Page 49

The scent of scorched stone and rain-soaked magic hung thick in the corridor, curling beneath the soot and smoke like something ancient and bittersweet. I stood in the center of it all, boots coated in ash and blood, not mine, not anymore, breathing in the fading hum of battle.

And then I looked up.

Around me, the people who’d stood at the edge of the world and dared to lean forward.

My father stood with his shoulders back, a quiet steadiness radiating from him now that his curse had lifted. He looked older than I remembered, not just in body, but in soul. He was still warm, still steady, and still him.

Keegan was a few feet away, his knuckles bruised and raw, his chest still rising in uneven pulls. He hadn’t said much since the fight ended. Didn’t need to. The set of his jaw, the way he watched me, like he was trying to memorize every breath I took, spoke more than words ever could.

Stella leaned against a broken column, her wand limp in her hand, her curls wild and rimmed with light from a fire spell she hadn’t bothered to extinguish.

She’d protected this place with everything she had, and it showed.

Her eyes met mine, and she gave the faintest nod.

Not a smile, just an acknowledgment that we were still standing. Somehow.

Nova sat cross-legged on a cracked section of floor, her staff across her lap, sweat glistening down her temple. Her eyes were closed, lips moving silently in prayer or spellwork. I didn’t know which. She looked peaceful, in that dangerous way stars do when they’re about to go supernova.

And then there were Skonk and Twobble.

Skonk was twirling above Stella’s head, humming something that sounded suspiciously like a victory song. Twobble was chewing on what looked like a very old licorice root, grinning like he’d just won a bet with the moon itself.

It was everything I had ever wanted.

And yet…

I felt it.

A sudden hollowness.

Not in the room.

Not even in the magic.

In the sky.

I turned slowly, heart sinking.

The Moonbeam was gone.

Not fading. Not drifting.

Gone.

The last shimmer had vanished while we were caught in the chaos. The window high above the corridor was dark now, its frame no longer touched by silver. No threads of light. No gentle hum. Just the absence of something we had counted on to fix everything.

I swallowed hard.

It hadn’t worked. Not completely.

We had changed something, yes. My father’s curse was broken, his body returned, his soul anchored.

But what was traded in its place? What unknown sacrifice was surrendered?

The tarot card warmed in my pocket, and my world stopped as the sacrifice became clear.

The weight of the curse still pressed on the Academy like storm clouds that refused to break.

I couldn’t feel the other Wards as lively as earlier.

But worst of all, I couldn’t feel whether Keegan’s curse had been severed. Had his broke as well as my dad’s?

Keegan hadn’t said anything. Not about the curse. Not about the mark he’d carried like a brand, every ten years facing an uncontrolled shift that weakened him more each time.

My eyes found him again.

He was watching me…had been, I think, the whole time. His expression was unreadable, like he was keeping a secret he didn’t want to name. There was something hollow in the way he held his arms at his sides, something… unfinished.

He stood only a few feet away, half in shadow. His arms were crossed over his chest, but the tension in his shoulders wasn’t just from battle or exhaustion. It was something else. His jaw was clenched too tightly. His brow furrowed, though his eyes were fixed on me.

Not my father. Me.

“Hey,” I said softly, leaving my father’s side and moving toward him. “You okay?”

He gave a single nod. “I’m fine.”

I tilted my head. “You don’t look fine.”

“I’ve looked worse,” he muttered, which was probably true, but still.

I reached for his hand. He flinched. Just a fraction. But I noticed.

My heart stuttered. “Keegan…”

“It’s okay.” But the sharp edge in his voice wasn’t for me. It was for whatever was hurting him.

That’s when I saw it, how his other hand hovered near his ribs not protectively, but tightly, like he was bracing against something.

I moved closer, lowering my voice. “Talk to me. What is it?”

He hesitated.

“It’s nothing.”

“Keegan,” I said, more firmly now, “you nearly took Gideon apart. You saved everything. And now you’re shaking like the curse still hasn’t let go of you. Don’t lie.”

He looked away.

And finally, finally , he said, “It hurts.”

“From the battle?” I blinked.

“No,” he admitted. “My side is…there’s something wrong. Since the end of the fight. Since the Moonbeam faded.”

I stepped in front of him, searching his face. “Is that normal? When you shift like that?”

He shook his head. “No. I’ve been through battles before. Injuries, yes. Exhaustion, always. But this isn’t that. It’s not healing right. It feels like when the shift is forced upon me and uncontrolled.”

I swallowed, thinking back to him fighting the pain from that last episode. I’d been told it was harder for him to survive each one. “Is it the wound from Gideon?”

He paused. Then said, slowly, “It’s deeper. It feels like it’s under the wound. Like something's… caught.”

A chill ran through me. “What kind of pain?”

Keegan took a breath, jaw tight. “Ever since the curse hit, I’ve lived with a dull ache. It became part of the background noise. I got used to it. But this…” He winced as he shifted his weight. “This is sharp. Angry. Like something’s fighting back now.”

Panic fluttered in my chest.

“But it wasn’t like this before the Moonbeam?”

“No,” he said. “It started right after. It reminds me of those episodes that happen every decade or so.”

“Oh.”

“I didn’t want to take away from your moment,” he said simply, eyes flicking toward my father. “You deserve joy. You deserve this win.”

I reached up and touched his cheek. “You’re part of this win.”

His hand came up to hold mine against his face. “I didn’t want to make you worry.”

“Well,” I said, voice cracking, “that didn’t work.”

He gave a weak smile. “Yeah. Figured.”

A storm swirled in my stomach. We had driven Gideon back. The curse had bent. But something had curled its claws deeper into Keegan while we were celebrating. Something I hadn’t seen.

And perhaps that was Gideon’s play all along.

A piece of him was left behind.

Not in magic. But in pain.

“We’re going to fix it,” I whispered fiercely.

He nodded slowly, eyes closing as if even that promise brought some relief.

“But Keegan,” I added, “You don’t get to carry it alone anymore... We do this together. ”

His voice was hoarse when he said, “Okay.”

We stood there for a long time.

The hidden dragons still slept below. The secret was still safe deep inside me. There were moments I thought Gideon knew, but I kept those thoughts sealed, and I really think he was calling my bluff.

The students were still safe.

My father was human again.

But now, the next thread revealed itself with Keegan, bright and fragile.

Keegan was still cursed, possibly worse than before.

And I would burn every shadow in the world to free him.

I didn’t speak.

Not at first.

Keegan’s hand was still warm in mine, but something beneath his skin pulsed cold. A quiet hum of wrongness, like magic coiling where it shouldn’t. Not burning. Not flaring.

Just waiting.

Nova’s words still rang in my ears. The curse hasn’t ended. It’s shifted. It’s rethreading.

Stella had gone quiet, her arms crossed, wand tucked under her elbow. Ardetia stood a few paces back, eyes narrowed, watching Keegan as if trying to see what might be coming next.

“Ember is disenchanting Celeste. She’s perfectly fine and will come out of hiding soon,” Nova informed me.

I could finally take a deep breath.

Keegan said nothing. He didn’t have to. The tension in his shoulders, the way his body leaned ever so slightly against the wall behind him, like he needed it to stay upright, told me everything.

I let go of his hand slowly, not in fear, but in care. Noticing the way his fingers curled in after, like he was holding something in.

“Is it changing you?” I asked, voice barely above a whisper.

He didn’t flinch. “I don’t know.”

He met my eyes, and something in them made my heart twist. Not panic. Not despair.

Curiosity.

And pain.

He wasn’t trying to push it away.

He was enduring it and trying to understand it.

“Where does it hurt precisely?” I asked again, this time more softly.

He tapped his side gently. “Here. It started as a sharp ache. But now… it’s like a root. A single thread, winding in.”

I nodded and removed the card from my pocket.

Nova took a slow step closer, her fingers skimming the air near Keegan’s ribs, careful not to touch. The orb in her other hand pulsed again, flickering between warm gold and cold silver. A duality of magics, tugging against each other.

Her gaze fell to the Hanged Man card in my fingers, and sadness fell over her expression as I handed it back to her, trying to push the nausea away.

She nodded and turned her attention back to Keegan.

“It’s not trying to destroy you,” Nova said, more to herself than to us. “It’s studying you. Learning you.”

“That’s exactly what it feels like,” Keegan murmured. “Like it’s deciding who to be.”

I felt the world tilt just slightly under my feet.

This wasn’t the curse we knew. This wasn’t the cold rot that had buried itself in Stonewick, that had turned my father into something else, or sealed the Academy for decades.

This was the next form.

A new shell being shaped.

Keegan was becoming the vessel.

And none of us knew what that would look like.

I stood in front of him, not reaching for him this time, but anchoring myself in his gaze. “Do you feel like yourself?”

He blinked. “Yes. But also…”

He hesitated.

“Also?”

“…more aware. I can sense the Academy more clearly. The Wards. The heartbeat of the land under the stones.”

Nova’s brows lifted. “It’s not just binding,” she said quietly. “It’s infusing. ”

Ardetia stepped forward. “We will get through this. We won’t let it bury you.”

“Or destroy you,” Nova added.

“No,” Keegan said. “I’m awake inside it. I know it’s there.”

The implications clicked into place.

He wasn’t being buried.

He was being rewritten.

“Is it… Changing your magic?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Keegan said. “I haven’t tried to shift again since the battle. I don’t want to test it before we understand more.”

He was thinking clearly. Sharply. Not fading into some dazed curse-born version of himself.

He was still him.

But that could change.

“I need to observe,” Nova said, already pulling out another crystal, this one etched with threads of living runes. “We need to document this. Measure the transitions. See what remains and what grows.”

“No more assumptions,” I added, my voice steadying. “We thought the curse worked one way. But that was just its last shape. We don’t know what this one will be.”

Keegan offered a thin smile. “So I’m a study subject now.”

“You’re more than that,” I said. “You’re still you. And you’re not alone.”

Twobble cleared his throat behind me. “As fascinating and wildly magical as this is, I do feel compelled to ask if we should, I don’t know, keep him in a charm circle for safety? Just a gentle bubble, perhaps?”

“No,” Keegan said firmly.

Stella grunted. “Agreed. Containment will agitate what’s building. If it senses fear, it could interpret that as a threat.”

“It’s not feeding on hostility,” Nova added. “It’s behaving like… an ancient seed. One that’s only now waking up.”

Silence settled again.

And I understood something then, deep in my bones.

Keegan wasn’t cursed, not in the same way my father had been.

This was something stranger, more intimate, and more powerful.

This was a choice the curse had made.

Not to destroy him.

But to evolve.

And in doing so, it had chosen him.

A sacrifice had been made.

Nova’s expression didn’t change, but her eyes warmed.

“You’re not afraid,” she said, looking at me.

“I’m terrified, ” I answered honestly. “But that doesn’t mean we react without listening.”

Keegan looked at me then. Really looked. And his pain softened, just a little.

“Thank you,” he murmured. “For seeing me. Not just what might be inside me.”

I stepped forward and touched his chest, where the ache coiled beneath his ribs. “I always see you.”

The corridor was quiet again, but not with fear, with focus.

We weren’t in a rush to fix him or hide him.

We were going to understand the curse to break it, not him.

Whatever the curse became, however it chose to exist next, we would meet it—not with fear, but with truth.

Keegan wasn’t the end of this curse, and I certainly wouldn’t let him be sacrificed.

He might just be its turning point.

I felt a strange comfort settle in my bones, not because we were safe.

But because we weren’t running anymore.

We wouldn’t fall for the mirage of tomorrow because we learned to live for today, together and always. The shadows would rise again, but we’d be ready.

***

Dear Magical Reader,

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for joining me once again in the whimsical world of Stonewick!