Thornhill Academy (By Sheridan Hartin) novel Chapter 242

Burn it.

Devour it.

The hunger surges, loud enough that my vision fractures, shadows slamming outward in a violent pulse that rattles the cage. I slam my forehead into the bars, breathing hard, trying to remember which thoughts are mine and which ones just sound convincing. I know their plan. I understand it. That’s the terrifying part. I’m still here enough to follow along. To track exits. To count steps. To feel the weak points singing to me like open throats. I bare my teeth, saliva slick and bitter on my tongue, laughter bubbling up again, sharp and broken and thrilled. They think they’re containing me. They think they’re moving me. They think I’m holding. I am…

…just barely. But I know one thing with brutal clarity: I will not stay inside this cage. Not if there’s still anything left to

eat.

14:25 Mon, Jan 19.

Thornhill Academy

Containment Breach

Cassian

Kael’s fist goes through the service door like it personally insulted his mother. The lock plate buckles with a metallic snap, the hinges scream once, and then the Council’s side entrance swings inward. Heat and smoke drift behind us from the front assault, but in here the air feels refrigerated, scrubbed clean of battle, scented faintly with something bitter and antiseptic that clings to the back of my throat. Rhaziel’s shadows lift the cage just above the floor so it doesn’t scrape. The smaller containment structure looks almost obscene inside this corridor, too brutal for a place that prefers its cruelty elegant and hidden. Allison crouches inside it, shoulders rounded, fingers white around the bars, her head angled as if she’s listening to a frequency no one else can hear. I stay close, one hand hovering near the cage out of instinct I can’t shut off, the other already mapping the space. Kael shuts the door behind us, softly for once. Even he understands the difference between noise meant to distract and noise that gets you killed.

“Left,” Cage murmurs.

His voice is rough, scraped raw by pain he refuses to acknowledge. He holds himself upright through sheer spite, one hand pressed against the stitch line that runs down his face. His remaining eye tracks the corridor with the sharp focus of someone who grew up inside a trap, this trap to be exact. Evander moves at his shoulder, close enough to catch him if he drops, far enough that Cage won’t feel handled. Kael drifts to my right, restless energy packed tight into his muscles, fire kept on a short leash under his skin. Rhaziel stays behind the cage like the corridor belongs to him. The moment we cross the threshold, the building notices. There’s no alarm. No sudden light. No theatrical reaction. The air simply feels like it tightens. Pressure shifts against my sternum, subtle and immediate, like a flat hand pressing into my chest. The hair along my arms lifts, and every instinct I have leans forward and says the same thing. We just crossed another ward. Allison inhales sharply inside the cage. Her pupils flare wide. Her head turns with slow, precise intent, tracking something that doesn’t move and doesn’t make sound. Her shadows creep along the bars as if tasting the air. Kael glances at me. His grin is gone, replaced

by something sharp and assessing.

“What’s the building doing?” he mutters.

“Sampling,” I say.

The Council doesn’t just rely on guards and locks. It relies on systems that identify you the moment you become a problem. We’re already a problem. The only variable left is how long we remain a surprise. We move. Rhaziel’s shadows carry the cage through the corridor like a coffin that refuses to be mourned, and I walk beside it, mind split between spatial awareness and the bond because Allison is watching, calculating, learning the rhythm of our breathing and footsteps. A junction opens ahead, two corridors branch off from it. The left hall widens slightly, brighter, more polished. The right narrows into something

utilitarian.

Cage points with his chin. “Right. Maintenance run. Takes us under the central stairwell.”

We take the right. The air changes again, colder, dampened by stone that holds moisture and secrets. Pipes run along the walls, embossed with runes that glow faintly. The corridor slopes downward, the ceiling drops, and the space forces us closer together, shoulder to shoulder, breath overlapping breath. Allison’s cage looks larger now. Like it’s taking up more than its share of the world, and her claws scrape once against the bars. Rhaziel’s gaze flicks back toward her, shadows tightening almost imperceptibly, an extra coil sliding over the cage like a seatbelt.

“Naughty little wraith,” Kael mutters, half-jokingly.

Allison’s head snaps toward him.

Her lips peel back from her teeth in something that might be a smile in the wrong light.

*Kael,” I say, and my tone carries years of classroom authority and battlefield command in the same breath. “Less commentary.”

He lifts his hands. “Yes, commander.”

1/3

14:25 Mon, Jan

Containment Breach

We reach a grated door,set into the stone, a rune-lock embedded in the frame.

Cage leans in, squinting with his remaining eye. His breath shudders once as pain catches him.

“I can open it,” he says.

“You can stand,” I correct quietly. “That’s all I need from you right now.”

His jaw tightens. Rage flickers in his expression. He’s never had the luxury of weakness. Not under Varyn’s roof. Rhaziel steps forward without comment.

One claw traces the lock. Shadow slides into the grooves like water into cracks. The rune flares once, then dies, and the door swings open with a soft groan.

We slip through. The stairwell beyond is narrow and spirals downward, black stone drinking what little light exists. Steps curve tight around a central

column etched with Council sigils, each one a reminder of how long they’ve been building cages for people like us. The noise of the battle outside vanishes

completely. Here, the silence weighs heavily. It presses into my ears and makes every breath loud. I keep my eyes forward and open my mind just enough to

reach Allison.

We’re moving. Stay with me.

Her response hits like hunger wrapped around a single flicker of warmth.

Cass.

Then it’s gone, swallowed by static and dark magic. At the bottom, the stairwell opens into a corridor lined with sealed doors, each marked with a number and a sigil. Storage. Archives. Containment. The Council loves labels. A faint vibration travels through the floor beneath my boots. Subtle and repeating.

Three beats. Pause. Three beats. It’s an alarm protocol.

“Keep moving,” I say.

Evander’s eyes flick to me. “They know.”

Cage’s mouth curves bitterly. “Yep.”

The corridor ahead turns sharply left. The light shifts and shadows deepen in a way that prickles my skin. A figure steps into view. A man in a tailored grey coat, Council crest pinned neatly at his throat. His stance is relaxed, practised, more dangerous than anyone shouting orders outside. His eyes flick from

Rhaziel to me to Kael to Evander to Cage, then settle on the cage.

He smiles like he’s found something he lost.

“Professor Hill,” he says calmly. “I assumed you’d come, eventually,”

He isn’t one of the Seven, but he’s close enough to bleed for them. Behind him, the wall ripples. Stone fractures along invisible seams, and something forces its way out of the architecture, tearing free with a grinding crack as chunks of wall fall away. The thing that steps into the corridor is roughly humanoid, tall and angular, built from compressed dark magic bound into stone. Its limbs bend wrong, joints forming where none should exist. Its head is smooth and faceless except for a vertical split down the centre that pulses faintly, opening and closing like a breathing wound. The magic inside it is dense and concentrated. Weaponised darkness meant to neutralise threats. Allison rises inside the cage, Shadows slam outward instinctively, claws scraping metal as

her eyes lock onto the construct.

The man steps closer. “Containment breach protocol,” he says conversationally. “You of all people should understand.”

14:25 Mon, Jan 19.

Thornhill Academy

Measured Steps

.

Cage

54

The construct is already moving when he finishes speaking. It comes at us down the corridor in long, tearing strides, stone limbs grinding against the floor.

Dark magic packed so tight inside it that the air bends around its shape. I feel it before I see it clearly, pressure dragging at my ribs, my vision lagging a

fraction behind my instincts. That half-second delay is enough to make my jaw clench hard enough to hurt. I lift my hand anyway. The spell snaps out of me

fast, a compressed bolt meant to shear straight through its chest and collapse the binding runes from the inside. It’s something I’ve done a hundred times in

places just like this, but my depth is off, and I know it the instant it leaves my palm. The magic skims wide, tears a trench out of the wall instead, stone

exploding into dust and fragments as the construct barrels on untouched.

“Fuck,” I snarl.

Pain flares hot and blinding behind my ruined eye as my balance wobbles, the world tilting wrong for a heartbeat. The thing is almost on us now, arm lifting, joints grinding as it prepares to grab, to pin, to tear the cage open and drag her out like a prize. Rhaziel moves. His shadows hit the construct mid- stride, striking with precision that makes my teeth grind. They coil around its arm, its throat, its torso, darkness folding over darkness. They wrench

sideways with brutal force, and stone slams into stone hard enough to crack the corridor wall. The construct thrashes, runes flaring brighter as it adapts,

dark magic surging outward in a pulse that makes the lights flicker. Cassian steps past me without hesitation. His attention locks straight onto the Council

bastard in the grey coat. I feel it more than I see it, the sudden spike of mental pressure, Cassian’s magic slamming into the man’s defences like a battering

ram through a locked door. The Council man stiffens, breath hitching, eyes going glassy as his knees buckle and he folds to the floor with a dull, useless

sound. Rhaziel’s shadows compress inward all at once, crushing the construct’s core and collapsing the runes in a cascade of snapping light. Stone fractures,

splits, then gives, the whole thing collapsing in on itself and hitting the ground in a heap of dead weight and leaking shadow that dissipates fast, like smoke

dragged into a vacuum. I don’t watch it finish. I’m already moving.

“Come on,” I snap, voice rough and loud enough to cut through the aftermath. “We don’t stop.”

Evander’s already shifting position, eyes tracking the corridor ahead. Kael cracks his neck once, fire rolling back under his skin. Rhaziel lifts the cage again,

shadows tightening around it as Allison presses forward inside. Her fingers are digging into the bars, pupils blown wide as she watches the place where the

construct fell, her breathing sharp and fast.

“Left,” I say immediately, turning into the next corridor without waiting for consensus. This one slopes upward, narrower, the stonework older, seams in the

walls that don’t quite line up, and my mind slots it into place instantly. Auxiliary access. Not meant for traffic. Not meant for fights. It feeds into the inner ring without touching the public halls. I grew up running these corridors. I know where the sound carries. I know where the wards overlap. I know which walls hide spell conduits and which ones will bleed power if you punch them hard enough. My head throbs in time with my steps, pain flaring when I move too fast, when the world shifts, and my vision lags. I grit my teeth and keep going because stopping gets people killed, and this place has never waited for

anyone to heal. Allison shifts again inside the cage, shadows crawling tight along her arms, brushing the bars like they’re mapping the space the way I am 1 watch her reflection in the metal as we move, tracking the moments her breathing changes. The way her head turns when we pass certain junctions, when