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Many days of exhaustion weighed heavily on Ros’ shoulders. Her hands couldn’t stop shaking; phantom sparks kept jolting through the nerves from keeping her magic focused at her fingertips all day.
Lately, there were shadows creeping in and out of the edges of her vision. She was getting pretty well acquainted with them by now, considering how little she’d been sleeping. Those apples weren’t going to enchant themselves, after all.
That’s why, when she first began catching glimpses of white in her peripherals, she didn’t think much of it. Even when it looked a bit like a pair of feet sticking out from the end of her bed. When it moved like the flowing of a long skirt on a windy day. When it spilled over the back of her desk chair like locks of long, wavy hair.
Then it started to linger. What had once maybe seemed like odd shapes and partial silhouettes became the definite outlines of a humanoid figure. Full forms that stood watching from the corner of the room, that walked closer until she squeezed her eyes shut and they disappeared. Sometimes they would stand very close, almost daring her to look upon them directly. They never laid a hand on her, and she continued to avoid looking for as long as she could.
The first time she saw her face, Ros screamed herself hoarse. She couldn’t breathe very well afterwards for quite some time, as if she’d shrieked all the oxygen straight out of her lungs and out of her mana veil. She- no, maybe it?- had looked at her? Sort of? Its eyes were certainly aimed in her direction, but they were… empty. Unfocused, unseeing. As vacant as the day she saw that face put into the ground.
The color was all wrong, too. Her sister’s eyes had never been that pale and glassy, right? Ros tried to picture her face from back when she was still alive, still healthy and uncorrupted. The realization that she couldn’t quite visualize it, that it had been such a long time since her poor sister had fallen ill— it made the life mage feel sick to her stomach.
She— it, not she, because that illusion was not her sister and Ros couldn’t afford to forget that— kept coming back. It seemed to find new and worse ways to catch her off guard, causing her to flinch, jump, and even shriek in alarm. The others were starting to catch on that something was wrong, and she feared it would only be a matter of time until the entire academy thought she was losing it. Juniper and Water likely wouldn’t gossip, but what about the others?
If the others found out, they may begin to doubt her sanity. If they started doubting the soundness of her mind, then they wouldn’t trust her judgment. And if her judgment couldn’t be trusted, then they wouldn’t trust her to watch their backs. And if she couldn’t watch their backs, then they’d be down a healer. Which meant more people would be in danger, more people could get injured, and might even die. They were going to die. Everyone was going to die, and it was going to be her fault, and once again she would be helpless to do anything but watch as the people close to her were consumed one-by-one by the corruption and its bottomless appetite.
Her hands still won’t stop shaking. No matter how tightly she clenches them into fists. Her fingernails were biting into her palms, and for a split second the blood that rose to the broken surface of her skin ran gold.
They won’t die. She won’t allow it. She couldn’t let the corruption destroy more innocent lives. They will survive this place, and they will become the dragon riders that the world needs them to be.
Ros will make certain of it, even if it kills her.