I’d hoped we could rescue Halven right away. But Isa and Professor Veyn made it clear we weren’t ready. After several days of silence following the revelation about Halven, Professor Veyn returned, declaring that we would be training for a few weeks before venturing into The Seal. So we would return to the Council Chambers, not to deliberate, but to train.

The Council Chambers had never felt more alive. There was a different energy in the air this time, thick with magic and effort. Not just from the fires in the sconces, but from all of us, side by side, learning to stretch our powers further than we had before. It pulsed with purpose, with movement, with magic learning to reach outside of itself.

We needed to understand Binding. Everything Rielle and I had learned about Binding our magic to nature and more. When Veyn spoke of Binding magic—magic tied not just to the elements, but to the life of the world itself—I felt something stir. It wasn’t just about strength. It was about connection. To the ground beneath our feet, to each other, and to whatever waited for us beyond those walls.

What Rielle and I had spent the last couple of months learning now had to be taught to the rest of us in a few weeks.

Every evening, we gathered. The benches filled slowly at first, the air always thick with fatigue after our regular classes. But once Veyn started pacing in front of the ancient stone map with his chalk-streaked sleeves and ink-covered fingers, we listened. The diagrams behind him on a black piece of slate were half-legible, but I understood them. I helped him draw them.

He explained the core tenet over and over. Binding magic was not a simple spell. Nature did not obey. It listened and responded, but only to harmony. Binding, true binding, came from shared intent. One element supporting another.

Sometimes he let me help demonstrate. Not because I asked. Because I was already doing it. I moved from student to student, correcting their stances, helping them phrase their intent more clearly. Showing them where their magic fought instead of flowed.

I did not look at Veyn, but I felt his eyes on me constantly. In the quiet moments. In the loud ones. When he called for volunteers and when he said nothing at all.

He had tried to speak with me more than once. Tried to catch me on the way in or the way out. I slipped past him every time.

Teaching steadied me. But when it was my turn to learn, to receive, to let someone else guide me, I faltered. Even when Neir or Rielle stood beside me with patient instruction, part of me resisted.

I hated that I still wanted his voice to be the one giving the praise, guiding me next to him as part of his life, not some compartmentalized part that couldn’t cross over into his secrets. The part that got to share in every single thing that helped to shape the man I loved.

But he wouldn’t let me in.

Instead, I poured my magic into the vibrant, growing life around me.

On the fourth day, I began practicing growing roots through the floor itself, coaxing tendrils from tiny moss clumps where the stone cracked near the wall. It felt good to grow slowly and steadily, without flourish. To wrap strength around silence and call it peace.

“You quiet the land, Docilis Shara,” Veyn said from behind me one day.

His voice was low, almost reverent. It vibrated through me and goosebumps rose on my arms. I wanted to feel his voice speaking against my skin in my most secret places.

But I did not turn to him. I did not thank him. I just nodded and moved on to help Ardorion.

He had been struggling. Trying to force fire into dead metal. But his flame kept flickering out, and I could feel the frustration simmering beneath his skin.

“It just doesn’t work,” Ardorion said, voice tight. “Maybe fire doesn’t bind well with other elements because of where it comes from. Because of Ignis. The Fire God didn’t exactly get along with the others, considering his history. Maybe the other elements hold a grudge.”

He looked away, like he regretted saying it aloud. Probably remembering how Ignis had destroyed Sygilla.

Professor Veyn didn’t scoff. He tilted his head and considered it. “Fire takes on the qualities of its master. Like Ignis, fire consumes, transforms, and rages. But under the right conditions, it could also sustain.”

He folded his arms, and I knew he didn’t like speaking against any of the gods, his reverence for them a thing I didn’t quite understand. “Start by finding where fire lives in nature without destroying it.”

It was the perfect answer.

I joined Ardorion by a crack in the floor where the moss grew thickest. He looked at me warily, like he did not want help, but I smiled anyway. “We need shared intent. Let’s light the moss with your flame but keep it from burning it.”

He nodded, and we whispered our intent together. When the moss shimmered green and gold without turning to ash, the joy on his face lit brighter than any flame.

That was what Binding with nature looked like.

But I saw what came after too. When Aster stepped forward and called water from the air with barely a whisper, and the whole chamber seemed to hold its breath, I watched Ardorion fold inward again.

I said nothing. But I stood beside him a little longer than necessary.

The days blurred after that. More sessions. More mistakes. More flashes of beauty when the elements finally listened.

On the evening of Nonis 9th, Veyn dismissed us early.

“We will not train tomorrow,” he said. “Deveil’s Night is not a time for training. You are expected in the ceremonial field by twilight for the Mourning of the Mists. We walk through the mists so the wraiths pass us by on Deveil’s Night as we begin the Descent of the Veil.”

My breath caught at the mention of it.

Deveil’s Night was not just tradition. It was remembrance. It was the one night I let myself hope I might see my grandmother’s face in the mist.

And the thought of walking that path while knowing Veyn might do the same made something unsteady beat beneath my ribs.

Deveil, the shortened form of the Descent of the Veil. I never used to think much of it when I was younger. The stories always felt like they belonged to someone else’s pain. But as I grew older, it began to settle in me differently.

We all knew the tale. How the Goddess of Conflict, Brihiva, descended into the eight hells for her slain son, how her husband, Acratius, God of Warfare Strategy, followed without question, how love and grief reshaped the gods themselves. Acratius had to stay behind while his wife and son returned to the living, but on that day every year, the veil thinned between the living and the dead. The story was called “The Descent of Brihiva and Acratius,” and it was meant to remind us that even gods could mourn. That sometimes, the only thing more powerful than destruction was remembrance.

I never cared about the myth. But I cared about what it allowed.

Because on Deveil’s Night, they said the veil thinned. That spirits could find their way through the mist. And that if you listened hard enough, if you stilled everything else inside you, you might hear their voices again.

Every year, I hoped to see his face, hear his voice.

My grandfather had Withered only a few years ago. One day, his laugh still filled the kitchen. The next, he was silent, bark spreading up his arms like ivy, his magic dimming with every breath. It was not death. It was a return. That was what we were taught. The Wood Fae did not die. They Withered. They became one with the roots of the trees that had housed their lives, their homes, their stories. My grandfather’s essence had returned to our family’s tree in the Spring Quadrant, and sometimes I pressed my hand to the bark, thinking I could still feel him with me.

But on Deveil’s Night, I always wondered if I might glimpse him again. Even just for a second.

That night, I dressed slowly. The ceremonial veil draped over my face, translucent and pale, and I walked barefoot across the wet stone of the Academy steps. The ceremonial field lay in shadow, bathed only in torchlight and mist that curled low like breath on glass. The others were already gathering. Cloaks whispered and feet padded lightly over the earth.

A soft flute played somewhere in the darkness. Brihiva and Acratius’s son, Ashar, was said to have played it too, when the world still remembered the gods as more than myth, as more than just stories.

I stepped into the grass. Cold dew kissed my skin. The mist curled higher around my ankles. We walked in silence toward the ceremonial tree, where its branches stretched long above us like arms welcoming us along with the wraiths that crossed the veil this night.

I did not walk beside anyone.

I kept my gaze low, my heart quieter still. If there was ever a time to reach across the veil, it was now. And I did not want to miss him if he came.

When I neared the tree, I knelt. I let the mist soak into the hem of my robe and tried to empty every thought that wasn’t her. I breathed out the ache in my chest from my ancestor’s absence. From Veyn’s presence still lingering inside me like roots that had never stopped growing.

I just wanted my grandfather to fill my heart, to guide me where others failed.

I closed my eyes and whispered his name.

And in the hush that followed, the breeze moved differently. The mist curled tighter around my shoulders. And for a moment, I swore I heard the creak of bark that once held a laugh.

I pressed my hand to the grass. Not asking for more. Just thanking him for that.

That was all I needed.

It soothed the ache in my soul. It gave me strength to help save my friend, even if my heart continued breaking.