Jonath eyed the rubble with a deepening scowl. The more thoroughly he looked it over, the more he realized they couldn't simply blast it all away—not in a narrow, load-bearing tunnel like this.

  “We’ll need to take it slow,” he grumbled. “Risk the whole tunnel collapsing otherwise. Void take me, we don’t have time for this…”

  As he stood there silently fuming at the inconvenience, Miselle walked over until she stood beside their irate leader. She gave the blockade a brief once-over before addressing Jonath, her reply sharp.

  “I’ll send word to the Magister, though he won’t be pleased with the delay." She hesitated a moment, then spoke again. "Setting that aside, though, there was something about that little girl.”

  "The squalorspawn?" Jonath replied distractedly, his focus still on the rubble, "What about her?"

  Miselle’s amber eyes narrowed a fraction, the only outward sign that Jonath’s dismissal grated on her.

  “Three things,” she said, and held up gloved fingers like she was tallying errors in a ledger. “Her eyes. The timing. And her… signature.”

  Jonath’s attention flicked toward her at last, the scowl still carved into his face like a permanent rune.

  “Her eyes?” he echoed. “She’s a starving street brat from Darkreach. They all look half-dead.”

  “That’s precisely why hers stood out,” Miselle replied, voice clipped. “Starving children don’t look like that. Not really. You saw them. Empty. Not dazed, not fearful, not defiant. Empty in the way a well with no water is empty.” Her gaze slid back toward where the girl had been crouched against the wall, as if she expected to see her still sitting there like a stain in the stone.

  Jonath clicked his tongue. “You’re waxing poetic.”

  “I’m being accurate.” Miselle’s jaw tightened. “And that’s only one point.”

  Jonath exhaled through his nose, slow, annoyed, but he didn’t cut her off again. That alone was a concession.

  Miselle continued. “Second: timing. We finally track the lead to a particular cellar on the edge of Old Noblecrest, after hours of chasing aether eddies and false trails through the Beggar’s Quarter… and the moment we breach the surface barricade, we find a child already inside the access tunnel. Not outside. Not hiding in the estate ruins. Inside.”

  Jonath’s gaze drifted up the stairwell for a moment, as if re-running the morning in his mind. The stone slab they’d shifted aside had been heavy enough that even Calbert had needed to set his feet and flex his back. Several children working together could've moved it, certainly, and the girl had mentioned she was tricked into coming down here.

  That tracked, but what were the odds this would've happened just when they'd arrived? There was also a chance the brat had been lying through her teeth. Maybe she'd set the whole thing up to make herself look like a victim. Jonath wouldn't have put it past these gutter filth. He wouldn't have trusted a single one of the Darkreach denizens to clean the grime off his boots.

  Still...

  “Perhaps it is a strange coincidence, but what of it?” Jonath pressed, though the irritation in his voice had changed flavor—less dismissive, more wary. “Speak plainly, Miselle. Just what are you getting at?”

  Miselle’s lips thinned, her brows furrowing in consternation. “I'm... not sure yet, but that girl... Her eyes. Her presence here, now of all times... Something about her rubs me the wrong way.”

  Jonath scoffed but Miselle continued before he could reply.

  Her eyes sharpened once more as she raised a third finger. “And the third thing—what really sets me on edge—is her aether signature.”

  That made Jonath finally turn his body toward her. It was subtle, but Miselle could tell the phrase landed. Aether signatures weren’t gossip. They weren’t feelings. They weren't hunches or suggestions that could be dismissed. They were measurable. Tangible. And Miselle had a particle knack for sniffing them out.

  “You actually got a read?” he asked.

  Miselle grimaced. “Somewhat. It was faint, but she has enough potential that I caught a whiff of it. It wasn't... normal.”

  Jonath’s eyes narrowed. “Explain.”

  Miselle’s gaze drifted down to the stone under her boots. For a heartbeat her expression shifted into something almost thoughtful—an inward-facing look that only appeared when she was putting sensation into structure.

  “Most people have a signature that matches their life,” she said. “Ambient seep, personal throughput, the faint imprint of repeated habits. Darkreach folk tend to have signatures like smoke—thin, smeared, inconsistent. Malnourishment, exposure, stress. Their cores sputter and recover and sputter again.”

  Jonath’s scowl deepened, not at her explanation but at the mental picture.

  “That girl,” Miselle continued, “was… clean. Not clean as in healthy. Clean as in coherent. Like she’s been routed through a stable pattern for a long time. And underneath that, there was a… hitch.” Her fingers flexed unconsciously, as if feeling the snag again. “A resonance that didn’t belong in her body.”

  Jonath stared at her.

  Miselle met his stare without blinking. “Something is bound to her,” she said quietly. “Or something has marked her. It feels a bit like a Familiar, but... not quite. I'm not entirely sure how to explain it, but like I said, it isn't normal.”

  The tunnel seemed to grow colder, if only because the words suggested it. Jonath gave her words some thought before frowning. Miselle was a model student. Brilliant in ways not even Jonath himself could match, much as it irked him to admit. This was especially true when it came to aether manipulation. She could be trusted when it came to this kind of topic.

  And in fact, the more he thought about it, the more Jonath recalled overhearing something the Magister had said as they finished their brief. He hadn't caught most of it, but there was something. Something about a child...

  "Could she be—"

  Before Jonath could give voice to the thought, Mari's half sigh, half groan of protest came from the corner of the corridor.

  “Oh, come off it,” she said, pushing a damp curl behind her ear beneath the brim of her cap. “She was just a wee thing, cautious and probably hungry. It’s Darkreach—folk down here look strange because life’s strange. So maybe she’s got a quare affinity. So maybe she's got a Familiar squirreled away. So what? Not like it's any of our business."

  Miselle’s eyes cut to Mari like a blade. “It is if it gets in the way of our task.”

  Mari glowered right back. "And who says it will? You?"

  "I know a potential liability when I see one,” Miselle snapped. “And every instinct I have is telling me that girl is—”

  "'Instinct' my arse!”

  And with that, Mari stormed back up the stairs without another look back. A flash of outrage crossed Miselle's normally icy features, but just as she called out to her fellow student, Jonath spoke up.

  “Enough,” he said. The word cracked through the corridor with the practiced authority of someone used to being obeyed. “Let her be, Miselle.”

  "But—"

  "I said, let it go," he repeated with a glare. "It's not like I don't trust your judgement, but we do have more important things to focus on right now, like that aforementioned task."

  Miselle’s eyes remain fixed on the stone staircase, her gaze still simmering, but didn't say anything more. That was good enough for Jonath, who turned his gaze back to the rubble.

  “I get where you're coming from, and I agree that the child is suspicious, but we don’t have the luxury of chasing shadows on a hunch—not even yours. The Magister wants this done before his meeting tonight, and we’ve already burned half the day navigating this rat maze.”

  When Miselle still looked dissatisfied, Jonath let out a small, irritated sigh.

  "If it'll make you feel better, I'll bring it up to the Magister once we return," he said. "We'll let him decide whether or not the brat is worth looking into, so focus on what we came here to do."

  Miselle’s expression relaxed slightly and she inclined her head once. It wasn’t gratitude. It was acknowledgement. Jonath was at least wise enough to keep dangerous facts in a safe mental box and, failing that, he knew when to pass the responsibility on and who to pass it to. Mari’s eyes flicked toward the stairs, as if she could still see the small girl being hauled away.

  And if in answer to her thoughts, heavy bootsteps sounded from above growing closer by the second. Before long, Calbert Grimm appeared, stomping down the stairwell, broad shoulders filling the opening like a door of his own. He looked over his two peers with a scowl that suggested he’d already been in a bad mood before he woke up this morning.

  “What?” he rumbled.

  “Nothing, don't worry about it," Jonath replied with a dismissive wave of his hand. He turned to Miselle. "Go ahead and let the Magister know this may take longer than expected."

  Miselle nodded and stepped away. From the inner pocket of her blazer she drew a narrow strip of vellum, stiff with embedded geometry. The sigaldric array was already there—fine, ash-gray lines pressed into the surface, inert until fed. Condensing her message into pure intent, she set her thumb against the mark at its base and let a measured pulse of aether bleed from her core.

  The vellum warmed as the miniature array engaged. Lines brightened in sequence, collapsing the message into a bounded pattern. The strip curled slightly as the final constraint locked, then the geometry discharged and went blank—its work done.

  High above them, far beyond sight, the Academy’s relay lattice accepted the packet and stepped it along its anchored path, node to node, without haste or interpretation.

  Miselle slipped the dead vellum back into her pocket. “The relay took it,” she said. “He’ll receive the notice once it clears the upper chain.”

  Jonath’s jaw ticked. “He’ll be furious.”

  “He’ll survive,” Calbert grunted in reply, a flicker of dryness slipping through his stony expression. "Wasn't our fault. He'll understand that. Probably."

  Calbert’s gaze flicked upward, just in time to see Mari barrel back down the stairs. A heartbeat later she nearly collided with him. She skidded to a stop, breath puffing in the cool air, eyes wide. Calbert didn’t bother acknowledging the girl. Instead he moved past her and up the staircase, just enough to grab hold of the cellar doors and pull them shut.

  Mari pressed a hand to her chest. “Sorry—!”

  Miselle watched Calbert head back down the steps before returning her cold amber gaze to Mari, her eyes narrowing. “What were you doing up there?”

  “Making sure the girl gets some grub in her before she scampers off home," Mari replied, her chin lifted, lime green eyes daring Miselle to argue. "You got a problem with that?"

  Miselle's expression said she had several, but it was Calbert who responded first.

  “You didn't tell her anything she didn't need to know, did you?” he asked pointedly, his tone dangerous.

  Mari just rolled her eyes at the bulky student. "'Course I didn't, ya big lug. I'm not daft, I'm just givin' the poor dear a helpin' hand is all."

  "In a place like this, some would call that daft," Miselle muttered.

  Mari just stuck her tongue out at the other woman.

  Calbert stared at her for a long moment, expression unreadable. Then he sighed and shook his head before stepping past her and rejoining the other two students.

  “Bleeding hearts,” he muttered as he passed her, voice low. “Always dripping on someone else’s floor.”

  Mari glared after him, then hurried to catch up. As the two of them joined Jonath and Miselle, the light from Jonath’s orb slid across Calbert's baldric and the massive sword strapped to his back—an absurd thing to carry in an underground passage, and yet Calbert wore it like a natural extension of his spine.

  He stopped beside Jonath and jerked his chin toward the stairwell.

  “She’s gone to play saint,” he said.

  Jonath’s scowl deepened. “Yes. I heard.”

  Calbert snorted. “She’ll get herself killed one day.”

  Miselle’s voice was ice. “Or she’ll get someone else killed.”

  "I'm standin' right here, ye bastards!" Mari called out from the side. The others ignored her.

  Calbert shrugged, indifferent. “Either way, she won’t be moving rubble. So. What’s the plan?”

  Jonath turned back to the blockage and rubbed his temples.

  The tunnel ahead had collapsed in a brutal choke of stone and timber. Old beams—half-rotted—had snapped and wedged themselves into the pile like broken ribs. A section of wall had sloughed inward, leaving loose rock that would shift if they so much as sneezed at it wrong.

  They could blast it, yes. Jonath could whip out an incantation for a concussive pulse. Miselle could probably do something similar. Both their methods would doubtless be clean and efficient, but if they carelessly destabilized the load-bearing stone above, the whole corridor might come down like a guillotine.

  They'd be buried before any of them could get a spell off, and whatever they'd been sent to retrieve would be buried right along with them. Never mind the Magister's wrath—Jonath refused to let his corpse be a mere stepping stone on the path of succession for his siblings. He wasn't sure what his teacher was planning or what he was looking for, but Jonath would be damned to the Stygian Wastes before he died here.

  Jonath ground his teeth, then inhaled and let out a calming breath. Getting worked up about his family wouldn't help matters. All he needed to do was make sure they did what needed to be done. He could do that. He was Jonath Crenwell, third son of the Crenwell Family, and for the Crenwells, failure was unacceptable.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “This obstruction alone has already put us behind schedule,” Jonath said, his voice calm but firm as he surveyed the collapsed stone and splintered timbers. “That means we don’t rush to compensate. We slow down, we work deliberately, and we make sure nobody makes a mistake we can’t undo.”

  Miselle arched a brow, studying him rather than the rubble. “Slow and steady is sensible,” she said, “but that still leaves the question of how. This isn’t a clean collapse. The stress lines are tangled.”

  Jonath was quiet for a moment, his azure eyes moving across the barricade, tracing the way the stone leaned, the way the beams bowed under weight they were never meant to carry. At last, he nodded to himself. “We rely on earth-based incantations first. Nothing dramatic. We loosen the structure a little at a time, brace what’s still bearing weight, and peel the obstruction back layer by layer instead of trying to force it open.”

  Calbert followed Jonath’s gaze, his expression as stony as the rubble before them. “And when something comes free,” he said, “I take it out of the way.”

  “Yes,” Jonath replied immediately, meeting Calbert’s eyes. “But only once we’re certain it’s no longer carrying load. I don’t want brute force turning a controlled removal into a cave-in.”

  Calbert gave a low grunt. In Calbert-language, it meant he understood and accepted the constraint.

  Miselle stepped closer to the wall, placing a hand against the stone. Her gaze unfocused as she let her senses probe deeper, feeling the hidden pressures and subtle shifts of ambient aether beneath the surface and between the cracks. After a few seconds, she drew her hand back.

  “The wooden beams need to be addressed first,” she said. “They’re acting like a skeletal frame right now. If we remove the wrong one too early, the entire pile could shift inward—and if that happens, the ceiling above us will likely follow.”

  Jonath inclined his head. “Then I’ll stabilize the surrounding stone before anything is moved. Miselle, you identify the load-bearing beams and the stress points around them, and you anchor those points so nothing transfers weight unexpectedly. Calbert, once something is properly freed, you move it clear. Nothing gets lifted until we’re all certain it’s safe.”

  Calbert’s mouth twitched, just barely, in something that might have been a smile if his face were more expressive. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not here to be impressive. I’m here to make sure this wall isn’t here when we’re done.”

  Jonath nodded once. “Good. Then let’s begin—carefully.”

  "Give me a moment first," Miselle suddenly spoke up.

  Jonath scowled at the interruption, but watched silently as the woman reached into her pocket again and produced a stick of pitch-black inscription chalk—thin yet sturdy, the kind used for temporary warding marks. She crouched and began sketching short sigaldric braces along the tunnel wall: simple geometric knots that would distribute load and prevent micro-fractures from propagating.

  “Jonath, can you put up a sound dampening field?” she asked without looking up.

  Jonath frowned. “Is that really necessary?”

  Miselle answered without skipping a beat, her hand tracing lines without pause. “If we want to ensure this task is kept under wraps, yes.”

  "If we wanted to ensure this task was kept under wraps, we should've done more to keep the kid quiet," Calbert commented bitterly.

  Mari, who'd been content to leave the planning up to the rest of her team, suddenly spoke—her tone quiet and dangerous as she looked over to Calbert.

  "An' just what are ye suggestin', Calbert?" she asked. "Ye lookin' to slaughter a child in cold blood on the off chance she might go gabbin' about a plan we barely know anythin' about?"

  She snorted in disgust when Calbert didn't respond with anything more than a slight twitch of his brow.

  "I swear, you Warrior types are all the same," she muttered, turning away from the man.

  Jonath only gave the two a brief glance before addressing Miselle's request.

  “This section of Darkreach seems fairly empty, but I did notice a few rats scurrying about,” he said. “And while Calbert does have a point about the little loose-end, there's not much we can do about it right now. That said, I suppose your suggestion isn't an unreasonable precaution. A standard dampening field, then. Minimal radius—enough to cover the tunnel and the immediate area surrounding the ruins above.”

  Miselle nodded.

  "That should be sufficient."

  With that, Jonath inhaled, then exhaled, letting his core open just enough to draw ambient aether into a stable pool. His fingers moved in a tight, precise pattern—sigaldric geometry formed and linked as he spoke the complex incantation aloud, not flashy, not ornate. Just functional. With the last rune drawn and the last syllable spoken, the air briefly warped, an invisible ripple spreading through and beyond the tunnel.

  In its wake, all sound dulled slightly. Dust settled faster. Even the light orb seemed to hover more quietly. Miselle’s shoulders eased a fraction. She continued her inscriptions, each mark sealing with a faint shimmer as the compiled logic took hold. Calbert watched for a moment, then rolled his shoulders and flexed his hands, as if preparing to wrestle a boulder.

  “Now,” Jonath said, exhaling slowly as he rolled tension out of his shoulders. “We start with the outer layer. Nothing structural yet. I want the surface loosened before we even think about removal.”

  He stepped in close and flicked out a complex sigil before setting his palm against the stone, fingers splayed. The incantation was quiet, almost conversational—earth-aspect, friction eased rather than broken. The stone answered reluctantly. Tiny shifts rippled beneath his hand as resistance bled away, seams softening just enough to allow movement without collapse.

  Miselle watched the response for half a breath, then knelt and added her own work. A stabilizing mark went down beside his hand, not flashy, not ambitious—just enough to keep the loosened gravel from deciding to go its own way.

  “That should keep it from sloughing inward,” she said, eyes tracking the stone rather than Jonath. “But I doubt it'll hold properly if we rush it.”

  “I wasn’t planning to,” Jonath replied. “I like my spine where it is.”

  Calbert stepped forward, reaching for one of the exposed beams. He gave it a testing push, just enough to feel how it resisted.

  “Wait,” Miselle snapped, sharp as a cracked whip.

  Calbert froze mid-motion.

  She pointed, her finger hovering inches from the wood. “Not that one. That beam is carrying weight from two directions. You pull it now, the rest of this pile will remember gravity all at once.”

  Calbert studied it for a moment longer, then withdrew his hand. “Right,” he said, unfazed. “Didn’t like how it felt anyway.”

  They settled into a rhythm after that—careful, deliberate, almost practiced. Jonath eased stone loose in small concessions rather than demands. Miselle redirected stress before it could travel, anchoring here, bracing there. When something finally gave permission to be moved, Calbert took over, lifting and shifting slabs that would have crushed an ordinary laborer without so much as a grunt.

  Minutes passed into an hour, then two. Dust clung to everything. The tunnel’s damp chill mixed with the heat of exertion, turning breath into something heavy and metallic. Jonath could feel time slipping away in tiny, maddening increments, each one testing his patience.

  Between movements, between measured breaths, conversation threaded itself through the labor. Calbert shifted a slab aside with a muted scrape of stone on stone.

  “I still don’t like this,” he muttered. “Of all the places in the city, why here? Why the Beggar’s Quarter of all cursed holes?”

  Miselle didn’t lift her head from her work. Her chalk traced another short brace, neat and economical. “Because the lead pointed to Darkreach,” she said. “We didn’t choose the neighborhood.”

  Calbert snorted softly. “What do we even know about this 'lead' anyway? What did the Magister say?”

  Jonath didn’t look up, his palm still braced against the stone as he eased another section loose. “Very little, unfortunately,” he said, voice taut. “He mentioned a relic of some sort.”

  Mari sat against the tunnel wall nearby, her particular set of skills not suited to the kind of labor her fellow students were performing. Her Familiar, who'd reappeared at some point during their work, sat in her lap, purring like a normal cat as her master stroked her back. Mari paused in her ministrations at Jonath's words and looked up.

  "What d'ye suppose it is?" she asked. "The relic, I mean."

  "No idea," Jonath replied without returning Mari's curious look, "though if I had to guess, given where we are, it's likely some ancient treasure or heirloom left behind by one of the old noble families during the Revival."

  Miselle finally glanced up at that, amber eyes searching the stone as she chimed in. “Which is especially strange because the High Council should have seized any and all such heirlooms or treasures during and after that bloody purge,” she pointed out.

  Mari's brows furrowed. “Wait, doesn't that mean we're technically filchin' Council property?” she asked, suddenly sounding uneasy.

  Calbert gave a low growl of effort as he dragged another block free. “Probably,” he grunted, "but our dear teacher's got connections. He can probably smooth things over pretty easy."

  "Calbert's right," Jonath added. "He has some sway in the Council given his family name, so there shouldn't be a problem." He paused, thoughtful. "In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the Council was backing this little venture."

  “It isn't impossible,” Miselle replied, her chalk scratching once more. "But I'm fairly sure the Magister still has his own plans for whatever we find down here."

  Jonath pressed his palm back to the stone, steadying it before it shifted too far.

  “I agree,” he said. “but speculation won’t make this go any faster. Eyes on the prize, people. We get in, we get what he wants, and we leave.”

  Calbert straightened, rolling his shoulders until the leather of his baldric creaked. Dust clung to his forearms, grit grinding into sweat as he shifted his footing near the rubble.

  “This better be worth it,” he muttered, then turned to Jonath. “You got all details, right? Did our dear old Magister mention anything about a reward for a job well done?”

  Jonath shook his head. "Nothing more than the favor already granted to us," he replied with a grimace. "This wasn't a suggestion or a trial. It was an order. A command backed by the authority of an Academy professor back by his noble name. Reward or not, we couldn't refuse."

  Calbert clicked his tongue in frustration, but didn't push the matter. He knew Jonath was right, but that didn't make it sting less. This was why the big man hated nobles, but he wasn't so stupid as to air his grievances aloud—not in front of Jonath anyway.

  Miselle’s gaze drifted past the duo, down the newly opened gap where the tunnel swallowed their light. The darkness beyond was... strange. The scent of dust, woodrot, and mold permeated the tunnel ahead. It spoke of age and abandonment, but it was the dark and the ancient, almost esoteric flow of aether within it that set the young woman on edge.

  "Aetheric residue?” she murmured, almost too quiet for the others to hear even in the relative silence of the tunnel. “Something old... signs of... a Familiar? No, that wouldn't be possible unless there was still someone here to... then again, it almost feels like—”

  "Have something to share with the rest of the class, Miss Reyn?"

  Miselle blinked and frowned as she found Jonath's features twisted in annoyance. His palm stayed braced against the stone, eyes fixed on the stress lines she'd been charting. She hid an irritated scowl of her own at the sight. She knew now wasn't the time to get lost in thought, but she'd been the cusp of something. Something important.

  Now it was gone.

  After a moment, she shook her hand and returned to her work. “You noticed it too, didn't you?” she asked, choosing to change the subject. "The sheer amount of ambient aether spread across Darkreach? It permeats in uneven patterns, but it's all over the place—especially in this area."

  It took a second, but Jonath allowed his annoyed expression to soften into something more thoughtful. "I noticed, yes. I might not be as sensitive to the call of aether as you, but the volume of aether in this rathole part of the city is unmistakable."

  "Aye," Mari chimed in, giving her Familiar a considering scratch behind the ears, "Gleam's been drinking it in like a starvin' goat. I've only ever seen her coat this shiny inside the Academy halls."

  “Can't say I'm too good at sniffing out aether,” Calbert added, carefully pulling and tossing another rotted wooden beam aside. “But even I can feel it. Still, what's it matter? We're not looking for aether hotspots.”

  “No, but it's still worth noting,” Miselle argued. “Dense pockets, uneven. Old seep, not active work. Scars rather than construction.” Her fingers brushed the wall as if recalling sensation. “Whatever its current state, Darkreach is still one of the oldest—if not the oldest—districts in Veilheim. There's history here, and likely still so much we have left to uncover about what that history hides. Does none of this fascinate you? Any of you?”

  "Not really," Calbert drawled.

  Jonath glanced at her. “I'll admit, it's certainly something to think about, but not worth spending more time in this place than I have to."

  He didn’t indulge Miselle’s theorizing any further. The moment the last slab shifted and the rubble finally relented, he cut off the lingering chatter with a flat command and a look that made even Mari close her mouth.

  “Alright,” he said. “We’re through, so let's move. We've wasted enough time.”

  The gap beyond was tighter than any of them expected—only a short stretch of tunnel, barely long enough to justify the collapse that had guarded it. Jonath's light orb slid forward and painted damp stone, ancient mortar, the occasional jut of rotten timber.

  No branching paths. No labyrinth. Just a straight run that ended almost immediately in something that made Jonath’s breath catch despite himself.

  A door.

  It sat embedded in the stone as if the tunnel existed only to end here. The frame had long since been overtaken: surrounding rock had crept inward and hardened into warped, rootlike ridges, while true roots threaded through the seams and ossified into knotted braces.

  Moss clung in dark patches, and the wood itself—some dense, unfamiliar timber—had blackened with age without ever truly rotting, sealed into stubborn permanence. The door’s face was layered with old carvings half-lost beneath cracks, lichen, and petrified growth.

  What remained showed swirling, interlocking cuts that felt too organic for Academy sigaldry, their flow broken but not erased. Not letters. Not runes. Marks that hinted at an older logic, one buried rather than extinguished.

  Mari stopped short, her Familiar stiffening in her arms. “Abysses below,” she muttered, voice low. “That is… that is pure nightmare fuel. Look at it. It’s like some tribal scratchin’s from before folk learned how to write proper.”

  Miselle had already stepped closer, eyes narrowed, her interest sharp enough to feel like a physical thing. “It's not runic script nor an array, but at the same time, there are patterns here reminiscent of modern runic inscription techniques,” she said quietly.

  Her gaze burned with fascination as she swept it over the hoary, nearly petrified wood of the ancient door. She ignored the impatient glares of Jonath and Calbert as she continued her muttered musings.

  “An attempt at ritual inscription dating the pre-sigaldry era, perhaps? Or is it simple complex artistry at work? No, it's definitely more than that. The cut depth varies like it was done by different hands over a long period. The frame’s stone has been… almost coerced into shape. Work this fine takes time, precision, and aetheric intent...”

  Jonath forced himself forward, masking the way his skin prickled. “It’s a door, Miselle,” he said, curt. “I'm sure it's old and carries a lot of history, but it's a door nonetheless, and like all doors, it was made to be opened.”

  He reached for the knob. It was metal—duller than brass, too intact to match the wood, its surface unmarred by corrosion. Jonath wrapped his glove around it and turned.

  Nothing.

  He tried again, harder. The knob rotated a fraction, then met an immovable resistance that didn’t feel like a simple lock. It felt like refusal. He continued a few more times, trying to get a feel for what the literal sticking point might be. It didn't feel like a lock, but at the same time, it didn't feel like something was wedged within whatever ancient locking mechanism was behind the door either. Magick, then, Jonath decided as he finally released the doorknob.

  Jonath’s jaw tightened. “Fine.”

  He stepped back, drew a clean unlocking sigil in the air with two fingers, and spoke the incantation with practiced precision. The geometry snapped into place, then guttered out as if the door had swallowed the logic and found it unconvincing.

  He immediately followed with a more forceful disenchanting sigil—less finesse, more authority. A lock that did not wish to comply, whether mundane or arcane, could be made to, if you wrote the rules hard enough.

  The door didn’t so much as shiver.

  Unimpressed, Calbert leaned in, the muscles in his folded arms flexing slightly. “I'm here if you're looking for a more physical form of persuasion.”

  “No,” Jonath snapped automatically—then, when his next breath tasted like frustration, he added, “Not yet.”

  Miselle watched on, intrigued by the display, as though Jonath were conducting a live demonstration. Her gaze tracked the way the incantations died, the absence of recoil, the door’s absolute stillness.

  “It’s resilient to aetheric intent—maybe even immune,” she murmured. “Not warded in a reactive way. More like it's completely invisible to rune-filtered aether, or perhaps it has some kind of internal condition that refuses to engage.”

  Mari hugged her Familiar tighter, unease climbing. Yet under it was something else—an unexpected looseness in her chest, a relief she couldn’t quite justify, as if some part of her had been afraid of what success would mean.

  Jonath’s restraint broke.

  He drew a heavier earth-aspect incantation, the kind meant to fracture stone and shear hinges from their housings. Aether pooled into his core, pressure building, syllables sharpened into command. The air warped around his hand. The tunnel seemed to hold its breath.

  He released it.

  The force struck the door and vanished—simply ceased—without sound, without impact, without even the courtesy of failure’s backlash. The spell didn’t rebound. It didn’t dissipate. It was simply stopped cold.

  Jonath stared, furious.

  Calbert, uncaring of Jonath's ire, pushed the young noble aside and stepped forward. “My turn.”

  He planted his boots, set his shoulder, and drove his weight into the door. Ossified wood and ancient stone met him with dead certainty. Not a groan. Not a creak. His expression darkened.

  He flexed his hand, drew aether from his core, infusing it through muscle and tendon until his glowing veins stood out like corded neon rope, then hit it again—harder, faster, with the kind of force that should have shattered a barricade.

  The door did not acknowledge him.

  Miselle exhaled, almost pleased. “Remarkable,” she said, as if witnessing a theorem proven. “It’s not merely reinforced. It’s fundamentally uninterested in being opened by us.” She gave an uncharacteristic bark of amused laughter. "It might as well be part of the surrounding wall."

  Jonath’s eyes flashed. “By Bellatina's grace, I will pry this bloody door from its decrepit hinges if it's the last thing I do...”

  And so they tried—Jonath shifting sigaldric casting, runic script casting, and even a full array. Calbert cycled between leverage and raw impact—until time itself felt like another sealed mechanism grinding them down. Mari’s concern grew with every wasted attempt, and that odd relief stayed lodged beneath it like a splinter.

  Eventually Miselle spoke, calm and decisive. “Why not stop here? It's clear by this point that this task is no longer within our scope. We'll return to the Academy and report exactly what we found. The Magister won't be happy, but he should understand given the circumstances."

  Jonath rounded on her, anger hot and immediate. For a heartbeat it looked like he might refuse out of spite alone. Then he turned back to the door, drew one last desperate incantation—something ugly, stripped of elegance—and forced it into being.

  The spell died like all the rest.

  Silence settled.

  Jonath’s shoulders went rigid. Then, with visible effort, he swallowed his rage. “Fine... Fine, Goddess damn it!” he snapped, before getting his tone back under control. “We'll leave this to Magister Threvin. No doubt he'll have had a contingency for our potential failure.”

  "No complaints here," Mari murmured, giving the implacable door one last unnerved glance before joining the rest of her group. So eager was she to get as far away from the door as possible that she'd missed her Familiar—whose gaze had been fixed to the door since its reveal—finally give a soft, annoyed and confused huff before it vanished in aetheric smoke.

  They turned away from the carvings that would not be read, the threshold that would not yield, and began the long walk back through the damp dark—carrying nothing but dust on their clothes and the uneasy certainty that they’d found exactly what they were sent to find.

  And it had found them wanting.