A Funeral for Every Spell

Chapter 4

"Magisterium search! Open up, every door!"

The splintering wood of the heavy oak door groaned under the impact of a battering ram, the vibrations shuddering through the floorboards of Vaelric’s attic room.

In the dimness, the mended brass key on his worktable continued its soft, violet pulse, its stem still pointing rigidly toward the west window. Vaelric didn't hesitate. He thrust the key into his pocket, grabbed his heavy wool cowl, and scrambled toward the glass. Slipping the iron latch, he pulled himself out onto the wet, slick slate roof just as his front door burst inward with a deafening crash.

Cold rain lashed his face as he crawled along the roof’s narrow ledge. Below him, the alley was a swirling pit of shadows and rain-slicked cobblestones. Behind him, boots stomped through his ruined room, accompanied by shouting enforcers knocking over stacks of blank vellum.

Vaelric reached the iron drainpipe at the corner of the eaves. Gripping the rusted metal, he slid down the wall, his boots hitting the muddy alley floor with a dull splash. He ducked into the darkness, wrapping his wet coat tight around his chest as he sprinted away from the building.

The key in his vest pocket burned against his ribs, glowing faint purple through the damp fabric. It wasn't just pointing; it was pulling, exerting a subtle magnetic tug that guided his footsteps through the maze of the Saint Orwyn district.

As he reached the edge of the lower market square, the atmosphere grew suffocatingly dense. Torches sputtered in the downpour, held aloft by nervous city guards patrolling the perimeter. But it wasn't the guards that made Vaelric’s skin crawl; it was the people.

Small groups of civilians stood under building awnings, huddled together in frantic, hushed panic.

"I tell you, she just stared at me!" a baker was saying to his neighbor, his hands shaking as he gestured down the street. "Mrs. Gable was wandering the avenue in her nightgown, asking everyone if they knew where her front door was. It’s like her brain just turned to ash!"

Vaelric pulled his hood lower, his stomach twisting into a hard knot of guilt. Mrs. Gable. The cost of fixing a simple brass key.

He slipped beneath the shadow of a grand stone archway at the edge of the plaza, taking cover behind a thick support pillar. He pulled the brass key from his pocket. The violet light within the metal pulsed softly, mirroring the frantic rhythm of his own heart.

He needed to be sure. He had to know if what had happened to the old woman was truly his doing, or if he was simply losing his mind to panic.

Looking out toward the market square, he spotted a cluster of guards patrolling the far side of the plaza. The rain was thick, blinding, making it impossible to see if they were setting up a blockade across the main avenue.

Vaelric closed his eyes, focusing on the key in his palm. In his mind, the ancient phonetic symbols carved into the obsidian fragment etched themselves behind his eyelids. He remembered the syntax—the precise cadence for clarity, for piercing dark and illusion.

"I just need to see," he whispered, a desperate, bargaining tone creeping into his thoughts. "Just a minor sight. Nothing big."

He spoke the ancient syllables aloud under his breath. The words felt like cold iron on his tongue, smooth and unnaturally heavy.

Instantly, the gloom of the storm vanished from his perception. His vision flared into hyper-sharp clarity. The rain seemed to slow to falling drops of glass, and the dark plaza blazed with luminous trails. He could clearly see the blue, shimmering lines of Magisterium search-wards weaving between the buildings two streets over, marking the exact boundaries of the perimeter. It was effortless. His mind felt clear, untired, untouched by the usual draining fatigue of magic cast by standard spellcasters.

Then came the price.

A sharp, choked gasp echoed from the shadow of the archway just five feet away from him.

Vaelric snapped his head around. A young man wearing a leather cobbler’s apron stumbled out from beneath the stone overhang, dropping a small, polished brass pocket watch into the mud. The man fell to his knees, clutching his head with both hands, his body wracked by violent shivers.

Vaelric canceled the spell instantly. The luminous lines vanished, returning his vision to the dark, rain-soaked reality. He rushed forward, dropping to one knee beside the groaning man.

"Hey... hey, are you alright?" Vaelric asked, his voice raw.

The young man looked up. His eyes were wide, glassy, and completely hollowed of focus. He looked at the mud-stained pocket watch lying between them, then down at his own trembling hands. He opened the watch’s spring latch, revealing a delicate, painted portrait of a smiling young woman wearing a veil of white lace.

"I... I don't..." the cobbler stammered, tears suddenly brimming in his eyes and mixing with the rain on his cheeks. "Who is this?"

"Look at the picture," Vaelric urged, his heart hammering against his ribs like a sledgehammer. "Do you know her?"

"I know... I know I was somewhere warm," the man whimpered, his breath coming in ragged, terrified hitches. "There were white flowers. People were singing, clapping... I was holding someone's hand. But I can't... I can't see her face. God help me, why can't I remember my own wedding?!"

The man began to weep hysterically, pounding his fists helplessly into the wet cobblestones.

Vaelric recoiled as if he had been struck. He backed away slowly, his chest heaving, his mouth dry as ash.

He had done it again. To gain ten seconds of dark-vision, he had erased the happiest day of a complete stranger's life. He hadn't paid for the magic with his own soul; he had stolen it from a man who didn't even know he was being robbed. He wasn't just a scribe reading about monsters anymore. He was the monster.

Unable to stay in the open square, Vaelric turned and ran. He fled deep into the maze of abandoned alleys along the riverbank, stumbling blindly through the dark until he found the ruined shell of an old, disused bell tower. Crawling through a broken wooden hatch at its base, he collapsed onto a pile of dry, rotting straw tucked beneath the ancient timber supports.

He curled into a ball, clutching his knees to his chest, shivering violently from both the cold dampness of his clothes and the crushing weight of his guilt. The rain drummed relentlessly against the sagging roof structure above, a monotonous, mocking hum. Exhaustion finally overtook his panic, pulling him down into a fitful, dark sleep.

In his sleep, there was no rain. There was only stone, dust, and absolute silence.

Vaelric found himself standing once again in the circular underground chamber of the Saint Orwyn Catacombs. Before him lay the obsidian coffin, its chains shattered, its lid thrown wide open.

Inside, the preserved man lay motionlessly in his midnight-blue robes. But as Vaelric watched, the man’s head turned slowly toward him. Those starlit, vacuum eyes locked onto Vaelric’s soul.

“You feel the sting of the borrow, little scribe,” the corpse’s voice rasped. It didn't ring through the air; it vibrated inside Vaelric’s brain like iron grinding against stone.

"I'm hurting people," Vaelric said in the dream, his voice trembling with bitter anger. "I fixed a key, and an old woman forgot her house. I looked through the dark, and a cobbler forgot his wife. What kind of curse is this?!"

The corpse’s pale, aristocratic lips curved into a cold, lifeless smile.

“Magic is a debt, Vaelric. A fundamental weight of the world. It cannot be destroyed, nor can it be created from nothing. The Magisterium tells their mages that they pay the price themselves—that they sacrifice their own memories, their own history, to fuel their fires. But they lie.”

"They lie," Vaelric repeated, the image of Kaelen Thorne's stolen letter flashing in his mind.

“Energy is never lost,” the corpse whispered, its body rising into a slow, unnatural sitting position within the obsidian box, dark robes spilling around it like ink in water. “It is only moved. The ancient syntax does not create energy without cost; it simply transfers the burden. You do not pay, Scribe. Others pay for you.”

"I don't want it," Vaelric choked out, clenching his fists until his nails bit into his palms. "I won't use it again. I won't steal from innocent people."

“You think you are a predator?” The corpse let out a quiet, raspy sound that might have been laughter. “You are a child playing with sparks. The Magisterium builds its high towers and holds its grand empires on millions of stolen moments. They harvest the poor, the weak, the forgotten, funneling their very lives into the grand machinery of power. You are merely doing in miniature what your rulers do to the entire kingdom every single day.”

The corpse reached out a pale hand, pointing its long, slender finger directly at Vaelric's chest.

“The key is turned, Vaelric. The debt is moving. And the hounds have already picked up your scent.”

Vaelric snapped awake with a sharp, gasping breath, sitting bolt upright in the rotting straw. Cold sweat trickled down the back of his neck, mixing with the chill of the morning air.

Gray morning light was filtering through the cracks in the bell tower’s timber walls. The heavy downpour had subsided into a thin, miserable drizzle.

He pushed himself to his feet, his joints aching, and stepped out through the broken hatch into the alley. The air in the district felt heavy, unnatural, tainted by a lingering, metallic tang. As he walked toward the edge of the residential district, he heard more shouting, more crying.

The "memory fog" was spreading. The sudden, unexplainable amnesia affecting ordinary citizens across three blocks had caused utter chaos. Neighbors were arguing, families were panicking, and the city watch was completely overwhelmed, suspecting an outbreak of magical plague.

Vaelric pulled his damp hood tight over his black hair, keeping his gray eyes glued to the slick cobblestones as he hurried toward the lower market boundary. He needed to find a place to lay low, to figure out where the mended key was pointing before the Magisterium locked down the entire sector.

He turned a sharp corner into a narrow, stone-walled alley that led toward the river docks.

Suddenly, the shadows at the end of the alley deepened, stretching unnaturally across the wet stone walls.

A tall figure stepped smoothly out from behind an arched buttress, blocking his path entirely.

She wore a tailored, blue-mantled coat trimmed with fine silver thread—the official uniform of a high-ranking court investigator from the Royal Capital. Silver-blonde hair framed a sharp, strikingly pale face, and her gray-blue eyes locked onto Vaelric with terrifying, analytical precision.

In her right hand, she held an intricate, spinning brass instrument surrounding a glass sphere. Inside the glass, a tiny cloud of bruised-violet light was pulsing frantically—matching the exact cadence of the key in Vaelric’s vest pocket.

Elarisse Veymour took a slow, deliberate step forward, her left hand coming to rest lightly on the pommel of the rapier at her hip.

"You're leaving a very strange trail for a record-keeper, scribe," she said, her voice smooth, level, and entirely devoid of warmth. "Care to explain why four people in this alley just forgot their own names?"