**POV: Ayla**

The morning air at the academy feels different today. It is crisp and bites at my skin. It carries the faint metallic scent of coming rain. But the real change lives inside the main corridor. The light hits the floorboards in a new way. The shadows pull back when I walk past. The heavy weight I carried for months has changed shape. I no longer feel like the target or the outcast. I feel like power waking up.

Word of Zane’s public claim spreads like wildfire overnight. It is not a whisper. It becomes a roar. By the time I reach my locker the corridor stays unusually quiet....