I gave you a home. I accept you in death. Yet, you chose to turn against me.

Elena walked through the parking lot, taking in the scents, the sounds, and the music. Nearly everyone seemed happier today, more festive and alive. As she walked through the parking lot, the sound of music, cheers, and the scent of food drifted through the air. It smelled wonderful. Each place brought new sensations atop the old ones.

The path she took was the same one she took that night. Dancing, giggling, and music continued playing. It was late, but the party wouldn’t stop until the sun came up for most people. Elena found that comforting. Before she’d be angry, irritated, or bothered by people using their time that way, but today she understood. Sometimes rest involved activity, and sometimes that activity involved living a little differently than normal. Instead of anger, a sense of contentment filled her in a way that felt new, but right.

Elena took a deep breath, enjoying the scents, sounds, and music. The houses and shadows no longer seemed mad, as if rejecting her very presence. Now, the houses and their shadows seemed happy to see her. Their shadows reached across lawns, and broken streets, and met her own. It felt surreal as if this was who she was meant to be.

She continued to the university path, past the neighborhood, towards the familiar stretch of road that led to the burned ruins of learning. A line of police cruisers drove down the road. They didn’t stop for her, and they didn’t seem in too much of a hurry to care. Their light didn’t turn on, nor did their sirens. They drove down the road, one after the other like a parade of silent knights who failed in their duty.

It didn’t take long for Elena to stand before the broken iron of the university gates. She paid the message on the ground no mind and continued forward. What greeted her was the same burned university. Only, instead of the subtle sense of order it seemed to hold, now there were pieces of furniture strewn across lawns, piles of clothes tossed around, and already broken walls were now more broken than they had been only hours before.

She looked at the fountain, abandoned, without its owner. She looked at the metal rod that pierced the statue of Rykard. She felt a sense of wrongness, not at Rykard being pierced, but at William not being where he should be. He couldn’t have been captured. He seemed careful, deliberate. When she had walked to the stage, he tried to pull her back to safety, as if he knew they would’ve gotten caught. He had to be safe.

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“William, are you out there?” She calls out in not quite a yell. She waited, listening for the wandering man, but the only sounds she heard were those of the wind and rustling leaves in the trees and ground. “William?” She tried again, as she walked through the plaza. Silence.

She continued through the path. The wind pressed through the leaves of trees, dancing through her long hair and loose dress. The wet earth provided familiar scents of a new season, and the dampness provided a comforting sensation that only came for fall. She found her way to the tower, noted the broken desks, and strewn and wet paper, and climbed the familiar steps. It’d been weeks since this place had been new to her, and now it felt more like home than the one she just left. Up the path, she found her floor and walked down the hall to her room.

A familiar scene greeted her. Piles of trash from the snacks she had eaten over the weeks, and a small pile of clothes that was her bed. During the weeks she felt hungry, she assumed it was because a part of her was still alive, or that she was a kind of Jaan that needed to eat. That first night, when she saw the Necromancer, she felt dead, like the night itself had invaded her. But, the next night, after being next to William, she felt warm, like she was alive. Elena assumed it had to do with the magic settling inside her, but whenever she felt her heart, she felt it beat back at her. She had no answers, no way of knowing that she wasn’t undead, not until those stones were shown to her, and she felt nothing. Now, she didn’t know what to think. What exactly did happen to her those weeks ago?

Once she changed into her usual set of clothes, she looked out through the window. Lights changed, and music dwindled. The night would soon be ending, and anyone not at a long-lasting party would soon be asleep. It was fine. Elena knew that this particular night couldn’t last forever. “I wish this night did last forever,” she said aloud. “In my books, Sin used to hold a market. She’d open the doors for all sorts of things to come through. If I could’ve seen that, it would’ve been amazing.” Elena sighed at the thought. The old stories comforted her still and brought her relief, a sense of adventure. The Necromancer still intrigued her, but she was sure that the man on the stage was not the Necromancer. She looked down over the university, it seemed more ruined than she wanted to admit.

At the fountain, she sat on the ledge. Back at the starting line, she wondered if she even made any progress at all. She spent the last few weeks wandering the Deuda with him and found nothing. It troubled her. Didn’t that fortune teller say she’d meet him? Or, darkness? On the ledge of the familiar fountain, she found her eyes drifting to the statue and wondered how mad someone would have to be to throw it so hard.

“What do I do?” she said, as if to the moon just beyond the statue. It was full, bright, and full of power. “The Necromancer is still around, so there’s still something I could do. But…” she paused, admitting what felt more important, more pressing to her. “Where is William?” The nights they spent together, sharing their interests and their lives. It felt right. She sighed. As she was about to stand and begin her, no doubt, fruitless search, a familiar black cat, with fur as deep as the night ran at her from the shadows.