Chapter 118: A Gift Without Name

Elara:

I opened the box carefully and discovered several small glass jars filled with dried herbs. A note had been tucked beneath them, explaining that they were the same herbs he had used to make the tea for me when I had been struggling with nightmares. Because the tea had helped me sleep that evening in his dorm, he had dried and preserved enough of the herbs for me to make several more cups whenever I needed them.

A smile immediately spread across my face as I read the note again. It was such a simple gift, but somehow it felt incredibly thoughtful. He had remembered. He had noticed that the tea helped me, and instead of giving me something extravagant, he had given me something he knew I could actually use.

My smile faded slightly when another realization hit me. "Oh." I stared at the jars guiltily. "I didn’t give him anything."

It wasn’t that the thought of getting him a present never crossed my brain at all. Because it did. But after contemplating for nearly the entire sleepless night before the day I went shopping for Christmas presents with my friends, I decided to not buy anything for people below Tier 1 in my list. So that day I only got presents for Myra, Violet, Mrs. Nettle, Mrs. Carter, Jasper, Master Brown, and Crazy.

The next package contained something entirely different. When I opened it, I found a beautifully crafted spell-training journal, accompanied by a set of enchanted practice crystals and a small metal focus ring designed to help stabilize elemental magic during spell formation. There was no extravagant decoration, just a simple card bearing Professor Fenrith’s name.

I picked up the ring and examined the tiny runes carved around its surface, immediately realizing how useful it could be. It was precisely the kind of thing I needed while learning to control my magic instead of merely reacting to it.

I smiled to myself, genuinely touched that Professor Fenrith had thought of giving me a present and it was something practical rather than something ceremonial.

The next box was from Lorien.

I stared at it for a surprisingly long time before finally opening it. Inside was a beautifully bound book, old enough that the edges of its pages had begun to soften with age. I couldn’t immediately tell what it contained, and perhaps that was exactly why I hesitated. Anything connected to him seemed capable of carrying ten layers of meaning I wasn’t prepared to deal with.

I eventually closed the box again and pushed it to the side. I would look at it later. When I was ready. That left only one package.

The final box was enormous. It was almost absurdly large compared to everything else, and there wasn’t a name anywhere on it. No initials. No card. Nothing. The only thing attached to the top was a huge printed message that simply read, Merry Christmas.

I stared at it suspiciously before walking around the box as though viewing it from another angle might magically reveal its sender.

"Who sends a nameless giant box to someone’s dorm?" I muttered, although Crazy was nowhere nearby to offer his usual sarcastic commentary. I hadn’t seen that cat since previous night.

Curiosity eventually won. I crouched beside it, pulled the ribbon loose, and lifted the lid while humming softly to myself, still wondering which one of the academy’s residents could possibly have sent something this enormous.

The moment I removed the wrap papers covering whatever was inside, a horrifying scream tore through my lungs.

For several seconds, I couldn’t breathe. I simply stared into the box, my mind refusing to understand what my eyes were seeing. There, curled unnaturally against the bottom of the box, was a white cat. A white cat with the same small body, the same pointed ears, the same fluffy tail, the same markings around its face that looked exactly like Crazy’s.

Except this cat was dead. Completely, horribly dead.

My stomach twisted violently as the realization finally reached me, and a scream ripped out of my throat so loudly that my entire body shook with it.

"Crazy!"

I stumbled backward, knocking into the table behind me as another scream escaped my lungs.

"Crazy!"

I couldn’t stop screaming his name. I couldn’t stop staring. The world around me seemed to collapse into a blur of white fur and those familiar eyes that weren’t supposed to be staring lifelessly from the bottom of a Christmas box.

My knees nearly gave out, and I grabbed the edge of the table to keep myself upright, tears already burning my eyes. Someone had killed him. Someone had found Crazy, somehow, and killed him, and then sent his body to me. The thought was so horrifying that I couldn’t even process it properly.

I didn’t remember hearing footsteps racing toward my room. I didn’t remember the door opening wider. I didn’t remember the terrified voices asking what had happened. My screams had apparently been loud enough to send half the corridor running, and because I had forgotten to lock my door when I returned earlier, students simply rushed inside without waiting for permission.

Within minutes, my dorm was crowded with horrified faces. Students stood frozen around the room, some covering their mouths, others staring at the box as though they couldn’t believe what they were seeing either.

Someone whispered that it might be a familiar. Someone else asked who could possibly have done something like that. I heard none of it properly.

I was still standing beside the table, trembling so badly that I could barely feel my hands. My mind had gone somewhere far away, trapped between denial and terror.

I didn’t know when the professors arrived. I didn’t know when Myra and Violet pushed their way through the crowd, calling my name over and over. I didn’t know when Lorien appeared or when Jasper entered the room. I only knew that people were suddenly everywhere, voices overlapping, footsteps moving around me, someone telling everyone to step back.

Then Professor Rowan’s voice cut through the chaos as he ordered someone to carefully remove the box from my dorm. The instant I heard that, panic exploded through me.

"No!" I lunged forward, grabbing desperately at the edge of the box. "Don’t touch him!" My voice cracked as I fought against whoever was trying to move it. "Don’t take Crazy away from me!"