Chapter 542. Kaela Says I Never Run Unless Something Is Wrong (She Has a Point)

Chapter 542: 542. Kaela Says I Never Run Unless Something Is Wrong (She Has a Point)

William smiled through the chaos, watching them. There was something grounding about their bickering; it felt human.

It felt safe.

Then, he performed his ritual: he counted heads. His eyes swept the field, counting the familiar silhouettes against the torchlight.

His smile faltered. The count was wrong.

"Where’s Ellie?" William asked, his voice cutting through Kaela’s complaining.

The question was quiet, but it carried a sudden, sharp edge that made the others pause.

Olivia blinked, looking up from her cushion.

"She said she wanted to rest," she said slowly. "She told me that right after dinner."

"She seemed... tired." Olivia hesitated, her brow furrowing. "She looked a bit pale, though."

"I noticed it earlier this afternoon when she was helping with the tea."

The pit in William’s stomach deepened. ’Pale.’

"And Clara?" William pressed, his mind already racing through the possibilities. "Has anyone seen Clara?"

"She left me a message," Olivia said, fishing a folded piece of parchment from her sleeve. "Hold on."

"She says she’s in the library... Something about looking for references for the next theory exam."

William stared at the empty space where Ellie should have been standing. The evening air suddenly felt much colder, and the familiar sounds of the academy seemed to retreat, leaving him alone with a growing, gnawing suspicion that the routine was about to shatter.

’Looking for something.’

William turned the phrase over in his mind like a blade, testing its edge, and he hated what he found. The words were hollow, meaningless.

Ellie hadn’t been ’looking’ for anything; she had been retreating.

For two days, she had been systematically constructing a fortress around herself, brick by brick, smile by smile.

She had skipped breakfast, then lunch, then dinner each time, offering that same maddeningly gentle, infuriatingly calm smile that deflected every question, every concern, and every attempt at connection.

He had rationalized it. He had told himself she was exhausted from the festival, that she deserved her privacy, that he was being overbearing.

But now, as the cold wind bit at his neck, he realized he hadn’t been giving her space; he had been allowing her to build a tomb.

"I need to step away for a moment," William said, his voice cutting through the crisp night air like a gunshot.

The training drill died mid sentence. The metallic ring of practice swords ceased abruptly.

Lia and Kaela both froze, their eyes locking onto him, sensing the sudden shift in his posture, the way his shoulders had gone rigid, and the way his gaze had gone distant and dangerous. "Carry on without me."

"What’s wrong?" Kaela asked, her usual bravado faltering. "Did you forget to eat again?"

"A bad feeling," William replied.

His voice was flat. And it sounded almost dead.

He expected a quip. He expected Kaela to make some joke about his brooding nature or his superstitious tendencies.

But the silence that followed was heavy and suffocating. It was Lia who spoke, her voice economical, stripped of all pretense.

She didn’t ask for details. She didn’t demand an explanation.

She simply assessed the situation with the cold logic of a soldier recognizing a compromised position.

"Go."

William didn’t wait for a second permission. He turned on his heel and moved.

What started as a purposeful stride quickly devolved into a desperate, bone-jarring sprint. He tore away from the practice field, his boots pounding against the cobblestones in a frantic rhythm that echoed off the academy walls.

His lungs burned as the cold air scraped against his throat like sandpaper.

Behind him, the sounds of the training field began to fade, but one sound lingered Kaela’s voice, stripped of its usual fire, drifting across the distance with a haunting softness: "He never runs like that unless something is really wrong."

’Something is wrong.’ The words reverberated in his skull.

Every stride he took was punctuated by the phantom echo of his own voice from three nights ago, the promise he had made when he thought he was being supportive, when he thought he was being a good friend.

’If it happens again, you wake me up.’

’I don’t care what time it is. Just tell me.’

But she hadn’t woken him. She hadn’t sent Clara.

She hadn’t sent a message, a rune, or a sign. She had simply vanished into the shadows of her own making.

She had gone somewhere alone, she had shut the door, and William, the one person who was supposed to see through the mask, had let her do it.

’Where are you, Ellie?’ The question screamed in his mind as he rounded a corner, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. ’Where did you go?’

The corridor leading to the dormitory wing was a tunnel of oppressive shadows. The torchlight flickered weakly against the stone walls, casting elongated, grotesque shadows that seemed to writhe as William sprinted past them.

His breath came in ragged, burning gasps, each one a reminder of the terror clawing at his throat.

When he reached Ellie’s door, he skidded to a halt, his boots scuffing harshly against the stone. The silence here was different from the silence of the academy grounds.

This wasn’t the peaceful quiet of night; it was a suffocating, predatory stillness.

He grabbed the handle and twisted. Locked.

"Ellie?" he called out, his voice cracking slightly.

He knocked once with a sharp, controlled rap. "Ellie, it’s William Wade... Open the door."

Silence.

"Ellie, I know you’re in there... Open up." He knocked again, harder this time, the sound echoing down the empty hallway like a death knell. "This isn’t funny."

"Open the door right now!"

Still nothing. No shuffling of feet, no startled gasp, no annoyed protest.

The absence of sound should have been comforting, a sign that she was simply asleep, but his instincts were screaming. His enhanced senses, sharpened by months of survival and the constant hum of the System, began to pick up something else.

Beneath the silence, there was a sound. A wet, rhythmic noise.

A low, muffled grinding that made the hair on his arms stand up. It sounded like someone biting down on a rolled-up cloth or perhaps something softer, straining with every fiber of their being to prevent a scream from tearing through their throat.

It was the sound of someone holding back agony so primal that letting it out would mean losing their mind.

William pressed his palm flat against the dark wood of the door.

The moment his skin made contact, his entire body recoiled as if he had touched a live wire. A violent, uncontrolled thrum vibrated through the doorframe, traveling up his arm and settling deep in his chest.

It wasn’t mechanical; it was magical.

It was the unmistakable, terrifying resonance of raw, uncontained mana, the kind of chaotic vibration that occurs when power moves without a conduit, without a will to steer it.

It was the sound of something breaking apart at the molecular level.

His wind sense began to prickle, then burn. The air in the corridor was changing.

The atmospheric pressure was dropping rapidly. He could feel it: the air was being sucked toward the threshold of the door, pulled inward as if the room beyond were a starving lung, inhaling everything in its path to feed a vacuum at its center.

The very space inside the room was collapsing, folding in on itself.

’It’s happening,’ his mind shrieked. ’The void.’

’The Hollow Circle... It’s not coming for her... it’s coming from inside her...’

"Ellie!" he roared, the panic finally breaking through his controlled exterior.

His hand flew to the hilt of his blade, not to attack, but because his body demanded a weapon. "Ellie, I’m coming in!"

He didn’t wait for an answer; he knew there wouldn’t be one. He braced his shoulder, drew back, and threw his entire weight against the stubborn wood.