My body felt extraordinarily light. Not in the way it had immediately after my core had been added, when energy had flooded me in a sudden, disorienting rush, but in a quieter, more controlled way. That first burst had been raw and unstable, a surge that my body had barely known how to contain, like a flood released all at once into channels that were not yet ready for it. This was different.

  Every movement felt cleaner. Every breath felt placed where it was meant to be, not forced, not shallow. I was not suddenly stronger in a dramatic sense. I was not twice what I had been, or even close to that. The change was smaller, more honest, and far more dangerous for that reason. Fifteen percent, maybe twenty. Enough that I could feel it in my joints when I shifted my weight, in the way my feet met the ground with certainty instead of hesitation, in the way my balance corrected itself without conscious thought. Where I had once been thin to the point of fragility, all sharp edges and hunger, I now felt almost sinuous, as though my body had finally remembered how it was meant to exist and had quietly corrected itself.

  The hallways of the guild were calm at this hour. Stone walls caught and softened sound, turning footsteps into a low murmur rather than an echo. Sunlight filtered in through high windows, catching dust in slow motion and painting pale shapes across the floor. I walked beside Meka, my staff steady in my hand, its familiar weight anchoring me. She cradled her bunny carefully in her arms, leaves rustling softly as it shifted and resettled itself. The motion was unconscious, protective. She held it the way someone held something precious they were still learning how to care for, careful not to squeeze too tightly, afraid of doing something wrong without knowing why.

  “Did you end up naming your bunny?” I asked, keeping my voice light.

  “Yep.” She nodded quickly, far too quickly, her head bobbing up and down in an enthusiastic rhythm that jostled the familiar. The bunny lifted its head and looked up at her with round, acorn-like eyes, patient and entirely unbothered by the movement. “His name’s Bunny.”

  I looked at her. The bunny looked at me. Then it looked back at Meka, ears twitching slightly as if the matter had already been settled beyond question.

  “Good name,” I said.

  We never spoke of it again.

  We continued walking, the quiet broken only by the soft sound of our steps and the occasional rustle of leaves. The guild was alive around us even in its calmer moments. Doors opened and closed. Voices drifted from distant rooms, indistinct and unimportant. Somewhere far off, metal rang softly against stone as someone trained or repaired equipment. It was the sound of a place that never truly slept.

  “All right,” I said after a moment. “Now that you have a familiar, things change. He can grant you.” I paused, glancing at her. “Well, he is a he, correct? You keep saying that.”

  “Yeah,” she said immediately. “He told me so.”

  “All right,” I said. “That makes sense.”

  I adjusted my grip on my staff as I thought about how to explain what came next. Teaching was not about knowing the most. It was about knowing what to leave out. “Bunny is a funnel for your magic, in a sense,” I said. “Similar to how a staff activates spells through the circuits inlaid within it, a familiar helps you regulate magical expenditure. But it does more than that. It weaves your magic into something new, something that already understands growth, decay, and balance.”

  I tapped the end of my staff lightly against the stone as we walked. The sound was soft and controlled. “A staff is stagnant unless it’s made of living wood. Even then, that kind of staff is closer to a familiar than a normal focus ever will be. A familiar is different. It’s a companion, a friend, and sometimes an adversary.”

  She frowned slightly at that last word. “What do you mean, an enemy?”

  “You know about the feeding,” I said. “Right?”

  “Yes,” she said quickly. “You told me that.” She nodded again, slower this time, more thoughtful. “I have to feed him some of my mana every day.”

  “Yes,” I said. “If you don’t, they will push back. Actively. Time and friendship change how that manifests, but their nature does not disappear. They are, in essence, fey creatures, and the fey are bound by rules older than most mortal civilizations.”

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  She tilted her head as she walked. “But don’t people have other kinds of familiars?”

  “They do,” I said. “Elementals. Lesser beasts. Constructs. Even spirits bound improperly, though that rarely ends well. But what you have is, I believe, an immature spriggan.”

  She stopped walking entirely and stared at me. “What’s a spriggan?”

  “A tree person from the fey lands,” I said.

  “I thought those were ents.”

  “No,” I said patiently. “Ents are tree people from the mortal realm.”

  She blinked once, then again. “Okay. This is getting confusing.”

  “I know,” I said. “It’s a lot of history. The important part is this. Bunny is a fey creature. Not an elder beast. Not a celestial. Not a demon. Not an elemental. He is a spirit of a tree. Spirit is the key word.”

  We resumed walking. I slowed my pace to match hers, making sure she was following. “Spirits generally come from one of two places,” I continued. “The plane of the fey, or the plane of death. Do not ever contract anything from the plane of death unless you are an extraordinarily powerful entity. It will corrupt you. It will try to drag everything toward death. That is how necromancers are born.”

  She stiffened slightly. “Aren’t necromancers evil?”

  I looked at her and shook my head. “Not inherently. Only when they don’t understand what they are dealing with. Those who start as necromancers are often less susceptible to the corruption, in much the same way that a mage is usually strongest in their first school of magic. Alignment matters.”

  I kept my voice even as we walked. “Those who begin in another school and then reach for death magic are more likely to take on that corruption, because it pushes against who they already are. That does not mean every first-school necromancer is good. Death is a tempting power, and temptation does not care about intentions.”

  I glanced at Bunny as the leaves shifted. “Even healing can be done through the school of death. Necromancy is only as evil as the person using it, and the corruption they allow to settle into themselves.”

  I slowed slightly, more to give her time than because I needed it. “Most people think life and death are opposites,” I said. “They aren’t. Growth is the opposite school of magic from death. Death ends things. Growth changes them.”

  I kept my voice calm, letting the words settle before continuing. “Life’s opposite isn’t death. It’s entropy. That’s something most people get wrong. In the same way, botanomancy is the opposite of pyromancy, not water and fire, and not nature and fire either. People assume opposites based on surface traits instead of underlying function.”

  I glanced at her briefly. “I could go on about the theory for a long time, but we don’t need to do that right now. You’ll understand it intuitively once you start to find your own path to power. That understanding comes with time.”

  I gave a small nod as we resumed our normal pace. “And we have plenty of time to go over it.””

  She walked in silence for a while, absorbing that. The bunny shifted in her arms, leaves brushing against her forearm.

  She looked down at Bunny, then back at me, hesitating. “I… I think I’m afraid of fire,” she admitted.

  “That is understandable,” I said. “And to become a true wizard, you will have to confront it. Just not yet.”

  I looked at Meka and continued before she could retreat into the thought. “There is one more thing you need to understand. When I say opposites, I do not mean enemies. I mean positions on the wheel. Magic is not a ladder or a line. It is a spectrum that turns, a wheel that never stops moving. Schools that sit opposite one another are not meant to cancel each other out. They are meant to define one another.”

  I tapped my staff once against the stone floor, a quiet punctuation. “Most people believe fire destroys plants and plants smother fire, so they call that opposition. That is shallow thinking. True opposition is deeper than surface effect. Pyromancy and botanomancy sit opposite one another because they both govern force and change. Fire grows through consumption. Plants grow through accumulation. Once you master both, you will see that they feed each other.”

  I glanced at Bunny as the leaves shifted. “Your pyromancy will strengthen your botanomancy. Your botanomancy will stabilize your pyromancy. Controlled heat encourages growth. Disciplined growth teaches restraint to flame. Fear is part of that balance. It comes from the school you begin with, not because you are weak, but because your magic is demanding that you understand its cost.”

  I exhaled slowly. “When I first trained, my first school was pyromancy. I was terrified of the woods. Not because they were dangerous, but because they represented everything fire does not understand easily. Growth without force. Persistence without hunger.”

  I looked at her and smiled faintly. “You and I are opposites on the wheel. I began with one of the easiest schools and had to master one of the hardest. You are beginning with one of the hardest, and one day you will learn one of the easiest, guided by someone who knows both.”

  The words caught slightly as I continued. “One of the greatest pyromancers of all time.”

  It made me feel faintly ill to say it aloud. As if I were reducing myself to a single trick, a single label. But when I looked at Meka, her eyes were bright, unafraid, and full of trust.

  So I smiled, and we walked on.

  My hand rose instinctively to stroke my beard as I considered the thought, and I froze when my fingers met nothing but air. For a moment, I stayed like that, hand hovering uselessly in empty space. Then I continued the motion anyway, stroking nothing at all, as if muscle memory alone might will it back into existence.

  I smiled faintly to myself as we walked. I could only hope for a future where my beard was glorious once again.