttered.
"And you say 'thank you' to the dining hall stew pot. Even though it's not alive."
"It might be," she said darkly.
"My point is, whatever you were, it doesn't cancel out what you are. You're Rea. You're you. And...you're not alone."
He held her gaze.
She stared back—and something in her chest unclenched.
Not everything. Not the whole knot of fear. But something.
A breath she hadn't realized she was holding.
He reached for her hand.
She didn't flinch.
The greenhouse glowed faintly. Fireflies blinked near the roof, winking in and out like stars.
"I'm scared," she said again, softer this time.
"I know."
"I don't know what's going to happen."
"I do," he said. "Whatever it is, we'll handle it. Together. Even if you remember a million evil spells and start glowing ominously."
She squinted. "You'd really stick around if I turned into a murder witch?"
"I'd make you tea and tell people to watch their grammar."
She laughed.
And then sniffled, just once, before quickly burning the tear away with a flick of her finger.
"Sorry," she muttered. "I don't...usually do this."
"I know," Elias said. "I've been waiting."
She glanced sideways. "For me to cry?"
"For you to let me in."
She paused.
"…I still hate your signs."
"Liar."
She leaned against him, just a little. Enough to count.
He didn't say anything.
But his smile was real.
Back in the dormitory tower…
A cloaked man knelt before a flickering rune circle. His hands trembled as he poured the scrying dust into the basin.
"She lives," he whispered. "She remembers."
A voice hissed from the shadows.
"Then soon...she will return to us."
And in the basin, flames curled upward.
Blood-red.
And smiling.
To be continued…