December 15, 1886. A weekend.

Cloud-heavy dawn. Hedi pressed to the window, solemn, wearing a face made for funerals.

The train swayed toward Naghtown, away from the bustling streets. The world fell quiet in one breath.

Black clouds locked the sky like iron doors. Shards of lightning flickered. No rain yet. Only sullen thunder, rolling like drums in a cellar.

A violin sang in the carriage, thin and silver. Across the aisle, someone ate, crisp as a mouse gnawing a cracker.

A baby woke to the sound. The mother whispered like wind in grass, yet the crying kept beating like rain.

Selina closed her eyes and rested, calm as a sleeping swan on dark water.

Hedi tapped the glass. Fields thinned into forest, a green tide closing in.

Each forest, no matter its name, tugged at a quiet longing. Familiar rows of similar trees stitched together like a quilt.

At sixteen, she had walked the Sacred Cathedral’s woods with Alina, a day rimmed with dew.

Trees stood tall and packed, steeped in the scent of tidewater. Shallow pools lay everywhere, like coins set in earth.

Sunlight fought through branches. It dappled the ferny floor of the swamp. After leaves, little light remained, glimmers drifting with ripples.

“There are ghosts here! Real ones—spirits that float.” Alina chose her words like stepping stones across a stream.

She was an orphan taken in by the Sacred Cathedral. She spoke slowly, careful as a cat. “I heard it from a man who prayed here days ago.”

She clasped her hands behind her back and smiled at Hedi, a smile clear as water, unafraid of truth.

“If the nuns hear that, they’ll scold you,” Hedi said, voice cool as shade. “Maybe lock you up.”

“I’m used to it.” Her tone tossed it aside like a pebble.

“Not afraid of bugs?”

“There aren’t any,” Alina said, brushing grass seeds off her dress like burrs off wool. “It’s all to spook you.”

“I play along, but it’s clean inside. Besides, would the Priest let the nuns lock us in a filthy room?”

“Maybe. I’ve never been,” Hedi answered, eyes down like rain on slate.

“You don’t make mistakes,” Alina said, light as a laugh.

Hedi moved deeper into the trees, thoughts heavy as stones in a pocket. She’d believed Dark Magic meant punishment.

Confinement by nuns. Other forms of chastening, cold as iron. Yet when the nuns and the Priest learned, no punishment came.

They chose instead to send her to Northstar City, to Hervor Academy of Magic, when she turned sixteen.

The Priest had said, voice steady as a bell: “Confinement isn’t arbitrary. I can’t use Dark Magic as a reason.”

“It would invite gossip, sticking like burrs. I can’t drive you out either. That would stain your path.”

“Given your gift, sending you to the Academy is also a kind of ‘banishment.’ It lets me keep the sacred rule.”

“And sever your ties to the Sacred Cathedral, like cutting a knotted cord.”

Leaves hissed overhead. The sky peeked through shifting gaps, growing and shrinking like a pupil.

Far dogs barked, blurred, like calls from a doorway to another world. Yes, a world unlike this one.

Hedi had come to find a moment to say goodbye. A new world waited, like a train at the edge of fog.

“Why so quiet?” Alina climbed a small rise, a general on a mound, surveying her paper army.

“That heavy face looks so grown up!”

Hedi smiled, soft as morning smoke. “Do you know what maturity is?”

“The nuns say maturity is knowing what to do, and what not to do.”

“Then you’re not mature,” Hedi said, walking on, words even as moss. “Climbing trees in a dress to catch bugs.”

“Wading after fish. Running wild in the Sacred Cathedral. Stealing little cakes.”

“What’s wrong with that? The Priest grins at me like sunshine!”

“I still remember you set the dog on Sister Bertha,” Hedi said, memory sharp as a thorn.

Alina wore a grin like a fox. She leapt into a puddle, splashing light like coins. “She always fixes her face like stone.”

“She smacks my palm! She says learn from you, but you’re quiet as a pond. No life in you!”

“When you’re grown, looking back, you’ll itch with shame,” Hedi said, calm as a teacher.

“Speaking of growing up, what do you want to do?” Alina asked, eyes bright as wet leaves.

“Find a job and feed myself,” Hedi said, simple as bread.

“Don’t want to stay in the Sacred Cathedral?”

“I can’t be a nun, I—” The words lodged like a fishbone. She swallowed them and walked on.

Only the Priest and the nuns knew about the Dark Magic books. She couldn’t say it. Not to anyone.

“Maybe a Professor of Magic,” Hedi said at last, voice level as a path. “I’m suited to it.”

“I want to be an explorer!” Alina’s voice jumped like a flame.

“You won’t stay either?”

“Mm… I’m too naughty. Energy for days, like a spring that won’t run dry.”

“Self-aware, huh,” Hedi said, a small nod like a leaf falling.

“What does that mean?” Alina pouted, lips a small storm.

“It means you know your situation and your limits,” Hedi said, gentle as dusk.

Alina darted close and touched Hedi’s gray-white hair, long as winter rivers. Then she took Hedi’s hand.

They slipped out of the woods into a shallow hidden hollow, a place few feet had pressed.

They crossed a simple hanging bridge over a babbling stream. They climbed into a low hill packed with firs.

“You’ve never been here!” Alina walked ahead, turning back with a grin like moonlight. “My secret base!”

Hedi kept two or three steps back and warned, voice tight as thread. “We’re far from the Sacred Cathedral.”

“It’s fine. We’ll be back before supper,” Alina said, carefree as wind.

“When you say it’s fine, trouble’s coming,” Hedi said, dry as a reed.

“That’s because some brat tattled to the nuns!” Alina huffed, cheeks hot as embers. “I gave him a beating.”

“He won’t snitch again,” she added, then fell into silence like a stone in water.

Hedi tapped leaf litter with her toe, small sounds like moth wings. She lifted her gaze to the strip of sky.

In the hush, she listened to the fine noises around them, each one a silver thread. Alina walked slow, thinking hard.

“Do you have something to tell me?” Alina burst out, quick as a sparrow. “You wanted to talk. I dragged you here.”

“Yeah,” Hedi said, a pause like shade.

“What is it?”

“It’s—”

A small scarlet bird jolted from a branch, ringing clear as a bell. It rose like a flame and cut the air.

Alina sprang after it, wanting it warm in her hands. The thread of talk snapped, gone like smoke.

“Did you see?” Alina ran back, cheeks flushed dark, almost violet. Her eyes shone like wet stone.

“First time seeing a bird that pretty! If only we had tools.”

“The nuns will scold you,” Hedi said, cool as rain.

“I don’t care!”

Alina’s hair was a boyish brown crop, quick as a breeze. Hedi’s hair fell to her waist, gray-white as frost.

Their temperaments were worlds apart, a river between them. So Alina dragged Hedi everywhere.

She wanted her spark to catch, to turn the quiet girl mischievous, like lighting kindling.

“Oh! Were you about to say something?” Alina asked, face serious as a lantern.

Hedi checked her pocket watch, bright as a coin. She shook her head. “We still have time. Let’s head back.”

They walked in silence through the fir grove. On the path lay pale husks, shed skins white as parchment.

Alina stepped on them, creaking like old doors. Hedi moved like searching for a lost thing, eyes on the ground.

They eased toward the Sacred Cathedral, drawn like a compass needle.

“I’ve been looking for you two forever!” Sister Bertha bent her head in anger, her cheeks shaking like jelly.

“Where did you take Melvina again?!”

Alina pursed her lips and answered, one beat at a time. “It’s. A. Secret.”

“Go to the hospital with everyone. Priest John is very ill,” Sister Bertha said, words cold as iron.

“He may not live through today. Hurry, see him one last time.”

“We should’ve gone already. Because you dragged Melvina off, everyone’s waiting on you!”

Alina sucked in air, a skiff under a squall. Her lashes trembled up and down like grass in wind.

Color drained from her face, the rose gone, turning dingy, almost earth-gray.

“Move!” Sister Bertha ordered again, voice like a whip.

“R-right away!”

Hedi rushed after Alina toward the steam car waiting outside the Sacred Cathedral, heart pounding like hooves.

She started to run, but Sister Bertha grabbed her collar, a hook snagging cloth. “You read Dark Magic.”

“You can’t visit the Priest.”

“A look from afar—” Hedi pleaded, voice thin as wire.

“Check the time,” Sister Bertha said, eyes hard as flint. “The last train to Northstar City is pulling in.”

“I can go tomorrow,” Hedi said, hope like a candle.

“At Hervor Academy of Magic, a school that honors time’s order, you’re transferring midterm,” Sister Bertha said.

“You must manage your time. Make a good first impression on your tutors,” she pressed, words like stones.

“It’s the least you owe the Priest who wrote your recommendation.”

“That makes me look cold,” Hedi said, throat tight as a knot.

“If you want, I can tell your peers you read Dark Magic,” Sister Bertha said, smile thin as a blade.

Hedi wrenched free and ran for the road, feet flying like sparks. The steam car had already gone, racing toward the hospital.

“Let’s go,” Sister Bertha said, gripping Hedi’s forearm, a clamp on iron. She dragged her to the platform.

She shoved her into the carriage, rough as a wave. “Your bag has your essentials and the Priest’s letter.”

“You’re making me look heartless!” Hedi hissed, eyes bright as rain.

“The moment you opened a book of Dark Magic, you ceased to belong to the Sacred Cathedral,” Sister Bertha said.

“The births and deaths here no longer concern you. That door is closed,” she finished, voice like stone.

“In that case, I won’t mourn you either,” Hedi said, cold as winter light.

Sister Bertha smiled like a knife. “Don’t you dare come to my funeral.”

The sky broke into heavy rain, a flood that meant to drown the world.

The window blurred behind rivers of cold water. White lightning smeared, unsure as ghosts behind glass.

Hedi tapped the glass and chewed her memories, quiet as snow.

At some point, the violin became a piano, rain-soft and slow. The passenger across the aisle stopped eating.

The baby, spent, stopped crying, sleep closing like a lid. Selina opened her eyes and whispered, “What a storm.”