The corridor outside Carmilla’s office seemed to stretch farther than Soliana remembered.
Nothing about the stone had changed. The torches burned the same. Footsteps passed, voices murmured, work continued. Yet the distance between one turn and the next felt drawn out, like time had decided to loosen instead of move.
Neither of them spoke.
Eric tried several places beside her before settling on none of them. He moved ahead, slowed, dropped back, came up again, restless in a way he couldn’t smooth out. Every position carried the sense that he had somehow volunteered for responsibility he didn’t want.
Soliana walked in a straight line.
Her back was upright, her hands steady at her sides, her attention fixed somewhere beyond the traffic of the hallway. She moved with the quiet obedience of someone who had already accepted instructions that hadn’t been spoken yet.
Eric tasted air through his teeth.
“This is stupid,” he said.
No answer came. Her pace didn’t falter.
“You heard her,” he pressed. “Two weeks.”
Servants crossed an intersection ahead of them, splitting and reforming without hesitation. A pair of messengers slipped between uniforms, never colliding. Eric waited for her to react to any of it.
“Do you understand what that means?”
She nodded.
Not surrender. Not agreement. Just recognition that the words existed and had entered the world.
Eric dragged a hand back through his hair, pushing it off his forehead as if that might clear the situation too.
“People fail that thing after training for months,” he said. “Some don’t even get accepted to try.”
Soliana shortened her stride by a fraction, forcing him to match her instead of pacing circles around her.
“I’ll try,” she said.
He laughed under his breath, but it came out thin.
“That’s not the impressive part.”
They moved past a group of clerks balancing ledgers against their chests. The men didn’t look at them; they were already late for something that would not wait. Eric gestured toward them, irritated, like the proof of his argument had sprouted legs.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
“They belong here.”
Soliana heard him. Her jaw tightened. It passed quickly, but he saw it and felt the small failure of it not turning into anything useful.
He groaned.
“Look,” he tried again, dropping his voice, attempting gentleness and not wearing it well, “there’s no shame in backing off. You pushed far enough. Carmilla didn’t throw you out. That’s already something.”
Soliana stopped.
She didn’t make a scene of it. She simply ceased moving, and Eric had to turn or walk away from her.
“If I stop,” she asked, “what happens?”
The hallway breathed around them. Someone brushed Eric’s shoulder and muttered an apology without slowing.
He opened his mouth.
Closed it.
There were a dozen answers he could give, most of them comfortable, all of them dishonest in different directions.
“Nothing,” he said at last.
She held his gaze long enough to understand exactly how empty the word was.
Then she resumed walking.
Eric stayed still for a heartbeat, watching her leave him with it.
“You could wait,” he called, catching up again. “Take a year. Learn things properly. Get placed somewhere quiet. Laundry. Archives. Anywhere that doesn’t grind people down.”
Her profile gave him nothing back.
He pushed anyway.
“You don’t have to prove anything right now.”
She stopped again.
People adjusted around them with the irritated grace of those accustomed to obstacles.
Soliana touched her sleeve, straightened a crease that didn’t need straightening, and took the moment she needed. When she spoke, her voice was careful and steady, each word set down with intention.
“I’m going to take it.”
Eric searched her face. He tried to find uncertainty hiding in the corners of it, some hesitation he could widen.
There was none offered to him.
Air left him slowly.
“Fine,” he said, already retreating, already planning how to make this survivable. “Fine. Then you should at least know what you’re walking into.”
She blinked once.
He turned sharply and set a faster pace. She followed without comment.
“Inferna runs on three things,” he said. “You’ve heard them before, even if you never stopped to notice.”
He counted them on his fingers because he needed something solid to anchor the lecture.
“Competence. Efficiency. Necessity.”
The names stayed between them, heavy and ordinary.
Soliana repeated them to herself. He saw the shape of it happen.
“They aren’t decoration,” he continued. “They decide what stays.”
They reached the stairwell and began descending. Their steps rang differently here, sharper, the sound climbing ahead of them.
“If someone puts something in your hands, you finish it,” Eric said. “You don’t soften it. You don’t negotiate with it.”
Soliana listened with an intensity that made him uneasy, as if she were building shelves inside herself and placing each sentence carefully.
“You don’t waste time,” he went on. “You don’t waste movement. You don’t waste people.”
Workers came up the opposite direction, breath measured, eyes already on the next destination.
“And if something has no reason to be here,” Eric said, quieter now, “it won’t stay.”
Soliana took that in too.
He wished she would argue. He wished she would misunderstand. Either would have made him feel better.
Instead she absorbed it, and the absence of protest pressed against him.
He nudged a loose pebble with his boot and watched it tumble ahead of them.
“You can’t grow all of that in two weeks,” he muttered.
“I know.”
Of course she did.
He almost laughed.
“So you don’t try to grow everything,” he said.
She waited.
“You find people who already have it.”
They reached the bottom of the stairs.
Eric hesitated there, rubbing the back of his neck, staring toward the training districts where the air always seemed tighter and voices carried impact in them.
“For Competence,” he said, reluctant and resigned, “I know someone.”
Her eyes lifted toward him.
He grimaced toward the future.
“She’s going to hate this.”
Eric started walking.
Soliana went with him.
