Overview
There is a room at Thornwood that is not on any map. It is in the tower, above the visiting professor quarters and below Aatos's study, in a space that architectural plans insist does not exist. The door has no handle on the inside. The window has no latch. The walls are reinforced with Veil-work so dense that even the Hollows won't approach.
Inside is a woman. Her name is Bertha. She was, before the tower, a Psychic Heartcraft practitioner of extraordinary power — the kind of power that the tradition's textbooks describe as "theoretical." She could project emotions into every mind within a mile. She could dismantle barriers the way a surgeon removes tumors. She could make you feel what she felt, and what she felt was everything, all at once, without filters.
Then the barriers broke. Not hers — the Loom's. A structural failure in the Veil-stream that feeds Psychic Heartcraft sent a pulse of raw, unfiltered consciousness through every practitioner in the region. Most survived. Most recovered. Bertha received the full force at point-blank range.
What She Became
She did not go mad. Her mind expanded beyond what a human nervous system can sustain. She feels every emotion in every room in the tower. She feels the ivy's satisfaction and the stone's patience and Aatos's peculiar, textured loneliness two floors above. She feels all of it, simultaneously, without relief.
Rochester built the barriers. Rochester maintains the barriers. Rochester comes to teach at Thornwood because Thornwood is where she is, and someone has to reinforce the walls every fortnight, and he will not trust anyone else with this.
Notable
- Location: hidden tower room, Thornwood Academy
- Gift: Psychic Heartcraft, shattered and amplified beyond human capacity
- The walls around her room have begun to absorb her projected emotions. Students who pass report feeling sudden inexplicable grief.
- Jane senses her before she finds her. The shape of that much pain is impossible to miss.