Chapter 10 - Fault Lines Don't Heal

Briarcrest did not wake the next morning as the same institution.

There was no official announcement. No proclamation of reform or condemnation of rebellion. The academy simply… hesitated. Systems lagged. Schedules misaligned. Authority fractured into overlapping directives that contradicted one another in subtle, dangerous ways.

Nyx felt it the moment she stepped into the corridor.

Eyes didn’t slide away anymore. They lingered. Measured her not with fear, but with calculation. Some students nodded. Others stiffened. A few looked at her with something like resentment, and she had forced a choice they’d hoped to avoid.

The enemy had multiplied.

Her tablet chimed with three summons before noon.

She ignored them all.

Instead, she went to class.

The lecture hall buzzed with tension, students seated farther apart than usual, alliances no longer assumed. The professor began the session, and stopped when Nyx entered.

For a heartbeat, no one spoke.

Then the lecture resumed, strained and brittle, as if everyone were pretending yesterday hadn’t cracked something fundamental.

Nyx raised her hand.

The professor hesitated.

“Yes… Miss Calder?”

“The framework you’re using assumes centralized legitimacy,” Nyx said evenly. “Given the data released yesterday, do you still stand by it?”

Silence slammed down.

The professor swallowed. “That discussion is… beyond the scope of this course.”

Nyx nodded. “Then the course is obsolete.”

A few students exhaled sharply. Someone laughed under their breath.

The professor dismissed class ten minutes early.

By midafternoon, the retaliation shifted shape.

Not discipline.

Reputation.

A revised narrative began circulating, and quietly, efficiently. Nyx Calder was brilliant, yes, but unstable. Gifted, but reckless. A catalyst, not a leader. Someone to admire from a distance, not follow.

The story didn’t come from the Council.

It came from students.

That was the part that hurt.

Nyx found Alaric in the records annex, and one of the few places where the system still lagged enough to allow privacy. He was scanning old Council charters, sleeves rolled up, expression intent.

“They’re rewriting me,” she said without preamble.

Alaric didn’t look up. “They always do that to women who won’t soften.”

She leaned against the table. “They’re doing it to you too. Painting you as manipulated. A traitor who followed the wrong person.”

Now he did look at her.

“Are you worried?” he asked.

She met his gaze. “I’m angry.”

A flicker of a smile touched his mouth. “Good.”

They worked in silence for a while, piecing together what Briarcrest didn’t want seen, or precedents. Old schisms. Times when the academy had faced similar fractures and responded not with reform, but exile.

“They’ll force a choice,” Alaric said finally. “Public enough to look fair. Personal enough to hurt.”

Nyx nodded. “They always do.”

The choice came sooner than expected.

That evening, every student received the same message.

OPTIONAL REALIGNMENT REVIEW

FOR STUDENTS EXPERIENCING ACADEMIC DISSONANCE

Optional was a lie.

The review offered incentives, and restored access, protected placements, future endorsements, and in exchange for reaffirming institutional confidence and disavowing “destabilizing influences.”

Nyx stared at the message until her jaw ached.

“They’re asking people to abandon you,” Alaric said quietly.

“They’re asking people to survive,” she replied. “That’s worse.”

The realignment sessions began the next day.

Nyx didn’t attend hers.

Instead, she stood on the steps of the central quad and waited.

At first, no one joined her.

Students streamed past, eyes forward, shoulders tight. Some glanced at her apologetically. Others looked relieved she wasn’t stopping them.

Then a girl Nyx recognized from systems theory paused.

“I don’t agree with everything you did,” she said softly.

Nyx nodded. “You don’t have to.”

“But they rewrote my project last term,” the girl continued. “Said it was to ‘improve alignment.’ It wasn’t.”

She sat.

Another student followed. Then another.

Not many.

Enough.

The faculty noticed.

Guards hovered.

Briarcrest watched its order dissolve not through riot, but refusal.

Alaric joined Nyx as the sun dipped low.

“They’re panicking,” he said. “Council factions are deadlocked. Celeste is pushing for expulsions.”

Nyx exhaled slowly. “Let them.”

A shadow fell across the quad.

Headmistress Vire approached alone.

“You’ve made your point,” she said. “Now you’re doing damage.”

Nyx stood. “No. I’m letting it be seen.”

Vire’s voice dropped. “You’re turning students into liabilities.”

“They already were,” Nyx replied. “You just called it merit.”

Silence stretched between them.

“You could leave,” Vire said at last. “Gracefully. With recommendations intact. A statement acknowledging your… misalignment. Briarcrest stabilizes. You go free.”

Nyx felt the weight of it, and the escape, the relief, the safety.

She thought of her mother’s letter. Of every quiet theft masked as opportunity.

“No,” she said.

Vire’s eyes hardened. “Then you force my hand.”

“Then you prove my point.”

That night, the verdict arrived.

Not expulsion.

Segregation.

Nyx was reassigned, and again. Removed from Dominant Track. Stripped of advanced access. Placed into an “Independent Evaluation Cohort,” a bureaucratic nowhere designed to erase without spectacle.

Alaric received his own notice.

Permanent removal from Council consideration.

Exile without exit.

Nyx found him in the same place she always did when the walls closed in, and beneath the academy, where stone remembered older truths.

“They think this ends it,” she said.

Alaric shook his head. “They think it contains you.”

She looked at him. “You could still walk away.”

He met her gaze, steady and unflinching. “I already lost what they use to buy silence.”

A breath passed.

Then another.

“This will get worse,” Nyx said.

“Yes.”

“And it won’t be heroic,” she added. “It’ll be slow. Ugly. Lonely.”

Alaric stepped closer. “I know.”

Their hands brushed, and not accidental this time.

They didn’t pull away.

Above them, Briarcrest recalibrated, trying desperately to seal cracks that had already spread beyond repair.

Fault lines didn’t heal.

They waited.

And the next break would not ask permission.