Tidefall held the Night Market on the second-last Friday of every school year. Nobody had mentioned this to the first-years until two days before it happened. Harper considered that criminal.

"You kept a market secret?"

Professor Elowen looked up from attendance.

"It was on the calendar."

"Calendars are where adults hide things."

Ava said, "I read the calendar."

"Exactly."

The Night Market transformed Founders' Courtyard after sunset. Strings of floating lanterns hung between arches. Tables appeared under striped awnings. Older students sold things they had made during the year. Enchanted bookmarks that remembered your page. Tiny ceramic pots warmed by gentle heat charms. Braided bracelets in Order colours. Wooden puzzles. Caramel slices from the kitchens. Second-hand books. Postcards painted with the academy cliffs. No real money changed hands inside the student market. Students used small stamped tokens issued for the evening, enough that nobody's family income decided whether they could take part. Ava approved of this system immediately. Harper approved of the food. Jasper liked the noise. It was different from the dining hall. Less organized.

Music came from three older students under the west arch. Someone had enchanted paper fish to swim through the air above a craft stall. First-years wandered in groups, pretending they were independent while staff stood at every exit. Room Fourteen received twelve tokens each. Harper spent three within four minutes.

"You have no restraint," Ava said.

Harper held up a bag of cinnamon popcorn.

"Counterpoint."

They visited Soren's table first. He and two other students had restored pieces of old Tidefall machinery into desk toys. A tiny counterweight lift moved a wooden platform six centimetres when you turned a brass wheel. Jasper stared.

"You made that?"

"Mostly. Ashcroft stopped me using an original nineteenth-century gear because apparently 'historical preservation' matters."

"It does."

"Traitor."

Jasper bought one. It cost four tokens. Worth it. Mia's table sold painted stones from the permitted inland collection area. Not magical. Just good. Harper bought a pink one with a tiny white wave painted across it. Mia looked at her.

"You know that's a wave."

"Yes."

"You spent half the year pretending the Sea thing was coincidence."

"Character development."

"Fair."

Ava spent two tokens on a set of green page markers and then fifteen minutes deciding whether the purchase had been frivolous. Harper bought her another set purely to end the crisis.

"You cannot solve decision discomfort by buying both options," Ava said.

"Watch me."

At the northern end of the market, the Orders ran community stalls. Not recruitment. That rule was written on a sign large enough that Harper read it aloud sarcastically. Brannor repaired broken bag straps and sharpened kitchen knives for staff. Velmor offered weather postcards showing tomorrow's likely cloud patterns. Calyx gave out herb cuttings and taught students how to keep them alive over summer. Nocten ran a lost-property identification game that was probably an excuse to return three months of abandoned belongings. Jasper found one of his own socks there. He did not ask how.

"Buy it back," Harper said.

"It is mine."

"Then steal it."

A Nocten prefect looked up. Jasper took the sock and left. The market should have been entirely ordinary. For most of the evening, it was. Then Jasper saw the shell. It sat on a second-hand trinket table run by seventh-years. Small. White. Spiral-shaped. Nothing magical about it from a distance. Jasper stopped. A faint cool pressure touched his ribs. Not strong. Water. Harper noticed first.

"What?"

Jasper looked at the shell. The Sea's attention did not feel alarmed. More like recognition. He approached. The older student behind the table smiled.

"Two tokens. Came out of a storage box from the old harbour rooms."

Ava immediately said, "Was it cleared for sale?"

"Yes. Crowe checked everything."

Jasper did not touch it. The shell was ordinary except for one thin blue line painted inside the spiral. A harbour marker. Old. He had seen the same colour in archive photographs of the lower docks before Deepwater. Ava recognized it too.

"That's an old safety mark."

The seventh-year shrugged.

"Probably. The shell itself isn't enchanted."

Jasper felt Water again. A tiny impression. Stone steps wet with rain. A hand holding the shell. Then nothing. A memory? Not his. Maybe not Water's either. He stepped back.

"I don't want it."

Harper looked surprised. Months ago Jasper would have bought it. Taken it apart. Asked questions. Tried to find the person in the impression. Now he knew better than to turn every piece of attention into a demand for investigation. Ava asked, "Should we tell Crowe?" Jasper thought.

"Only what happened. Not that something's wrong."

They found Crowe near the staff tea table. Jasper described the impression. Crowe listened.

"Any sense of danger?"

"No."

"Any instruction?"

"No."

"Then thank you for reporting it. I'll recheck the item before it leaves school property."

That was it. No market closure. No sealed chamber. No midnight mystery. Crowe later confirmed the shell had belonged to an old harbour teaching kit. The painted line was only paint. Perhaps Water recognized where it had been. Perhaps Jasper's own memory of archive photographs had shaped the impression. They did not know. The answer remained allowed to be uncertain. Back at the market, Harper bought Jasper an enchanted bookmark shaped like a yellow fish.

"Why?"

"Because you didn't buy the creepy shell. Reward."

"I'm not a dog."

"Correct. Dogs are easier."

Ava bought three herb cuttings from Calyx and immediately worried about keeping them alive over summer. Mia dragged everyone toward the music. The final hour became dancing that nobody was good at. Seven-year-olds moved with the complete confidence of people not yet old enough to care how they looked. Jasper was terrible. Harper was worse and louder. Ava claimed she was not dancing while clearly dancing. When the lanterns dimmed at nine, the whole courtyard groaned. Students carried purchases back to residence. Jasper put the tiny counterweight lift on the Bag Bed beside the handball trophy. Then added the yellow fish bookmark to his bedside table. The shell stayed with Crowe. He did not regret leaving it. That felt like another kind of growing.