~CalistaNormal places make me nervous.Not the kind of nervous that tightens your stomach or raises the hairs on your arms. Worse than that. The kind that settles in your bones and waits.I spent the first hour in Keldrin Vale pretending to be lost.It wasn’t difficult. No one questioned it. I wandered between stalls, paused at wells, leaned against walls as if I belonged there—or as if I were trying very hard to. I asked harmless questions first. Directions. Names of streets. Where travelers usually stayed the night.People answered easily. Too easily.The problem wasn’t hostility. It was ignorance.“Magic?” a baker repeated when I asked, flour dusting his beard. “You mean tricks? Street performers sometimes come through.”“No,” I said patiently. “Real magic. Wards. Enchantments. Anything… unusual.”He laughed, good-natured. “Miss, if anyone around here could throw fireballs, we wouldn’t still be hauling water by hand.”That answer repeated itself in different voices, different face

~CalistaThe name lingered after he said it, hanging between us like a sound that refused to settle.Draven.I turned it over in my mind, searching for where it belonged. The effort sent a dull ache through my skull, like pressing on a bruise you didn’t realise was there. I knew that name. I was sure of it. Not vaguely. Not in passing. It was lodged somewhere deep, threaded through something important.But every time I reached for it, my thoughts slid away.“I’ve heard it before,” I said slowly, more to myself than to him. “Your surname.”Elvis watched me, expression sharpening just a fraction. “Yeah?”“I just… can’t place it.” I frowned, irritation bubbling under the confusion. “It’s like trying to remember a dream after you’ve already woken up.”“That happens sometimes,” he said lightly. Too lightly. “Especially when you’ve had a rough day.”I snorted. “That’s one way to put it.”Silence stretched again. Somewhere above us, fabric rustled as the wind caught a laundry line. The alley

~CalistaThe city felt different after Verdant Forest.Not changed, exactly—but sharpened. Like I was seeing Elarion through a lens I hadn’t realised was missing before. Every shadow looked deeper now. Every narrow street felt intentional. As if the city itself had been watching us walk back in and was quietly taking notes.Elvis didn’t seem bothered.He strolled ahead of me with his hands in his pockets, posture loose, like he hadn’t just torn through monsters with abilities that made my chest ache with familiarity.“So,” he said after a while, glancing sideways at me. “You’ve been unusually quiet. Either you’re traumatised, or you’re thinking too hard.”“Can it be both?”He grinned. “Usually is.”We passed beneath an archway half-choked with ivy, the street beyond sloping gently downward. Lanterns were being lit now, soft golden light blooming one by one as dusk settled in.I hesitated, then spoke before I could talk myself out of it.“Do you know anyone named Laurent?”The name fel

~Calista I couldn’t stop pacing. The room Elvis had insisted I use—small, clean, overlooking a narrow street—wasn’t large enough for the amount of thoughts crowding my head. I crossed it again and again, boots tapping softly against the wooden floor, then stopped, then started again. The Aurelian Archive didn’t exist. Not yet. That was the part that scraped against my mind like a dull blade. Not that it had been destroyed, or hidden behind wards too subtle for me to feel without magic. But that it simply… wasn’t. As though the idea of it had not yet occurred to the world. Which meant the book wasn’t here either. The spell circle I’d drawn back then had been precise. Painfully so. Each line measured. Each anchor deliberate. I hadn’t memorised it—I’d trusted the text, trusted that I could always return to it if something went wrong. A foolish assumption, apparently. I pressed my palms together, inhaled slowly, then exhaled. Without the circle, without the exact configuration,

~OmniscientAngela Calder worked the way some people prayed.Quietly. Intently. With the unshakeable belief that if she followed the right sequence, the universe would eventually answer.Calista sat on a narrow stool near the wall, her recovered equipment laid out on the central table like relics. Chalk-stained compasses. Burned focus crystals. The knife she’d used to score the circle’s outer boundary, its edge still faintly humming with residual mana.Angela hovered over them, sleeves rolled up, dark hair twisted hastily at the nape of her neck. She murmured as she worked—not spells, not quite. Observations. Corrections. Half-formed thoughts spoken aloud so they wouldn’t vanish.“This residue is… fractured,” she said, passing a thin lens over the knife’s edge. “Not decayed. That’s important. It means the spell didn’t collapse—it was interrupted.”Calista folded her arms, watching. “Is that good?”“It’s extraordinary,” Angela replied without looking up. “If the residue had decayed nat