Page 148 of Magical Mischief

Not yet.

I walked the edge of the room instead, letting my fingers brush the strange soft walls. They didn’t feel like stone but more like old paper.

The hum was louder here. And yet, it was easier to think.

Hope.

That’s what this room felt like. Not the blind kind. Not the reckless, sunshine-in-a-bottle kind. But something truer. A kind ofsteadying.

A place for the beginning of something.

I sat on one of the cushions.

Cross-legged.

Waiting.

I didn’t know what I was waitingfor.

Just that I needed to.

The Academy was doing something, rearranging itself. Testing. Inviting.

I didn’t know if this room was meant for me.

But it had called me.

And that mattered.

My fingers rested in my lap, and I let my breath slow. The silence wasn’t empty. It was the kind thatlistens back.

And I let it.

No rushing.

No fear.

Just the stillness of stone that remembers, and walls that wait for the right voice.

A single floating light drifted down, close enough that I could see its wings. They were as thin as a soap bubble, with a pulse of green-blue running through. It hovered in front of my face for a breath, then dipped gently… and vanished into the pedestal.

I didn’t move.

I didn’t need to.

The room had already accepted me.

Now, it was up to me to listen.

The silence stretched long enough that I almost thought it was over…that whatever the Academy had wanted from me had already happened. Maybe the room was just here to be sat in. A soft place to rest after a storm of questions. Maybe the hum I’d followed was nothing more than the echo of too much magic and not enough sleep.

But then I heard it.

A voice, but not in the way people think of voices. It didn’t come from the pedestal or the ceiling. It didn’t echo through the floor or press against my ears. It arrived all at once, everywhere, and inside.

It wasn’t one sound. It waseverysound.

Hollow yet full.