Page 24

“You’re not supposed to be here.”

The voice slid through the air with softness and certainty, but laced with a disappointment I hadn’t heard before.

I froze.

My fingers hovered over the humming box, with breath caught just between inhale and regret.

I turned slowly.

And there she was.

Grandma Elira.

Not cloaked in light or mystery or the soft folds of ethereal magic, as I’d seen her countless times within the safety of the Academy or during quiet midnight moments of tea and truth.

No.

She was solid here. Present. Real in a way that made my stomach twist.

She meant business, and I had no idea why.

Her silver-streaked hair was pinned up in its usual coiled knot, though a few strands had slipped free around her face.

Her deep-blue robes moved slightly as if she’d just stepped through a gust of wind that hadn’t touched me.

She looked like she'd simply walked into the library the way anyone might.

“Grandma?” I asked, my voice smaller than I meant it to be.

Her eyes met mine, and something flickered in them. Was it relief tangled with concern? A blend of how did you manage this and please don’t do it again.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“I could ask the same,” she said, stepping into the narrow aisle with the ease of someone who had never obeyed boundaries as written.

She glanced toward the book sprites, who hovered a few feet above us now, unmoving and tense. Her gaze then dropped to the box at my side, still humming faintly on the shelf.

“What is that?” I asked, but even as I said it, I knew she wouldn’t answer.

Not yet.

Instead, my grandma took a slow breath, eyes returning to mine.

“You weren’t supposed to find this,” she said. “Not yet.”

“So it is meant for me,” I said, straightening. “You’re not surprised I’m here.”

“No,” she admitted. “I’m only stunned that it happened so soon.”

The humming deepened, and for a moment I could almost hear words buried inside it—a tone, a name, a warning.

“Grandma,” I asked carefully, “what is this?”

She looked at the box again and then closed her eyes as though choosing her words from a very, very old shelf in her memory.

“It’s a record,” she said finally. “But not the kind you read. The kind you feel.”

I didn’t understand. Not fully. But part of me did.

Part of me had known the moment I felt it through the book spine.

“The circle?” I asked. “Is it about the bent circle?”

Her eyes opened.

And they were suddenly far older than the lines around them.

“Yes.”

A long silence settled between us.

“I had a vision,” I admitted quietly. “In the Hedge. The circle wasn’t broken. But it was bent. I saw... something coming through.”

“I know,” she said.

Of course she did.

“I think it was Gideon.”

That stopped her, but she gave no twitch or flinch.

But her breath left her like she hadn’t realized she was holding it.

“Gideon shouldn’t be able to penetrate into the hedge,” she said slowly.

“Then why could he?”

She looked at the box again.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“I’m not certain it was him,” I explained, and she nodded.

“He’s good at manipulation and conning magical folks into believing he’s always around.”

The admission startled me.

“He does have a habit of making me paranoid,” I agreed.

I had never heard uncertainty in my grandma’s voice before, not like this.

She reached out and touched the edge of the shelf, not the box itself, but the wood near it. Her fingers trembled. Just once.

“Something’s unraveling,” she said softly. “And it’s touching places it shouldn’t. Opening doors that were meant to stay sealed.”

“And that message?” I asked. “The one that said the circle was bent. Did you leave it?”

My grandma looked away.

“No.”

She didn’t offer a guess and didn’t need to.

We both knew what it meant.

It hadn’t been a warning.

Not from one of us.

It had been a signal or a mark.

The circle wasn’t broken.

Only bent.

But could that bend let someone in? Could it be the key to ending the curse?

“You need to leave this alone,” my grandma said suddenly, voice sharp in a way that caught me off guard. “This box, this history, it isn’t for you yet.”

“But I didn’t just find it. I was led to it.”

“No,” she said. “It found you. And not everything that finds you has your best interest in mind.”

My hands curled into fists at my sides.

“Grandma,” I said, quieter now. “If something’s coming, something that already bent the circle, don’t I have a right to know what it is?”

She didn’t answer because she didn’t have to, because she was already fading.

It wasn’t visually or in a flash of light or shimmer of air, but in presence.

The way the magic dims when the candle burns low.

“Grandma—”

“Trust yourself,” she said. “But not everything that feels like destiny is meant for you. And not every warning comes in time.”

And then she left.

The aisle was empty, but the box still hummed.

And I was left staring at it, more certain than ever that whatever was inside it had been waiting a long, long time to come to light.

And now it had found me .

I didn’t realize how tightly I was holding the box until my fingers ached.

I moved it close to my chest, wrapped in its worn violet fabric, and moved quickly through the quieter library corridors and into the upper passageways where students rarely wandered. My breath came fast, not from exertion but from the weight of what I carried, and of what it might mean.

The Academy, bless it, didn’t fight me. Its halls opened before me without protest, doors easing aside, stairs uncreaking, lanterns glowing a fraction warmer like they knew something fragile was in motion.

I didn’t look back, but not because I wasn’t afraid my grandma might reappear.

But because I was more afraid of what I’d see in her eyes if she did.

Halfway to my room, I heard it.

A soft shuffle came up behind me, with the unmistakable snort of an English bulldog.

I turned the corner and there he was. My dad was plodding along like a shaggy guardian who didn’t need to be asked.

And trailing just behind him, eyes narrowed, arms full of scrolls, and breathless with anticipation, Twobble.

He stopped short when he spotted me. “Oh. It was you. I thought I was imagining that suspicious sprint zip by.”

I didn’t answer right away. My arms were trembling, though I hoped it didn’t show.

Twobble blinked at the bundle in my hands. “What’s that?”

“Something I wasn’t supposed to find,” I said, breath shallow. “But did anyway.”

Frank gave a low, curious bark and thumped his rear against my shin in greeting.

Twobble tilted his head. “Do I need to be worried?”

I looked at him, really looked, at his mismatched buttons for vest closures that he’d recently started sporting, and his eternally ink-stained fingers found more secrets than anyone knew what to do with.

“No,” I said, opening the door to my quarters. “But I’d welcome the company. If you’re not busy?”

“Busy?” He scoffed. “With what? The kitchen sprites arguing in the kitchen? No thanks.”

He followed me in, with my dad waddling close behind like this was his idea to begin with.

The moment the door shut, I moved to the bed and sat down heavily. The box buzzed faintly in my lap, like it knew we were somewhere private now. Somewhere sealed.

Twobble stayed back, leaning against the wardrobe. “So… what is it?”

“I don’t know,” I whispered. “But the book sprites led me to it.”

I unwrapped the cloth, and the violet fabric slipped away, falling into my lap like shed skin.

The box beneath was older than it looked in the library. Not wood, not stone. Something between smooth, dark, and almost iridescent. There was no latch or hinge.

It opened like it had been waiting.

With just a soft click, the top folded back, and inside…

I stared.

Twobble stepped forward, slowly.

Even my dad looked curious.

Inside the box, resting on a bed of silken thread, was a small, clear orb.

The object was no bigger than a plum , and it was encased in fine silver wire that curled around it like a net holding something precious.

The orb glowed faintly from within, but it wasn’t steady.

It pulsed.

And inside that pulsing light, there was movement, with shadows and shimmer.

Not a reflection, not magic mist.

But filled with memories.

My breath caught as the orb pulsed once, twice, and an image bloomed within.

I saw a piece of the Academy, not as it was, but as it had been . The architecture had fewer towers, and the Butterfly Ward was half-formed.

And someone arose at its center.

A woman, clad in dark robes, stood alone, her hands outstretched, channeling something beneath the earth.

Then the image flickered.

The woman fell.

And a circle of others appeared around her as images of Wards collapsing, and a storm overhead shook the ground.

And then…

Darkness.

The orb went still.

Twobble let out a low whistle. “Well. That’s a new development.”

I couldn’t speak.

Because the face of the woman, just before she fell…

I knew it.

Not from a portrait. Not from a history book.

From my reflection.

She looked just like me.

And the shadow curling behind her?

That felt like Gideon but worse.

Older and something deeper.

My dad lay his head in my lap as Twobble sat down beside me without a word, legs swinging.

We stared at the orb.

And I realized this wasn’t a message.

It was a warning or worse.

A memory waiting to repeat.

The orb had stopped glowing.

Whatever vision it held had faded back into stillness as its light flickered into sleep. But the dread it left behind had only begun to stir.

I sat there, unmoving, the velvet weight of the box in my lap, the ghost of that woman’s face burned behind my eyes.

She looked like me.

Not vaguely. Not metaphorically.

Me.

And she had failed.

Not just faltered. Not stumbled. She had fallen in the center of the circle as it twisted and pulled apart.

It wasn’t bent. It was broken as if the very ground beneath her had turned against her.

I closed my eyes, bile rising in the back of my throat.

This wasn’t just about a bent circle.

It never had been.

That message wasn’t reassurance. It was a warning. Or worse… a promise .

Because if it hadn’t broken the first time, then the one who bent it hadn’t succeeded.

Not yet.

And history has a way of repeating itself, especially when someone insisted on finishing what was started.

I pressed my hand to the orb’s surface. It was cool again.

Innocent. Like it hadn’t just shown me the exact moment everything nearly fell apart.

But now I knew the truth.

The first attempt had failed.

And someone— something was still trying.

Still pushing.

Still bending that circle, one careful inch at a time, until it snaps.

The dread crawled up my spine like ivy, slow and choking, because the second attempt?

The second time never played out the same.

The second time would be smarter.

Sharper.

Worse.

Whoever wanted to break the circle wasn’t done.

And they wouldn’t stop until it shattered completely.

Not bent.

Broken.

And the part that turned my stomach to ice?

I wasn’t sure if I’d been chosen to stop it…

Or replace the one who’d failed before.

And I wasn’t sure which of those terrified me more.

Because I knew who was at the center of it all.