After some time passed Flora was moved to the Isolation ward. No one was allowed to see her. The next day the professors and Doctors went about their work as if nothing had happened. No on talked of the incident. The classes wen on as scheduled, only now one seat was empty in Neil's class. When they went for physical training, there was one girl less in the gymnasium.
Arata tried to meet her, but was denied the opportunity. As a final effort he went to Lyra, maybe she could make it happen.
"Let me meet her, please," Arata said as he entered Lyra's office on the second floor of the main castle.
Lyra didn't look up at first. She slid a stack of files aside with careful precision.
"Who?" she asked.
"You know who I'm talking about."
She sighed softly, fingers resting on the desk. "I'm sorry, Arata. That's not something I can arrange." She paused. "She's fine. She's regained consciousness. You can rest assured."
"Then release her from isolation" Arata snapped. "It's not like she was physically injured."
Lyra finally looked at him.
"You know we can't do that" she said evenly. "We need to confirm there are no residual effects from the exposure."
"She's not all right" Arata said, quieter now—but sharper. "Is she?"
Lyra didn't answer immediately.
"Let me see her," he continued, pulling out the chair and sitting down heavily. "Just once."
The silence stretched.
Lyra's expression shifted not to sympathy, but to calculation.
"I'll see what I can do" she said at last. "Meet me tonight. At the entrance to the Isolation Ward."
Arata stood.
"Fine" he said. "Goodbye, Miss Lyra."
He left without waiting for a reply.
...
Night came quietly to the Academy.
Not with darkness, there was never true darkness here, there were always stars lighting up the sky, veins lighting up the corridiors. It was with he thinning of sounds. Footsteps faded from the corridors.The Doors closing. The veins brightened from their daytime glow to a very watchful crimson, like embers coming back to life.
He had told Wanuy about what he would be doing tonight. he had insisted on coming.
"I should come with you.."
"No, what if someone comes for checking, you need to be here to cove for me." Arata shut him down.
"Fine, I hope Flora's okay." Wanuy said as he sat down.
Arata waited until the second bell marked curfew. Then he moved. The path to the Isolation Ward was not marked, Why would path to Isolation ward be marked?
Corridors narrowed as he descended, the stone changing subtly beneath his boots it was smoother, older than the other stones, worked by hands that had not cared about comfort. The air grew colder, drier, stripped of the faint warmth that usually rose from the veins.
There was no hum here. The veins had stopped at the entrance.
His right hand was twitching. it was as if his hand had been disconnected from the network of the veins., and it didn't like that a bit. He had to concentrate on his breathing to stop the twitching.
At the final turn, the corridor ended in a wide, circular antechamber. The Isolation Ward entrance stood opposite him. There was no arch like that of the observation ward. There was no grandeur even though he was in an castle. Runes crawled along its surface in slow, deliberate patterns, rearranging themselves as if testing combinations.
Arata stopped several paces away.The air here felt wrong it was too clean, too devoid of sound. Even his breath seemed reluctant to linger.
Someone was already there waiting for him. Lyra stood near the wall, hands clasped behind her back, coat darker than usual, her face half-lit by the cold artificial light. She didn't turn when Arata approached.
"You're on time" she said.
"You said tonight" Arata replied.
She nodded once. "I didn't say it would be safe."
"I trust you." Arata said as he followed her inside.
He stepped inside. The runes along the wall shifted in response, their glow tightening.
"Is she awake?" he asked.
"Yes" Lyra said. "She has been... on and off."
"And?" Arata pressed.
Lyra took a moment before answering, "She is not herself. It's as if something has taken over control, or at least trying to.
In a glass cube surrounded by stabiliser rods. Her body still breathed, but her eyes no longer focused on anything. When he saw her through the glass, her lips were moving.
Whispering. he couldn't make out what, but he would recognise that cadence anywhere. It was the rhythm he woke up to every morning. It was the rhythm he felt in his bones. It was the same he had heard in the veins. The hum from inside resonated faintly with his mark. His hand tingled as he pressed it against the glass.
The moment his skin met surface, the whispering stopped. Flora's eyes snapped open. For a heartbeat, they were just eyes of someone lost. Dazed, Searching and Terribly Human.
"Arata…?" she whispered, voice raw as paper. "You came back."
He leaned closer to the glass. "Flora, it's me. Can you hear me properly?"
"I can." Her pupils trembled, adjusting to the light. "Everything's so quiet now. I was so afraid I'd forgotten what quiet felt like. There is constant humming, pulsing, and voices in my head."
"You're safe" he said. "They said you were—"
"Sleeping? They always say that. A faint, tired smile touched her lips. "It's strange. I remember when I departed, how everyone in my family was so sure the Flame would make me more than I ever could be. Do you feel more, Arata?"
He hesitated. "I just feel incredibly tired."
She laughed softly. "Then maybe you're lucky. I feel everything. All the veins breathing, all the walls beating. It's beautiful, yet it hurts. It's so much to take in all at once."
Her smile faltered. "Do you think the flame remembers us? When we die, I mean?"
"Flora" he said gently, "you're not dying".
If you die,I won't have anyone to talk to. One of my two friends will be gone. You can't die. Arata thought to himself.
"Maybe not." Her voice thinned, almost a hum. "Maybe I will just become part of the rhythm in the Veins."
The light inside the chamber began to pulse faintly. Her reflection rippled across the glass. "You should go" she murmured. "It doesn't like when we talk too long."
"What doesn't?" Arata pressed closer to the glass.
"The Flame, It's origins are so much darker and beautiful than we could ever imagine" she said. "The heartbeat between seconds."Her tone changed it became slower, deeper, too even. "It's learning how to use my mouth. Isn't that funny?"
"Flora..."
"Shh, little one." She tilted her head, eyes unfocused now, listening to something far away. "I talk to you too, don't I? I tug at you when you breathe. I am trying to remember your name."
Her fingers twitched against the glass, tracing lines only she could see. "Don't be afraid of it, Arata. Fear makes it louder." It was Flora's voice again.
Her smile widened. "It likes you."
"Stop" he whispered, but the word barely left his throat.
"Too late" she said softly. "It's already in your blood."
Her voice fractured it was laughter and sobs tangled into one. The lights stuttered, the containment field crackling as she pressed her palm flat against the glass mirroring his.
"You have seen it once" she whispered. "The world behind the skin..."
For an instant, they weren't eyes at all. They were mirrors. And through them, he saw it, the same vision he'd glimpsed in the tunnels. A colossal shape turning in the dark, scales like continents, blood flowing through caverns. Each heartbeat shaking the world.
She's stirring brother. You wake her.
Arata staggered back. The connection broke. The glass remained cold, but his palm burned. The veins on his hand were pulsing blue.
When he looked again, Flora had gone still. Her breathing shallow, mechanical.
Lyra found him later, standing in the corridor outside the ward.
Arata turned. "What's happening to her?"
Lyra's gaze softened for a moment, pity, or something near it. "Residual resonance. Her frequency aligned too closely with the Flame's core. She's hearing what no mortal is meant to hear. even if you guys are Wyrmbound."
"What does it say?"
"It doesn't speak" Lyra said. "It remembers. It retells the memories as stories and incidents, if the cadet is able to take in the knowledge of past, he or she becomes stronger, but the knowledge sometimes overloads you, and then the Flame takes over."
He wanted to argue, but the words didn't come. He only nodded and left. Sometimes, its better to leave then trying to say something.
He returned to the dorm , a tired and defeated man. he had never lost a confrontation before, but the Academy had shown there are more ways to loose a fight, other than just physical. It felt like he had lost his little sister again, the first time wasn't his fault, but this time it felt like it was.
Wanuy was already asleep, so he entered the dorm quietly.
He sat by the window again, unable to sleep. The fog outside was thick, hiding the world beyond a few meters. Yet every few minutes, the mist pulsed faintly red, illuminated from within. The veins pulsed brightly today, more than rest of the days.
There, in the fog he saw a silhouette, at first he thought he was dreaming, but then it slowly raised it's arm, and he recognised the faint glowing lines on those arms, it was Flora.
He pressed his hand to his window. The veins in his dorm pulsed violently.
You see her now, a voice whispered. She hears me more clearly than you ever will.
"I am not a lunatic, to just follow a cult, But, why her?"
Because she dares to listen.
"You killed her."
No reply this time, and Arata realise he won't get one.
The room went cold. For a moment, the reflection in the window wasn't his, it was Flora's face, smiling, eyes black and endless.
He blinked, and she was gone.
...
By morning, she was dead.
The official report said neural overload due to harmonic instability.
No one mentioned the singing.
But in the dormitory, as he bandaged his glowing hand again, Arata could still hear it faintly in the walls it was that same tune, soft and steady, like a lullaby meant for gods.
Not dead, the voice murmured.
Returned to me.