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“If you would like to rest.” The words come slowly. Each one halting as I recall the shape and sound of them. “There are blankets in there.” I gesture to the wooden chest against the wall.

She doesn’t look. Instead, she backs away until she hits the wall behind her, eyes darting around the room again.

“No.” She shakes her head. “I can’t rest. I need to get out of here. I need to go home. It’s almost Christmas.”

Another word I don’t recognize. It doesn’t belong to any regional dialect I know, or any tradition I recognize. Not a solstice, not a name-day, not anything Meridian has ever marked.

A new possibility begins to form.

“I need to find the door.”

There is no way out. She hasn’t accepted that yet.

“There isn’t one.” I force the words out after half a beat of silence.

“What do you mean,there isn’t one?” Her eyes widen, panic rising beneath the exhaustion again. “There has to be a door, a window …something!”

“It’s night.” I pause. I became accustomed to silence a long time ago. I’m not sure I can adapt to speech again. “It’s too cold. You’ll die out there.”

She presses her hands against the wall, shaking her head.

“This can’t be happening.”

I don’t argue. She isn’t going to listen to me anyway. She’s already retreating inward. Her panic has nowhere left to go. Let it break. Let it consume her attention. While she does that, I can work out how to shape what comes next.

She slides down the wall until she’s sitting, knees pulled up to her chest. “This is insane,” she whispers, more to herself than to me. “Thiscan’tbe happening.”

I return to my desk, and leave her to unravel in silence. If she believes I’m giving her space, she won’t question the limitations of mymovement. That kind of misdirection is easy to maintain, and it buys me time.

The tower’s blue light begins to dim as night deepens outside, the blue-violet glow softening by degrees. She notices the change. I can see it in the way her eyes lift, wide and unfocused, straining to orient themselves in a room that refuses to behave in any way she understands.

“What is happening now?”

“Night falls.”

She blinks at me. I ignore her, and pull the open book toward me.

I keep my eyes on the page, but I can still see her at the edge of my vision—head bowed, shoulders starting to sag. She lists forward, then jerks upright, clearly not trusting her surroundingsorme. But each reset takes longer. Her body is shutting down, needing rest, whether she wants it to or not.

I wait until sleep takes hold, then rise, and walk as far as I can before the binding stops me. She’s still against the wall, folded in on herself, arms tight around her legs, chin against her knees. Her breathing has deepened, slowed.

Shemusthave responded to my summoning. Years after casting the spell into the void, she alone found her way to this tower.

My pulse jumps once. I suppress the response.

It didn’t work in the way I expected. It didn’t draw someone loyal to me. But perhaps that’s better. She doesn’t know who I am. Doesn’t know what I was. Andthatopens new possibilities I hadn’t considered.

I can barely contain the surge of triumph. Years after pouring the last of my magic into the summoning, of accepting it had failed, it found someone.

And now she’s sleeping across the chamber from me.

Real. Tangible. My potential salvation.

I study her features in the dim light. Unremarkable by the standards of this world. Sunburned skin already blistering across her cheeks and nose. Chapped lips. Strange clothes that speak of a world unlike my own.

My eyes track over her face, her hair, her hands, pausing on her fingers. The nails are painted. A splash of red against the dark blue material covering her legs.

Nothingabout this creature suggests power or purpose or destiny.