Chapter 903: Finding The Commander

The descent from the central structure was faster than the climb through its interior. Liam did not retrace every room. He took the route he had already judged stable, passed the upper corridor with the old signal grooves, crossed the broken stair gap by the wall ledge, and left through a side entrance that opened onto one of the inner roads. Wing followed above, its silhouette briefly crossing the moon before circling back toward the Southern District.

By the time Liam returned near the barracks and courtyard, the district felt different from the day.

Most students were inside now, packed into reinforced rooms, temporary shelters, and marked resting spaces with all the discomfort of people pretending stone floors counted as mercy. A few lamps still burned in the barracks windows. Low voices slipped through cracks in the walls, not lively, but present. Some students whispered because they could not sleep. Others had fallen silent in the heavy way of exhaustion. Outside, activity had narrowed to patrols, assigned guards, and the wall watch above. The courtyard no longer carried the chaotic movement of intake and work teams. It was dim, controlled, and tired.

Liam stretched his senses outward without pushing too hard.

Most students were asleep or close to it. Their breathing gathered in uneven pockets through the barracks and holding areas. Injured students rested more lightly, some shifting whenever bandages pulled or splints pressed wrong. Patrols moved in pairs along guarded paths, their footsteps measured but occasionally delayed by fatigue. Restricted buildings remained marked, though one pair of guards near the collapsed storage house stood too far from the actual boundary.

The drainage openings had watchers, but one of them was sitting where standing would be better. The wall watch above moved at decent intervals. Robin Hugh’s air-touched awareness brushed faintly against the breeze near the southern parapet, steady and attentive.

The district was holding.

Barely.

But holding.

Liam crossed the courtyard, looking for Sheila so he could give the report and be done with whatever structure she would undoubtedly try to build from it before dawn. He checked the injured area first from a distance. She was not there. He passed the reinforced barracks entrance and saw Edith speaking quietly to a patrol pair, one hand resting on a folded report. No Sheila beside her. Felix sat not far away with the Command Log closed for the moment, his head bowed as if he had fallen asleep sitting up while pretending otherwise. Mela was near the injured, awake enough to notice movement but too focused on sorting bandage cloth to look up fully.

No Sheila.

Liam stopped near the edge of the courtyard as two patrolling students approached from the inner road. One carried a spear. The other had a dim glowstone cupped in one hand and the expression of someone trying to look alert through exhaustion.

"Have you seen Sheila?" Liam asked.

Both students stiffened slightly, then recognized him and became even more careful.

The one with the spear shook his head. "Not recently."

"She was near the injured earlier," the glowstone student said. "Then she checked the wall rotation, I think. We have not seen her since."

Useful, but incomplete.

Before Liam could decide whether to find Edith instead and make the report someone else’s problem, a familiar voice drifted down from above.

"Looking for our beautiful commander already? How dedicated."

Liam did not move for half a second.

Then he looked up.

Charlotte Raven lounged on the edge of a nearby rooftop as if the partially secured ruin beneath her was not a hostile assessment site but a private balcony built for her amusement. One knee was bent, one arm resting lazily across it, curls falling around her face in the dim light. She looked entirely too comfortable for someone sitting above a courtyard where students had spent the day dragging monster corpses and marking death traps. Her smile was aimed downward, but it sharpened when Liam’s eyes met hers.

The two patrol students turned as well, visibly unsure whether they were supposed to react to her presence, report her for being on a roof, or pretend this was normal because Charlotte had a way of making nonsense look intentional.

Liam stared at her for a moment and understood immediately that his evening was about to become longer than necessary.

"Thank you," he said to the patrol students.

Then he turned and walked in the opposite direction.

Charlotte’s laughter followed him, soft enough not to wake half the district and pleased enough to be irritating. "That is so rude, Liam."

He did not slow. "Then enjoy it from the roof."

"I know where Sheila is."

He stopped.

Slowly, he looked back. Charlotte had not moved, though her smile said she knew exactly how effectively she had caught him.

"Where?" he asked.

She tilted her head. "Information is not free."

Liam turned away again. "I will find her myself."

"Oh, come now. Not even a little negotiation?"

"No."

"You have no romance in your soul."

"Good."

"That was not a compliment."

"I treated it as one."

Charlotte sighed dramatically and pushed herself upright. "You are terrible at being fun."

"You are terrible at being brief."

She hopped down from the roof with the easy grace of someone who trusted her body completely, landing lightly on a lower wall before stepping to the ground. The patrol students watched her descend, then wisely remembered they had a route to walk and continued on after Liam gave them a glance that suggested lingering would shorten their usefulness. Charlotte approached him with familiar confidence, stepping just a little too close because she enjoyed testing whether personal space had any effect on him.

It did not.

Or, more accurately, he refused to reward her for it.

She circled him once, eyes flicking over his face, his tied-back hair, the dark glove at his side, and the calm expression that gave her nothing easy to grab. "You look like you found something interesting."

"I found work."

"That is what interesting looks like when you are emotionally damaged."

"I need Sheila."

"So direct."

"Where is she?"

Charlotte smiled wider. "Still not free."

Liam looked at her.

She smiled back.

He considered leaving again. It remained a strong option. The district was not large enough to hide Sheila forever, and Charlotte enjoyed games more when someone agreed to the rules. Unfortunately, following her would likely take less time than searching every patrol point, wall post, and quiet corner where Sheila might have gone to think.

Efficiency defeated dignity more often than he preferred.

Charlotte seemed to see the decision before he said anything. She turned away from him with a pleased little sway, walking toward a quieter lane between the barracks and the inner road.

"Coming?" she called over her shoulder.

Liam watched her for a moment.

He did not trust the situation. He already regretted whatever conversation was about to happen. Charlotte knowing Sheila’s location could mean exactly that, or it could mean she wanted to drag him through three unnecessary remarks before giving useful information. Both were likely.

Still, he needed to report what he had found.

Liam followed her into the quieter Southern District, the dim patrol lights fading behind them as Charlotte led the way without revealing where they were going.