Chapter 133
Chapter 133
Nathaniel
I found Bastain exactly where I expected to: hunched over a long slab of shattered stone that once served as a table, deep in the back of the ruined library near the edge of the camp. His coat was streaked with soot, one sleeve rolled up past his elbow, veins dark with the residue of temporary enchantments. His fingers moved fast across a scrap of parchment, quill twitching like it was more muscle memory than intent. Pages surrounded him some open, some half charred, others sealed beneath magical glass to keep them from disintegrating.
The place reeked of damp parchment, scorched leather, and something older–something like ozone and pressed ash. The ceiling overhead had long since cracked and fallen inward. Cold daylight filtered in through the broken beams like a watchful eye, casting bars of light across his work. Dust hung suspended in the air, catching the glow like old magic waiting to be disturbed.
“Bastain,” I said.
He didn’t look up.
I took a step closer. “We need to talk.”
He finished the line he was scrawling–an arcing sigil that looked eerily like one of the leyline markings Jiselle had left behind earlier this morning. Then he set the quill down, closed his eyes briefly, and exhaled.
“You’ve seen it too, haven’t you?” he asked without turning. “The change.”
“It’s more than a change,” I said, jaw tightening. “She’s not just stronger. She’s… different.”
That made him took up. Slowly. His expression was tired, but alert. Watchful. Not a hint of surprise.
“I’ve been researching leyline convergence theory for years,” he said. “And before Jiselle ever walked through that gate, I thought I understood the boundaries. The thresholds between power and vessel. But I was wrong.”
I folded my arms across my chest. “What exactly are you saying?”
He gestured to the pages scattered before him. Some were sketched diagrams, some raw data, others written in a blend of Old Tongue and modern spellscript. But they all had one thing in common–violet flame. Everywhere. Scrawled in the margins, highlighted in ink, dancing across the outer edges of diagrams like the color had bled through the paper itself.
“There’s only one other historical account of a violet manifestation in Ethereal flame,” he said. “One. And it didn’t end in prophecy or coronation.”
I felt my pulse spike. “What happened?”
He looked at me. Direct. No hedging.
“It ended with a realm gate collapsing. And an entire city disappearing with it.”
Silence pressed in like a second skin.
“Collapsed?” I repeated.
“Cut off,” he said. “Permanently. A scar in the leyline so deep it couldn’t be healed. The flame didn’t just consume its wielder. It turned her into a conduit. A siphon. The gate couldn’t sustain the draw–and so it imploded. The land folded in on itself.”
“Why haven’t I heard about this?”
“Because the Council buried it,” he said. “They buried her name, her story, her tomb. Just like they did with the truth about the Gifted.”
I exhaled slowly, grounding myself against the edge of the table. “You’re afraid that’s what Jiselle is becoming.”
1/4
Chapter Ra
~i think “ Bestbin sald, carefully, “that the kiready in. The layed piltas differently have vihen she steps into the matje met i vielst frame. That fen’t just magic, Nathaniel. That’s rooted history tomating elder than the Academy, ofter than the vet taskó
1shook my head. “She’s not going to collapse anything. She’s not that far gone!
“Not yet he said. “But that’s the part no one wants to say stud
Ple walked around the table, picking up a smaller page and harding
i was a glyph—a tight spiral centered around an open circle, ringed with than interlocking runes that glowed faintly vinter
“That’s the symbol she stepped into this morning,” he said. “You saw it too.”
I nodded.
“It’s not random,” he added. “It’s a leyline stabilizer. But it wasn’t drawn to stabilize others, it was drawn to anchor herself“.
I frowned. “So she’s in control.”
He paused. “She is now.”
“What does that mean?”
Bastain studied me. There was no smugness in his expression. Only the gravity of a man who’d read too many things he couldn’t unlearn.
“It means,” he said quietly, “she can hold it–only if she remains herself.”
Something cold settled in my chest.
“And if she doesn’t?”
“Then she becomes a gateway,” he said. “Not metaphorically. Not symbolically. A literal tear in the leyline. If she fractures again, she could open something that doesn’t close. And this time, it might not just collapse a city.”
1 swallowed hard. My fingers tightened around the edge of the glyph.
“She won’t lose herself.”
Bastain didn’t argue. But he didn’t agree either.
Instead, he said, “Just make sure no one pushes her to the edge.”
I turned to leave.
But as I stepped out of the tent, the bond shifted.
Not softly. Not gently.
It twisted.
Like a thread pulled taut across glass.
I stopped mid–stride, hand braced against the wooden beam just outside the entry flap. The air around me flickered, the scent of leyline energy thickening in the back of my throat.
“Jiselle?”
My voice slipped out before I realized how sharp it sounded. The bond had gone still—quiet in a way that didn’t feel like rest. It felt like something holding its breath.
2/4
20
Chapter 133
No answer.
I waited, tuned in, reaching across the tether for anything–an image, a flicker, a whisper.
Nothing
And then
The scream.
It didn’t build. It didn’t rise from silence like pain trying to find a voice.
It detonated.
It shattered across the bond like a pane of glass imploding under pressure–sudden, violent, and wrong.
Not Jiselle.
Not her voice.
High. Piercing. Unnatural. A sound that didn’t belong in this world–or in any other. It clawed its way through the tether and scraped down my spine, a shriek so primal it bypassed logic and landed somewhere in my gut, turning my insides to ice.
It wasn’t rage.
It wasn’t grief.
It was terror.
But not hers.
1
It had come through her.
Like something had used her body as a conduit, her mouth as an exit wound. My hand flew to my chest instinctively, palm pressed flat over the bond scar that pulsed once–then sparked, the magic biting like a live wire.
I staggered back, breath caught in my throat.
Behind me, even the forest fell silent.
No wind. No birds. No rustle of leaves.
Just the heavy echo of that scream still vibrating in my bones.
Bastain had gone still.
His eyes–wide, alert–locked on mine across the dim space.
“You heard it too,” I said, my voice low, steady only by habit.
He nodded slowly, no trace of the scholar left in his expression now.
His voice was grim.
“It’s starting.”
