The eastern storage sheds sat at the far edge of the training grounds, tucked against the outer wall where the morning shadow kept them cool and dark until well past nine. There were four of them, low stone buildings with heavy wooden doors and iron locks that required a faculty key to open officially.
Unofficially, I already knew from the novel that the third shed’s lock had a fault in the mechanism that responded to pressure applied at a specific angle. It had been that way for years. The maintenance staff knew about it and kept scheduling the repair and it kept not getting done.
I went there before the morning bell finished echoing.
Seraphine walked beside me this time instead of behind. The grounds were empty at this hour, that particular quality of pre-morning quiet where everything feels slightly suspended. Our footsteps on the stone path were the only sound.
"Tell me the build again," I said.
"Medium height. Lean. Left shoulder carried forward, habitual rather than injury related. Quick walker but controlled, not rushed. Someone who is comfortable moving in the dark." She paused. "They knew where they were going. Not exploring. Delivering."
"Could you narrow it to first year or older?"
"The height and proportion suggest second or third year. First years are typically less settled in their movement. This person was comfortable on these grounds in a way that takes time to develop."
I filed that. Second or third year. Someone who had been here long enough to know the layout well, long enough to know about the storage shed lock, and apparently motivated enough to be doing deliveries in the middle of the night in the first week of term.
We reached the third shed.
I applied pressure to the lock at the angle the novel had described and felt the mechanism give with a soft click. The door swung inward.
The inside smelled like dust and old canvas and the faint metallic undertone of summoning materials in storage. Folded practice barriers along one wall. Stacked equipment cases along the other. Nothing immediately visible.
Seraphine stepped past me into the shed and walked the perimeter slowly. She stopped near the back left corner and crouched down. Her hand moved aside a folded canvas sheet and she held up a flat package wrapped in oilcloth.
"This was placed deliberately," she said. "Not stored. The positioning is wrong for storage. It was put here to be retrieved, not to stay."
I took the package and unwrapped it carefully.
Inside was a flat leather case. Inside the case were three things. A set of summoning focus crystals, mid-tier quality, the kind used to artificially elevate a summon’s output above its natural ceiling for a short period. A folded paper with a location marked that I recognized as the eastern training ground at night. And a small vial of something dark that I did not need to analyze to identify because I had read about it in Chapter twenty eight of the original novel.
Nocturne extract. Derived from a shadow-class creature. When introduced into an area it disrupted the resonance between summoners and their bound entities, creating a window where summons could act outside their contract parameters. In effect it broke the leash temporarily.
Someone was planning to use it in the eastern training grounds.
At night.
With artificially elevated summons who would not be under proper contract control.
I rewrapped the package and set it back exactly where Seraphine had found it.
"You are leaving it," she said.
"I am leaving it where it is for now," I said. "I know it is here. That is more useful than removing it. If it disappears someone adjusts their plan and I lose visibility on what they are doing. If it stays I can watch who comes back for it."
Seraphine looked at the package for a moment. Then she looked at me. "The logical target of a disruption event in the eastern grounds at night would be whoever is most visible in the first year cohort," she said. "The student most likely to be drawn out. The one whose summon being temporarily off-leash would cause the most significant incident."
"Yes," I said.
"That is you," she said.
"Probably."
She was quiet for a moment. We were close in the small space of the shed and in the dim morning light her crimson eyes were very clear and very still. Something was moving in them that was not quite the composed evaluation of the past two days.
"Someone is planning to hurt you," she said. Her voice was the same tone. Even and measured. But underneath it was something that had no interest in evenness at all.
"Someone is planning to create a situation that could hurt me or damage my reputation," I said. "It is not the same thing. And I am going to handle it."
"I could find them tonight," she said. "I know the movement pattern. I would identify them within an hour of watching the common areas."
"And then what?"
A pause.
"Then we would know who it was," she said. Carefully.
"Seraphine."
"Yes?"
"What would you do to them if I were not here to instruct otherwise?"
The silence this time had a different quality. Honest rather than tactical.
"Something thorough," she said quietly.
I looked at her directly. "I know. That is why I am here and why I am asking you to let me handle this."
She held my gaze for a long moment. Her expression was doing something complicated. The composed surface was entirely intact but underneath it I could see the shape of something that did not find waiting easy. Something that had located a threat to something it cared about and was running on instincts that had nothing to do with academy conduct guidelines.
"You matter to me," she said. Simply. Directly. The way you say something when you have decided that dressing it up serves nobody.
The statement settled in the air of the small shed.
"I know," I said. And then because she had been direct and she deserved the same: "You matter to me too. Which is why I need you to trust me on this."
Something in her face shifted. Still composed. But the quality underneath the composure changed, the hard edge of the ready instinct softening by a fraction into something more willing to wait.
"I will trust your method," she said. "But I want you to understand something clearly." She stepped slightly closer. Not threatening. Just close enough that the statement would land without distance softening it. "If your method fails and something reaches you, I will not wait for instruction. There will not be time and I would not spend it waiting regardless."
"If something reaches me and you respond to protect me I will not fault you for it," I said. "That is different from hunting someone down in the dark because they are planning something."
"Understood," she said.
She stepped back.
We left the shed and I reset the lock behind us.