Breakfast at Reichenbach was never quiet; it only pretended to be.
Xavier could hear the whispers of students lingering in the air like smoke as he walked in.
He could hear his name, and if he listened too closely, exactly what Malrick had mentioned:
"I heard they're dating."
"I heard he force-fed her his blood, and I believe it. Artsy guys are into weird stuff like that."
"Oh my god, is that why she suddenly looks good?"
Cutlery chimed against porcelain as he stepped closer to the cafeteria line. Chairs scraped stone. Conversations layered over one another until the room hummed with a low, constant noise, carefully warded so it never quite tipped into resonance.
Xavier stood in line with a tray in his hands, staring at the oatmeal as if it had personally offended him.
He hadn't slept much. Again.
The visions hadn't returned in full force, but they lingered at the edges of his thoughts, sticky and half-formed. Echoes instead of images. The kind that made it harder to focus, harder to tell where one idea ended and another began.
"Didn't peg you for a breakfast person, Thorpe."
Xavier stiffened.
He didn't need to turn around to know who it was.
Marcellus stood too close behind him, voice smooth, posture casual in the way people got when they wanted a reaction and pretended they didn't. His uniform was immaculate. Hair perfect. Not a wrinkle or shadow to suggest the kind of things he'd been involved in lately.
Although Xavier knew better.
Xavier exhaled through his nose. "I'm not."
"Then why are you here?" Marcellus asked lightly.
Xavier slid his tray forward as the line moved. "Because if I don't eat, I'll pass out."
"Ah." A pause. "Medical."
"Something like that."
Marcellus hummed. "Funny. You've been doing a lot of things lately that don't seem... strictly necessary."
Xavier finally turned.
Marcellus was smiling, but there was no warmth in it. Just cold and steady calculation. Curiosity sharpened into something else, as if he had all the pieces and put them together.
"You and Rosales," Marcellus continued. "Always disappearing. Always busy. Makes people wonder."
Xavier met his gaze steadily. "People should mind their own business."
Marcellus's smile widened just a fraction. Enough to show some teeth.
"That's not how my school works, Xavier."
The words landed heavier than they should have. Possessive. Territorial.
Like a reminder, not a statement.
Xavier tightened his grip on his tray and stepped around him, intent on leaving it at that.
Marcellus shifted.
Not aggressively. Just casually enough to block Xavier's path.
"Move," Xavier said, low and flat.
Marcellus tilted his head. "Why? You late for something?" His eyes flicked meaningfully. "Or someone?"
Xavier felt it, the prickle at the base of his neck. The instinct that told him this wasn't banter anymore. This was bait.
"Do you have to go meet your girlfriend?" Marcellus added, voice almost playful.
"Why?" Xavier shot back. "You jealous she picked me over you? Is that why you poisoned her?"
The smile vanished.
Not slowly.
Not theatrically.
It dropped off Marcellus's face like something that had never belonged there in the first place.
The cafeteria noise didn't fade, but it shifted. Forks scraping plates. Low voices. A laugh somewhere, much too loud, but it all felt distant.
"Yeah," Xavier said, stepping forward just enough that there was no room for misunderstanding. "You thought I forgot about that."
Marcellus went very still.
"I don't know what you're talking about," he said lightly. Too lightly.
Xavier didn't blink.
"The garlic," he said. "The blood bag you got someone to contaminate. You knew which blood bag was hers because of the pink tab on the corner."
A flicker.
There. Just for a second. A muscle in Marcellus's jaw twitched.
"You don't get to play dumb," Xavier continued, voice low but steady. "Not after what it did to her."
Marcellus's eyes sharpened. "Careful, Thorpe."
"Or what?"
There it was again, that split-second hesitation. The kind that only happens when someone realizes they've been seen.
"You're throwing around accusations you can't prove," Marcellus said, leaning in slightly. "That's dangerous."
"So is poisoning someone," Xavier replied.
The word hung between them.
Poisoning.
A couple of students at a nearby table went quiet.
Marcellus's nostrils flared. "You think I'd risk expulsion over a freak who makes friends with the dark?"
It was meant to be dismissive.
It landed like gasoline.
Xavier didn't even feel himself set his tray down.
"You don't get to talk about her like that," he said, and this time there was no humor in it. No flinch. No retreat.
Marcellus's lips curled. "Why? Because she's yours?"
Xavier's pulse thundered, but his voice didn't shake. Not when this was as important as it was.
"No," he said. "Because she's not yours."
That hit harder than it should have.
For a second, something cracked through Marcellus's composure. Not rage, but something far uglier.
Possession.
"You think she chose you?" Marcellus asked softly. "You think you won something here? You think you're better than me?"
"I don't think this is a game to win," Xavier replied. "You're the only one acting like it is."
Marcellus stepped closer.
"Be careful, Thorpe," he murmured. "You don't understand what you're standing in."
But Xavier held his ground.
"I understand enough," he said. "You targeted Danny. You targeted her. And if you come anywhere near either of them again—"
"What?" Marcellus pressed. "You'll draw me a picture?"
The insult might've landed a few months ago.
Not now.
Xavier tilted his head slightly.
"No," he said quietly, shaking his head a little, "I'll remind you you're not untouchable. "
The words weren't loud.
They didn't need to be.
Marcellus blinked, just once, because for the first time, there was no uncertainty in Xavier's posture. No apology in his stance.
Xavier didn't look like a boy trying to win a fight.
He looked like someone who had already survived worse.
Marcellus stepped back first.
It was subtle, only half an inch. A shift of weight. But it was enough.
"You're out of your depth," Marcellus muttered.
"Maybe," Xavier replied. "But you're out of time."
He picked up his tray.
Didn't rush.
Didn't look back.
And this time, Marcellus didn't block his path.
He didn't sit down.
Instead, he turned toward the exit, pocketing whatever he could eat later while the paper bowl of now-cold oatmeal rested against his palm as he dug into it with a plastic spoon.
The Bell Tower waited.
Xavier could feel it in his teeth as he crossed the quad, the way the air thinned the closer he got, like the campus itself was holding its breath. He didn't rush. Didn't linger either. Just walked, one step after another, oatmeal forgotten except for the automatic motion of the spoon against the paper bowl.
"This survives better if it stays simple."
The words surfaced uninvited.
Friends.
Simple.
He'd nodded at the time. Let it sit. Let Thorn draw the line the way she always did. Clean and deliberate. Thorn never lied when she set boundaries. She just didn't explain what they cost her.
Or what they would cost him.
Xavier exhaled slowly, fog ghosting in front of his mouth. He wasn't angry. That was the worst part. He understood why she did it. He always did. That didn't stop the quiet ache of realizing that every time things edged toward something real, she folded them back into something manageable.
Something survivable.
He tightened his grip on the bowl, then tossed it into a bin without slowing. Hunger could wait. Everything could wait.
Except this.
The tower loomed above the eastern edge of campus, narrow and tall, its stonework older than most of the Academy's wards. Bells hung suspended inside, some cracked, some intact, all etched faintly with runes that had been meant to amplify, not contain.
Which made it dangerous.
Thorn stood at the base of the tower with her violin already in hand, chin tucked, posture loose but alert.
The morning light caught in her dark hair, outlining her like a warning sign. The wind danced through as she looked up at the tower.
Pippa paced nearby, restless energy rolling off her in waves. Danny leaned against the low stone wall, arms folded, looking better than he had weeks ago, but still not whole.
Xavier approached, his heart settling when Thorn looked up.
She didn't smile.
But she didn't look away either.
"Finally," Danny said, squinting up. "This thing's been humming since sunrise. Been driving my wolf hearing insane."
"That's because it's waking up," Thorn replied. "Sound anchors don't sleep, they just listen. Absorbing anything it can. That's how it stays alive."
Pippa made a face. "Yeah, I absolutely hate that."
Xavier set his bag down, his gaze mainly on Danny. "Sorry, I got caught up in the cafeteria."
He pulled out his sketchbook and looked up, scanning the bell tower. It was old, and cracks littered the foundation.
"Okay, we do this carefully. If we use too much brute force, and that thing is coming down."
"And no blocking," Thorn agreed. "If we try to silence it, it'll just scream louder."
Danny tilted his head. "So what? We negotiate with it?"
"More like... redirect," Xavier said. "Delay the resonance. Stretch it out so it can't loop back on itself. If we can delay the resonance enough, the frequency of Thorn's violin can slip in unnoticed and redirect it to where it's supposed to be."
The bells above them rang.
Not loudly.
But the sound slid down the tower walls, warped and doubled, echoing wrong. Xavier felt it scrape at the edges of his thoughts as he drew the first rune on the stone with chalk.
Thorn lifted her violin.
"Here we go," she murmured.
The first note rose clean, then it fractured.
The tower answered.
Sound rebounded off the stone in jagged waves, layering over itself until the air vibrated. Feedback built fast, sharp enough to make Pippa clap her hands over her ears.
"Too much!" Danny shouted.
"I know," Thorn said through clenched teeth, fingers shifting mid-play.
Thorn brought her violin down and looked over at Xavier, "You have different runes for me?"
Xavier looked through the drawings and pulled one shoulder up, "I don't––"
"I can try layering them on top of each other."
"If it works like music, which it has so far, you should be able to."
She adjusted, changed the angle of her bow, the pressure, the tempo.
The melody bent sideways, slipping between the echoes instead of fighting them.
Xavier dropped to one knee and continued sketching runes directly onto the stone floor, chalk smearing under his hands. He altered the pattern as Thorn played. Opening curves instead of closed loops. Delays instead of barriers.
The bells rang again.
This time, slower.
The sound echoed through his head, each wave louder than the last.
Xavier's hands laced through his hair as he held his head in his hands, his temples pounding in time with the music.
"Xavier!" Pippa called. "You good?"
"Yeah—" He groaned as he tried to blink through the pain. "No. Wait."
He frowned at the rune.
"What's wrong?" Thorn asked without stopping.
"I..." His brow furrowed. "What's the word for when sound... stacks?"
Danny frowned. "Stacks?"
"You know, when it builds on itself, " Xavier snapped his fingers, frustrated. "It's right there."
Silence stretched.
Thorn felt it like a pulled string; Xavier never forgot words, not even when he was stressed. She had seen him come up with extravagant lies on the spot.
"Do you mean layering, Xavier?" She asked, her gaze falling to the drawing.
He glanced up quickly, "Layering, yeah. Thank you." He stared at the page of his sketchbook before he turned back to the unfinished rune.
He finished the rune, the chalk completing the curve just in time for the music to finish playing. The sigil on the ground glowed a light purple, and the air shifted.
The bells rang once more, then fell quiet.
Not silent, but balanced.
The echo softened, dispersing outward instead of folding back in. The tower settled, its hum dropping to a low, manageable thrum.
Thorn lowered her violin slowly.
Danny exhaled. "Holy shit. It worked."
Pippa grinned. "We didn't die."
Xavier smiled faintly, then pressed his fingers to his temple.
Something tugged there, just for a second.
A word he couldn't remember, but he let it go.
They sat on the tower steps afterward, stone still warm beneath them, the bell's low hum fading into something almost tolerable.
Danny broke the quiet first.
"There are other wolves in the infirmary," he said. "Not anchors. Not Choir stuff. Just... students who got caught in the spillover."
Xavier didn't look at him. "Danny—"
"I know," Danny cut in quickly. "I know we don't have time." His fingers curled against the stone. "I just— they're scared."
Thorn's jaw tightened, the muscle ticking once.
"We can't split focus," she said. "Not yet."
Danny nodded. Disappointed, but he didn't argue. He never did.
Pippa shifted beside them. "I could help."
Three heads turned.
"I mean it," she said, meeting Xavier's gaze without blinking. "You teach me the runes. I'll handle the rest."
Xavier hesitated.
The bell tower's feedback still rang faintly in his ears. The half-second where a word had slipped away from him, almost like it had never existed.
"Pip—" Thorn started.
"I'm not fragile," Pippa said, firm. "And I won't mess it up."
Silence stretched.
"She pulled off stealing blood from the infirmary without getting caught," Thorn added, not looking at Xavier. "That counts for something."
Xavier exhaled slowly. Studied Pippa. Then Thorn.
"Okay," he said at last. "But we start simple."
Pippa's smile was sharp and satisfied. "Good. I'm tired of watching the people I love get hurt while I just stand around."
The Bell Tower hummed quietly above them. It was stable, for now.
Danny and Pippa peeled off toward the cafeteria, already arguing about whether rune ink needed to be charcoal-based or if eyeliner would technically work in a crisis.
Thorn didn't look back.
Xavier fell into step beside her as they turned toward the north wing.
The campus felt... lighter. The air pressure had thinned, like someone had cracked a window in a room that had been suffocating for weeks. The Bell Tower hummed behind them, steady and contained.
It should have felt like relief.
It didn't.
At least, not to Xavier.
"Yesterday," he started, not really sure where he was going with this.
Thorn didn't slow. Didn't look at him.
"Yesterday," he repeated, softer now. "What you said."
Her shoulders rose and fell with a measured breath. "You're going to have to be more specific."
"You said things survive better when they stay simple."
She stopped.
Not fully, but just long enough to make Xavier stop, too.
"That wasn't an invitation to unpack it," she said.
"I know," he said automatically.
And he did.
That was the problem.
He hadn't meant to bring it up. Not like that. Not today. Not when she looked like she was trying to keep something tamed and at bay
But the word simple had been sitting in his chest since yesterday, and he hadn't been able to leave it there.
"Xavier," she sighed, finally turning to face him. Her expression was controlled, careful, and exhausted. "Please don't do this."
"Do what?"
"Make me choose words I'm not ready to stand behind."
Something twisted low in his chest.
"Okay," he said, shoving his hands in his pocket.
"A lot is going on right now, Xavier. The choir, the anchors, my parents," She sighed, "My powers."
Xavier's brows furrowed.
"What's going on with your powers?"
"I—" she ran a hand through her hair. "It's harder to keep the shadows still. They keep moving without me reaching for them."
Xavier stilled.
"Since when?"
She hesitated.
And that was answer enough.
"Thorn."
She exhaled through her nose. "I noticed it first after I drank the blood pouch."
The admission landed quietly between them.
"The real one?" he asked.
She nodded once, her eyes closing for a moment. "Yeah, it's like my body caught up all at once. Like something that's been starved finally got fed and now it doesn't know how to behave."
As if on cue, a thin ribbon of shadow slipped along the stone wall behind her. Not violent. Not threatening.
Just restless.
Xavier's eyes tracked it automatically.
"They're not attacking," she said quickly, noticing. "They're just... loud."
"Loud?" he echoed.
"In my head," she clarified. "Like static. Like they're waiting for instructions I haven't decided to give."
She looked frustrated now, not scared, but annoyed at herself, like she had shown exactly why Reichenbach was right to starve her.
"I was being managed before," she muttered. "Giving me a controlled dose. Everything dull enough to keep it contained."
"And now?" he asked quietly.
"Now..." Thorn swallowed thickly, "I feel like I brewed up a storm."
That made something in him soften.
"You should've told me," he said.
She shot him a look. "You already worry enough about me,"
He opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Fair.
The shadows curled again near her boots, faint and flickering like nervous energy trying to decide whether to manifest.
"And you..." she looked down suddenly, like looking at him hurt, "You've been sketching runes in your sleep."
His jaw tightened. "That's not your problem,"
"You haven't been sleeping," she said flatly.
He blinked. "You've been paying attention."
"I'm a Heron," she replied. "I notice things."
Silence pressed between them again.
"We don't actually know what we're doing," she said.
Xavier sighed deeply at her words. He knew it wasn't panic, it was just honesty.
"No," he agreed. "We don't."
Another shadow slid up the wall, higher this time, and Xavier instinctively stepped closer.
"We could," he said carefully.
She frowned slightly. "Could what?"
"Figure it out."
She didn't respond.
"We don't have to wait until something breaks," he continued. "We could... train. Compare notes. Practice somewhere that won't collapse if we mess up."
Her eyes flicked to his.
"Together?" she asked, and there was something unreadable in it.
"Yeah, I haven't learned anything new about my own powers after my mom died,"
She looked at his hands, faint chalk still caught in the lines of his skin, smudged into the creases like the runes refused to let him wash them away.
"I guess it wouldn't hurt," she said slowly, like she was negotiating with something inside herself, "to try and gain more control of my powers."
It wasn't quite an agreement.
But it wasn't a refusal either.
Xavier nodded once, careful not to look too relieved. "We could go somewhere isolated."
Her brow arched. "That narrows it down."
He glanced around the quad, then back at her. "The cemetery."
She blinked.
"The cemetery?" she repeated.
"Yeah." He shrugged, trying to make it casual. "It's quiet. Old stone, stable ground, fewer witnesses if we accidentally rip a hole in something."
She stared at him.
Then narrowed her eyes slightly.
"That's a very specific suggestion."
He hesitated, but just enough.
"It is your favorite place on campus," he said finally. "Isn't it?"
The question landed softer than he meant it to.
Thorn went to answer immediately, something sharp, something deflective, but the words caught. She closed her mouth instead.
Then she scoffed lightly.
"Yeah," she said after a beat. "I guess it is."
The admission felt more intimate than it should have.
He noticed.
She noticed that he noticed.
"So you've been keeping track?" she added, folding her arms. "Creepy."
"I'm observant," he added.
"You're nosy."
"Semantics."
Thorn looked up at him and nodded slowly, "Fine," she said finally, "but we start after my parents leave."
Xavier nodded, "Sure,"
Thorn's shoulders relaxed a little, and Xavier noticed that it had been the first time they had in days.
"Come on, let's get you back to your dorm. I'm sure you have more to do before your parents come."
"Yeah," she rubbed the back of her neck, "I actually need help moving something... if you wanna help."
Xavier bit the smile off his face before he nodded softly,
"Yeah, lead the way."