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The fork slipped out of Ivy's hand and hit the porcelain like a gunshot.
Every head at the long table turned.
"First time with silverware?" The girl across from her had blonde ringlets and emerald earrings and a voice sharpened to a point. "It's alright. We all have to start somewhere."
Ivy picked the fork back up. Set it down outside-in, the way the borrowed etiquette book said. Met the girl's eyes. "I'm fine. Thanks."
"Of course you are." The girl leaned toward the boy beside her, not bothering to lower her voice. "I heard they let in a charity case this year. Full scholarship. Can you imagine?"
Ivy's hand closed around her knife. The hall was too bright, too loud, too full of people who'd grown up with servants pouring their tea. The letter had called this an honor. *Selected from thousands. Your talent has earned you a place among the finest minds in the realm.*
It hadn't said the finest minds came with trust funds.
A boy leaned in from her other side. Ink-stained fingers, rumpled collar, hair that looked like it lost a fight with a comb. "Ignore Clarisse," he muttered. "She does this to everyone."
"Does what?"
"Finds the soft spot. Digs." He shrugged. "I'm Toby. Scholarship kid too. Enchantment track."
That helped. A little. "Ivy. Alchemy."
"Oof. Hardest one to fake." Toby grinned. "You actually gotta know what you're doing."
A chair scraped at the head table. The whole hall dropped into silence like someone had cast a spell on it.
Maybe someone had.
Headmaster Verne rose. Silver hair, granite face, a voice that didn't need volume to fill the room.
"Welcome," he said. "You are students of Nightfall Academy now. Some of you carry centuries of magical bloodline. Others—" his eyes swept the room and landed on Ivy for exactly one second, "—earned your seat with raw talent. It won't matter. Within these walls, you will fail. You will learn magic isn't a birthright. It's a discipline. And discipline doesn't care about your name."
He lifted his goblet. "To your future. May it be worth the price."
Ivy raised her glass with everyone else. The wine was dark red, almost black in the candlelight. She took a sip—
And nearly choked.
Not the taste. Across the room, Verne's goblet had gone black. Not dark red — black, like ink dropped in water, veining through the crystal.
Verne stared down at it. Set it on the table like it might go off.
Nobody else noticed. Toby was flagging down a server for more bread. Clarisse was mid-laugh at her own joke.
Ivy's pulse kicked. Three years grinding herbs in her master's shop had taught her exactly one thing that mattered right now: wine didn't just change color.
Verne stood so fast his chair barked against the floor. He said something low to the professor beside him. Two of them flanked him, walking fast for a side door. His hand — she saw it — was shaking.
"Finally," Clarisse said, tapping her fork on her glass. "Do you think dessert's coming?"
Ivy wasn't listening. She was watching a woman at the head table — short dark hair, a scar down one cheek — pick up Verne's abandoned goblet, sniff it, and go white as bone.
Then the screaming started.
It came from near the entrance. High. Ragged. Chairs scraped back all down the hall.
"Someone help him!" a girl shouted.
A boy was on the floor between two tables, body twisting, limbs jerking wrong. His face had gone ash-gray. His eyes rolled back to white.
Professors were already moving, wands out — but they looked lost. Like the wards that were supposed to make this impossible had just failed and nobody could figure out why.
Ivy was moving before she decided to. She shoved past Toby, past Clarisse's frozen face, and dropped to her knees by the boy.
Up close it was worse. His lips had cracked black. His breath came in thin, wet gasps.
She pressed two fingers to his neck.
There. Faint. Fading fast.
"Poison," she said, steadier than she felt.
The scarred professor crouched beside her. "You sure?"
"Yes." Ivy yanked a vial off her belt — universal antidote, basic recipe, the one thing every apprentice carried. She popped the cork, tilted his head back—
His eyes snapped open.
Wrong open. The whites had gone black, veined red, staring at her like she was made of glass.
His mouth opened. A sound came out. Not a word.
Then he stopped breathing.
The professor swore, pressed her wand to his chest, snapped an incantation. Nothing.
She tried again. Nothing.
"He's gone," she said quietly.
Ivy sat back, the vial still open in her hand, going numb. Around her the whispers started — crying, staring, someone saying her name from far away that might've been Toby.
Then she saw his palm.
A mark. Dark, pulsing like it had a heartbeat. She'd seen cursed ink before, alchemical burns, all of it. This wasn't any of that.
A sigil. Black lines in a circle, symbols inside that shifted when she looked straight at them. The edges glowed dying-ember red.
She reached out. Touched it.
It moved.
The sigil peeled off the dead boy's skin like wet paper and latched onto her hand. She gasped, tried to yank back — too late. It was already crawling up her wrist in cold black lines.
The professor grabbed her arm hard. "What did you do?"
"I didn't do anything, I just—"
The sigil pulsed once, hard, and her vision whited out.
When it cleared, the hall was quiet.
Not shocked-quiet. Empty-quiet.
No students. No professors. No body. Just Ivy, kneeling on cold marble, the feast tables still full, candles still burning like nothing had happened at all.
Then the sigil spoke.
Not out loud. Straight into her skull, like it had crawled in behind her eyes.
*Welcome, Vessel. You have three days to—*
A chair scraped somewhere behind her.
Ivy spun around.
She wasn't alone anymore.