Page 68 of Magical Mission

Straight toward it.

I didn’t have a spell on my lips. Nothing prepared. No elegant incantation, no precise handwork. Just an instinct that was deep, sudden, and louder than thought.

I raised my arms.

The chandelier stopped.

Not with a flash. Not with a gust or spark.

It simply...stopped.

Hung there, swaying slightly, as if some invisible hook had caught it just before the point of impact. Its glass crystalsshivered, and a few drops of enchanted wax trembled mid-air, caught in the same strange pause.

My breath was ragged. My legs locked in place. And my arms, still outstretched, were burning with something I didn’t understand.

Not heat.

Not weight.

It was like holding something through memory. Like the magic wasn’t flowing from me, butthroughme, from somewhere older. Somewhere I hadn’t touched until now.

Somewhere that felt like the Academy itself.

The chandelier wobbled in the air again, just slightly. My knees buckled.

Then Ardetia was beside me.

She didn’t speak. She didn’t need to.

With a wave of her hand and the murmuring of a spell so low I could barely hear it, she guided the chandelier down with a slow and gentle ease.

She touched nothing, but the fixture slid itself to the ground like a glass boat finding still water.

The moment it settled, the breath I’d been holding ripped out of me like I’d been punched.

I dropped to one knee.

The foyer was quiet again, except for the faint rustling of dust and the metallic sigh of the chandelier cooling against the stone floor.

Twobble rushed to my side. “Maeve! Are you, did you…what did you do?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

Ardetia crouched beside me, her cool hand pressing against my shoulder. “Where did you learn that?”

“I didn’t.”

Her eyes searched mine, unreadable as always, but I saw the faintest narrowing of her gaze. Not suspicion. Not fear.Recognition.

“You channeled something,” she said softly. “Not spellwork. Not structured. You moved beyond realms again. Between here and then, hedge witch.”

“No,” I said. “It was just...there. It felt like it wasn’t mine.”

“Not all power is,” she said.

I swallowed hard. My whole body buzzed, not with adrenaline but with the residue of something that had passed through me and hadn’t quite left.

“You stepped into the moment of before and managed to pause in the moment of the next.” Ardetia stood tall and still, turning to the students watching wide-eyed from the far corridor.