Ocean Studies, according to Harper, had been falsely advertised.

"We've had two lessons and nobody has put us in the ocean."

Professor Elowen continued handing out measuring cards without looking up. "You have had two lessons."

"That's what I said."

"And I would like you to reach lesson three."

Harper accepted the card. "So swimming later?"

"Perhaps when I become convinced you can follow an instruction without negotiating its wording."

Ava took Harper's pencil before she could use it to make a point on the safety rail. Ocean Studies was held on a broad terrace built halfway down Tidefall's western cliff. The platform was enclosed by a chest-high stone wall and a metal rail beyond it, while a pale line marked the limit students could cross without direct permission. Five dark tide markers had been carved into the rock below.

The afternoon wind came hard from the west and smelled of salt. Jasper liked the terrace immediately, although he was beginning to suspect that liking places near the sea might become complicated at Tidefall.

"Today," Professor Elowen said, "you are learning the difference between observation and explanation. Every three minutes, record the highest marker reached by a swell, wind direction and any visible foam pattern. Write what happened, not what you think caused it."

Ava's expression became almost cheerful. Harper looked toward the water. "Can I write that the foam looks like a duck?"

"If it genuinely does."

"Excellent."

Room Fourteen worked together. Ava kept the table. Jasper handled the timer because, according to Ava, he was least likely to argue with it. Harper watched the sea with the dedication of someone who had finally been assigned a task involving staring at something interesting.

For twenty minutes the observations were ordinary. Marker two. Marker two. A larger swell reached three. Wind west-southwest. One foam pattern did resemble a duck, although Ava wrote irregular curved foam because she had principles. Jasper had just reset the timer when the pressure returned. It began behind his ribs, faint enough that he almost ignored it. Then the feeling deepened and his attention went to the water below without any conscious decision. A wave approached the cliff.

The wind was strong enough to roughen every visible stretch of sea, yet the swell flattened a metre from the rock. It did not break or lose force gradually. Its crest simply disappeared, leaving a smooth sheet of water that slid against the cliff without spray. Harper stopped talking. Ava's pencil hovered over the page. Other students noticed. Murmurs passed along the terrace. Professor Elowen moved toward the inner boundary. "Stay where you are. Keep observing." A second swell formed. This one rose higher than the last and touched the third marker with remarkable neatness before falling away. The pressure in Jasper's chest sharpened.

He knew the sensation now. The dream had contained it. So had the harbour. It was the impossible feeling of being noticed by something that did not need eyes. Jasper looked beyond the marker stones, toward water too deep to see through. For one moment the entire western sea seemed enormous in a way it had not a second earlier. Not merely wide. Present. Then the feeling vanished. The next wave broke normally.

Professor Elowen was still staring at the water when footsteps sounded on the internal stair. Headmaster Thorne emerged onto the terrace with far less surprise on his face than Jasper would have preferred. Harper leaned toward Ava. "That was fast." Ava glanced at the stairwell. "Too fast for someone who was summoned after it happened." Thorne exchanged a few quiet words with Elowen, then looked across the class. His gaze found Jasper immediately.

"Observation becomes most useful when something refuses to fit the pattern," he said. "Record exactly what you saw. Leave theories for later."

Jasper wrote: 10:27. Wind continued. Wave flattened before cliff. Second swell reached marker three. Conditions then returned to normal. He did not write that something had noticed him. Ava's lesson table did not have a column for impossible attention. The class ended early. As everyone moved toward the stairs, Thorne asked Jasper to remain behind. Harper stopped as well.

"Upper landing," Professor Elowen told her.

"I can wait quietly."

Ava took Harper by the sleeve. "No, you can't." When they had gone, Thorne rested both hands on the stone wall and looked at the sea.

"Did you feel anything before the water changed?" he asked.

Jasper's stomach tightened. "A pressure. Here." He touched his chest. Thorne nodded once. That was not the reaction of someone hearing nonsense for the first time.

"You know what I mean," Jasper said.

The Headmaster was quiet for several seconds. "I know a smaller version of it. Sometimes." Jasper stared at him.

"You can feel it too?"

"I can sense disturbances connected to the older currents around Tidefall. I have heard what I would call echoes, though that word is imperfect. I cannot reach them, and they do not answer me in the way you have described."

Jasper's skin prickled. "I haven't described anything."

"Not today."

The dream came back. Thorne turned from the water. "Have you experienced this before arriving at the Academy?" Jasper hesitated, then told him about the dream: the dark water, the thing below, the pulse that had answered him and the strange images that felt like memories belonging to somebody else. The Headmaster listened without interrupting.

"Am I in trouble?" Jasper asked when he finished.

"No."

"Is something wrong with me?"

"Also no."

The answer came so quickly that Jasper believed it.

"Then what is it?"

Thorne looked back toward the sea. "There are old records of people sensing unusual activity in the waters around Tidefall. Some are unreliable. Some are incomplete. A few are written in Selari old enough to make translation difficult. None of them give me a simple answer for you."

"So you don't know."

"I know enough to tell you not to experiment."

Jasper frowned.

"Curiosity is useful," Thorne said. "Provoking something you do not understand is not curiosity. It is simply risk with better branding."

That sounded like something Ava would approve of.

"Tell me if the feeling changes," Thorne continued. "Tell Professor Elowen. Tell Professor Ward. If it speaks in words, if it gives you an image, if you sense it away from the coast, I want to know. Most importantly, do not go looking for it alone."

"Okay."

"And Jasper?"

"Yeah?"

"The fact that I cannot explain this yet does not make it your job to solve it for me."

Jasper nodded. He even meant to believe him. At the upper landing, Harper was waiting with her arms folded while Ava pretended not to be waiting just as impatiently.

"Well?" Harper asked.

Jasper looked back down the stair. "He knows a bit." Ava's eyebrows rose. "How much is a bit?"

"Not enough."

Harper considered this. "That's worse than nothing."

"Probably."

The class spent the following day arguing about whether the Ocean Studies incident had been magical at all. Some students insisted the flattening wave could have been an odd current. Others said the timing made that impossible. Ava refused both positions until they had more evidence, which made Harper accuse her of founding a political party called Maybe. Professor Elowen used the disagreement as the next lesson. She drew three columns on the board: OBSERVED, INFERRED, UNKNOWN.

The class placed facts from the terrace into them. The wind had continued: observed. The wave had flattened: observed. Jasper had felt pressure beforehand: observed by Jasper, not independently verified. The sea had deliberately reacted to Jasper: inference.

"This distinction," Elowen said, "will save you from an impressive number of mistakes. Not only magical ones."

Jasper found the exercise uncomfortable because the thing he cared about most sat mostly in the final two columns. After class, Thorne gave him permission to use a private reporting card kept in the first-year office. Jasper did not need to make an appointment every time he felt something faint. He could record the time, location, strength and any images, then staff would follow up if necessary.

"So Ava's notebook," Jasper said, "but official."

Thorne looked toward Ava, who was waiting outside the office. "I fear she has already outperformed our form design." Jasper laughed. The Headmaster's admission that he could hear only echoes changed how Jasper saw him. Thorne was no longer the adult with the answer hidden somewhere. He was another person standing beside the same mystery with a smaller window into it. That was less comforting than authority. It was more trustworthy.

They climbed toward the main level together. Behind the stone, the sea had returned to its usual rhythm, but Jasper found himself listening for something beneath it all the way to dinner.