Fire took something from him. What, exactly, I can't say. But he's learning to use the thing that hurt him—to control what he fears.

Isn't that exactly what I tried to do by choosing to join the water affinities? Only I'm hardly learning to channel. It feels more like I'm fumbling in the dark with my unbound power. The book Bastian gave me will hopefully hold some information I can use to improve, but I'll have to keep finding time to work through the complex code, and spare time isn't something we have a lot of here at Confluence.

"Do you always come here when you have bad dreams?" I ask, my voice softer than I intended.

"Ever since my first night here." His gaze remains fixed on the distant mountains.

"It's peaceful," I say, my eyes drawn again to the vast expanse of darkness before us.

"It's quiet," he corrects, but there's no edge to his words.

He's right in his own way to correct my wording, I realize. Peace is an illusion here. There is quiet, yes. There is sometimes even the semblance of calm. But there's always danger nearby, isn't there? Always a threat hanging over our heads, ready to strike us down when we least expect it.

We stand in silence that gradually shifts from awkward to something almost comfortable, the space between us charged with something I can't quite name. I don't know how long we remain there, side by side without speaking, before voices drift up from below.

"Who the hells told him?" a woman's voice asks, low and urgent. “He wasn’t supposed to be back for months yet. Perhaps not even until the Crucible.”

"That remains to be seen," a man responds. "But the Rector obviously heard about the body with the burnt out mark. Why else would he be here?"

Raith and I both go still, listening. His body tenses beside mine, still as the night itself.

Both voices sound older. Instructors, I think, though I can't see them because they're walking in the open third-floor hallway directly beneath the wall we’re standing on. Their whispers are drifting up from the many windows below.

"Elements. What a fucking mess. If anyone asks, we assumed it was a prank by one of the fires. Scorch marks to imitate a siphon, not the real thing.”

“If anyone asks, I’m claiming I never saw a thing. Do you have any idea⁠—”

The voices are silenced suddenly as a door snaps shut below.

Siphons? Goosebumps rise all over my skin, a chill that has nothing to do with the night air settling deep in my bones.

I glance at Raith to find him already watching me, his expression unknowable but his eyes burning with intensity.

"Siphons?" I ask, my voice barely above a whisper. "Did I hear them right? And what would that have to do with dead people's marks?"