Threadless : A growing novel

The academy halls had not changed. It was the people walking through them who no longer looked up.

Selene stood on the high balcony, not to be seen — but to see. Her ceremonial robe fell behind her like shadowed glass, catching the gold of the late sun but never reflecting it back. She had been crown princess for long enough now that no one whispered when she passed.

She had grown used to silence. But not to forgetting.

Down below, in the courtyard with its idle stone fountain, Iris sat alone on the rim, feeding crumbs to the crows. One landed on her shoulder, but she didn't flinch. She had never flinched — not even the day Aro disappeared without leaving a proper goodbye.

"You're not waiting for him, are you?" Selene asked quietly, her voice reaching down more like memory than sound.

"No," Iris said. "I'm just making sure someone remembers what we were."

Before either could say more, a third presence emerged. The light in the courtyard bent slightly — the way it does when something re-enters without proper permission.

Alin stepped into view, dressed not in royal cloth or stitched insignias — just a student's uniform, worn at the collar, still bearing the threadbare ribbon she never learned to tie right.

"You were in the exam hall," Iris said. "We never saw you after that."

"No one did," Alin said. "But I saw everything."

Selene didn't speak, but her gaze softened — not in surprise, but recognition.

Alin had never been erased.

Only left behind in a chapter that was never supposed to open again.

They didn't rush forward.

They didn't cry.

They just sat — the three of them — on the edge of that dry old fountain, side by side. Their reflections weren't in the water. They were in each other.

Alin, the forgotten.

Iris, the loyal.

Selene, the watcher.

And for a moment, in the breath between loops, the frame was whole again.