Thornhill Academy (By Sheridan Hartin) novel Chapter 98

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I head straight to the academy’s main library, and when it’s thankfully empty, I enter. The grand vaulted ceilings hum faintly with the wards that keep curious students from creeping in after hours. The lamps are half-dimmed, but I don’t bother turning them up. I know this place in the dark better than I know my own classroom. My boots echo against the marble as I head toward the restricted wing. One quick touch of my sigil ring, and the heavy runed doors whisper open, exhaling centuries of dust and secrets. Rows upon rows of tomes glare back at me from their iron cages: books that shouldn’t exist and scrolls bound in magic older than the academy itself. I don’t stop until I reach the lower shelves: Forbidden Bloodlines. Mutations. Magical Anomalies. Siphons.

Even the word looks dangerous, the ink looks like it was etched in a trembling hand as if the scribe feared writing it. I pull every volume that even hints at it The Consuming Gift, Hybrid Arcana: A Study of Containment, The Soul as Vessel.

–

My arms ache by the time I stagger back toward the exit, the pile stacked high enough to block my view.

My cabin sits just beyond the training fields, a lonely little stone house meant for faculty who never quite learned to socialise. Perfect for hiding things. I drop the stack on my table, order a bottle of red and some food from the night kitchen, and uncork the current bottle of wine I have before I even unbutton my coat. The first text I open is brittle with age, its edges burnt like someone once tried to destroy it.

“A siphon is not born of one element, but of none

I take a long sip of wine, frowning.

Devour to become.

a void given will. They steal to survive, they devour to become.”

She hadn’t looked like a devourer. She’d looked…terrified.

Another book speaks of early experiments, where siphons were created as weapons, living conduits of magic. Most were killed in infancy or driven mad by overload. None were permitted in academies. None should even exist anymore, as what was left in this world was sent to the front lines of war. And yet… one is sitting in my classroom. I push aside the plate of food I’ve barely touched and flip through more pages, my mind spinning faster than I’d like. The more I read, the more contradictions I find. Some accounts describe siphons as unstable parasites. Others call them the “missing link” – beings meant to unite magic, not destroy it. I drag a hand through my hair and stare into the fire. She’d channelled my magic before, who knows how many times. She’s trying to pass off my power as her own. Trying to blend in here like she’s an everyday magical. Which makes her both dangerous and utterly untrained,

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