A week. That's how long it's been since the wolf. A week of watching the village hold its breath. The guards walk in pairs. Kids don't play near the woods. And I train until I can barely stand.
"Again."
Seraphine's voice is calm. I pull on the thread of magic she's sectioned off for me. It's tiny, barely enough to feel. I twist it. Hold it. Count to ten. Release it, slow and clean.
No nosebleed. No burning.
"Better," she says. It's the highest praise I'll get. "The festival is in three days. The convergence will make the lines... volatile."
"Should we cancel?"
"And hide? No. We can't let fear win." She eyes me. "But you will be needed. Your... sensitivity... will be our warning bell."
Great. No pressure.
From Seraphine's quiet temple, I go straight to the training ground's noise and sweat. Kaela is already there, her wooden sword a blur. The wolf encounter lit a fire under her; she's obsessed.
"Amaki!" Master Dren barks. He's a grizzled veteran with a magi-tech hand Elira built. "You're late."
"Two minutes."
"Two minutes, you're dead. Grab your stick. Today, you two learn not to trip over each other."
This is new. We never train magic and combat together.
"Finally!" Kaela grins, all teeth.
Dren activates a training construct. It's a shadowy, lurching thing of magic. "Kaela, you're the pointy end. Ren, you're support. Don't let it touch you. Begin!"
Kaela's in. She's fast. Way faster than a seven-year-old has any right to be. She feints, the construct lunges, and its flank is open. I wait... wait... now. I shove a tiny, precise bolt of magic at its leg.
It's not a blast. It's a... a trip. The construct stumbles.
Kaela is on it. Thwack-thwack-thwack. The construct dissolves.
"Sloppy!" Dren yells. "Again!"
We do it until we're both covered in sweat and shaking with exhaustion. But by the end, we're moving like one person. She draws the attack, I create the opening. It's... a perfect fit.
Elira's workshop is too quiet. That's the first bad sign.
The usual, wonderful chaos is gone. She's just... sitting at her workbench, staring at a blueprint. Her hair is tied back. Elira never ties her hair back.
"Hey," I say.
She jumps, almost dropping a focusing crystal. "Ren. Hi. Come to see the disaster-in-progress?"
"Came to see you."
She's scared. The last time we worked, a device overloaded. I'd had to damp it with my magic. It wasn't her fault—the ley line was unstable—but it terrified her.
"I'm scared, Ren," she admits, her voice small. "This festival... all that power... what if my display... what if I hurt someone?"
"The new design is safer." I point at the blueprint. "Triple redundancies. That's smart."
"It's paranoid."
"Paranoid is good. We need paranoid right now."
She gives me a weak smile. "You sound like you're forty, you know that?"
"I feel like it most days."
We work for an hour, just checking her new, safer schematics. It's calm. Normal. It's the best I've felt all day.
Dawn. Toren's hand on my shoulder. "Up. Patrol."
The woods are gray, silent, and cold. We move like ghosts. An hour out, Toren stops. He doesn't make a sound. He just... freezes.
I freeze, too.
I can smell it. That wrong smell. Rot.
The blight we found weeks ago... it's not a patch anymore. It's a clearing. The ground is cracked and gray. The ley lines... God, the ley lines are sick. They're sluggish, veined with a black-purple infection.
The symbols carved into the trees aren't just markers. They're... engines. They're sucking the life out of the forest and pumping darkness in.
"Can you fix this?" Toren whispers.
"Not quietly," I whisper back. "The second I try, they'll know we're here. Whoever 'they' are."
The forest goes dead silent. That same predator silence.
Toren's sword is out. The shing of the enchanted steel is the only sound in the world.
The thing that steps out of the shadows wasn't a deer. Not anymore. It was. Now it's a nightmare. Its antlers twist at angles that make my eyes water. Its eyes aren't glowing; they're... holes. It doesn't drip void; it radiates it like a toxic fog.
This isn't a wolf fighting the infection. This is the infection.
"Run?" I squeak.
"Too late." Toren is already in a warrior's stance. "Same as the wolf. I engage. You... do what you do. Be careful, Ren. This one is... worse."
The thing charges. It doesn't make a sound.
Toren meets it. The screech of his new, rune-etched blade hitting the void-antler makes my teeth ache.
I pull on the ley line. I focus. Control. Finesse. Scalpel, not a hammer. I don't blast it. I target the black-purple nodes I see on its hide.
It screams. A sound that isn't a sound.
As the void magic washes over me, fighting back, something inside me... stirs.
The curse.
It... it likes this. It's not scared. It's curious. It reaches for the void energy... like a friend. Like it recognizes it.
No.
I slam a wall down in my own mind, fighting the deer and myself. Mine. I pour the clean magic, focusing, cleansing.
The deer shatters.
It doesn't become a deer. It doesn't run away. It just... dissolves. It collapses into a pile of black, hissing goo and evaporates.
There was nothing left to save.
I'm shaking. Toren has his hand on my shoulder. "You okay?"
"Yeah. Tired." I don't tell him about the curse. I don't... I don't know how.
The council meeting is a blur of grim faces. "It's accelerating," Toren says, his voice flat.
"Cancel the festival!" Elder Ironwood demands.
"Cower and wait for them to burn us in our beds?" Elder Stoneheart roars back.
It's Seraphine who silences them. "The festival must happen," she says, her voice quiet but final. "We don't hide from the darkness. We defy it. We celebrate. We show them we are not afraid." Her silver eyes find me across the room. "The child of the convergence will be tested. Soon."
The night before the festival, I can't sleep. The ley lines are already pulsing, brighter than I've ever seen them. The air thrums.
I'm on the roof, just watching, when Kaela pulls herself up beside me.
"Couldn't sleep?" she whispers.
"Brain's too loud."
"You need to fix that."
We sit there for a long time, just two kids watching the magic pulse in the sky.
"Tomorrow's gonna be a mess, isn't it?" she asks.
"Probably."
"Good." She grins, her teeth flashing in the silver light. "I'm tired of waiting."
I can't help but smile. "Warrior's oath?"
"Warrior's oath," she says, bumping my shoulder with hers.