Hedi watched Selina; pale phosphorescence pooled like moonlight, light and shadow crosshatching her face, lending it a deep, secret pull.

Certainty settled like cool rain: people don’t flip overnight. They trim their branches on the trunk they already grew.

A sun-bright smile at first glance can tilt with time, like a sundial shifting; the shadow lengthens and shows what the noon once hid.

It’s not a thunderclap change after some catastrophe, but an underground spring rising through old stone.

In short, it’s movement, a river not a statue.

A person’s nature is many-sided, a five-point star of openness, duty, extroversion, agreeableness, and nerves, each point glinting in different light.

Touch the right string and a different music hums out, like a lute in a sudden wind.

Selina was like that. When she learned I couldn’t lean on magic and had shrunk into a helpless, short girl, a buried facet of her lit up, like a mirror catching a single beam.

I felt a small sting, like salt on a cut. Was it my words that gave her the rush of being needed?

If so, I should follow the current a little, not fight the stream.

“S-sometimes...” Heat flushed my face like a rising ember. I lowered my head and combed my messy hair again and again with my knuckly fingers. “I want someone I can cling to too.”

“I’ll protect you!”

I wrestled with the feeling, shook my head, and fixed the hair she had mussed, like smoothing wind-ruffled grass. “Don’t get too relaxed.”

“Didn’t you say, the tougher it gets, the calmer we should be?”

I scratched my neck, feigning amnesia, and reached to rest my hand on Selina’s shoulder. She pulled me forward instead, swapping our places as neatly as a magician flipping cards.

A thin sigh slipped out, like mist on glass. I spoke each word like a bead on a string. “I can’t use magic. Your grasp of the Dark Realm is patchy. How am I supposed to be calm? We may not even get out alive. The Dark Realm opened a year ago. What do the Investigators eat, staying this long? They’ve probably—”

Her hand cupped my face before I finished. It was cool, like the first snowflake melting on skin. I wanted to push it away, then felt the comfort in it, and balked—getting my face kneaded by someone younger felt beneath my station.

“That’s enough. My face isn’t clay.”

“Feeling any better?”

“More depressed.”

A long sigh left me, like wind leaving a sail. I was about to go on when her hand stroked my cheek again. I caught her thought like catching a falling leaf. She heard me sigh and figured I’d start complaining.

I talk calm, but fear rings inside me like a struck bell.

Thinking it through, ever since we entered the Dark Realm, I’d been feeding Selina my gloom like smoke.

No wonder she said, If you’re afraid, I don’t get to show fear.

We walked deeper into the passage. I turned over Selina’s changing mood in my mind and let her hand nuzzle my face like a cat.

Silence pressed in, thick as snow. The faint rustle of roaches on the outer wall vanished for no reason, like a tide pulled back. Only our shoes went tap-tap on the stone.

Our steps weighed different, our bodies like two drums of different size; the blended beat echoed too loudly in the corridor, a stitched sound that felt almost unreal.

“How much farther?”

“I don’t know either. I just followed the crystal here.”

“If only I could use magic—what a damn place.” I spoke, and felt Selina knead my cheek harder, like kneading dough. “It’s not a complaint, just... I can’t believe I’m this weak.”

My words blurred as her fingers tugged and slid, like an old gramophone wheezing through a scratched groove.

“You rely on magic a lot, Professor,” Selina said, still rubbing, her laugh like a spark in dry grass.

“Do you feel that confident about running?” I managed, half-muffled.

“Of course.”

“Imagine this. You become a vegetable, and danger prowls around you. That’s what it feels like for a Spellcaster to lose magic. Does that land?”

“It does. But even if you can’t use magic, you’ve got me. I can protect you. Worst case, I carry you and run.”

“That makes me dead weight.”

“It feels like you—” Selina paused, the word hanging like a ripe fruit. “Don’t like to rely on people?”

I shook my head, a slow ripple. “I just can’t help with anything.”

I knew it clear as winter air: in a place this uncertain, the cost of losing magic is unreadable.

“It can’t be helped. There’s no mana in the Dark Realm. You should know that, Professor.”

“When you say know, you mean your internal Investigator briefings. I didn’t see that in any book about the Dark Realm.” I let out a small breath, like easing a knot. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be this anxious.”

“No way around it. Magic needs mana.”

“Right. If it needs mana, it’s only human magic at best—wait. Exactly. Magic that needs mana is just human magic.”

“What do you mean?”

“How much magic theory do you know?”

“Only the basics. Three major branches.”

“Correct. Ordinary human magic, Sacred Magic, and Dark Magic. Human magic is the one used most. Sacred Magic needs the right vocation. As for Dark Magic, old texts are hard to crack, so few learn it.”

Selina’s mood dipped like a cloud crossing the moon. She cut in, “But you can only study one. Their principles differ. Human magic needs mana. Sacred Magic needs will. Dark Magic feeds on emotion.”

I chuckled, three little notes, brushing off the gloom like dust. “Impossible.”

“I haven’t even said anything yet.”

“Trace magic to its roots and no one holds all three. You already study human magic. If you add another, you dull your feel for spells—deadly for a Spellcaster, isn’t it?”

I nodded agreement, like tapping a seal. “The more familiar you are, the shorter the wind-up before a cast.”

“Wind-up?”

“Don’t mind me. It’s my nickname for it. In academia they call it guiding time.”

“My seniors said Spellcasters are perfectionists. They shave the time to the bone.”

“Think back to the Shattered City. Was my guiding time fast or slow?”

“It felt fast.”

“Slow. Very slow.” I used the tone I had for grading papers. “Most Spellcasters in the Empire would spin me till I lost the North.”

“But you’re a Professor at a top academy.”

“Sure. But to me, the edge isn’t extreme polish. It’s breadth. Know it, use it. No need to sand it to mirror-bright.”

She searched for words, then laughed, a small bell. “You’re unlike any Spellcaster I’ve met.”

“That’s because I spent my time-saving practice elsewhere.”

I swept my arms left and right, like wiping grime with a wet rag.

A patch of the black corridor flared with light, like streaks left on glass after a hard scrub. Harsh white rushed out, and our world widened like a curtain pulled. Air swelled with sudden heat, a kiln breathing.

“What is that? You shouldn’t be able to use magic.”

“Dispel Darkness. It’s Sacred Magic.”

“You actually know it?!”

“I was recalling it while we talked.” My voice stayed even, like a pond at dawn. “I’m rusty though. I used to make it bigger.”

The calm in my tone stunned Selina, as if she’d seen frost on fire. She opened her mouth, then let it close.

“Don’t spread this around. It’ll draw wasps I don’t need.”

I moved on without looking back. White light scattered like thrown rice, and a long shadow pulled from my heels.

The shadow trembled in time with my steps, a dark fish in a bright stream. Our heavy footfalls boomed through the stone-laid passage, drumming steady as a heart.