Chapter 941: Report (1)
Sheila, Edith, and Felix waited inside one of the central structure’s smaller records rooms.
The room had not been important enough to restore properly yet, but it had become useful through necessity. Old shelves leaned against the walls, some empty and some stacked with recovered records that had been sorted into rough categories by Felix’s increasingly cramped handwriting.
A narrow table occupied the center, its surface crowded with loose parchment, the Command Log, charcoal sticks, sharpened writing tools, a half-broken inkstone, and a few weighted scraps used to keep older pages from curling. Dust still clung to the upper corners, and one wall bore a crack that Edith had already marked as stable but worth watching.
Sheila stood at one side of the table with her arms folded, the live map projection dismissed for now but not forgotten. Edith had claimed the corner nearest the door, where she could see both the hall and the room without appearing guarded. Felix sat with the Command Log in front of him, stylus ready, his posture straight in the way people sat when they knew what they were about to write might matter later.
The door opened.
Asher entered first.
Celia followed close enough behind him that she nearly stepped on his heel, expression tight with irritation.
"You could have held the door properly," she said.
Asher glanced back at her. "It opened. You walked through. That is the purpose of a door."
"That is not the point."
"Then your point is defective."
"It is basic courtesy."
"I do not waste energy performing useless rituals for people who can move their own hands."
Celia’s eyes narrowed. "You are impossible."
"And yet you survived traveling with me. Growth."
"I survived despite you."
"That sounds like gratitude wearing cheap armor."
Sheila, Edith, and Felix all looked at them.
Not openly. Not dramatically. But the brief pause in the room was telling. Only a few hours ago, Celia Roanne had been a composed, distant student who would likely have avoided Asher Hawthorne unless forced into proximity by an instructor. Now she was arguing with him like they had built a habit out of irritation and somehow decided to keep it.
Felix’s stylus hovered above the page.
Edith’s brows lifted by the smallest amount.
Sheila looked between them, then decided the explanation could wait for a future in which the world had become less strange. "Where is Liam?"
The door opened again before either could answer.
Liam stepped inside. "Late," he said. "Sorry."
His apology was brief enough that it sounded like a report rather than contrition. His field-uniform shirt was in one hand, damp along one side and folded poorly as if he had decided fabric organization was a burden invented by someone with too much peace. He wore only his field-uniform pants, dark tank top, boots, and fingerless gloves. His hair was down, loose from the tie he had used earlier, the dark length falling around his face and shoulders in a way that made him look sharply different from the version most of them were used to seeing in uniform.
"My shirt got soaked when I rinsed off," he said. "Drying it took longer than expected."
He crossed to a nearby counter and set the shirt down without ceremony. Then he lifted one hand to his wrist and slid free one of two hair ties none of them had noticed before. The motion was casual. He gathered his hair back with both hands, arms lifting, the muscles in his shoulders and forearms shifting beneath skin marked here and there by old scars. Most were small. Some were not. Thin lines. Pale cuts. A few darker marks that looked older than academy training should have allowed.
The room went quiet.
Not because anyone intended it to.
It simply happened.
Sheila’s eyes caught on the scars first, then on the difference in him without the upper field layer. Liam was already striking in a way that most people noticed and few admitted aloud, but stripped down to the practical basics of uniform pants, tank top, gloves, and loose hair, he looked less like the quiet, unpleasant shadow standing at the edge of a room and more like what he was: dangerous, young, scarred, and far too composed inside a body that had clearly survived more than it explained.
Edith’s expression remained controlled, but her gaze paused longer than usual.
Felix blinked once, then looked down as if his notes had become suddenly fascinating, except his stylus did not move.
Celia’s stomach performed an act of treason.
’No,’ she thought immediately, furious at herself. ’Absolutely not. We are not doing this again.’
Her eyes had caught the line of his arms as he tied his hair back, then the scars, then the way his face looked with his hair loose before he twisted it into a rough bun. The observation lasted only a breath. That was still too long. She hated that she noticed. Hated even more that some traitorous part of her mind supplied the word striking before she could crush it.
Liam finished tying his hair and lowered his hands.
Asher looked him up and down with open disgust. "Put your shirt back on, shadow bastard. Even your dramatic entrances are irritating."
The room exhaled in several different ways at once.
Liam looked at him. "You are welcome to look away."
"You walked in looking like a tragic training dummy with better hair. That is hard to ignore."
"Skill issue."
Asher’s eyes narrowed. "I will burn that bun."
"You will try."
Sheila recovered fully and raised one hand before the two of them could start. "Liam, it is fine. Now that you are here, we can begin."
Liam nodded once.
Sheila’s tone shifted. "We need the report on the unknown Apex pack."
Instead of speaking immediately, Liam turned to Felix. "Writing materials. And the log."
Felix pulled the Command Log slightly closer on instinct. "This is the official log."
"I know."
Felix hesitated, then looked to Sheila.
Sheila studied Liam for a second, then gave a small nod. "Let him use it."
Felix sighed as if handing over a newborn bird to a wolf. "Please do not spill anything on it."
"I am not Dylan."
"That is reassuring in several categories," Edith said.
Felix reluctantly slid the Command Log and writing tools across the table. Liam took them with a plain "Thanks," then sat at the table and opened to a fresh page. The others assumed at first that he meant to organize the report himself or outline the details before Felix formalized them.
Liam picked up a charcoal stick and began moving it across the page as he spoke.
"The Apex-level creatures we encountered were not in the field guide," he said. "That matters, but it is not the main problem. An unrecorded threat is dangerous because no one has prepared for it. This one is worse because of what it can do and how it behaves."
Felix leaned slightly forward despite himself. "Go on."
"Eyeless, but not blind. They tracked us accurately without visible eyes. Highly coordinated. Physically powerful. Fast enough to cross open ground from stillness before an ordinary student would react. Intelligent as a pack."
Charcoal moved quietly beneath his fingers.
"Their bodies are low-built and dense. Heavy jaws. Strong forelimbs. Thick hides. Sensory ridges or vents along the head and neck. They use sound, vibration, pressure, or something close enough to function that way. I am not certain which yet."
Sheila listened without interrupting, her expression tightening by degrees rather than all at once.
Liam glanced at Asher. "Direct combat."
Asher folded his arms and leaned against the wall, though the casual posture did not quite hide the seriousness in his eyes. "They do not take hits properly."
Edith’s gaze shifted to him. "Explain."
"My controlled blue-flame strikes landed. They damaged them, but not the way they should have. Their hide and body structure spread the force. One of them angled its shoulder into a compressed flame slash and rolled through enough of the impact that it stayed standing." His mouth twisted. "Annoying."
"Impact absorption," Felix murmured, writing on a scrap because Liam had the main log.
"Likely," Asher said. "And the wounds closed. Not instantly. Not like they were never hurt. But fast enough that shallow damage became a waste. Burns pulled inward. Cuts sealed at the edges. If we kept hitting them lightly, we were just giving them time."
Liam nodded slightly without looking up. "Regeneration confirmed, rate uncertain. Worse under glancing wounds. Decisive damage required."
Edith looked at Liam’s moving hand, then back to Asher. "Did they adapt defensively after being hit?"
Asher’s eyes narrowed. "Yes."
Celia spoke before Asher could decide whether to resent the question. "They did."
Everyone looked to her.