Orphaned Seed
Copyright© 2026 by Fantasylover11
Chapter 20: Bleed
The Glass Lab never let you forget it could see you.
Tonight the clear walls felt sharper.
Midterm practical meant observers in the corners who weren’t students, clipboards held like shields, eyes trained to notice the wrong kind of talent. The air smelled of conductive ink and bleach and the faint metallic tang that came when too many people were holding their breath in the same room.
Sienna took her seat with Mirror and kept her posture still.
Don’t give them anything for free.
Noah stood at a station near the center, hands loose at his sides, face composed in the way she now recognized as work. He looked like a freshman in a clean sweatshirt.
If you didn’t know how to look.
The instructor was Dr. Vance again. He didn’t waste words.
“This is a stability practical,” he said. “You will build a paired sigil. One anchors. One dampens.”
He held up two plates of glass.
“You will apply a controlled load. Then you will hold it.” His gaze moved across the room, stopping on faces like he was memorizing them. “If you chase output, you will fail.”
Sienna felt the lab go quiet.
Everybody had heard the same rumor: Mercer was a problem because he never looked like he was trying.
Sienna watched Noah’s hands.
He didn’t move until the start signal.
When he did, it was boring.
Precise lines.
No flourish.
He traced the etch guides like he was copying homework.
The act of it should have looked like nothing.
Up close, Sienna saw the cost.
His shoulders stayed relaxed while his jaw held too tight. His gaze kept sliding away from the observers, then returning without making it obvious. His breathing stayed controlled, but not effortless.
Something in him was braced.
Masking, she thought.
Not the word.
The thing.
Dr. Vance paced the aisle behind the stations.
“Anchor,” he called.
Noah set two fingers on the center mark of his first plate.
Sienna leaned forward by a fraction.
The glass didn’t glow.
It never did.
But the air above the plate shifted, subtle as heat over asphalt.
Noah pulled his hand away immediately and reached for the second plate.
“Dampen,” Dr. Vance said.
Noah set his fingers down again.
Hold.
For a second, everything about him looked too controlled.
Then something cracked.
Not dramatic.
Not an outburst.
His eyelids fluttered once, like he’d lost focus for an instant. His left hand twitched toward his temple and stopped halfway, caught by his own restraint.
He recovered fast.
To the observers, it would read as stress.
To Sienna, it read as pain.
Noah’s mouth tightened.
His shoulders stayed loose.
He held the dampen-sigil anyway.
The plates stabilized.
The shimmer above the glass smoothed.
Dr. Vance paused at Noah’s station.
Sienna watched his face.
“Maintain,” Dr. Vance said.
His eyes slid, quick and controlled, to one of the non-student observers—an unspoken check. The observer’s stylus stopped mid-scratch, then moved again like nothing had happened.
Noah nodded once.
The practical continued.
Other students slipped.
A Lantern girl overfed her anchor and cracked the glass with a sharp ping.
A Tide boy lost his timing and watched his dampener wash out.
Noah stayed boring.
He held.
He breathed.
He looked like he was doing nothing.
Which meant the people with clipboards watched him harder.
Sienna felt a familiar flare of anger.
Not protective.
Not romantic.
Just tired of watching institutions punish restraint.
“Time,” Dr. Vance called.
Plates were set down.
Students exhaled.
Noah stayed still a moment too long.
Then he blinked, slow.
His gaze went distant.
Sienna’s fingers tightened on her knee.
Memory gap, she thought.
Like he was losing seconds.
Noah looked down at his station as if he wasn’t sure what he’d just finished.
Then he straightened, face blank again.
The observers wrote.
After, the lab emptied into the corridor in careful clusters.
Sienna didn’t follow the crowd.
She watched the faculty table.
Two staffers stayed behind with Dr. Vance. A tablet was passed between them.
Sienna couldn’t see the screen.
She didn’t need to.
She saw the timing.
The way the staffer with the neutral face leaned in like this was the real practical.
The way Dr. Vance’s mouth tightened as if he didn’t like being made responsible for someone else’s story.
Sienna waited until they moved away.
Then she walked to an empty terminal in the records alcove and pulled up the public-facing log for the midterm.
Her own entry loaded.
Clean.
Noah’s entry loaded.
Clean.
Sienna stared at the stability score.
Not wrong.
Too neat.
The variance line beneath it read 0.00.
Nobody held a live sigil at zero variance.
She refreshed.
The number stayed.
She refreshed again.
Nothing.
The lie wasn’t always a dramatic rewrite.
Sometimes it was the absence of a flaw that should have been there.
Sienna opened the raw detail view.
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