Aralyn's POV
I had been wandering around Shadowvale for so long that I had completely lost track of time. At some point, I had stopped paying attention to where I was going and simply let my feet carry me wherever they wanted. Every hallway looked the same, every path eventually connected to another path, and every corner revealed more of the academy, but none of it mattered because my mind had been stuck on the same problem for hours.
No matter what I did, no matter how hard I tried, I still couldn't find even the smallest hint of magic inside me, not a single sign that I belonged in this place. After spending most of the day trying to force something to happen, I was finally beginning to accept a possibility that I had been trying very hard to avoid.
Maybe High Priestess Amodina had been wrong, maybe Shadowvale wasn't as perfect as they thought they were. Maybe they really did make a mistake when they brought me here.
