*Jiselle*

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443

The fire cracked low in the corner brazier, but its warmth felt far away, like it couldn’t reach through the thick tension pressing between everyone.

Nate stood near the far wall, arms crossed and jaw tight, pacing back and forth like a caged wolf waiting to snap. Bastain sat at the edge of the table, a stack of old parchments spread before him, most of them half–charred or marked with ink innguages even he barely

tranted.

They’d been at it for over an hour–going in circles about how best to reinforce the leyline barriers now that Aedric’s reach was growing stronger through whatever tether had started forming between him and Ethan. And that tether… it wasn’t just a theory anymore. It was visible now. Felt.

“We can’t seal the east corridor with another Gate sigil,” Nate argued, voice tight. “It’ll draw her energy again, and she’s already-”

“She’s stronger now than when the first circle was burned,” Bastain cut in, not unkindlyi, /ibut firm. “You know what the child’s presence has done. The leyline stabilizes around her. The mark on her stomach is evidence of that.”

Nate’s eyes flicked toward me–only for a second–but it was enough to make my skin crawl. Not because he doubted me. No. But because I saw it again, the thing he wouldn’t say aloud.

He was afraid of me.

Or maybe not of me exactly… but of what I was bing.

“I’m not using her again to power some ancient spellwork,” he muttered, and this time his voice was lower. Strained. “She nearly passed outst time, and you said-”

“I said,” Bastain interrupted, “that the Gate reacted to her in ways we don’t fully understand. That’s why we’re testing leyline cement. It’s not about using her. It’s about protecting her.”

“Then maybe let her rest.”

“I’m right here, you know,” I said softly, my voice cutting through their argument like a de dulled by exhaustion. “You could ask me what I want.”

Both of them stopped. Bastain dropped his gaze like he realized toote that he’d overstepped. Nate… Nate didn’t look at me at all.

And I didn’t need the bond to know why.

b9:54 /bbWed/bb, /bbSep /b17

:–

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353 Vouchers

Something between us had cracked since the day I walked away with the veilstone de in bmy /bhand and refused to let him stop me. It wasn’t shattered. But it wasn’t whole either. And bwhen /bhe turned away again, pacing toward the outer hallway without another word, I let him go.

Eva came in a few minutester with a tray of tea neither of us drank and a map

I’d already looked at three times today. She dropped it on the table and said nothing, but her eyes bwere /bred–rimmed, like she hadn’t slept either.

Only Ethan was missing.

Again.

I found him two hourster in the library tower, sitting in the upper alcove where light filtered through broken panes and dust swirled like ghosts. His back was to me, head tilted toward the window, as if he were listening to something only he could hear.

“E?” I asked, voice careful.

He didn’t move.

“Ethan.”

His shoulders tensed slightly, and then he slowly turned his head.

His eyes weren’t vacant–but they weren’t focused either. They were somewhere in between, locked in that hazy ce he’d drifted to more and more over thest few days. That ce that made me worry, made Bastain nervous, and made Nate stop speaking altogether.

“There’s something wrong,” I said quietly, kneeling beside him.

His lips moved.

I leaned closer. “What?b” /b

“She sings in fire,” he murmured, the words in a rhythm I didn’t recognize. “She stands in the center of it, calling to me. Not screaming. Not afraid. Calling.”

A chill rippled down my spine, even though the air was warm and stale with magic.

“Who does?” I asked, though I already knew.

He looked at me then–really looked. And I saw it in his eyes.

The flicker.

Like candlelight behind fogged ss.

b9:54 /bbWed/bb, /bbSep /bb17 /b

Like me trapped behind skin.

“The child,” he said. “She knows me.”

I didn’t respond. Not right away.

€445

1.55 vouchers

bI /bjust stood and walked over to the shelves, trying to steady my breathing, to fight the pressure building in my ribs. I didn’t know what I’d find. I didn’t even know what I was looking for. But I needed to move. To do something.

Then I felt it.

A pull.

Low and strange. It dragged me toward Ethan’s cot in the corner. Something beneath it was humming–barely there, just under the edge of sensation, like a sound too deep for human

ears.

I bent down.

The floor beneath the bed was scorched.

I reached out and brushed back the thin edge of a rug that had been half–kicked under the frame, and my breath caught.

A rune.

Etched into the stone.

In blood.

It was old. Dried. But still sharp enough to sting my senses, like it had never stopped bleeding in the ways that mattered.

And it wasn’t any rune I’d ever seen.

I called for Bastain.

He came within minutes, Eva behind him.

“What is it?” he asked.

I pointed.

His eyes darkened. “That’s Hollow–born script.”

1

Eva’s breath hitched. “Here?”

b9:55 /bWedb, /bbSep /b17 .

“I told you,” I whispered. “He’s drifting. He’s not… here. Not all the way.”

ELE

Drvoushan

Ethan stood now, hands braced on the edge of the window frame. “I didn’t draw it,” he bsaid/b, but his voice was shaky. “I don’t remember. But sometimes… I wake up with blood on my palms.”

Bastain knelt beside the rune, tracing its outer curve without touching it. “This is possession magic. It’s subtle, slow. You wouldn’t feel it. Wouldn’t even know until it was toote. Whoeverid this… wanted to use him as a bridge.”

“The teacher,” I said. “He marked Ethan.”

Eva’s face was pale. “We let him in. We trusted him.”

“No,” I said tly. “We believed his story because we wanted to. Because we were tired. Because we needed a way to stop guessing and hoping and guessing again. We needed someone to tell us what wasing.”

“And he did,” Bastain muttered. “He said one of the Triad wouldn’t survive the child’s birth. And now he’s found the weakest link.”

Ethan didn’t flinch. “I see her in the fire. Every night.”

“Have you spoken to her?” Bastain asked.

Ethan hesitated. “I think… maybe.”

His voice dropped, barely audible.

“I think she’s choosing me.’

The room fell silent.

Not because we didn’t understand.

But because we did.

And none of us knew what that meant. Not yet.

Not until the fire answered back.

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