Hervor Academy and Pandero Academy sit on two streets in Northstar City that split like forked rivers. Step off the platform and walk one way, and the other is gone.

For Alina, both campuses are unmapped terrain. To get back to Naghtown on time, she picks the one closer to the platform: Pandero, east of the station in the industrial belt.

Because time is tight, the quest for Melvina slips to second place. It becomes a side item on the road, like the free drink you grab after a meal, neither main dish nor hunted prize, just a habit of the hand.

That thought stirs her heart with restless grit, like sand worrying a shell.

She tries a deep breath; behind fingers pressed to mouth and nose, she sips the air like muddy water, heavy and stale.

Whether I find Melvina or not, I’m going back. The vow drops like a nail in wood.

Summer light burns bright, stamping the ground with tree-shadows like torn flower-print. No wind, no leaf-noise; the shade looks etched into the earth like an old carving. Heat wraps the air, and a dry hiss whispers like paper; thumb-sized cicadas cling to trunks and rasp their sawing cry.

Along the road, Alina runs hot and wordless, tired like a stone left in the sun.

Factory chimneys unspool waste like thin gray ribbons climbing the sky. Drain channels set in the sidewalk carry viscous ink-green flow, like ancient verdigris with no trace of thinning. The sulfur stings like a struck match. Passersby move like riverfish used to the taste; even at the sight of a nun, their faces stay stiff and drained of life.

Alina fans herself with a hand, chasing a breeze like a moth; the air she stirs is only heat folding back. She lifts her other sleeve and wipes her cheeks with loose fabric, skimming sweat like dew off grass. The street underfoot looks gnawed by industrial dust, a smear of soot across bread. Her ears fill with bright metal clinks and the low grind of machines, sound stacked like clouds.

Deeper in the factories, she spots a long rectangular mirror leaning against a wall, a tall quiet lake stood upright for miners to wash the day from their skin.

She drifts to the mirror and studies herself. The habit that should be plain is no longer clean; white sweat-salts map the dark cloth in winding lines like dried riverbeds. On her brow and nose, clear beads hang like glass seeds. Wet strands cling to her cheeks and neck, like something hauled up from a swamp’s black floor.

“Like this—” Alina gathers the strays, her fingers combing like bone teeth. “How am I supposed to face Melvina? At the gate, they’ll stop me like a vagrant!”

“Headmaster said you’re a sister?” a voice murmurs behind her, a patter like rain through leaves. “I remember you weren’t kind to religion—” The words float in the heat like a slow kite, half careless, half barbed. “A sister, really?”

“Not a sister.”

“Really?”

“Mm.”

Alina stands in the mirror’s discreet shade, her breath held like a bird cupped in hands. She watches two girls across the street. Their bright uniforms look like petals against the district’s gray. One flings an arm and toys with beige sunglasses on her nose; the other yawns, lazy, her ash-gray curls spilling to her waist like a fall of wool. The mirror sits at a perfect angle, a covert window; it lets Alina listen from the dark like a fish under a bridge hearing footsteps.

“Not a sister, for real?” Beige Shades presses. “Why’d the headmaster say you are?”

Little Gray stretches and answers, voice like warm dust. “Because I grew up in the Sacred Cathedral.”

“That doesn’t count as being a sister?”

“Why does growing up in a cathedral make you a sister?”

Beige Shades pockets one hand and catches the railing with the other, steadying her sway like a reed in water. “Because that’s what everyone assumes.” She smiles, pretty and sharp, then scrapes sweat from her brow with a nail like peeling paint. “Don’t you?”

Little Gray shakes her head.

As she does, the long curls tumble from her nape like a cloud made from putty, heavy and awkward, swaying with weight.

Alina watches, quiet. Little Gray’s answer fits both fact and feeling; she herself has never thought of herself as a sister. The way Little Gray shakes her head, her hair following like a wave, pulls Alina back to a not-so-distant time. Back then, Little Gray would lie under a towering locust tree and watch white clouds drift like slow boats; Alina would sit beside her and ease out the coiling locks. Wild grass bent and swayed, rolling in layers like a green tide from near to far.

“I don’t feel much for that place,” Little Gray says, cutting Alina’s drift of thought like a snapped thread.

“They raised you—”

“It may sound cold,” she says, voice flat as a blade, “but they brought it on themselves.”

Beige Shades falls silent, as if weighing the depths under the words; Alina watches Little Gray, stunned like a swallow striking glass.

“Don’t ask for details,” Little Gray warns, voice low, slow and measured, laying each word like a stone. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay, okay—do you miss any friends there?”

“At the Sacred Cathedral?”

Beige Shades twists her mouth. “Of course!”

“I probably don’t have friends.”

“Probably?”

“There’s a case like this,” she says, clinical as chalk. “Some people might see me as a friend. I never looked at them the same.”

“You really are a weirdo,” Beige Shades says, flicking the words like pebbles. “Thinking like that, you won’t have friends.”

“Friends from the Cathedral—” Little Gray pinches her chin and lowers her voice, slow and hesitant, each word surfacing like a bubble. “I won’t have ties with that place.”

Alina listens, and her heart tightens in pulses like a net hauled hand over hand.

A strange fatigue follows, as if it had silted up long ago and only today did she feel the weight.

“I should’ve gone to Hervor Academy,” Alina whispers, faint as shade. “I chose wrong.”