Orin's words didn’t register at first.

  Lecia was still staring at the cellar doors. At the way the air seemed to bend toward them. At the pressure crawling under her skin, heavy and old and waiting. The world beyond that rusted wood felt closer than the one she was standing in, like her body had already taken a step her feet hadn’t.

  “—Lecia?”

  She didn’t react.

  Orin clicked his tongue and waved a hand in front of her face. “Oi. Lessie, you in there? I said, you wanna go first or—”

  Her focus snapped back, sharp and sudden. Lecia blinked once, then looked up at him, the distant sheen in her golden eyes receding just enough to acknowledge his presence. She glanced back at the cellar doors—old, warped, but solid enough to hide something very real—before returning her gaze to Orin. Her head tilted a fraction, not curious so much as measuring.

  “…Why?”

  Lecia would've had no problem leading the way given what she felt. Whatever was down there had to be magickal in nature, she was certain of it. The only thing stopping her from completely disregarding Orin altogether and rushing ahead was the fact that it was Orin. She didn't trust the boy. That wouldn't stop her from going down into the cellar, but she wouldn't until she'd heard what he had to say first.

  Caught off guard by the response, Orin's frown of irritation faltered. He was quick to recover, though, shrugging like it didn’t bother him. “I mean, if you don’t wanna go, I can. But I figured you’d jump at the chance. You know, with how adventurous you are.”

  Lecia blinked, still not fully understanding. "...Adventurous?"

  "Yeah, you’re always sneaking out by yourself," Orin said, flashing that same slick smile. "No one knows what you’re up to. We figured you were making trips to Tradehaven, swiping extra food or maybe a few stags from idiots too dumb to notice. But no one’s got it figured out."

  He paused, his eyes narrowing as though thinking hard. "Actually... you don’t come back with much, now that I think about it."

  Lecia remained silent, her face unreadable. She wasn’t going to confirm or deny anything. Sure, she’d tried stealing food in Tradehaven now and then. Sometimes it worked, sometimes not. But she always slipped away before the Watch came running. It wasn’t just that she was small—it was something else, something she didn’t fully understand.

  Stealing coins wasn’t her thing, though; Orin and the others were better at that. But food and money weren’t really why she wandered out of Darkreach.

  Orin kept talking, not noticing her silence. "Point is, you’ve got a knack for poking around where you shouldn’t. I figured I’d let you have the honors this time."

  Lecia considered his words for a moment, then looked back at the cellar doors. “What’s down there?”

  Her voice stayed calm, flat, but something in the question made Orin’s smile flicker. He frowned, his cocky front cracking just a bit before he sighed.

  "Look, I wanted it to be a surprise,” he said, scrubbing at his messy blond hair. “But fine."

  He put on a show of being irritated, throwing a glance at the doors. "Me and the boys found this place earlier. Thought it might be full of old junk we could pawn off to Donluk. Some painting, old furniture, jewlery. Could’ve made a few silver horns, maybe even a full royal or two if we were lucky.”

  He crossed his arms, clearly annoyed. “But instead, we found some weird door."

  Lecia’s curiosity sharpened. "A door?"

  "Yeah," Orin said, his eyes narrowing as he tried to explain. "I mean, it might've been a way into the actual cellar or something, but it didn’t look right. It was stone, with carvings—magick stuff, you know?”

  Lecia’s heart gave a quick, unexpected flutter, though her face remained neutral. “Magick stuff? Like runes? Or sigils?”

  Orin snapped his fingers, his grin returning as he pointed at her. “Yeah! Like that. Runes and sigils and junk. I know you’re obsessed with that stuff, so I thought you’d want to check it out. But, hey, if you’re scared—"

  She'd heard enough.

  Throwing all suspicion to the wind without so much as a thought, Lecia stepped forward. Reaching down, she grabbed the cold iron handles of the cellar doors, and pulled without a word. Orin's smug grin didn’t escape her notice, but she ignored it.

  She tugged at the doors, but they barely shifted, groaning under the strain and kicking up a cloud of dust. She yanked again, her thin arms shaking with effort. On the third try, the doors creaked open a bit more.

  Lecia wasn’t strong. Anyone could see that. And she knew it herself. Still, she kept pulling, and on her fourth attempt, the doors gave way, creaking loudly as they swung open to reveal steep stone steps descending into darkness.

  Breathing hard, Lecia peered into the gloom below. The smell of damp stone, woodrot, and something old—like stale air that hadn’t moved in years—wafted up. Her pulse raced as she stared down, feeling a flicker of anticipation. Magicks. Runecraft. Hidden secrets. Something ancient and powerful could be down there, waiting to be discovered. That was enough to drive her legs forward, down the steps.

  She'd just taken her first step down, the stone beneath her feet cold and slick, when she heard movement behind her. She froze. Orin’s footsteps, right? She glanced back up, but before she could fully turn, something shoved her hard between the shoulders.

  Her feet slipped out from under her, and with a sharp, surprised gasp, she tumbled down the last few steps. Her elbow smacked painfully against the edge of one step, followed by a stinging scrape as her knee dragged along the rough stone. She landed hard on the cold, firm stone, her breath knocked from her lungs, and pain flared in her side where she’d hit.

  For a few moments, she just lay there, taking stock of the aches and throbs spreading through her body. Her palms stung from the fall, scraped and raw. She let out a small hiss of pain but didn’t cry out—just slowly pushed herself up onto her aching hands and knees, ignoring the dull throb in her bruised elbow and the sharp burn in her hip and knee.

  Before she could fully register what had just happened, the heavy groan of the cellar doors shutting filled the space, followed by a solid thump as they slammed shut above her. Lecia’s head snapped up, but the doors were already closed. Then came the sound of shuffling feet and muffled voices from above. Not just Orin’s voice—there were others too.

  Orin’s friends.

  Lecia’s mind clicked into focus too late. This had been a setup, a trap she’d walked right into. Orin had never cared about exploring the cellar or some magickal door. He’d lured her here, letting her think it was something else entirely. She'd known it might be a trap—was almost certain of it even, but she'd gone anyway. The call of aether combined with the allure of real, working magicks had been far too strong for her to resist.

  "Stupid..." Lecia muttered bitterly to herself, the irritation at having willingly walked into yet another one of Orin's schemes rising in her chest. That frustration turned to confusion as she heard the heavy scrape of something being dragged across the ground above her. Realization hit a moment later.

  They were blocking the doors.

  Ignore the pain, Lecia staggered to her feet, rushing up the steps and throwing her weight against the doors, but they didn’t budge. Lecia frowned, pressing harder on the doors, though without much hope. She wasn’t angry, not really. Annoyed. Frustrated, maybe. At herself more than them. She continued to push, shoving again and again, but it was useless. Whatever they'd put on the other side wasn’t moving. Lecia’s small frame barely made an impact.

  From outside, she heard a burst of mocking laughter—grating and cruel. "Serves ya right, midgelet!" a familiar voice rang out, rough and full of glee. "Thought you could get away with screwin’ me over? Thought you could just hide in Tradehaven and everything would be peachy? Think again, Little Lessie!"

  It was Derik. He was never far from Orin’s side, the muscle to Orin’s schemes, always eager to carry out whatever dirty work Orin needed. She didn’t have to see him to picture his greasy, unkempt hair clinging to his forehead or the way his piggish features twisted with malice. The fact that he hadn't been with Orin before now should have raised more alarm bells. Lecia had been to quick to dismiss it at the time.

  More's the blame on her for letting her gaurd down.

  He was bigger than most of the kids at the orphanage—strong, too—and he knew it. He used that strength to push others around, always looking for someone weaker to bully. His pudgy frame hid surprising power, and his mean-spirited nature made him one of the few she actively avoided. Orin might have been the ringleader, but Derik was the one who enjoyed getting his hands dirty.

  Lecia stared up at the sealed entrance, confused. What was he talking about? She hadn’t done anything to Derik—not that she could think of, anyway. Sure, he and his crew liked to push her around, and she never fought back. She usually just ran, hiding where they couldn’t find her. But screwing him over? She had no idea what he was on about.

  Then again, Derik always seemed to have it out for Lecia in particular, though she never understood and still didn't know why.

  More laughter echoed down, and then Orin’s voice cut in, smooth and unbothered. "Sorry about this, Lecia, really. But, y’know, the boys come first. Gotta look out for them." His voice was casual, as if betraying her was just another part of his day. "You get it, right? So, for now, you’re gonna stay put. It’s only for a little while, promise."

  "And don’t you worry," Derik chimed in, his voice dripping with malicious glee. "We’ll be back tomorrow morning, real early. You’ll be out in no time. Long as you behave yourself down there."

  Orin’s voice followed, calm and almost reassuring. "At least you won’t go hungry. You’ve still got that bread, right? Consider it a... peace offering. A little something to tide you over till we let you out."

  There was a pause, then a quieter, more self-satisfied tone. "And don’t sweat the Matron. I’ll make sure to put in a good word so she doesn’t come down too hard on you. Call it a favor."

  Derik let out a loud guffaw, his voice fading as he walked away. "Look at this guy! Playin’ the hero. The Saint of Darkreach, right here!"

  The sound of footsteps faded away, leaving nothing but thick silence behind. Lecia’s eyes stayed fixed on the doors for a moment longer, her chest feeling tight. It wasn't fear, not really—just that cold, heavy pressure she always felt when she realized how much smaller she was compared to everyone else.

  But being stuck down here wasn’t something she could change.

  She glanced back at the darkness below and let out a slow breath, descending the stairs again, one painful step at a time. The stone was cold under her feet, the air heavy with dampness. There was no point in lingering by the doors. They weren’t going to open. Orin and Derik made sure of that.

  Lecia stopped at the bottom of the stairs, letting her body relax. The shadows pressed in and the silence pressed down, but she ignored both. Intead, she let her shoulders drop. Her breathing slowed, shallow at first, then steadier. She closed her eyes and turned her attention inward—not to her thoughts, but to the space behind them, just behind her sternum, where that blazing aetheric ember lived.

  It wasn’t heat, not exactly. It was pressure. Potential. A quiet density that had nothing to do with muscle or bone. When her awareness brushed it, the aethercore answered—not generating anything new, but opening, condensing what already seeped through the world around her. Ambient aether slid inward along invisible gradients, thin at first, then thicker, pooling against the limits of what her core could safely hold.

  She felt those limits instinctively. Push too hard and the flow would stutter. Hold too much and it would shear away, wasted—or worse, tear at her from the inside. So she didn’t force it. She let the aether settle, guided by habit more than technique, until the pressure stabilized into something usable.

  Her mentor had insisted on breathing patterns, focus exercises, geometric visualizations. Lecia had never been good at the first two. She just did what she did and it seemed to work out. That woman who'd been kind enough to teach Lecia hadn't been too happy about her process—or lack thereof—but that never bothered Lecia. If it worked, it worked. That was all that mattered in the end.

  When the aether was stable, Lecia lifted her hand. She didn’t speak the spell. Spoken incantations were an important scaffolding—or so she'd been taught. But Lecia didn't agree. What if someone attack her while she was chanting a spell? Beyond that, wouldn't her words give the spell away? What if they had a counter? Even beyond that, Lecia just didn't like talking more than she had to.

  So she just learned to cast spells without saying them. What mattered was structure and that she could remember the incantation. The former had posed some problems in the past, and still did in some cases, but she had absolutely no issues with the latter. Honestly, Lecia wasn't sure why most Mages didn't just cast spell without all the complicated words.

  Lecia had seen her mentor do it, so it wasn't like it couldn't be done. Maybe she was just... missing something? Lecia asked the old woman about it once, but hadn't received a satisfactory answer, much to her irritation. Still, Lecia managed to pull it off in the end, and that was good enough for her.

  In her mind, two runes aligned: lēoht, the rune for "light" and f?t, the rune for "vessel". Not symbols in the abstract, but precise geometries—angles, intersections, proportions that dictated how aether would move once released.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  She knew the names of the runes from practice, but rather than the names, Lecia focused on visualizing the shapes and her intent. She traced them into the air with her finger, not carving power but defining flow, the way a channel defines a river. The ambient aether snapped into obedience the instant the geometry closed.

  For a heartbeat, the runes burned white-gold in the air, their lines humming with tension. Then they collapsed inward, structure dissolving as function replaced form. A small sphere of steady light bloomed above her palm, perfectly contained, perfectly stable. The glow washed over the stairwell, pushing back the dark without strain or flicker. Efficient. Clean. Almost elegant.

  Lecia exhaled softly and let the orb drift to hover beside her head. The light spread around her, chasing away the shadows, revealing slick stone walls and a floor damp with moss. The passage stretched out in front of her, longer than she’d expected. Deeper. But she wasn’t ready to move yet.

  Her elbow throbbed sharply as adrenaline faded, and her knee burned where skin had split against stone. Lecia frowned.

  Runes could heal, but not simply. True restorative runework required layered structures—feedback loops, load-balancing geometry, far beyond what she could safely hold in her core. Her mentor had been very clear about that.

  So Lecia reached instead for one of only two sigaldry spells she knew.

  In truth, Lecia wasn't sure what the difference between runes and sigils were other than that sigils too more effort to draw. Her mentor had mentioned something about stability and efficiency and "letting the world take the burden of intent from the caster". Lecia didn't understand the finer details but she figured her mentor was old enough that she knew what she was talking about.

  She pictured the sigil whole, already complete—an efficient compilation of many lines and runes collapsed into a single, rigid form. Sigils didn’t ask how to heal. They simply executed the instruction. All Lecia had to do was trace the image she saw in her mind, though that was easier said than done.

  She drew slower this time. The lines were longer, the curves less forgiving. Lines connecting runes connecting lines in a complex, deliberate pattern. Aether drained from her core at a steady rate, the pressure inside her chest thinning as it fed the geometry. The sigil resisted her slightly—not alive, but inflexible. It demanded precision.

  Her hand trembled once. She corrected, forcing the line back into proportion before the structure could destabilize.

  The sigil sealed.

  It flared emerald and vanished, its stored logic discharging all at once. Warm aether washed over her body in a searching sweep, snagging on the injuries like hooks finding purchase. The sharp pain dulled to a distant ache; torn skin knit enough to stop bleeding. Bruises remained—sigaldry was conservative, not miraculous and it was a weak incantation besides—but the damage was stabilized.

  Lecia leaned back against the wall, breathing hard. Her core felt lighter now, closer to empty than she liked. That was fine. It had done its job.

  Lecia sat down, her back against the damp wall, the light orb hovering close. The passage ahead still called to her, the thought of something powerful down there stirring inside her chest again. But she could wait a little longer. She pulled the moldy loaf of bread from her cloak and inspected it. It had been crushed slightly in the fall, the loaf crumbling a bit in her tiny hands, but it was still mostly intact and edible.

  Good enough.

  Lecia gnawed on the rough bread, her teeth sinking into the stale crust as her eyes remained fixed on the dark tunnel ahead. The moldy taste barely registered—it was food, that’s all that mattered in the face of her hunger. She had other things to think about anyway. Whatever was down that passage, she’d find it. There wasn’t much else to do but wait for her body to stop aching and then move forward.

  The quiet settled in, cold and damp. Lecia found herself thinking about how easily she’d fallen for Orin’s setup. She should have seen it coming. Of course, he’d pull something like this. It wasn’t the first time he’d tried to humiliate her. She let out a small breath, more annoyed with herself than with him.

  She should’ve known better.

  But he’d dangled the one thing in front of her that always got her moving—magick. That was her weakness, and he knew it. Ever since she’d first seen the towers of Magehollow rising beyond Darkreach, her mind had latched onto one thing: becoming a Mage. More than anything else, she wanted that life. She wanted to learn runecraft and sigaldry, walk through the halls of the Veilheim's Grand Library, and study at the Veilheim Academy of the Runic Arts.

  Her mentor had painted such a grand picture in her mind, and Lecia couldn't let it go. She refused to. Orin said a lot of things Lecia didn't necessarily agree with or care about, but when it came to runecraft—the Runic Arts—he'd been right on the mark. For her, becoming a mage wasn’t just a dream. It was an obsession.

  Most of the other kids in Darkreach only talked about it in passing, like it was something fun to imagine but never really serious. But Lecia… Lecia had nothing else. She didn’t have a family, didn't have a past, didn’t have a future here. As far as anyone was concerned, she was just another squalorspawn from the Beggar’s Quarter. A waste of space. The only person who had ever thought otherwise was her mentor, that strange old woman who’d so brazenly stumbled into her life.

  Lecia chewed the bread thoughtfully, her eyes narrowing a little as she remembered. That crone had swept in like a tempest, all cackles and strange mutterings, and suddenly Lecia’s life had turned upside down. She hadn’t even taught Lecia much, but what little she did pass on was more valuable than anything Lecia had ever known.

  "Wonder where she is... that crazy old lady..." Lecia murmured, the words slipping out between bites of the moldy bread. It wasn’t like the old woman to stay in one place for long—she'd vanished as suddenly as she had appeared. Lecia doubted she even realized what she had done. But because of her, Lecia now had a real chance—a shot at escaping Darkreach and becoming something more than the dirt beneath the city’s heel.

  Those who knew Lecia were aware of her fixation on the Runic Arts. It was, after all, the reason she found herself in this mess. What they didn’t know, however, was that she could already cast a few spells—though, in truth, they were more like simple cantrips compared to what an actual Academy student could do.

  Still, Lecia knew better than to let anyone else find out. Not the kids at the orphanage. Not Matron Melora. No one. The moment they knew, they’d find a way to tear her down, to crush her before she could even take her first steps out of here. No, it was best to keep quiet. Keep practicing in secret. Until she was ready.

  Lecia finished the bread and stood up, brushing crumbs from her hands. There was no going back now. She had to move forward, into the tunnel Orin had tricked her into exploring. His story about the magickal door was probably a lie—he was good at making up just enough to get what he wanted—but still… part of her hoped. Maybe there was something down here. Anything kind of magick would do.

  Her feet padded softly on the damp stone, the light orb bobbing at her side. The tunnel seemed to stretch endlessly, far longer than it should have. Lecia couldn’t help but notice how unnaturally quiet it was. The only sound was the faint slap of her steps against the floor. She usually liked the silence, but this felt different. Wrong, somehow.

  Time passed—five minutes, ten, then a half hour—and the passage just kept going. It had gone far beyond the limits of the estate above by now. The air grew colder, and the feeling in her chest started to shift. Lecia slowed, her golden eyes scanning the walls, her steps growing more cautious.

  Something had changed. She wasn’t sure what, but it was there, like an itch just under her skin. Her steps stopped altogether as the sensation hit her fully.

  She was being watched.

  It wasn’t the first time Lecia had felt like this. Walking through Darkreach and Tradehaven, there were always people lurking, keeping an eye on anyone they thought they could corner. But this was different. This was heavier, older. Whatever it was, it wasn’t some beggar looking for trouble.

  Her heart picked up speed, and despite the cold that now seemed to bite at her skin, a sheen of sweat began to form. Whoever—or whatever—was watching her, it didn’t seem hostile. But the weight of that gaze pressed on her, like it was testing her. Judging her.

  Lecia stood frozen for a moment, her breath catching in her throat. She could turn back, walk away. But that thought didn’t last long. No, there was something here. Something important. And she wasn’t about to run from it.

  Taking a deep breath, Lecia forced her legs to move. The silence stretched on, but the oppressive weight of those unseen eyes didn’t go away. Whatever was watching her, it was still there, following her every step. The longer she walked, the more curious she became. This wasn’t normal. The path had gone too far, the air too cold, the distance too unnatural.

  Something was waiting for her, she was sure of it. And whatever it was, Lecia was going to find it. Lecia muttered under her breath, her words barely more than a whisper. "Magick... it has to be..." Her tone did little to convey excitement, but beneath the surface, her chest swirled with anxious anticipation. She could feel it—the same pull that always drew her toward anything connected to the Runic Arts.

  Her steps quickened almost without her realizing it. The heavy feeling of the ancient gaze was gone now, and with it the strange, oppressive atmosphere. Lecia barely noticed. All that filled her mind was the pull of whatever lay ahead. Her heart pounded in her ears, the sense of anticipation growing with each step. She had to know what was waiting for her.

  Suddenly, the tunnel gave way to something else, and Lecia stumbled to a halt. Her eyes widened as she took in the sight before her. There it was—her destination, standing tall in the dim light of her conjured orb.

  A door.

  It hadn’t just appeared, though it felt like it had. She’d been so caught up in the rush of the moment that time and distance had slipped past her unnoticed. One second she was walking, and the next, the door was right in front of her.

  Lecia blinked, her golden eyes, usually so dull, shining with awe. Something else stirred inside her too—something like reverence, though she wouldn’t have known to call it that. Was this the door Orin saw? Or did his lie just coincidentally happen to be true in the end? The door was clearly wood and not stone, so Lecia guessed it was the latter—not that it mattered regardless.

  Lecia could practically taste the aether spilling from the door, or perhaps whatever was behind it was the culprit. Lecia didn't know, but that only got her heart pumping faster.

  The door itself wasn’t large. It looked ordinary at first glance, but as Lecia's gaze moved over it, she realized just how wrong that impression was. It was crafted from a strange, dark wood she didn’t recognize, but that wasn’t what held her attention. Etched into the surface of the door were intricate, swirling shapes—shapes that defied description, twisting and turning in ways that made her head spin if she stared too long.

  The patterns seemed to pulse faintly, as if they were alive, and Lecia couldn’t shake the feeling that she had seen them before, in the shape that haunted her recurring dream. A cold, dark void. It was almost like standing on the edge of that dream again, staring into something vast and unknowable. The frame around the door twisted like ancient roots, every knot hiding tiny details that seemed to shift the longer she looked.

  Her gaze drifted to the doorknob. Simple brass, polished and gleaming. It looked so out of place against the ancient wood that it jarred her from her thoughts. Lecia shook her head, reminding herself she couldn’t just stand here forever. As much as the door fascinated her, it wasn’t the door itself that mattered—it was what lay beyond it.

  Steeling herself, Lecia reached out, her hand trembling slightly. Her fingers closed around the doorknob, and The moment her fingers closed around the brass knob, her core reacted. Not pain. Not fear. Pressure—external and absolute.

  A presence surged through the chamber, not flooding it with raw power but overwriting it, imposing structure so vast her own core could barely comprehend the edges of it. The ambient aether froze, pinned in place like iron filings around a lodestone. Then a voice entered her—not through her ears, but through the same channels she used to shape spells.

  "Ic, Eald Hr?fn, dēom t?t tis cild is gehāten LeFay, swā hit w?s gediht fram mīnum forman and endemestan hlāforde. Gecume fort, L?tel Ierfa, and genim tīn gebyrdr?ht."

  The voice thrummed with old aether, the words crashing into her thoughts with the weight of an undeniable command. Lecia’s knees nearly buckled under the sheer force of it. She barely registered what the voice was saying—it was like the meaning slipped through her fingers the moment she tried to grasp it. Vertigo hit her like a wave, and her vision swam, but what scared her more was that she couldn’t pull her hand away from the doorknob.

  It was stuck.

  The cold of the metal sank into her skin, sharp and biting, but no matter how hard she tried to pull away, she couldn’t let go. The voice reverberated in her skull, growing louder and more overwhelming until she thought it might tear her apart.

  The doorknob had become an anchor point, binding her core’s signature to something far older, far heavier. Aether screamed through her channels, not damaging them—testing them—measuring capacity, stability, response.

  A click.

  The door suddenly swung open with a groaning creak, pulling Lecia with it. She stumbled forward, the force of the movement yanking her off her feet. Her body hit the cold floor hard, her hands scraping against the stone as she fell. The freezing grip on her hand finally released, but the sensation lingered, leaving her fingers numb and aching.

  Lecia lay there for a moment, gasping for breath. The air inside the room was heavy, thick with something ancient and powerful. Darkness pressed in on her from every side, and the light orb she had conjured flickered weakly before going out entirely, snuffed out like a candle in a storm. Lecia was a small thing, but for the first time in a long while, she truly felt that fact with her entire being. Whatever was in this room… it was beyond anything she had ever imagined.

  Lecia pushed herself to her feet, her limbs trembling as she stood. Her eyes, usually so dull and flat, were wide with shock—a rare, unguarded expression she hadn't even known she was capable of. She realized quickly that she didn’t need her orb of light anymore. The room—or rather, the chamber—was dimly lit by pale golden flames flickering in old iron sconces. They clung to the cracked, vine-covered walls, their soft glow revealing a scene of ruin and decay.

  The stones around her were engraved with the same strange shapes and symbols she had seen on the door. They would have been beautiful once, mysterious and ancient, but time had worn them down. The vines had crept over everything, sinking their roots into the cracks and crumbling the walls. It was as if the entire chamber had been forgotten, left to rot for centuries. It all evoked antiquity, the occult, and something strangely familiar—something infinitely close to nostalgia.

  Lecia could feel it. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she puzzled at the sensation. Unfortunately, she couldn't spare much attention for the ruins or the mystery of her odd emotions. Her eyes were firmly locked on something else entirely.

  Beyond the fallen pillars and debris, the chamber was mostly empty, save for one thing—a pedestal at its center, wrapped in the same creeping vines. And resting on that pedestal, bathed in the dim light of the flames, was a tattered book. The leather cover was worn almost to shreds, the pages yellowed and fragile.

  Even from where she stood, Lecia could tell it was important. It was more than just some old, forgotten relic. There was something about it—something deep in her gut that told her this book was worth more than she could imagine. But any awe she might have felt was drowned out by the heavy, suffocating shock coursing through her as she looked up and saw what towered over the pedestal.

  The pressure in the chamber wasn’t force in the usual sense. It was presence—an aetheric mass so coherent that the ambient flow bent around it. Lecia felt it immediately, the way not just her aethercore but her entire body strained to reconcile something that should not need a core at all.

  A raven.

  It was massive, far larger than any bird Lecia had ever seen, its pitch-black feathers swallowing the dim light of the chamber like a void. The creature’s size was terrifying, its looming form nearly scraping the ceiling. She could feel its presence, an overwhelming arcane force that pressed down on her like a weight. The air itself seemed to pulse with it, thick and suffocating. Lecia couldn’t breathe. She could barely even stay upright.

  It was a raven, that much was clear, but it was also something more—something legendary, something out of the ancient myths she’d read in old, crumbling books. And that presence. That oppressive arcane energy. It was too much. Lecia could feel her thoughts splintering under the sheer force of it.

  “A... Familiar…” she rasped, barely able to push the word from her throat, her voice hoarse and strained.

  Familiars. Creatures of pure aether, summoned from some far-off realm that no human could understand. At least, that’s what her mentor had told her once. The description fit. This raven wasn’t like anything from her world. Lecia’s thoughts swirled in a frantic mess, tangled up in awe, fear, and confusion.

  What was this? Was this really happening?

  She wanted to ask questions, but her voice had left her, her mind too overwhelmed to form any coherent thoughts. The raven’s presence weighed down on her so heavily that it felt like her body was being crushed by it. Her legs shook, and she thought she might collapse at any moment.

  But then, just as quickly as it had come, the pressure vanished.

  Lecia gasped, drawing in a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Suddenly able to move again, she stumbling forward a step before righting herself. The weight that had pinned her to the ground lifted, disappearing as if it had never been there in the first place. She stared at the enormous raven, still in shock, her breaths ragged and uneven.

  The creature opened its beak, dark as obsidian, and its voice, deep and ancient, filled the chamber.

  “Be at ease, child… you’ve naught to fear from one such as me…”

  The raven’s voice echoed through Lecia, heavy with age and power, each word vibrating in her bones. Her heart pounded as she tried to make sense of what was happening, the line between dream and reality blurring. The weight of the moment was overwhelming, like nothing she had ever experienced, and she could feel the questions bubbling up inside her—questions she couldn’t quite form, even though they pressed against her mind.

  Despite the fear and confusion, something flickered within her. Hope. This wasn’t just another strange moment in the ruins—this felt like the beginning of something bigger, something she had always longed for. Lecia swallowed hard, her throat dry, but as she stood under the raven’s watchful gaze, she steadied herself. Whatever came next, she would deal with it, just like she did with everything else in her life.