The roof still leaked when it rained, but he’d patched most of the ceiling himself. The walls no longer smelled of mildew, just pine oil and dried herbs. The floor creaked less where he reinforced the rotting planks. He found satisfaction in little things: straight door hinges, sharpened kitchen knives, a well-tended fire.
Not the kind of journaling they’d taught him at the Academy, with carefully inked diagrams and mana metrics. This was messier. There are research notes, there are theories—
—But mostly just thoughts. Wandering. Barely legible between smudges of charcoal.
“My hands stop shaking faster when I write.
I don’t think that means I’m cured.
I think it means I’m scared of forgetting.”
He didn’t write every day. But he wrote enough.
One afternoon, Tomas tugged Aldric’s sleeve.
“Come on. I found something weird.”
They walked past the gardens, past the boundary trees, to the edge of a clearing. Crumpled among the ferns, lay a bird. The feathers were too matted to name the species.
Aldric knelt.
No wounds, no claws or beak marks. Just thin, deliberate lines carved into the skin beneath the feathers. Symbols. Glyphs.
He went still.
He recognized them. Barely. They’d been in a restricted volume at the Academy—Cryptomorphic Energies and Pre-Dawn Theory. Arcane sigils from before the Dawn Concord. Supposedly extinct.
He scanned the clearing. No residue. No smell of a caster. But something had been here. Something old.
Tomas fidgeted.
“Was it a monster?”
“No, don't worry.” Aldric said softly.
But he knew it was worse.
Every night after hearing about the bird, Veylor began his patrols.
No explanation. Just strapped on his armor after dinner and vanished into the dark.
Sometimes he came back with a bloodied blade. Sometimes with nothing at all. Once, with a broken chain in his fist and an expression Aldric had never seen before—sorrow, baring its teeth.
Aldric had also changed his appearance. Not by magic, but by necessity.
He shaved the sides of his hair and let the rest grow out, unkempt and shaggy. His Academy robes had been burned in Eryndor. Now he wore simple travel leathers, patched with mismatched stitching and a thick scarf wrapped to cover the line of scar that ran from jaw to collarbone.
The final touch? A single copper loop in his left ear—Veylor's idea.
“Farm boys wear them in these parts,” he'd said. “Means you’re too poor to steal from.”
So far, it worked.
Lysa had noticed the change. She didn’t comment.
Aldric had grown used to her silence. It wasn’t cold. Just precise. She didn’t ask what he was before Floralines. She only ever said things like, “Your blood smells like arcwort,” and “You’ve been pushing too hard again.”
One evening, he left his journal outside on the porch by mistake.
When he returned, she was holding it, sitting in the chair he usually occupied.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
She didn’t apologize. Just closed the cover, tapped it once, and said,
“You don’t write like someone who wants to be forgotten.”
He didn’t answer.
After that, Aldric began to notice small things about her.
The way she tucked her hair behind one ear when she was focused.
How she never corrected people—just raised an eyebrow that made them correct themselves.
Sometimes she’d sit nearby when he sketched runes in the dirt. Not talking. Not interrupting. Just being there.
One afternoon, she brought him tea without a word.
It was bitter. Herbal.
He made a face.
“You’ll live longer,” she said.
“Assuming I want to.”
She gave him a look. The kind that said “Try again.”
Later that week, she left a pressed flower in his journal.
He didn’t ask why.
He just put the flower in his desk.
That evening, Aldric finally showed Veylor what he’d been working on.
They sat beneath a lamp on the cottage porch, the map table between them now covered in scrawled schematics and Luminance script.
Aldric slid two sheets forward.
“Piercer concepts,” he said. “Both untested. One’s probably illegal. The other’s definitely illegal.”
Veylor raised a brow.
Concept #1:
-
Micro-filament constructed via compressed light weaving.
-
Anchored to muscle memory; cuts clean through fabric, minor armor.
-
Low mana cost, difficult to see in daylight.
-
Needs anchoring rune or haptic trigger.
-
Drawback: fizzles under heavy wind unless layered with Aegis tether.
Concept #2:
-
Slow infusion through Aegis fractures.
-
Amplifies internal Luminance until it ruptures the Aegis caster’s nervous system.
Veylor read both.
Then he whistled low.
“You scare me more than most scholars.”
Aldric smiled for the first time that week.
The next morning was too quiet.
The church bells rang once, breaking the silence.
Visitors had arrived.
A procession, robed and silent, walked up the main road. Most wore hoods. One did not.
He didn’t need to.
He was tall, unnaturally so. Taller even than Veylor. His figure was gaunt, his pale skin almost sickly translucent. His priest’s robe was bone-white with silver filigree stitched in complex fractals. Every step he took seemed to silenced the air around him.
And his eyes—
No.
Only the right one was visible. The left was sealed behind an intricate iron band.
Looking into it left Aldric irrationally uneasy.
At the town square, the man stopped before the gathered villagers. His voice was soft, but it carried.
“Peace be upon this place.”
No one spoke.
He glanced over the crowd. When his gaze passed over Aldric, the boy stiffened. It felt like Karnak had flipped through his memories and bookmarked the worst pages.
Beside him, Veylor tensed.
The man’s eyes lingered on the knight. Not recognition—Confirmation.
Then he smiled.
“How rare. To see iron walk again.”
Veylor didn’t reply. He didn’t move. His hand rested loosely on the pommel of his sword.
The man turned to the crowd again.
“I am Zephyros Karnak. Custodian to the Outer Sanctum. We are simply here to ensure the peace. The world, as you know, is changing.”
He walked slowly through the square, robes gliding without the sound of footsteps.
“We ask only for names. Loyalty. And trust.”
He stopped again. This time, directly in front of Aldric.
The priest's eye fixed on him.
“And you, boy,” Karnak murmured, “you seem… luminous.”
Aldric’s throat dried. He didn’t know what to say.
Karnak didn’t press.
But he smiled faintly.
He turned and walked back toward the church, the other robed figures gliding behind him.
Veylor didn’t speak until Karnak was long gone.
Even then, his voice was quiet.
“Do not get involved with that man.”
Aldric looked up.
“Who is he?”
Veylor didn’t answer.
But the ice in his silence said enough.
The bells of the chapel rang twice that day, and louder than usual.
A village-wide announcement followed:
“All travelers and outer-settlement residents, check in with the local Sanctum registry. Identification required. A spoken loyalty oath is mandatory.”
Whispers turned into warnings. Taverns emptied early. The blacksmith locked his forge for the first time in years.
Aldric was scribbling concepts when Veylor came in late, armor clinking softly.
The knight tossed a sealed envelope onto the table. Burned at the corners, of ash still clinging to the paper.
Aldric’s breath caught.
The sigil burned into the paper: an inverted flame over a crown.
“Another letter? From where?”
Veylor’s expression didn’t change.
“...Intercepted. Meant for the parish two towns over.”
Aldric wasn’t stupid. The ash. The missing courier. He knew how Veylor got it.
He read in silence.
The message was clear.
“Search continues for unregistered casters, residue of high-grade Luminance, and excommunicated apprentices.”
Aldric looked up.
“They’re closing the circle.”
Veylor’s jaw tensed.
“Then we run,” Aldric said.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re not ready.”
Aldric stood in silence.
What if Floralines gets caught in the fire?
He didn’t say it aloud.
But Veylor’s silence said he was already thinking the same thing.
Aldric didn't sleep much that night.
Instead, he wrote.
Not a journal entry. Not a design. Just a single phrase, scratched into the inside cover.