They left Kai with Henrik — a decision that no one explicitly made but that happened naturally, Kai staying seated and William and Seraphina moving toward the door, and neither of them questioning it. Kai needed to be part of that conversation, and Henrik needed to be part of what came next. This was the most efficient arrangement.

The administrative wing was quiet at this hour. A few staff members moving between offices, a junior administrator at the main desk who looked up when they entered and then went back to his work when they explained they were retrieving documents for Instructor Henrik under his authorization.

Henrik’s office was on the second floor, third door on the right. The key worked smoothly. The room inside had the organized quality of someone who maintained systems — files in labeled sections, desk clear except for current work items, bookshelves with the books actually arranged usefully rather than decoratively.

Seraphina went to the filing cabinet. William went to the desk.

"Expedition planning correspondence," she said, reading the labels. "Risk assessments. Student records." She found the expedition folder and pulled it. "Original enrollment list should be in here."

"Administrative correspondence is in the desk drawer," William said, opening it. A hanging folder system, neatly maintained. He found the section labeled *Committee Review — Current Academic Year* and lifted the entire folder.

"Check the expedition risk assessment," he said. "Look for the anomalous signature notation and the committee response."

Seraphina paged through the expedition folder quickly and efficiently. She found what she was looking for on the third page of the risk assessment form — Henrik’s handwriting, precise and compact.

*Level three essence signature: anomalous reading, estimated power level inconsistent with known indigenous creatures for Thornvale Ruins current mapping. Recommend delay pending additional survey.*

Below it, in different handwriting, the committee response.

Signed by three names.

Seraphina read the names carefully.

Two she didn’t recognize — senior faculty she knew by reputation but not personally. The third she recognized immediately, because it was not a faculty name.

It was an administrative name.

She held the paper and felt something settle into place with the cold specificity of a thing that had been true before she knew it.

"William."

He came to her and read the name over her shoulder.

A pause.

"Soren Hale," he said.

The name from his mother’s crystal. The competition oversight functionary. The unremarkable mid-level administrator who had visited the broker Darius and processed the essence-signature registration forms.

Who had also, two months ago, signed off on the clearance for an expedition into a dungeon with an anomalous essence signature, overriding the recommending instructor’s explicit request for a delay.

"He didn’t just pass the registration data," William said. His voice was level. "He cleared the expedition. He created the operational window."

"And then someone used that window to insert Derek and the first assassination team." Seraphina looked at the signature again. "He’s not the client. He’s a facilitator. Someone’s infrastructure inside the academy."

"Which means whoever is running this has had access to academy administrative processes from the beginning." William was thinking, she could see it. "They didn’t just react to the expedition. They helped create it."

Seraphina looked at the original enrollment list, which she had found underneath the risk assessment.

Twenty-three names for the original enrollment. Seventeen had participated in the final group.

Six had dropped in the final week.

She read the six names carefully.

Five she assessed quickly — minor families, no obvious strategic significance, plausible personal reasons for dropping an elective expedition in the week before it departed. The sixth name stopped her.

She read it again.

Then she handed the paper to William without comment and watched him read it.

He looked up.

"That’s the target," he said.

"That’s the target," she agreed.

The name on the paper was someone she knew. Not well — different year level, different house, limited direct interaction. But known. And connected, in ways that were not immediately obvious but became obvious when you understood what was actually being contested here, in ways that she should have seen sooner if she’d been thinking about this from the right angle.

A student who had dropped the expedition three days before departure with a logged reason of *personal health concern* and had returned to regular classes the following Monday. A student who was registered for four individual events in the Inter-Academy competition. A student whose family connection to the Regional Cultivation Council was not through a seat or a title but through something quieter and more significant — through the research records that determined which families received cultivation resource allocation for the next decade.

Whoever controlled that student’s family controlled significant influence over which cultivation bloodlines flourished and which declined. Including the bloodlines of everyone who might otherwise oppose them.

"We need to go back to Henrik," Seraphina said.

"Yes."

She replaced the files carefully, the way Henrik would want them replaced. William locked the office behind them. They moved back through the administrative wing and down the corridor and into the medical wing with the quick purposeful stride of people who had somewhere to be and something to do when they got there.

Henrik was talking to Kai when they returned. Low voices, the quality of a conversation that had found its level — not interrogation, not performance, something more like two people who had each decided to be direct and discovered that was more efficient than they expected.

Both of them looked up when the door opened.

Seraphina set the folder on the bed beside Henrik and pointed to the risk assessment page without speaking. Henrik read the committee sign-off. His expression did something controlled and unhappy.

Then she pointed to the enrollment list. The six dropped names. The one she had circled in her mind.

Henrik read it.

"You think this student is the target," he said.

"Yes."

He was quiet for a moment. "They’re not on my team. I have no formal oversight of their competition participation."

"No," William said. "But you know who does."

"Captain Morris oversees competition security coordination. She would have access to all student movement schedules during the event." Henrik looked at the file. "She also sits on the committee that reviewed the expedition clearance."

"Is she on the list," Kai said.

Seraphina had checked. "No. Two faculty members and Hale."

"Then she’s a viable contact," Kai said. "Someone with institutional authority who isn’t compromised by the clearance decision."

"You want to bring Morris in," Henrik said.

"We want to tell someone with the authority to act on it," Seraphina said. "We can’t watch one student across a three-day competition with multiple simultaneous venues by ourselves. We need someone who can adjust security positioning without making it visible."

Henrik thought about it. The thinking was visible on his face in a way it usually wasn’t — he was tired and in pain and had been lying in this room for days working through his own version of the same questions they had been working through.

"Morris is trustworthy," he said finally. "In the way that matters — she does what she thinks is right, not what’s politically convenient. She was the one who pushed for the investigation into Derek’s background after the expedition. Before the administration had officially acknowledged anything was wrong." He paused. "She’ll want to know everything. She won’t accept a partial briefing."

"We know," William said.

"And she’ll have questions about how you know what you know. Particularly you." He looked at Kai.

"I understand," Kai said.

"Do you have answers that will satisfy her without creating new problems."

"I have answers that are true," Kai said. "Whether they satisfy her depends on Morris."

Henrik looked at the folder, then at the three of them.

"I’ll send for her," he said. "She visits every morning. If she hasn’t come yet, she’ll be here within the hour." He settled back against his pillow with the careful movement of someone managing a broken arm. "In the meantime, you’re going to tell me the rest of it. The parts you summarized on the way here and the parts you left out entirely."

Seraphina glanced at William.

William pulled the message crystal from his pocket and set it on the bed beside Henrik.

"From my mother," he said. "She’s been running an independent investigation."

Henrik looked at the crystal. Then at William. "Your mother investigates assassination plots in her spare time."

"In addition to her primary responsibilities, yes."

Something moved through Henrik’s expression that in different circumstances might have been humor.

"Activate it," he said.

William did.

His mother’s voice filled the small room, careful and precise, and Henrik listened with the complete attention of someone who had spent decades in situations where listening correctly was the difference between good outcomes and bad ones.

When it finished, the room was quiet for a moment.

"Soren Hale," Henrik said.

"Yes."

"I sat across from Soren Hale in two committee meetings this year. He asked two questions in each meeting and deferred on everything else." Henrik’s voice was very controlled. "I thought he was simply passive. An administrator who showed up and signed where directed."

"He may still be that," Kai said. "A passive instrument operated by someone else."

"Which makes identifying the someone else the actual problem." Henrik looked at the door, then back at them. "When Morris arrives, we tell her everything. All of it. She will not work with partial information and she would be right not to." He fixed Kai with a steady look. "Including the parts about you."

Kai was quiet for a moment.

"Including those parts," he said.

"Good." Henrik reached for his water glass with his good arm, drank, and set it back down with the methodical care of a man who had accepted that careful movement was his current reality. "Four days."

"Four days," Seraphina said.

"Then we’d better use them well."

Outside the window the academy moved through its ordinary morning, students crossing the grounds between buildings, the sounds of early practice drifting from the training halls, the light continuing its slow arc through a sky that was clear and entirely indifferent to what was being decided in a small room in the medical wing.