Chapter 24: Burning Goodbye
The silence in the dorm room was a physical thing, heavy and final. Aria had walked me to the door, given my shoulder a squeeze, and left me to face it alone. Ren’s jacket was still draped over my shoulders, a borrowed shield. I stood on the threshold, staring into the space Tsubaki and I had shared for four years.
Her side of the room was sterile. The bed was made with Academy precision, the grey blankets tucked in tight, hospital-cornered. The little shelf above her desk, once cluttered with human-world trinkets, photos of us, and pots of glittery nail polish, was bare. The space echoed with her absence. It was cleaner than it had ever been when she lived here, and that hurt more than any mess she could have left.
My feet carried me to my own bed. There, centered on my pillow like a formal indictment, was a single, folded sheet of notebook paper. My name wasn’t written on it. It didn’t need to be.
I sank onto the mattress, the springs groaning a familiar complaint. I unfolded the note with numb fingers.
I’m sorry for what I said in my hurt, but it’s going to take me a while to forgive you. I hope the next time we see each other, it will be different. -with care always, Tsubaki.
The words were neat, careful. Not a single tear-smudge. She’d planned this. She’d packed, made her bed, and sat here to write this. The calculated calm of it carved me out. A screaming fight, a door slammed, would have been easier. This was a surgical severance. She was sorry for the words, not for leaving. She still needed to forgive me. The finality of ‘a while’ felt like a life sentence.
For some reason, this ending felt worse than if she had just left without saying anything. The apology was a hook, keeping me painfully connected to the wound. I stared at the paper until the letters blurred.
A single, focused thought cut through the numbness. Burn.
A heat, not born of emotion but of something deeper and more obedient, sparked in the center of my palm. A tiny, perfect sun, no larger than a coin, wisped to life just above my skin. It emitted no smoke, only a shimmering, intense heat. I held the corner of the note to it.
The paper curled, blackened, and vanished into minute, weightless ash that drifted to the floor. The flame vanished with it. All that was left was a faint, clean scent of ozone and a small, dark smudge on the polished stone.
I sat in the silent, half-empty room, wrapped in Ren’s jacket, and felt completely alone.
The winter break ended with a bittersweet note, the taste of ash and cold pizza. I packed my things into a single, scuffed trunk—clothes, textbooks, the few items that felt like mine. The sketchbook went on top. I said no goodbyes to the barracks. The echoing halls of the cadet dormitories felt like a shell I was finally molting.
My fifth year was starting, and so was my externship.This was it. The divide between training and the real, shadow-streaked world.
Aria showed up at my door just after dawn, her smile not quite reaching her watchful violet eyes. “Ready for the upgrade, roomie?” she asked, her tone light. She grabbed one handle of my trunk without asking, hefting it easily. I took the other.
The squad barracks stood apart from the main Academy spires, a lower, wider building of the same dark stone, built for function over grandeur. It looked like a grounded beast. As we approached the familiar entrance—the place I’d come for training, for briefings, for stolen moments of belonging—a genuine warmth spread through my chest, momentarily pushing back the chill that had taken up residence there since the dance.
I was finally here.
The bunk room was larger than our old dorm, dominated by four sturdy beds with footlockers. Two were neatly made. One, by the far window, was a chaos of rumpled black blankets and discarded shirts. The fourth, by the door, was bare mattress.
“That one’s yours,” Aria said, nodding to the empty bed. “Mine’s here.” She pointed to the meticulously neat one next to it. “Chaos Central belongs to Alex. And the princess over there is Hannah’s domain.”
Hannah’s bed was adorned with a plush, dark pink blanket and matching pillows. A small, elegant vanity was set up nearby.
“They’re on perimeter sweeps,” Aria said, dropping her end of the trunk. “Be back before lunch. Get settled.”
The process was mechanical. Clothes into the narrow dresser drawers. Toiletries on the small shelf beside my bed. Books stacked on the floor for now. As I lifted my sketchbook from the trunk to place it in the bottom drawer, it slipped from my fingers. It hit the stone floor with a slap, splaying open midway.
Aria bent to pick it up for me. Her eyes scanned the open page.
Her expression shifted, the casual warmth freezing over. “Well,” she said, her voice unnaturally flat. “That’s not very pleasant.”
“What is?” I asked, leaning over.
It was a drawing I couldn’t recall making. It was me, but a hollowed-out version. My face was rendered in stark, heavy charcoal lines, my eyes two empty pits of scribbled black, devoid of iris or white. I was on my knees, crouched over a form that was only suggested by a swirl of dark shading. My hands, detailed with frantic cross-hatching, were pressed against the vague shape, covered in dense, black scribbles that could only be blood. And from the eyes of the drawn-me, two clean streaks cut through the grime on the cheeks.Tears.
A cold slickness coated my insides. When did I draw that? I hadn’t touched the book since before the winter formal.
“Arisa.” Aria’s voice was a whip-crack. I jerked my gaze up to hers. Her violet eyes were hard, commanding. “Shadow World.”
The command, a training trigger for focus, snapped me out of my daze. I jolted, grabbing the book from her hands. I slammed it shut, the sound loud in the quiet room, and shoved it deep into the drawer, burying it under a pile of leggings. I closed the drawer with a final click.
We didn’t speak of it. She turned and began telling me about the shower schedule, her voice forcibly normal. The image, however, was burned onto the back of my eyelids.
By the time Alex and Hannah returned, the strange tension had been papered over with mundane routine. Alex let out a whoop and clapped me on the back hard enough to sting. “The prodigy joins the plebes! About time, Red.”
Hannah was more reserved, offering a beautiful, careful smile. Her caramel hair was tied in a flawless braid. “Welcome to the chaos, Arisa. Try not to leave your boots in the middle of the floor like some people.” She shot a look at Alex, who just stuck out her tongue.
Aria declared we were having a small welcome party. She produced two large pizzas from somewhere—real, human-world pizza, a rare luxury—and a bottle of something amber that wasn’t Academy-sanctioned. Then, to the groans of Alex and a raised eyebrow from Hannah, she announced she’d invited Mark.
“He’s not squad!” Alex protested, grabbing a slice of pepperoni. “He’s a lab-rat in a sweater vest.”
“He’s a friend,” Aria said with a tone that ended the discussion. “And he’s the one who got the pizza.”
Mark arrived ten minutes later, looking distinctly out of place in his crisply ironed shirt and trousers among our worn fatigues and casual clothes. His eyes, a sharp blue, scanned the room and landed on me with keen interest. “Arisa, now a fifth year cadet. Try not to burn the place down with your unstable flame magic.”
“Try to be normal for five minutes, Mark,” Aria sighed, handing him a cup of the amber liquid.
The alcohol was sweet and fiery, burning a path down my throat that warmed the hollow place Tsubaki had left. Aria, sitting next to me on the floor, kept a subtle watch. After my second cup, she gently tapped my wrist when I went for a third.“Easy. This isn’t water.”
But the warmth was the first real feeling I’d had in days, and I wanted to drown in it. I needed the noise, the buzz, the blur. I poured another. Alex, from across the low table we’d made of upturned crates, raised her own cup. “Yeah, go Arisa! A real cadet now! Chug!Chug! Chug!”
Hannah rolled her eyes but smiled. “Don’t encourage her, you gremlin.”
I was a cadet now. My fifth year meant I was an upperclassman cadet, an extern. The words felt foreign and powerful. I drank, the cheers muffled by the roaring in my own ears. My face grew flushed, the room tilting just a degree into softer focus.
“Game!” Alex declared, slamming her empty cup down. “Truth or Dare. No protector abilities, no lab-tech cheat codes.” She glared playfully at Mark. “I’ll start. Hannah. Truth or Dare?”
Hannah, meticulously picking olives off her pizza, didn’t look up. “Truth, obviously. I’m not running naked across the quad for your amusement.”
Alex’s grin turned wicked. “How many times have you ‘accidentally’ run into Commander Xenon in the west wing baths this month?”
Hannah’s caramel skin darkened. “That is a logistical coincidence based on our overlapping schedules.”
“That’s not a number!”
“Four,” Hannah muttered, taking a sudden, deep interest in her pizza.
The game continued, a comfortable, ridiculous rhythm. Alex was dared to eat a terrifying combination of hot sauce and cake frosting, which she did with terrifying gusto. Hannah asked Aria a truth about the most embarrassing thing Mark had ever done in the lab, and Aria recounted a story involving a malfunctioning hologram and a very startled janitor, making Mark bury his face in his hands.
The laughter was real, a balm on raw nerves. I felt myself loosen, the weight of the sketchbook, the empty dorm, the memory of Xenon’s touch, all pushed back by the warm, buzzing present.
Then Mark’s turn came. He leaned back, his sharp blue eyes glinting in the low light. He took a slow sip of his drink, his gaze traveling over Alex, then Hannah, then landing squarely on me.
“Arisa,” he said, his voice smooth, intellectual, yet with an underlying edge that cut through my buzz. “Truth or Dare?”
I raised my cup, the amber liquid sloshing, and took a defiant chug. The burn was familiar now, a welcome distraction. “Truth!”
Alex booed, throwing a crumpled napkin at me. “Boring! You gotta live a little, Red.”
Mark scratched his chin as if deep in thought, his blue eyes glinting with a kind of clinical curiosity. “Alright. What’s your body count?”
I blinked, the words not computing for a second through the warm fog. “My body count?” The silence in the room tightened. Hannah’s mouth formed a small ‘o’. Alex’s smirk died.
Aria’s fist connected with Mark’s shoulder, a sharp, solid crack. “Mark!”
He rubbed his arm, laughing. “Oh, sorry. Your reaction suggests that you are a virgin.”
Aria punched him again, harder. He winced, genuinely this time. When he recovered, he looked past my shoulder at something briefly, his expression shifting to something unreadable for a fraction of a second before his gaze snapped back to me.
“Fine,” he sighed, theatrically. “You can change to Dare. I dare you to tell me what kind of man you find attractive.”
The alcohol had dissolved my filters, my caution, my deep-seated fear of exposure. The warmth in my veins was a thick, dumb courage. I didn’t care. He was a lab tech. What did it matter?
What did it matter? The warmth from the drink felt good. The words fell out, easy and unthinking. "Okay, well. He’s gotta be tall. Taller than me, obviously. All that intense-eye, brooding-energy stuff is… well, it's obvious."
I took another sip, gesturing vaguely with my cup. Alex snickered. Hannah watched me with an amused, detached curiosity. Aria’s foot tapped against my ankle, a light, warning pressure I ignored.
I kept going, the details sharpening in my fuzzy mind. "He works out a lot, obviously. You see him in the ring sometimes? Or like, early morning on the training course? He's got these abs you could grate cheese on, and biceps like damn rocks under that leather jacket."
Alex’s smile started to falter. Hannah’s carefully plucked eyebrow inched upward.
"It’s when he’s sweaty, though," I blurted, the memory swimming up. "After a sparring session. That olive skin of his just gleams, like bronze under a sheen of oil. The sweat doesn’t look gross on him. It just… highlights everything. The run of his shoulders, the cut of his jaw." My own face was hot, but I couldn’t stop. Aria was frantically shaking her head, her eyes wide.
"And he's just… he's so sexy. God. Sometimes when he yells at me during practice," I said, my voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper that was still too loud. "Oh, the words sometimes make my knees wobble."
Hannah’s lips parted slightly.
"I don't know, I just... I want him to pin me down sometimes. Or pin me against the wall. One time he pulled my hair correcting my stance and I dreamt about it for days," I rambled, the confession pouring out in a torrent of alcohol-fueled truth. "He’s just so—"
Aria lunged.
Her hand slapped over my mouth, cutting off the next word—his name, it was right there on my tongue. She yelled, a touch too loud and too high, "Okay, okay, I think it's my turn! Mark, truth or dare!"
I made a muffled sound of protest against her palm. It tasted like salt and her lavender hand soap. I did the only thing my drunk brain could think of.
I licked it.
Aria yelped and snatched her hand back, wiping it on her pants in exaggerated disgust. "Ugh! You animal! Why did you interrupt me?"
"Because you were—" I started, the righteous indignation boiling up.
Someone behind me cleared his throat.
The sound was soft, dry, and utterly paralyzing. My blood didn't just run cold; it crystallized in my veins. The warmth from the alcohol evaporated, leaving a cold, sick vacuum in my stomach. The flush on my face transformed from a tipsy glow to a full, burning inferno of pure, undiluted horror.
He spoke, and his voice was cold oil on frozen metal. "I'm glad to see my squad has time to drink instead of doing the tasks I assigned them earlier."
I couldn't turn around. My entire body was rigid. In my peripheral vision, I saw Alex sit up straight, her face pale. Hannah had dropped her pizza slice. Aria closed her eyes for a second, a pained look on her face.
He moved then, stepping into the edge of my vision. He gave me the briefest nod, his expression unreadable stone. "Welcome to the squad," he said, his tone stripping the words of any warmth. "Please don't think I allow the actions that your colleagues are demonstrating."
Then he was walking away, down the hall toward his private room at the end of the barracks corridor. His back was a retreating slab of leather-clad judgment.
Panic, sharp and stupid and fueled by ninety-proof shame, overrode every survival instinct. "Hey!" The word tore out of me. I scrambled to my feet, grabbed the nearest pillow from Hannah's bed, and hurled it down the hall.
It wasn't a hard throw, but it was accurate. It hit the center of his back with a soft whump. He stopped walking. He allowed it.
He froze.
The air in the common room solidified into a thick, choking gel. Alex looked like she might be sick. Hannah had both hands over her mouth.
Slowly, he turned his head just enough to look over his shoulder at me. He cracked his neck. Then he rolled his shoulders, a deliberate, tense motion that made the leather of his jacket creak ominously.
My heart hammered against my ribs. I was mortified, humiliated, and bubbling with a drunken, defiant anger at the whole situation. "Come join us, you lame ass!" I yelled, the words echoing in the dead silence.
He turned fully. His dark eyes scanned the room—Alex's terrified face, Hannah's mortified one, Aria’s resigned slump, Mark’s fascinated stare. He walked back, each step measured and silent on the stone floor. He didn't sit. He loomed.
"Fine," he said, the word a low vibration. "My turn."
It was the most terrifying game of Truth or Dare I'd ever witnessed. He didn't play. He delivered verdicts.
"Alex. Dare. You will clean the primary training gym, top to bottom. Every weight, every mat, every mirror. By dawn."
Alex nodded mutely, any argument dying in her throat.
"Hannah. Truth. Your personal infatuation with Commander Wilson is noted. It is also a distraction that imposes on your duty. Correct it."
Hannah flinched as if struck, her eyes dropping to the floor in shame. "Yes, sir."
Then his gaze, heavy and dark, landed on me. I braced myself, waiting for the blow. For the comment about my rant, for the punishment for the pillow. He stared at me for a long, three-count second. My skin prickled.
He said nothing.
He simply looked past me to Mark. "Dr. Kieran," he said, and the title was an insult. "Asking inappropriate personal questions of a subordinate during a time of mandated sobriety for field readiness is a profound failure of judgment."
Mark opened his mouth to protest, to make a joke.
"Get out," Ren said. It wasn't a shout. It was quieter than his previous statements, and a thousand times more absolute.
Mark’s face flushed. He stood, gathered his jacket, and left without another word. The door clicked shut behind him, sealing us in with the squad leader.
Ren’s eyes moved over the three of us, the air so thick with tension I could barely breathe. He gave one final, slow look around the ruined pizza party, his gaze lingering on the empty bottle.
"Field readiness begins now," he stated flatly. "Sleep well."
He turned and walked to his room, closing the door with a quiet, definitive click.
We sat in the ringing silence for a full minute, the ghost of my words hanging in the air between us, more palpable than any shadow.