Chapter 7 - Nora

Once class had been dismissed, I returned to Aurelian House. The others dispersed in pairs and small groups, their voices fading after them like ribbons I could never reach. But the moment I crossed Aurelian’s threshold, I was met with silence. Silence that wasn’t cold. Silence that wasn’t empty. Intentional. Like the house had been waiting for my return, and only now felt safe enough to breathe.

My boots clicked softly on the obsidian floor, and sigils danced to life beneath the stones. Faint emberlight pulsed in their veins, like they were recognizing me. I reached out and ran my fingers across the edge of the wall. Magic beneath my touch hummed. I wasn’t surprised. It calmed something in my chest that I hadn’t realized was clenched. This wasn’t the deafening silence of empty houses and abandoned shelters. This was the silence of memory. And it was waiting for me to know it.

The tapestries along the corridor had been dull when I first walked past them, but the colors in them bloomed now, bleeding deep crimsons and liquid gold into the fabric. Dragons in flight, battles long lost to dust and time. I caught my breath when a dragon shifted mid-weave, its eyes flicking up to meet mine before settling into place again. I shook my head, tried to convince myself I had imagined it.

In the main sitting room, the fireplace had sprung to life, though no fire had been lit. Flames towered in a stone hearth that had seemed unused and long cold the day before. But it didn’t smoke. It gave off no heat. Only light. And it leapt at me, a welcome, as I moved. It danced in the room with me like a shadow moving in reverse. The bookshelves trembled slightly, and dust rose into the air before the tomes themselves began to move and rearrange themselves. Some of them drifted to a reading table and opened to pages annotated in old draconic script. I couldn’t read them, not yet, but I could feel the weight of the knowledge they contained. Knowledge intended for someone. Maybe for me.

I ran my hand down the dark banister of the grand staircase, appreciating the engraved scales that curled up its risers like a silent watcher. My fingertips tingled. The house was responding to me. Every turn of the hallway whispered history, but also something more. Something waking. Aurelian House had slumbered for centuries, forgotten and sealed. And it was coming alive for me.

I pushed open the heavy door to a small side chamber that I hadn’t noticed before. The room was bathed in soft amber light, and the air was thick with incense I couldn’t name. A large mirror stood in the center, its surface cloudy. When I stepped close, it cleared. My reflection stared back at me, but behind me, I could see flames curling in impossible shapes. A crown. Wings. I blinked, and it vanished.

I shouldn’t have been afraid. I should have run. But I didn’t.

The house. This place. It wasn’t just tolerating me. It was accepting me. Not out of duty. But out of recognition. I wasn’t intruding on something sacred.

I was home.

For the first time in my life, I didn’t feel like I was anywhere at all.

For the first time in my life, I felt like I was somewhere.

Like something had waited for me to come home.

I left the mirror chamber with my heart pounding faster than my feet could keep up. I needed air. I needed clarity. Anything. To make sense of what was happening to me. The house breathed around me, around my footsteps, but it gave me no answers. Only more mystery in the guise of welcome. My boots carried me further into the west wing, under a vaulted archway carved with unfamiliar constellations. As I passed beneath them, I heard something drift through the hallway behind me.

“Seraphine…”

I froze. My muscles tensed in place, while my heart beat a tattoo against my ribs. Instinct took over, and I spun. Searching the shadows, hunting for movement. For a person. For anything.

There was nothing.

The hallway behind me was silent. The flames in the sconces didn’t flicker. The air didn’t stir.

But I’d heard it. I hadn’t imagined it. I hadn’t dreamt it.

A name. Not mine. Not exactly. But similar. The voice curled through the silence like smoke, feminine and soft, but threaded with power. It didn’t warn me. It reminded me.

I called back, “Hello?” But only my echo replied.

I swallowed hard and continued. Slower now, my senses heightened to every sound. Every heartbeat. The stone floor beneath my boots hummed with something ancient. A feeling slid into my spine like I wasn’t walking these halls for the first time. Like I’d done this before, in another life. Or a dream that had bled too vividly into the light of day.

I found myself at the end of the corridor, before a tapestry I hadn’t noticed before. It was longer than the others, brushing the floor with its edges curled like pressed petals between the pages of a book. I reached out without thinking, letting my fingertips graze the fabric. It was warmer than it should be. Alive somehow. The image was partially faded, but I could make out the shape of a woman, tall, crowned in flame, her back to a mountain of wings. Around her, elements that I now recognized swirled. Fire, ice, storm, shadow, wind, earth. The six.

As my fingers brushed against the edge of the central flame, the voice spoke to me.

“Seraphine…”

It wasn’t behind me. It wasn’t in my head. It was inside me. Nestled beneath my ribs. Familiar and foreign at the same time.

I jerked my hand back and stumbled in place.

“Who are you?” I whispered. My voice was weak. “Why do you keep saying that name?”

But I already knew. Knew that the name wasn’t just someone else’s. Echoed in my bones like a story half-remembered. Like a melody hummed in childhood with no known source.

I pressed my palm flat against the tapestry again, ignoring the stinging heat against my skin. The sigils beneath my boots ignited in response, crawling outward like glowing roots. I had no idea what I was doing. It was as if I was opening something, or locking it away.

The voice didn’t return.

But in its place, the silence around me was electric. Sacred.

Who was Seraphine?

Why did this place call her like a ghost and hold me like a mirror?

Aurelian House embraced me with purpose. Not protection. Not possession. Recognition. It knew something about me that I didn’t. About the blood in my veins. About the past that wasn’t as dead as they all believed.

I stood there, hand pressed to flame-threaded cloth, heart thundering loud in the silence. I didn’t feel brave. I didn’t feel prepared. But I did feel chosen.

And that scared me more than the voice ever could.

I stayed with the tapestry until the hall had dimmed again, and the sigils underfoot faded into sleep. I wandered later back to my room, the one space in the whole castle-sized dormitory that felt even remotely like mine. But even that was a lie. It wasn’t mine. It was built for someone like me. Someone long dead. Someone whose name followed me like a second skin.

The fire in the hearth was already lit when I returned. The cloak I’d left draped over my bed had been hung neatly by the wardrobe, its lining still gently glowing gold and scorched black when I walked past it. Another tray of food sat on my desk, as if Aurelian House knew I’d skipped dinner in the Great Hall again. I should have been grateful. I wasn’t hungry.

But I sat.

The soup was warm. Seasoned just right. A crust of bread beside it, still steaming like it had just been pulled from the oven. I stared at it for a long time before taking a bite and chewing in silence.

No voices. No footfalls in the corridor. No doors slamming shut or popping open wide with laughter. No music or gossip or late-night potion explosions from roommate mishaps. Just the soft crackle of enchanted flames and the too-perfect quiet of a dormitory that remembered everything and welcomed no one.

I was alone.

Even in a House waking just for me, I was still just… me.

The tray disappeared when I had finished, like it always did. I peeled back the bedcovers and curled on my side, staring at the fire until the images blurred in my vision. The mattress was soft. The bedding adjusted to my body temperature. The enchantments lulled the room into a gentle quiet. It was all too perfect.

And yet, I still slept with one eye open.

The next day, I perched at the edge of the classroom while Professor Dana demonstrated controlled elemental compression. The others all paired up. No one so much as glanced my way. I said nothing. Just took notes. Mimicked the spell as best I could. When mine flared too loudly, it drew stares. When I fixed it on the second try, the stares didn’t fade.

At the library, I sat in a corner behind a stack of unwanted books. My cloak brushed the floor in utter silence. The Everley twins across the room stared until I turned a page. Then they whispered.

I caught my reflection in a window near the courtyard, my face, paler and haggard, framed by firelight. And behind me, there was nothing. No shadows but mine. No company but the house that had chosen me.

That night, I returned to Aurelian House with a stack of textbooks and a headache I couldn’t seem to shake. The halls still glowed faintly, warm in their way, like they were trying to soothe something raw beneath the surface. The fireplace had been lit when I entered the room. My bath had filled itself. A velvet robe had appeared folded neatly on the end of my bed.

Every need anticipated.

Every comfort offered.

And still, the silence pressed tight against my lungs.

They didn’t see me as a student. Not really. Not like them. To them, I was a threat in boots and borrowed breath. A rumor that they hoped would burn itself out. A dragon-shaped mistake that no one wanted to acknowledge. No matter how well I could recite incantations or follow the rules, I didn’t belong here.

I curled into bed and stared at the ceiling, the memory of that voice heavy in the walls around me.

Seraphine.

Maybe she had once walked these halls. Maybe she’d slept in this room and traveled these corridors. Heard the same name whispered from stone and shadow. I wondered if she had felt the same hollow ache below all the magic.

I wondered if she ever stopped feeling alone because I hadn’t. Not yet.

I wasn’t going to let the silence swallow me whole.

When the moon had climbed high above the towers of Aurelian House and the rest of campus had fallen asleep, I pulled on my cloak and slipped into the night. The halls were empty, the walls still warm with their strange magic, but outside the air was crisp and real and sharp against my skin. I walked with purpose, with defiance, my head high and steps sure. If anyone saw me, let them stare. Let them wonder. I was done hiding.

The path curved toward the greenhouses, their glass walls shimmering in the moonlight. Somewhere nearby, a nightbird called. For a moment, the world sighed, peaceful and wide under the stars.

And then the air shifted.

The silence grew too deep. The breeze was gone. I paused, my heart thudding, unease creeping down my spine. The shadows in the path ahead stirred, but not from the wind.

They moved.

Briar Maddox stepped into my path, leather jacket catching the moonlight like a warning. Tamsyn Vale and Lottie Grae stepped into the shadows on either side of her, eyes glinting with something too hungry to be called curiosity.

“Well, look what the House dragged out of their little bed,” Briar drawled, her voice low and mocking. “Stray must’ve finally gotten bored playing princess in her empty little castle.”

Tamsyn circled to my left, with a fake smile and razor calm. “She’s out past curfew. That’s a punishable offense, right?”

“Depends who’s enforcing it,” Lottie said, cracking her knuckles.

I didn’t move. I didn’t say a word.

Briar’s eyes narrowed. “Looks like the stray’s wandered off its leash.”

And then they attacked.

I spun, but they were faster. Speeds blur with werewolf agility. The world tipped. Breath torn from my lungs as claws grazed my arm. I stumbled back, but I knew then that I wasn’t merely an outcast anymore.

I was prey.