Athelia stared at her reflection, breathing hard.
Sapphire eyes. The image burned behind her eyelids every time she blinked. Not a memory. Not exactly. Just... there. Seared into her consciousness like a brand.
Her phone buzzed again. Casey: MOVE YOUR ASS
Right. Class. Constitutional Law. She was going to be late.
Athelia splashed more water on her face, didn't bother with makeup, yanked her hair into a messy bun. The scratches on her palms caught her eye again—evidence of something she couldn't remember but her body insisted had happened.
Backpack. Laptop. Keys. Phone.
She ran.
* * *
The apartment was blessedly empty—Casey already gone. Athelia took the stairs two at a time, ignoring the burn in her legs, and burst out onto the sidewalk.
Campus was a ten-minute walk if she hurried. Eight if she ran.
She ran.
October air bit at her face, cold enough that her breath came out in visible puffs. Trees lining the pathway were half-bare, leaves crunching under her feet. Normal. Everything was normal. Just another Thursday morning sprint to class.
Except.
Athelia slowed as she passed the old oak near the library entrance. Massive tree, probably a hundred years old. She'd walked past it a thousand times.
She stopped.
Her hand reached out without conscious thought, palm pressing against rough bark. And for just a second—less than a second—the air shimmered. Like heat rising from pavement, like something invisible rippling between her and the tree.
She yanked her hand back.
The shimmer disappeared.
"You okay?"
Athelia spun. A guy she vaguely recognized from Torts stood a few feet away, coffee in hand, looking concerned.
"Yeah. I'm—fine. Late for class."
She didn't wait for a response. Kept walking, faster now, heart hammering for reasons that had nothing to do with running.
* * *
The law building loomed ahead. She took the steps up and nearly collided with a group of 1Ls huddled around their phones.
"Excuse me, sorry—"
One of them looked up and Athelia's breath caught.
Golden eyes.
For a fraction of a second, the kid's eyes looked golden. Not brown, not hazel—golden like fire, like a predator watching prey.
She blinked.
Brown. Normal brown eyes looking at her with mild annoyance.
"Watch where you're going," the kid muttered.
Athelia mumbled an apology and pushed past them into the building. Her hands were shaking. Golden eyes, sapphire eyes—what was wrong with her?
She reached the classroom just as Professor Mendez was closing the door.
"Ms. Winters. How generous of you to join us."
"Sorry, Professor. I—"
"Save it. Sit."
Athelia slid into her usual seat near the back, Casey claiming the chair beside her. The classroom was standard law school fare—tiered seating, long tables, a wall of windows overlooking the quad.
Professor Mendez moved to the front of the room, pulling up a case on the projector.
"Today we continue our discussion of jurisdictional boundaries. Who can tell me the holding in International Shoe v. Washington?"
Hands went up throughout the classroom. But Professor Mendez's gaze settled on someone two rows ahead of Athelia.
"Or perhaps Mr. Cael'Sereith can enlighten us."
A voice from the front—smooth, deep, with an undercurrent of absolute certainty.
"Minimum contacts establish whether a defendant has sufficient connection to the forum state to justify the court's jurisdiction without violating due process. International Shoe created the framework, but the real question isn't about contacts—it's about boundaries. What gives one authority the right to impose its rules on someone from outside its territory?"
Athelia found herself listening intently, though she couldn't see the speaker clearly from her position.
"More critically," he continued, "what happens when the entity in question existed before those boundaries were drawn? Before the authority creating those rules even came into being?"
The room went quiet.
Professor Mendez frowned. "Interesting perspective, Mr. Cael'Sereith. Though I'd appreciate answers grounded in existing precedent rather than theoretical abstraction."
"Apologies, Professor." The voice carried something that might have been amusement. "Sometimes I forget how young these laws are."
Athelia pulled out her laptop, opened her notes, tried to focus.
International Shoe. Minimum contacts. Personal jurisdiction. She'd read this case a dozen times.
But when she looked at her screen, the words seemed to shimmer and rearrange themselves. Her hand moved to her trackpad without conscious thought, opening a blank document.
And she started typing.
Not notes. Just... words. Flowing from somewhere she didn't recognize.
The law of the old kingdom stated that boundaries could not contain those of royal blood. The barrier was not meant to keep them in. It was meant to keep them from remembering.
Athelia stared at what she'd written.
What the fuck.
She deleted it. Tried to focus on Professor Mendez, who was now calling on someone to explain Burger King v. Rudzewicz.
Casey leaned over. "You taking notes or writing a novel?"
"Notes. Just... notes."
But when she looked back at her screen, her hand had moved again. She'd opened her tablet's drawing app.
On the screen: a wolf.
Not a cartoon. A fully rendered, anatomically correct dire wolf, silver-grey fur detailed down to individual strands, golden eyes that seemed to watch her from the page.
She'd drawn it. Just now. In thirty seconds.
"Holy shit," Casey breathed. "When did you learn to draw like that?"
Athelia's hand was still moving. Adding shadows. The curve of the wolf's spine as it rolled onto its back, belly exposed.
She dropped the stylus like it had burned her.
"Ms. Winters." Professor Mendez's voice cut through the room. "Perhaps you'd like to share with the class what's more interesting than jurisdictional analysis?"
Every head turned toward her.
Athelia's face burned. "Sorry, Professor. I was just—"
"You were just ignoring my lecture. I assume you can answer my question, then. How does the minimum contacts standard apply in cases involving online commerce?"
Her mind went blank.
"I..." she started.
Professor Mendez smiled. It wasn't kind. "Perhaps if you spent less time on artwork and more time engaging with the material, you'd be able to participate meaningfully."
Someone snickered.
"Now, let's try someone who actually did the reading."
* * *
When class finally ended, Athelia grabbed her homework from her bag—the written assignment due today on personal jurisdiction. She'd worked on it all week.
Or... had she?
She approached Professor Mendez's desk where he was packing up his materials.
"Professor? My assignment."
He took the stapled pages without looking up. "Ms. Winters. Glad to see you can at least turn in work on time, even if you can't stay awake during—"
He stopped.
Stared at the first page.
Then the second. Third.
"Is this a joke?"
Athelia's stomach dropped. "What?"
He held up the pages. Every line was filled with neat rows of ones and zeros.
"Binary code, Ms. Winters? Really?" His voice dripped with sarcasm. "Was this supposed to be clever? Some kind of commentary on computational approaches to jurisdiction?"
Athelia stared at the pages. Her handwriting. Her pen. She'd spent hours on that assignment. She remembered sitting at her desk, writing analysis of International Shoe, discussing minimum contacts...
But the pages showed only binary.
"I—" She couldn't speak. Couldn't breathe.
"Zero credit, Ms. Winters. And see me during office hours. We need to discuss whether you're taking this course seriously." He dropped the pages into his bag. "Now get out of my classroom."
Athelia fled.
"Hey, wait up!" Casey caught her in the hallway. "What's going on with you? You show up late covered in scratches, you're drawing things you claim you can't draw—"
"I'm fine. Just tired."
"You're not fine—"
"I need to go. I have... research."
She walked away before Casey could argue, heading toward the back exit. The door opened onto a small courtyard, mostly empty.
Athelia sank onto a bench, pulled out her laptop, opened the drawing again.
The wolf stared back at her. Belly exposed. Vulnerable. Waiting.
"Athelia?"
She looked up. A guy stood beside her—tall, dark hair pulled back in a low ponytail, sharp features. He held two coffees.
"Uh. Yeah. That's me."
"Severen Cael'Sereith." He held out one of the coffees. "Peace offering. You looked like you needed it more than I did."
She took it automatically. "Thanks. You didn't have to—"
"Mendez ambushed you. First few weeks are brutal enough without that." He gestured to the empty space on the bench. "Mind if I sit?"
"Sure."
He sat with controlled grace. "So, you want to talk about what you were actually working on during his lecture?"
Athelia's hand tightened on her laptop. "I was taking notes."
"You were drawing a wolf." His voice wasn't accusatory. "I saw it when Mendez made you close your laptop. It was incredible."
"How did you—" She stopped. He'd been two rows ahead. There was no way he could have seen her screen.
Severen smiled slightly. "I pay attention to things most people miss."
They sat in silence for a moment. Athelia found herself studying him. Something about him felt... off. Not wrong. Just different.
"That answer you gave in class," she said finally. "About entities existing before boundaries were created. That wasn't in the casebook."
"No," he agreed. "But it's true. Sometimes the most important principles aren't written down."
"Teach me."
The words surprised them both.
"I run a study group," Severen said after a moment. "Few of us from Mendez's class. We meet tonight if you want to join."
"I'll be there."
He stood, finishing his coffee. "Good. And Athelia?" He met her eyes, and for just a second, she could have sworn they flashed a different color.
Sapphire.
The same impossible sapphire that had burned into her mind this morning.
Her breath caught.
"Whatever you're experiencing—the drawings, the sense that something's changing—you're not imagining it."
He walked away before she could respond, leaving her staring after him with her heart hammering.
Those eyes. I know those eyes.
Her phone buzzed.
Unknown number: Study group tonight. 7 PM. Room 204. -S
* * *
Room 204 had six students when Athelia arrived at 6:58. She recognized a couple from Mendez's class. The rest were unfamiliar.
Severen sat at the head of the seminar table, laptop open, two coffee cups beside him. He looked up when she entered.
"Athelia. Good." He gestured to the empty chair on his right. "Saved you a seat."
One of the other students—a guy with messy brown hair and a Yale undergrad hoodie—snorted. "Didn't know this was assigned seating."
"It's not," Severen said mildly. "But she's going to want to see the materials."
Athelia crossed to the chair. Severen pushed one of the coffees toward her.
"Milk, no sugar, right?"
She blinked. "How did you—"
"Saw you at the coffee cart this morning." He turned back to his laptop. "Alright. Let's talk about something Mendez keeps glossing over because it makes him uncomfortable."
"Competing territorial claims." Severen pulled up a slide. "What happens when you have two legal systems both asserting authority over the same territory. Both with historical foundations. Both with enforcement mechanisms. How do you determine which one has superior claim?"
Athelia pulled out her notebook as Severen continued the discussion. Yale Hoodie argued about power and enforcement. A dark-haired girl jumped in about the Doctrine of Discovery.
The discussion washed over her. She heard the words but they felt distant, like listening through water.
Her hand started moving.
Not drawing. Not words. Just... patterns.
Someone was talking. About sovereignty. About something. But the sounds were muffled, far away.
Her pen kept moving, filling the page with steady rows of zeros and ones.
Severen leaned slightly, trying to see her notes without being obvious.
Binary.
She was writing in binary.
His eyes narrowed. That wasn't—people didn't just write in machine code unconsciously. That wasn't how human cognition worked. At all.
"Athelia?" he said carefully.
She looked up, eyes slightly unfocused. "Did you say something?"
She hadn't even realized she'd been writing.
Severen stared at the sequence, then back at her. The memory gaps. The unconscious binary. The way she'd looked at him in the courtyard like they'd never met.
Something was very, very wrong.
"Everyone take five," he said abruptly, standing. "Bathroom break."
He stepped into the hallway, pulled out his phone, scrolled to a contact.
Caller ID: DEA
Two rings. Then: "Yeah?"
"We have a problem," Severen said quietly. "That student I mentioned—she's writing in binary. Unconsciously. And she has no memory of meeting me yesterday."
Silence on the other end.
"Binary? You're sure?"
"I'm looking at it right now."
A longer pause. Then, cautiously: "Don't let her out of your sight. I need to see this myself."
The line went dead.
Severen stared at his phone, then back through the doorway at Athelia, who was staring at her notebook like she'd never seen it before.
What the fuck is happening to her?