Chapter 563. Olivia Watches Eyes Like a Detective, and Apparently Mine Are Easy to Read

Chapter 563: 563. Olivia Watches Eyes Like a Detective, and Apparently Mine Are Easy to Read

Then, Kaela broke it with a long, low whistle that sounded somewhere between awe and genuine terror. "Holy shit, Ellie...!"

"You just cut down a tree from fifteen meters away with two fingers."

Ellie blinked, her hand still raised, her chest heaving as she stared at the spot where the light had vanished. "I... I did not mean to hit a tree!"

"I was just trying to make it go straight!" Her voice was high, tinged with the familiar panic of someone who had just realized they possessed a loaded crossbow.

"It does not matter if you meant to," Kaela said, stepping forward, her eyes bright with excitement. "That was fucking awesome."

Lia was already moving, but not to comfort. She had produced a fresh sheet of parchment and a charcoal pencil, her fingers moving with mechanical precision.

"Distance: fifteen meters."

"Projectile type: concentrated linear beam."

"Output: sustained."

"Precision: near perfect." She paused, scribbling furiously, her brow furrowed in concentration. "By my estimate, this is equivalent to the ranged attack capabilities of a senior instructor."

Lia looked up, and for the first time since William had known her, the mask of icy calculation slipped. A flush of genuine, unguarded excitement warmed her cheeks.

"That is remarkable, Ellie... Truly remarkable."

Ellie remained frozen, her gaze locked on the fallen sapling as if the severed tree were some alien object that had fallen from another world.

Her face became a battlefield of conflicting emotions: first, the pale shock of realizing she had just wielded something lethal, then a deep, hollow disbelief, and finally, slowly, like sunrise breaking through a storm, something fragile, something terrifyingly bright that she hadn’t permitted herself to feel in years.

"That..." she started, her voice cracking, barely audible above the wind. "That was me?"

The question wasn’t just about the beam of light; it was about the girl who had spent her life fearing her own heartbeat.

"That was you," William said.

His voice was steady, but internally, his heart was hammering against his ribs. He wanted to reach out and steady her, to anchor her to the moment before the adrenaline ebbed and the doubt returned.

"And I didn’t..." She swallowed hard, her eyes darting to the scorched earth around them, then back to William. "I didn’t explode? Everything didn’t just... shatter?"

"No," William promised, stepping closer until he could see the golden flecks still dancing in her irises. "You didn’t explode... You commanded it."

For three heartbeats, she simply stared at him.

Then, a shaky, breathless laugh erupted from her throat, a sound that was half sob and half triumph.

Suddenly, she threw both arms into the air, spinning in a small circle, and let out a short, wild cheer that was so unguarded it startled a crow off the fence, sending it spiraling into the sky with a startled caw.

It was more than just a successful exercise. It was the first victory she had ever claimed without the instinctive reflex to flinch, without the habit of looking over her shoulder to see what she had broken.

"Yes!" Kaela roared, breaking the spell of awe.

Without warning, she scooped Ellie up, hoisting the girl onto her shoulder like a battle trophy. "That’s my girl! The Tree Slayer!"

"Kaela! Put me down! Put me down right now!" Ellie shrieked, though her protests were undermined by the hysterical giggling that followed.

She flailed her arms as Kaela began parading her around the field in a victory lap.

Even Grock, trudging past on the stone path with a heavy bucket of mortar in each hand, paused. He squinted at the group through bloodshot eyes, his face twisted in genuine, grumpy confusion.

"What in the hell is all this racket about?" he grumbled, gesturing vaguely toward the fallen tree. "Why’re you lot screaming like madwomen over a dead sapling? It’s just wood."

"It’s not just wood, Grock!" Kaela yelled back over her shoulder. "It’s proof of concept!"

William watched them, a rare smile tugging at his lips. The atmosphere in the Dead Field had shifted; the oppressive weight of ’training’ had been replaced by something lighter, something human.

But as his eyes swept across the clearing, they snagged on a figure standing apart from the chaos.

Clara.

She was standing near the edge of the treeline, alone. Her journal was pressed against her chest as if it were a shield.

She was smiling a true, genuine smile that reached her eyes, the first William had seen in days. But the smile didn’t match the tension in her body.

Her fingers were wrapped around the leather cover of the journal with such desperate force that her knuckles had gone bone white, the skin stretched taut. She looked like someone witnessing a miracle while simultaneously bracing for an earthquake.

A small shadow fell across William’s boots. Olivia had drifted over to his side, her notebook already open, her quill poised like a weapon.

She didn’t speak loudly, but she didn’t bother with any pretense of secrecy either.

"Clara has been looking at the same page for an hour," Olivia murmured, her voice carrying that unnerving precision that made her seem decades older than she was.

William glanced at the girl, then back to Olivia. "How can you possibly know that?"

"I have been watching her eyes," Olivia said simply.

She tapped her pencil against her chin with a contemplative rhythm. "They do not move... Not once."

"She is reading the words, but her mind is somewhere else entirely." She paused, giving William a pointed look. "It is a thing detectives notice... Or at least, that is what the books say."

William looked back at Clara, then at Ellie, who was still being carried around like a conqueror.

The two scenes couldn’t have been more different: one was the loud, messy joy of a new beginning, and the other was the silent, white-knuckled grip of someone holding onto a secret.

William didn’t look away immediately. His gaze lingered on Clara, watching as she finally, reluctantly, turned a page.

She moved with the stiff, mechanical care of someone performing a ritual they no longer believed in, her movements hollow and rehearsed.

The memory of her words on the porch—those quiet, unsettling warnings she had whispered when the wind was high—rushed back to him. He didn’t pursue the thought.

Instead, he let it sit there in the back of his mind, heavy and dangerous, the way one lets a pot of boiling water sit cooling before daring to touch the handle.

The hours bled into each other. The training session had been relentless.

Ellie had pushed herself further than she ever had before, cycling between the razor-sharp focus required for beam control and the draining, intimate effort of sustained healing.

By the end, she had gone frighteningly quiet. The usual spark in her eyes had dimmed to a dull ember, replaced by a glassy, distant stare that signaled she was running on nothing but sheer stubbornness.

Seeing the exhaustion etched into the very set of her shoulders, William had suggested a walk. He didn’t call it a break; he called it a change of scenery.

He knew she needed somewhere to be that wasn’t the sterile confines of the training hall or the watchful eyes of the others. She needed to simply exist without being a problem to be solved.

By the time they reached the summit of the little hill behind the academy, the sun was beginning its final, dramatic descent.

The sky was a bruised tapestry of deep crimson and molten orange that fleeting, sacred hour where the world seems to hold its breath before the dark.

The hill itself was modest, little more than a rise covered in tough, wind-swept grass. A single, crooked pine tree stood at its peak like a lonely sentinel, its twisted branches silhouetted against the fire of the sunset.

From this vantage point, the world opened up. Below them, the academy roofs spread out in a patchwork of slate and stone, dissolving into the evening haze.

In the distance, the first amber lamps of the lower town began to flicker to life, tiny sparks against the encroaching purple of the twilight.

Ellie collapsed onto the grass with a long, shuddering sigh that seemed to release all the tension of the day.

She stretched her legs out in front of her, her boots scuffing against the earth. For several minutes, neither of them spoke.

The only sound was the distant hum of the town and the soft sigh of the wind through the pine needles.

Then, without warning or invitation, she shifted. She leaned sideways, letting her weight settle until her shoulder pressed against his.

It was a simple gesture, but to William, it felt like an enormous admission of trust, a physical claim that she felt safe enough to be vulnerable in his presence.

"Are you tired?" William asked quietly.

His voice was rough, tempered by the day’s own exhaustion, but it held an edge of tenderness he rarely allowed himself to show.

Ellie closed her eyes, tilting her head back to watch the orange sky fade into violet.

"So tired," she admitted, her voice barely more than a whisper. "But it’s a good kind of tired..."

"The kind where you feel like you’ve actually... moved forward."

William looked out at the horizon, feeling the solid reality of her shoulder against his.

For a moment, the threats of the future, the magic she couldn’t yet master, the enemies they didn’t yet know, and the secrets Clara was clearly guarding felt impossibly far away.