They had the gall to injure my sister. Again.

  The sight of her—burns seared along the curve of her forearm, a purple bruise blooming near her temple, the way she flinched when sunlight caught her cheek—made something in my chest go still and cold. I gave her a touch of Sanatio then and there, enough to dull the worst of the ache, to take the sting from the cuts so she could sleep without reliving every shove and half-fall in her head.

  I kept my hands light and distant while she watched. I couldn’t let the warmth of my magic read to her like a confession.

  How long had Ellara been enduring this?

  Why hadn’t anyone done anything?

  This wasn’t the Wastes. This place had rules. Consequences. People who claimed they were here to protect the weak from those who mistook cruelty for inheritance. Or so she always pretended.

  When she finally slipped beneath the blankets, exhaustion folding her thinner than she should have been at her age, I watched the slow rise and fall of her chest until the lantern light turned the room into a map of shadows.

  Only when her breathing deepened did I let the real work begin.

  The Sanatio I gave after she slept had no sympathy in it. It was precise. Surgical. A thing of slow mending and careful stitching. I drew the Expression down through my wrists, felt it roll like cold water into channels I had tuned over years. It spread—soft at first, then into a steady pulse that found the jagged threads beneath her skin and smoothed them. Flesh knit. Heat faded to bruises. Cuts paled and edged toward scab.

  I did not let the light touch my own old scars. Those stayed. A ledger.

  When I finished, the room smelled faintly of lemon, like rain after a storm. I let the last of the Sanatio slacken and watched the glow die where it lingered in the dark. Outside, the world kept its ordinary noises—someone closing a shutter, a cart creaking past on the street.

  I tightened the strap on my satchel, checked the casting aid at my wrist, and moved to the door.

  It was not my way to roar. Violence is not only a language; it is punctuation. You use it to end sentences.

  But there are lines you do not allow someone to cross and expect to share breakfast with the same people afterward.

  Leira crossed one when she made my sister a target.

  Lucien crossed one yesterday when he promised a public lesson.

  It was time for violence to become a conversation—and for them to learn what kind of punctuation finished it.

  The next day, I went to find the Veylan siblings.

  I chose one of the carved stones older than half the guards on campus, chilled by shadow even at noon. I leaned my shoulder into it and let the world move around me. Students passed in bright uniforms, laughter and barter bouncing off the arcades, but there was an edge to it today—attention tracking me like a weather vane. Rumor had thickened into something solid. People watched, not because they wanted to, but because the school taught them to watch anything that might become a story.

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  She arrived on cue.

  Leira Veylan moved like a coin spun on a table—deliberate, polished, designed to gather eyes. Alessa and Brin flanked her like trained attendants, their laughter clipped, their steps matched. Heads turned. A small tide of curiosity pushed toward us.

  I didn’t move.

  She saw me before her companions did. Some people miss what’s in front of them. She didn’t. When her gaze caught my shape against the column, her practiced smile faltered for a breath. Not much. Enough.

  “Fancy seeing you here,” she said, syrup over glass. “Transfer days are very festive this term.”

  Alessa giggled on cue. Brin cleared her throat like a blade being honed. The fourth—a junior I didn’t recognize—kept her casting aid tucked under her sleeve, fingers tapping its rim as if testing tempo.

  I watched them. I watched Leira’s eyes flit, trying for casual and landing on nervous. My jaw set.

  “Leira,” I said, once. Like calling roll.

  She answered with the correct sound, bright and rehearsed. “Cale Arcanus. I’m fairly sure my brother’s warning was clear.”

  I stepped off the pillar and closed the distance by one measured pace. Not close enough to touch. Close enough to thin the space between us.

  “You don’t seem to understand simple language,” I said.

  Small words. Deliberate. The kind meant to sit in a room and make the room adjust.

  “Pardon?” Her head tilted prettily.

  “You touched my sister.” I kept my voice flat. Naming things plainly shows people the shape they were pretending not to see. “So I’m going to tell you in a language you understand.”

  Her smile stayed balanced, but her fingers tightened on her satchel strap. The three behind her shifted. The junior edged closer, a faint flare at her casting aid before she forced it down.

  Around us, the quad felt it before speech caught up. Conversation thinned to a rustle. The air pulled tight, like a rope cinched across the courtyard. I exhaled a pressure that wasn’t loud but was heavy—folded, controlled, enough to press at lungs and throats.

  Leira didn’t step back. She leaned into fearlessness as a profession. But her eyes betrayed it—a sliver of pallor where confidence had been.

  “You speak dangerous words,” she said softly. The others laughed, brittle and off-key.

  I moved another half step. The pressure deepened, not cruelty, not violence—an announcement. Light shifted the way it does before storms, shadows lengthening without sun moving.

  For a heartbeat, stormglass violet flared in my sight. Then a thread of red cut through it and vanished.

  Leira saw it.

  Her breath hitched.

  She tried to reclaim the audience behind me, but the audience had gone quiet.

  “I touch what I please,” she said, and the cruelty wobbled. “People notice. What of it?”

  I let the silence answer first.

  “Remember,” I said, quieter, “it was your action that decided what comes next.”

  Her facade cracked. Not fully. Enough. Brin’s jaw locked. Alessa’s eyes went too wide. The junior pressed her palm to her bracer as it chimed and then stilled.

  She could have reached for Lucien then. She didn’t. She squared her shoulders instead and hissed, “Tell your bitch of a sister to know her place and we won’t have problems.”

  I smiled.

  “Oh,” I said, “the problems have just begun.”

  I turned away slowly. The pressure withdrew with me like a tide receding. The quad exhaled in a shared shudder, gossip snapping back into motion.

  Ellara stepped from the archway. Her fingers brushed mine for a second—neither plea nor demand. She was reaching for stability maybe comfort.

  “Was that necessary?” she asked.

  “It was,” I said. “She knows.”

  “Promise me you won’t—”

  “I promise I won’t make it worse,” I said. It was both truth and omission. "But I am going to end this. My way."

  Leira watched us go. Calculation crossed her face like a map unfolding. She didn’t call her brother yet. She folded herself back into nobility and walked away.

  Behind her, the junior trembled. Brin spat. Alessa laughed too loudly.

  We left the quad behind.

  By nightfall, people would name what had happened. They would talk of threat and intimidation and overreaction. But the truth was, labels are cheap.

  What mattered was the line I had drawn—and whether someone chose to cross it.

  Leira chose to look afraid for the first time that day.

  That would have to hold until Lucien decided to act.