Chapter 31 · The Scholar's Gate

Vesper's watchdog published a mentorship supplement that week—Tomas's columns featured as model practice. Kael told Tomas to credit himself. Tomas added a footnote crediting Kael. Documentation included gratitude, apparently.

Two years after the loop fractured and stayed broken, Tomas wore second-year stripes on his collar and still flinched when the academy bell rang.

Kael noticed because he remembered flinching too.

They met on Tuesday mornings in the ethics annex—a room that smelled of lemon oil and old chalk, donated by a merchant guild that wanted its name on something virtuous after the harvest scandal. Tomas arrived ten minutes early with ink on his fingers and a notebook divided into careful columns: *observation, source, harm, remedy.* Kael had taught him that structure during Tomas's disastrous first month, when the boy had reported a hazing ritual in the dormitory kitchens and been laughed out of the intake hall for "overactive imagination."

"If day repeats, find allies fast," Kael had said at the gates on a morning that felt like prophecy and wasn't. Tomas had blinked, confused, and Kael had amended: "If something feels wrong, document it before anyone tells you you're wrong."

The documentation had worked. The hazing had stopped.