Ami sat on the edge of a marble fountain, her fingers tracing the scars left by yesterday’s battle with Kalyn. The water burbled politely behind her, each droplet following its assigned trajectory. Just like us, she thought bitterly. Except I’m the droplet that keeps splashing out of the bowl.
Fayra’s tail thumped rhythmically against the tiles as she sprawled on the ground, sharpening a dagger with a rock she’d “borrowed” from Eidolon. “Relax, Fireworks,” she said, not looking up. “Your face is doing that twitchy thing again. Y’know, the one that says, ‘I’m about to implode from existential dread!’” She punctuated the last words with a theatrical shudder.
Velene, perched on a bench as stiffly as if her spine had been welded to a plumb line, shot Fayra a glare. “This isn’t a joke. That display in Eidolon nearly got us killed.” Her gaze swung to Ami, cold as Dominion’s dawn. “You lost control. Again.”
Ami’s threads—silvery and restless—coiled around her wrists like startled serpents. They’re not wrong, Anna murmured, her voice a sly brush of fingernails against Ami’s thoughts. velene’s a pillar of salt in a fancy cloak. fayra’s a lit firework with the safety instructions burned off. and you, darling? you’re the match neither wants to admit they need.
“It worked, didn’t it?” Ami said, louder than she’d intended. The fountain’s water hiccupped, a droplet escaping its prescribed path. “Kalyn’s contained. The mana surge is stabilized. So what if I… bent the rules a little?”
“Bent?” Velene’s glove creaked as she gripped the hilt of her blade. “You funneled raw Eidolon chaos through a Dominion containment grid! That’s not bending—that’s snapping the rules in half and using the splinters to light a bonfire!”
Fayra snorted. “A fabulous bonfire. Did you see Kalyn’s face when her own storm turned into purple confetti? Priceless.” She flipped the dagger, catching it by the tip. “Face it, Velene—Ami’s little ‘oops’ saved your tightly-wound backside.”
Velene stood abruptly, her cloak snapping like a banner in battle. “You think this is about pride? If that spell had misfired—”
“But it didn’t.” Ami rose, her threads flaring. The rosebushes recoiled, petals curling inward. “Why is it never enough? I followed the mission. I kept us alive. Why can’t you just… trust me?”
The words hung in the air, fragile as spider silk.
Velene’s jaw tightened. “Trust requires predictability. Stability. Two qualities you discard whenever that voice in your head croons a little louder.” Her gaze dropped to Ami’s wrists, where Anna’s influence had left faint silver traceries. “Dominion magic isn’t a game, Ami. Chaos consumes.”
Fayra rolled to her feet, tail twitching. “Oh, spare the lecture. You’re just mad because for once, the world wasn’t color-coded and filed alphabetically.” She stepped between them, her grin sharp enough to draw blood. “Guess what, Velene? Not everything’s a flowchart. Sometimes you gotta toss the rulebook and dance.”
“Dancing?” Velene’s laugh was a brittle thing. “Is that what you call it when villages collapse into sinkholes? When children lose parents to someone’s artistic interpretation of safety?”
Ami flinched. Velene had never mentioned her past before.
careful, darling, Anna whispered. velene’s a mosaic of scars pretending to be stained glass. one poke and she’ll shatter.
Fayra, for once, hesitated. “Look, I didn’t—”
“You didn’t think.” Velene turned away, her voice fraying at the edges. “None of you ever do.”
The silence pooled like spilled ink. Somewhere beyond the courtyard, the Academy’s clocktower chimed, each note a needle stitching the world back into order.
Ami’s threads dimmed. “I… I just wanted to help.”
Velene didn’t look back. “Then stop listening to the ghost in your head and start acting like a Dominion mage.”
Fayra’s ears flattened. “Wow. Even for you, that’s frosty.” She hooked an arm around Ami’s shoulders, her touch warmer than the sunlight. “C’mon, Fireworks. Let’s find somewhere less… pointy.”
As they walked away, Ami glanced back. Velene stood motionless, her shadow a perfect blade against the marble.
she’s afraid, Anna murmured. they all are. dominion built its walls high enough to forget the dark, and you? you’re the crack they can’t plaster over.
Ami clenched her fists, the threads writhing. “What if she’s right? What if I’m just… broken?”
Fayra stopped, her golden eyes reflecting the uneaten core of Ami’s fear. “Broken? Ha! You’re a mosaic, not a mug. And mosaics?” She flicked Ami’s nose, grinning. “They’re all the better for having a few jagged edges.”
In the distance, a single rose petal drifted out of line, carried by a breeze that defied the rules.
The argument with Velene still burned in Ami’s chest like swallowed embers. She stood at the edge of Dominion’s starlit courtyard hours after their clash, fingertips grazing the fractured tile where her chaotic magic had scarred the ground yesterday. Fayra had dragged her here to “cool off,” but the foxgirl’s idea of cooling off involved stealing honeycakes from the kitchens and lobbing pebbles at passing professors. Ami had shooed her away moments ago, craving silence.
“you’re brooding,” anna purred, her voice a sly crackle in Ami’s mind. “delicious, but unproductive. let’s find something to break.”
Ami ignored her, staring at her reflection in the fountain’s unnervingly still water. Velene’s words circled like carrion birds: “You’re a wildfire. And wildfires burn everything.” Even the fountain’s symmetry mocked her—every droplet timed, every ripple calculated.
“Amarantha,” came a voice colder than Dominion’s moonlit air.
Eria stood framed between two geometrically perfect rosebushes, her golden braids coiled like a crown. Her gaze flicked to the cracked tile at Ami’s feet. “Still cleaning up your messes, I see.”
Ami stiffened. “What do you want, Eria?”
“To admire Dominion’s latest eyesore.” Eria gestured to the fracture with a gloved hand. “Tell me—does it thrill you? Knowing every mistake you make weakens the containment field? That your mother loses sleep patching the cracks you leave behind?”
“oh, she’s good,” anna hissed, half-admiring. “sharp as a scalpel. twist it deeper, why don’t you?”
Ami clenched her fists. “I didn’t ask for your commentary.”
“No. You never do.” Eria stepped closer, her Dominion threads glinting faintly at her wrists. “But here we are. Amariel’s containment grid is degrading twice as fast since you started meddling in Eidolon. Kalyn’s tantrum last week? The mana surge that cracked the western aquifer? All you.”
The words landed like stones. Velene’s warnings about villages collapsing into sinkholes flashed in Ami’s mind, but she jutted her chin. “You think I don’t know that? You think I’m not trying to fix it?”
“Trying?” A delicate scoff. “Your ‘trying’ nearly got Velene incinerated yesterday. Dominion doesn’t need effort, Amarantha. It needs perfection. Something you’ve never grasped.”
“darling, let’s turn her into a hedgehog. a very sparkly hedgehog.”
Ami’s threads flickered silver at her fingertips. “Back off, Eria.”
“Or what?” Eria’s smile was a blade. “You’ll set the courtyard on fire again? How predictable. Though I suppose predictability is an improvement for you.”
The barb hit its mark. Ami’s magic flared—a jagged burst of light that made the rosebushes recoil. Eria didn’t flinch.
“There it is.” Eria’s voice dropped, low and deliberate. “The chaos you can’t control. The reason Amariel would rather send you to Eidolon than trust you here. Tell me—do you even want to belong in Dominion? Or are you just too frightened to admit you don’t?”
Something inside Ami snapped.
The threads erupted—not Dominion’s gold, not Eidolon’s kaleidoscopic fury, but a seething silver storm. Fountain water sloshed over the edge, drenching Eria’s immaculate boots.
“Fine.” Ami’s voice shook with a wildness that didn’t feel entirely like her own. “You want perfection? Let’s see yours hold up against this.”
Eria’s eyes narrowed, but her threads were already spinning—a gleaming lattice of light. “You’ll regret this.”
“no, darling,” anna whispered as the first strike lit the courtyard. “she will.”
The courtyard held its breath. Ami’s threads coiled around Eria’s golden weave like vines strangling sunlight—a mess of silver lightning against immaculate geometry. Eria’s eyes narrowed, her fingers twitching as she adjusted her spell, but the crack in her composure had already spread.
see how she flinches? anna purred, her voice the flicker of a candle in a hurricane. she’s never tangled with real magic before. only puppet strings.
“Focus!” Velene barked from the sidelines, her gloved hands clenched at her sides. Her shadow stretched across the tiles like a blade. “Dominion protocols, Ami! Stop indulging that—that noise in your head!”
Fayra, perched atop a fractured pillar, lobbed a pebble at Velene’s shoulder. “Relax, Miss Protocol! Fireworks here’s finally living!”
Ami barely heard them. The threads hummed in her palms, electric and alive, as Eria’s latest construct—a lattice of golden hexagons—slammed into her defenses. This time, Ami didn’t flinch. She let her chaos bend.
The hexagons shattered.
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The crowd erupted. A first-year fainted theatrically into a rosebush.
Eria staggered, a single strand of her golden hair escaping its braid. “Cheap tricks,” she hissed, but her voice lacked its usual ice. “You think scribbling outside the lines makes you powerful? It makes you dangerous.”
oh, she’s scared, anna cooed. scared of us. how delicious.
“Dangerous?” Ami shot back, grinning wildly as her threads spiraled into a helix of silver sparks. “Says the girl who cries if her tea’s two degrees too cold!”
Fayra whooped. Even Velene’s lips twitched.
Eria’s cheeks flushed. With a snarl, she flung her hands skyward. The air rippled as a massive Dominion sigil—a spinning mandala of interlocked triangles—materialized above them. The ground trembled, tiles cracking under the weight of pure, refined magic.
The crowd scattered. Fayra yelped and dove behind a pillar.
“Amarantha!” Velene shouted, genuine fear sharpening her tone. “Retreat!”
you could, anna whispered. or...
Ami’s breath hitched. The sigil pulsed, its light scorching her retinas. This was no training exercise—Eria meant to end her.
do you trust me?
Memories flickered: Amariel’s disappointed glares, Velene’s warnings about toilets and famine, her own hands shaking as threads snapped. Then—Fayra’s laugh, wild and unashamed. Eidolon’s kaleidoscopic skies.
Anna’s voice, soft: you’ve always been enough, darling. even when you’re messy.
Ami closed her eyes.
“Yes.” The world exploded.
But not in gold.
Ami’s threads detonated in a supernova of color—fuchsia, cobalt, emerald—twisting Eria’s perfect sigil into a swirling vortex of possibility. The mandala warped, its rigid angles melting into fractals, its hum becoming a melody that made the courtyard’s rosebushes bloom neon blue.
Eria screamed—a raw, unpolished sound—as her spell splintered.
When the light died, Ami stood unharmed at the eye of the storm. Eria knelt, her uniform smudged, her threads sputtering weakly around her like dying fireflies.
Silence.
Then—applause.
Fayra emerged, clapping slowly, her grin feral. “Well. That’s going in the Academy history books.”
Velene said nothing. Her face was pale.
Eria stood shakily, avoiding Ami’s gaze. “This isn’t over,” she muttered, but the threat rang hollow. As she turned to leave, her voice dropped, barely audible: “...Your mother was right about you.”
Ami froze.
what did she say? anna growled. let’s melt her shoes.
But Eria was already gone, the crowd parting silently in her wake. Fayra slung an arm around Ami’s shoulders. “Come on, Fireworks. Toast your victory with something that isn’t filtered through twelve purity sieges.”
Velene stepped into their path. “Ami. We need to talk.”
The courtyard emptied around them, first-years whispering as they fled.
“If this is another lecture—”
“The containment field’s degrading faster than projected,” Velene interrupted, her voice low. “Your little ‘experiment’ in Eidolon last week? It left a fissure. Amariel’s covering it, but if another surge…”
Ami stiffened. “You’re blaming me?”
“I’m warning you. That…” She gestured at the scorched tiles. “…wasn’t Dominion. Wasn’t even Eidolon. It was you. Unfiltered. Unstable.”
Fayra snorted. “Wow. Poetic. Got a sonnet about teamwork next?”
Velene ignored her. “Amariel thinks you’re the key to stabilizing the field. But if you can’t control what’s inside you…”
she wants to lock you up, anna hissed. pretty cage, golden threads—
“Stop.” Ami’s voice shook. “Just… stop.”
Fayra’s tail flicked anxiously. “Velene—”
“No.” Velene’s gaze never left Ami’s. “Dominion’s survival hinges on precision. You’re a wildfire, Ami. And wildfires…”
“…burn everything,” Ami finished flatly. “Yeah. I know.”
The words hung in the air, sharp as broken glass.
Fayra cleared her throat. “So! Who’s hungry? I hear the cafeteria’s serving existential dread with a side of—”
A silver thread snapped between them, coalescing into a shimmering scroll. Amariel’s seal blazed crimson on the wax.
Ami broke it open. Two words:
My office.
so, darling, anna murmured as they walked. ready to meet the dragon in her den?
Ami didn’t answer. Somewhere beneath her ribs, the threads hummed—not with fear, but anticipation.
The game had changed.
And for the first time, she couldn’t wait to play.
Ami’s boots clicked against the obsidian steps of the Academy spire, each echo a hammerstroke to her resolve. The air thickened with every floor they ascended, until even the walls seemed to sweat Dominion’s disapproval—polished stone sweating black ichor that smelled of burnt circuitry and old fears.
“you’re sulking,” anna purred as Ami paused at a slit window overlooking the training grounds. Below, Eria’s golden threads wove through first-years like puppet strings. “admiring your handiwork? she hasn’t stopped flinching at shadows since you shattered her precious sphere.”
“I didn’t shatter it,” Ami muttered, tracing a finger along the glass. A hairline fracture snaked under her touch. “It… destabilized.”
“semantics, darling. point is—”
“Amarantha.”
Ami jerked her hand back as Velene materialized beside her, gloved fingers gripping a scroll stamped with Amariel’s seal—a eagle clutching both a gear and a lightning bolt. “The Headmistress dislikes waiting.”
Fayra’s laughter ricocheted up the stairwell. “Relax, Velene! Dragon Lady’s probably just redecorating her lair. Oooh, maybe she bought new chains for Ami!”
Velene’s glove creaked. “This isn’t a joke. If the containment field degrades further—”
“No toilets, famine, babies exploding—yeah, yeah.” Fayra bounded past them, tail slashing the air. “But hey, look on the bright side! If Dominion collapses, we can all move to Eidolon and become professional firework artists.”
Ami’s throat tightened. Professional firework artist. That’s what her father—Wildmathguy—had called himself in the scraps of memory Anna sometimes leaked into her dreams. Amariel had burned those letters.
“she’s afraid you’ll choose him,” anna whispered. “choose us.”
The spire’s apex loomed ahead, its arched door etched with containment sigils that pulsed like wounded stars. Ami’s threads stirred uneasily, their silver tendrils fraying into prismatic static.
“remember the roses,” anna murmured.
Ami did. Four years old, trailing Amariel through Eidolon’s heart—a place of fractal skies and singing stones. Her mother had smiled then, really smiled, as Wildmathguy spun a crown of thunderblooms for her hair.
Until the miscarriage.
Until the healers said this child won’t survive the womb without Dominion’s order.
The door swung open before Ami could knock. Amariel’s solar was a violation of physics—a sphere of flawless symmetry floating in a void of Dominion’s deepest black. Glyphs hovered in concentric orbits, their gold dimmed to corpse-light. At the center, Amariel stood within a lattice of threads so intricate they seemed to stitch reality itself.
“Amarantha.” Her mother didn’t turn. “Explain your actions in the courtyard.”
Ami’s shoes sank into the floor, which rippled like tar. “Eria challenged me. I defended myself.”
“With Eidolon magic.”
“With my magic.”
Amariel’s threads twitched. One snapped, its severed end curling into a question mark. “That… voice. It speaks to you still?”
“tell her i say hello,” anna crooned.
“She’s part of me,” Ami said, lifting her chin. “Not a ‘voice.’”
Amariel turned.
Ami stifled a gasp. The Headmistress’s skin had gone translucent, veins mapping blue rivers beneath the surface. Her left eye blazed Dominion gold—the right swirled with Eidolon violet.
“You think this is a game,” Amariel said softly. “That your… experiments… have no cost.” She gestured, and the solar’s walls dissolved into a tableau of Dominion’s crumbling edges:
- A fountain in the Moon District vomiting black sludge.
- A clocktower frozen at half-past fracture.
- A child weeping over a doll whose face kept rearranging itself.
“The containment field is my life, Amarantha.” Amariel’s dual-colored gaze burned. “Every crack you widen with your chaos is a year stolen from my bones. Is that what you want? To watch me unravel?”
“she’s lying,” anna hissed. “the field isn’t her life—it’s her cage. she built it to survive leaving Eidolon, but it’s eating her. always has been.”
Ami stepped forward, threads sparking. “Then let it go! If the field’s killing you—”
“It’s killing you faster.” Amariel’s smile was a scalpel. “Or did you think your little episodes were simple clumsiness? The healers have charts. Your cells destabilize each time you flirt with Eidolon. Another five years, perhaps ten, and—”
“No.” Velene’s voice cracked like a whip. She stood in the doorway, Fayra’s wrist locked in her grip. “You told me her condition was stable.”
Amariel didn’t blink. “I told you what you needed to hear to keep her in line.”
Fayra wrenched free, fur bristling. “You knew?”
“Of course.” Amariel’s threads writhed, reforging the broken one. “But she’ll live decades longer if she masters Dominion. Assuming she stops indulging… distractions.”
“liar,” anna snarled. “she’s terrified you’ll outgrow her. that you’ll leave—”
“Enough.” Amariel flicked her hand, and the solar’s floor surged upward, hardening into a dagger-pointed landscape. “You’ll accompany Eria to the Mire. There’s a fissure in the containment field there. Seal it—properly—and perhaps I’ll reconsider your… rehabilitation.”
Ami’s laugh was all Anna. “Rehabili—what? You want to fix me?”
“I want to save you.” For a heartbeat, raw anguish flickered in Amariel’s heterochromatic eyes. “Even if you hate me for it.”
The floor dropped away. Eria waited at the Mire’s edge, her golden threads already weaving a bridge over the fissure—a jagged scar in reality where Dominion’s order met Eidolon’s song. The air smelled of ozone and endings.
“Took you long enough,” Eria said, not turning. “The fissure’s widened three centimeters since dawn.”
Fayra gagged dramatically. “Ugh, can you smell the pretension? It’s like perfume made from old textbooks and disappointment.”
Velene ignored them, crouching to scan the fissure. “Amariel’s parameters?”
“Standard stabilization paradigm.” Eria’s threads danced faster. “Suppress Eidolon resonance, reinforce Dominion latticework, and—”
“And suffocate the magic that’s alive here?” Ami interrupted. The fissure pulsed in time with her heartbeat, singing a wordless hymn that made her threads vibrate.
Eria’s posture stiffened. “Your mother’s orders are clear.”
“your mother,” anna mocked. “funny. sounds like she’s your mother too, golden girl.”
Eria’s threads faltered.
Ami froze. Oh.
The realization struck like lightning—Eria’s flawless technique, her obsession with Amariel’s approval, the way she’d flinched when Anna said “golden girl”…
“You’re her contingency plan,” Ami breathed. “If I couldn’t be fixed… you were supposed to replace me.”
Eria’s cheeks flushed. “Don’t be absurd.”
“aww,” anna cooed. “did the perfect princess think she was special? newsflash, darling—you’re just another cog. shinier, sure, but still replaceable.”
“Shut up!” Eria’s threads lashed out, not at Ami, but at the fissure. Golden light seared the edges—suppressing, strangling.
The Mire screamed.
Reality ripped.