Chapter 533. Everyone Is Laughing, I Am Counting Threads

Chapter 533: 533. Everyone Is Laughing, I Am Counting Threads

Olivia made a strangled, wet noise into her cup of milk, the sound half choke and half gasp, before she had to violently turn away to cough it out.

William, who had been opening his mouth to offer some semblance of supportive commentary, found himself frozen mid sentence.

Instead, he simply sat there, a strange, weary warmth spreading through his chest, the kind of pride one feels for a child who has finally learned to navigate a minefield.

’Six months ago,’ William thought, watching Lia with undisguised fascination, ’she would have dissected that comment with surgical precision. ’

’She would have given Kaela a three-minute lecture on the semantic difference between aimless wandering and leisurely exploration.’

But Lia didn’t argue. Instead, she pulled a fine-tipped pen from her pocket, opened her laminated masterpiece, and with clinical focus, wrote ’Walking around (permitted)’ in the margin of her schedule.

Then, without breaking her rhythm, she resumed eating as if she hadn’t just accepted a fundamental flaw in her worldview.

The levity at the table died a sudden death when William’s gaze drifted to the far end.

Ellie sat isolated at the edge of the bench, her presence feeling strangely hollow. Before her sat a bowl of steaming porridge, untouched and cooling, the surface beginning to form a thin, unappetizing film.

She looked fragile—not the fragile strength of a warrior, but the brittle exhaustion of someone who had been hollowed out.

Kaela was the first to register the anomaly. Kaela noticed food with the same hypervigilant intensity that most people reserved for spotting a wildfire in a dry forest.

She stopped mid-chew, her brow furrowing as she studied Ellie’s untouched bowl.

"Hey," Kaela said, her voice dropping its usual boisterous volume. "You usually demolish at least two bowls before the bell rings."

"Are you sick? Do you need the infirmary?"

Ellie didn’t look up. Her fingers traced idle, absent patterns on the wooden tabletop.

"Just tired, Kaela," she said, her voice flat, drained of its usual spark. "Somebody was screaming in the dorm last night, remember?"

"Hard to sleep through that."

"Oh, I heard that scream!" Kaela exclaimed, trying to inject some energy back into the conversation.

She suddenly swung around in her seat, pointing a finger accusingly at Clara. "That was you, wasn’t it?"

"I saw you from my window... You weren’t just walking; you were sprinting like a dragon was snapping at your heels."

The effect was immediate. Clara, who had been trying to maintain a dignified silence while sipping her tea, suddenly inhaled sharply.

The liquid went down the wrong pipe, triggering a violent, hacking cough that shook her entire frame. Her face flushed crimson as she struggled to regain control, the sound echoing off the stone walls of the canteen.

When she finally managed to gasp for air, her eyes were suspiciously bright, darting toward William before snapping back to her tea.

"I... I went to the bathroom," Clara managed to sputter through the residual coughing fits, her voice defensive and strained.

Kaela raised an eyebrow, a skeptical smirk playing on her lips. "At that speed? Through three corridors and down two flights of stairs?"

"You must have had some serious bladder issues."

Clara straightened her spine, her jaw locking in a display of stubborn defiance that William recognized all too well.

"I had to go very badly," she snapped, though the tremor in her hands betrayed the lie.

William watched them all—the forced normalcy of Lia, the obvious evasion of Clara, and the ghostly exhaustion of Ellie—and felt the weight of the night before settling back onto his shoulders.

The canteen was loud, the sun was bright, and the food was warm, but beneath it all, he could feel the cold current of something dangerous moving beneath the surface, waiting for the moment to finally break.

The table fell into a suspended silence for half a heartbeat, that fragile moment where a joke hangs in the air before either exploding or dying. Then, the dam broke.

Lia, with the unflappable focus of a scholar, carefully inscribed a new notation into the margin of her laminated schedule.

Kaela erupted into a bark of laughter so sudden and violent that she had to brace herself against the edge of the table to keep from sliding off the bench.

Even Olivia, who usually maintained a veneer of composed dignity, abandoned her pretense, her shoulders shaking with suppressed giggles.

Clara, however, remained the storm center. Her face burned with a mortified fury as she shot venomous glares at each of them in turn.

With a huff of indignation, she snatched up her journal and began scribbling furiously. William watched her hand fly across the page and was fairly certain she was composing an exhaustive, vitriolic treatise on the biological inevitability of mockery.

’Let her write,’ William thought, his own amusement failing to reach his eyes. ’Let her vent.’

’It’s better than the alternative.’

Yet, beneath the raucous noise of the canteen and the surface level levity, William’s attention remained anchored to Ellie. His eyes never truly left her.

She was sitting unnaturally, leaning forward on the balls of her feet, her spine angled precariously away from the wooden backrest.

It was the posture of someone who couldn’t bear the sensation of contact the way a person sits when a single point of pressure against their back feels less like support and more like a blade pressing against skin.

Nobody called her out.

Nobody commented on the strange, guarded way she carried herself.

The unspoken rules of the table held firm: you don’t ask about the nightmares unless you’re prepared to hear the truth.

William didn’t ask. Instead, he reached across the table in one fluid motion, silent as a predator, and slid a honey roll across the scarred wood until it came to rest beside her untouched bowl of porridge.

Ellie froze. Her gaze dropped to the golden, sticky pastry, then slowly lifted to meet William’s eyes.

For three heartbeats, the world seemed to narrow down to just the two of them amidst the chaos of the breakfast hall. Then, she reached out.

Her fingers curled around the roll, and she offered him a smile, not the practiced, hollow mask from the dormitory, but something small, fragile, and achingly real.

For ten seconds, the iron knot of dread that had been tightening in William’s chest loosened. He allowed himself to believe, if only for a moment, that this was just a bad night, not the beginning of an end.

The moment was shattered by a presence that seemed to drain the warmth from the air as it passed. Albert moved behind their table like a shadow cutting through light.

He carried a thick stack of parchments tucked under one arm, his footsteps silent despite his imposing frame. He didn’t stop, and he didn’t offer so much as a nod.

But as he passed, his eyes flickered toward Ellie. His gaze lingered on her for a fraction of a second longer than a casual glance warranted a look that was too sharp, too knowing, and too cold to be accidental.

Then, he continued toward the Headmaster’s wing without looking back.

William watched him go, the brief respite of Ellie’s smile evaporating instantly.

His mind flashed back to something the old man had whispered only days prior, a warning delivered in the dead of night: ’Remember, William, the silence from the Hollow Circle has never once meant they have given up.’

’It only means they are waiting for the perfect moment to strike.’

A cold, visceral thread seemed to connect every disturbing event of the last forty-eight hours: Clara’s midnight sprint, the unnatural heat beneath Ellie’s skin, the empty warnings of the system, and now, Albert’s knowing glance.

The thread was tightening around his throat, and as he watched the students laugh around him, William realized with terrifying clarity that he could feel exactly where that thread was leading.