Page 36 of She Who Devours the Stars (The Astral Mess #1)

The Aethenaeum had gone all-out on ceremonial junk for this “containment induction.” Banners in every shade of ancient, inscribed with sigils only half the room could read.

Air thick with hyper-sterile filtration, but underneath that, the stink of nervous sweat and ozone.

The kind of manufactured solemnity that made even the bored kids hold their breath.

It was a stage for drama, and I was not the only one waiting for the show.

My eyes tracked everything—posture shifts, micro-expressions, social drift.

The front row was a study in genetic engineering: three siblings in the same suit, teeth flawless, eyes chemically tweaked to match the Vaelith House crest. They made a sport of ignoring the crowd, occasionally glancing back to make sure we were still real.

Behind them, the Vellari twins, interchangeable as always, with their perfect hair and skin and matching expressions of practiced contempt.

I’d heard a rumor they once swapped places during a final and no one, not even the scan system, caught it.

At the edge, the rest of us: kids with too much time and not enough background, leaning into whatever performance they thought would keep them unremarkable.

Some kept their heads down, feigning interest in the holo-notes.

Some traded nervous glances, seeking confirmation that this wasn’t just a bad dream.

A few tried to merge into the walls entirely.

Me? I watched the faculty.

The headmistress wasn’t here. That was unusual—she never missed these.

The lectern was manned by Ipsum, the senior Ethicist, whose career was a string of cautionary tales and nervous breakdowns.

He was sweating through his collar, running breathing exercises in a loop, but the numbers on his wrist monitor only climbed.

The rest of the staff milled around the periphery, forced smiles, eyes flicking to the main doors every twenty seconds.

The room was off, and everyone felt it, but no one said a word.

A distortion hit the grav field. Only a hair, but I caught it—a ripple, then a snap as the Hall’s doors swung open, no preamble, no mythic fanfare, just the raw hush of a vacuum pulling at your lungs.

For a second, the air went static. Every eye locked forward.

Fern Trivane walked in like she’d just come from a mugging, and the mugger had lost. She was taller than I expected, maybe an inch over average, but all myth and angle, impossible to look away from.

The suit she wore was illegal in at least three systems—midnight blue, overlays in white that shimmered in time with her pulse, every line designed for either seduction or violence, or both.

Her face was sharp: cheekbones you could measure conductivity with, mouth curved in a half-smirk that said she’d already started counting the exits.

She walked with a gait I’d only ever seen in two places: on predators, and on the people who’d survived them.

Behind her trailed an Accord attaché—female, platinum hair, features so symmetric I almost missed the tells.

She didn’t move like a handler, more like a bodyguard who’d just been told to stand down.

She scanned the room once, then parked herself at the edge, hands clasped behind her back, every muscle at parade rest.

The real drama, though, was in the way Fern moved. Not a glide, not a stalk, just a perfect rejection of every tradition the room was built on. The crowd parted for her, instinctive, like they’d all agreed not to touch a live wire. Even the front-row royalty leaned back, eyes wide, as Fern passed.

It took me a second to realize my own heart had spiked.

The mythlights tracked her, the overlays in her suit refracting the spectrum until it bled out the banners and even the glass itself. I’d spent two years at this Academy, watched every type of prodigy and psycho walk these floors, but nothing had ever bent the room like this.

For a split second, I thought the attaché had to be the Nullarch.

The cut, the command in her eyes. She looked like someone who could burn down a city and then file the paperwork, no hesitation.

But when Fern stepped into the mythlight, the effect was immediate—a stutter in the drones, two nearby kids nearly flinched, and the faculty froze.

Even Ipsum, locked in his panic loop, forgot how to breathe.

I wasn’t immune. I made a mental note to figure out why later, but for now, I just watched.

A hiss in my ear: the Vellari twins, leaning in close, voices syrupy with malice. Vessa went first: “Careful, darling. Look too long and she might notice you exist.” Then Vex, voice even lower, “Or maybe she’ll eat you alive, and you’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

I didn’t bother answering. I just kept my eyes on Fern, watched as she prowled the front of the room, then pivoted on a heel so sharp it could’ve cut the floor. She stood at the center, waiting.

The crowd exhaled as one, but no one dared speak.

The headmistress finally arrived—she must’ve been waiting for the signal.

She strode in from a side door, robes flaring, her own resonance already tuned to war.

She stopped, met Fern’s gaze, and for a second, nothing else moved.

The two of them stood there, myth against myth, the entire Academy caught in the gravity between.

Then the headmistress nodded. “Welcome to Eventide Aethenaeum,” she intoned, and the words broke the spell.

Applause. Half-hearted, unsure, but enough to make the twins groan in boredom. I clapped, slow, late, then tucked my arms back into themselves.

I glanced once more at Fern, watched her lips twitch into a real smile—a dangerous one—and felt the floor shift under my feet.

I should have looked away. I knew the risk.

But I didn’t.

And I knew, in that moment, I wouldn’t get free of it, ever.

Thread Modulation: Dyris Vaelith Axis Alignment: Office of the Headmistress, Eventide

The Headmistress’s office had the aesthetic of a high-security jewelry heist staged inside a migraine.

It was all curves—chrome, burnished mythstone, iridescent glass—and just enough naked circuitry to remind you the room could be repurposed as a panic bunker if negotiations got ugly.

I perched on a chair that cost more than my first three apartments combined, its design so deliberately uncomfortable I had to admire the psychological warfare behind it.

You never forgot whose world you’d stepped into.

Headmistress Ania didn’t waste time with pleasantries.

She stalked the perimeter of her desk like a prowling bird of prey, streaming multiple data feeds into her peripheral as she spoke.

“I need you to explain to me,” she said, “in words my last two techs could not render into a diagram, how exactly your mythprint walked off a mythship, walked onto a major world, and in the span of fourteen hours produced a stable White Hole resonance event while simultaneously establishing an offshoot cargo cult and torpedoing three planetary economy models.”

I blinked. Not to show confusion, but to clear the afterimage of her shoes—bladed, mirrored, lethal in a way that wasn’t just decorative. “It was only tacos,” I offered.

Ania stabbed a finger at me. “It was not ‘only tacos.’ Dyris, I cannot stress this enough: She formed a stable divine resonance with a concept that physics still considers theoretical, and used it to make street food.”

I let my gaze wander to the environmental controls, which had ramped the air to a shade too cold, deliberate enough to trigger primal discomfort. “She was hungry. It seemed…inevitable.”

“Don’t deadpan me.” Ania leaned forward, hands flat on the desktop.

“Do you know how long it’s been since someone formed a new astral bond before entering formal containment?

Never. The answer is never. And that includes the recursions of myths other than Lioren.

” She pinched her brow, then toggled a mute on three live comms just so she could focus all her scorn on me.

“There are mathematicians on my payroll who just resigned rather than process the updates.”

I waited for her to finish. Silence was power, if you could stand it.

“She’s not Lioren,” I said.

Ania paused. She was one of the few who remembered the real version, not the Accord myth. She circled behind me and, for a second, I braced for a blow. Instead she clapped my shoulder—harder than protocol allowed—and barked a short laugh.

“She’d better not be.” She flared her hands, a gesture that included the entire city outside her window.

“There’s not enough left to burn.” She spun back to the desk and dropped into her own chair, a ring of glass and mythic suspension field that made her float half a centimeter above the floor.

She flicked open a new file, eyes darting.

“I’d hoped your friend would acclimate before the start of term. Maybe develop an allergy to headlines.”

I kept my voice neutral. “She acclimates by eating. It’s her style.”

“It’s a style that’s going to kill us all.

” Ania snorted, then waved off her own melodrama.

“You’re not here for a reprimand. You’re here because there’s something else.

” She looked at me then, eyes gone dead serious, the bureaucrat dropped for the veteran.

“Zevelune sent notification last night. She’s joining the faculty as a guest lecturer.

She did not ask. She just timestamped her arrival and attached a security waiver. ”

The words hit like a cold shower after a tranquilizer dart. “Zevelune—here?” I almost choked on the word. “Why?”

Ania grinned, all teeth and old scars. “Why else? She’s coming to finish what she started.” She eyed me. “She’s also requested you as her official liaison.”

I swallowed. “That’s not possible. House protocol—”