Severa Book 1 (Chapter 6)

Missus told me to sleep early or else, so I had to go to bed and write on my phone. Horrible experience, and imma have to act like I’m not sleep-deprived tomorrow. RIP.

Severa had no need to be anywhere near the Synod’s library unless it was to mess about with Kestovar, or asking him for a favor. She had been waiting for him for an hour; blearily staring at the pockets of students passing by while trying to stifle her yawns. This was an hour she could’ve spent on napping, or better yet, perfecting Pyroclasm Lance, her new Tier III incantation, the equivalent of an Epic-grade spell. It had taken her two months to level it up to Rank VI. The spell condensed heat and pressure into a razor-fine filament of white flame—not the lazy orange tongues most mages tossed about, but an aether-fed plasma that burned hot enough to shear through basalt. Against a wyvern’s scale, it didn’t batter or char; it bored straight through, slagging keratin and cauterizing flesh in the same breath.

Kestovar stepped out of the Synod’s library, squinting at the sun, and nearly collided with Severa. She was planted right outside the entrance, a length of deep green silk cradled in her arms. It was her lunch, and of course, that lunch was another satchel of Endurite Paste.

He stared at her satchel and asked, “Do you . . . eat lunch?”

Kestovar had always had a habit of asking the most peculiar questions with the same tone one might use for discussing weather patterns. Just yesternight, he’d asked her if she ate dinner. Not if she had eaten dinner that night. If she ate dinner in general.

Maybe he thought someone like her would eat dusted gold instead of normal food or something. Maybe he was beyond awkward. It was kind of weird and somewhat funny at the same time. Nobody else would ask her a question like that.

“Are we still doing this?” She asked.

He didn’t answer, but instead only stared at the silk cloth wrapping around her sachet. Of course there was a reason why she wrapped cloth around it; it was so that no one could see how she was culinarily torturing herself.

But if he really wants to know . . . Nothing wrong with just a bit of fun.

She raised her cloth, careful to not let the content poke out. “Oh. This? This is a bag of blood. I suck blood from the nape of people’s necks for sustenance. Would you like to volunteer yours?”

“I’m good.”

“Shame,” she said, tucking the silk back under her arm. The gold threads flashed once before the shadows claimed them again. “Shall we go?”

***

Elon Montreal prided himself on being an inventor, and no inventor worth the title went without a private lab or three—his third lab, naturally, was dedicated to the study of minerals. Severa didn’t pretend to know how half the tools in there worked, which was why Kestovar had to handle them. She leaned against a workbench, watching as he moved with a quiet, deliberate efficiency: setting up the instruments, calibrating readings, cooling a reaction chamber to sub-zero to tease out hidden properties in the stone.

He was utterly focused, transitioning from one stage to the next with a smooth certainty she’d never seen from him before. It was . . . rather impressive. The thought slipped in before she could swat it away. Maybe mocking him for his rock obsession hadn’t been entirely fair.

***

“Montreal. Are you awake?”

It took Severa a moment to register the words. She had, apparently, been sleeping upright—head tipped forward, feet planted, and without realizing it, unconsciously coaxing the air around her into supportive pressure. A perfectly serviceable makeshift chair.

Her eyes opened at once. “Of course. I’ve been awake all along.”

Kestovar stood barely half a meter away, looking at her like he was doing mental math on the probability of what she’d just said being true. “. . . I’ve finished the analysis.”

“What did you find out?”

“The quartz sample’s reaction under sub-zero induction yielded no phase shift, but the surface lattice shows a localized resonance warping at forty-three microns. There’s also harmonic bleed—probably second-order aetheric interference—”

She cut in. “In words that aren’t an alchemy textbook.”

He paused, then said, “There’s an imprint inside. I can’t tell whether it’s positive or negative, or if it’s worth prying open. I don’t have the means or the knowledge to find out. Also, the quartz is already soulbound.”

“To whom?”

“I don’t know. But now that the imprint’s been uncovered, whoever it’s bound to will feel the effect the moment they handle it.”

For a fleeting moment, Severa wondered if the quartz was soulbound to her. The thought curled, uninvited, at the back of her mind.

Only to be cut short by Kestovar. “I’m not 100% certain. But this item might be a Legendary-tier quartz.” His voice grew small at the end.

“What?” The word came out sharper than intended. Her eyes widened, then narrowed, then widened again with the demand. “Prove it.”

“I can’t—at least not aetherically,” he admitted, shifting his weight. “I don’t have the skills or the equipment for that kind of reading.” He hesitated, then gestured to the notes laid out on the workbench. “But based on mineral stratification, the density-to-resonance ratio, and the crystalline response under sub-zero aetheric dampening—”

She cut in once more, “In plain terms, Kestovar.”

He exhaled. “It behaves like a legendary-tier quartz would, based on every indirect indicator I could test without risking damage. The structure is too stable for common variants, and it resisted all thermal and elemental stimulus without a trace of microfracture. Those qualities . . . well, they narrow the possibilities down to maybe five known legendary types.”

She leaned in over the table, scanning his neat diagrams and meticulous measurements. Damn it all—they did look sound.

Still, she tapped the page with one manicured nail. “You said might. That means you’re not sure. And if you’re not sure, Kestovar, this could all just be an elaborate waste of both our time.” Her tone was even, but each word pressed on the uncertainty like a thumb on a bruise.

He stiffened, shoulders drawing in. “I told you, without the right testing—”

“Yes. Without the right testing, it’s nothing more than a theory. A good theory, perhaps, but still one you’d be laughed out of a guildhall for staking your reputation on.”

The faint crease between his brows deepened. Good. Doubt was safer for her than certainty. If he started thinking he’d uncovered something truly valuable, he might be tempted to demand more than their agreed terms.

And yet . . . deep in the quiet part of her mind, the belief was already rooting itself. Maybe being in that dungeon—by her own choice—would become her turning point after all.

But first things first. “Thank you for your troubles,” she said.

“I don’t need your thanks,” Kestovar replied. “But please deliver your side of the deal.”

Technically, she thought, he hasn’t told me much of anything. That could be fair grounds to wriggle out of the rest of her tutoring obligation. Then another thought, sharper and less charitable, followed: what more do you expect, Severa? He’s just a student.

“I keep my words,” she said at last. “There is nothing to worry about. Note down your schedule in a glyph, and I’ll be in contact.”

Kestovar complied without fuss, inscribing a neat glyph on a scrap of parchment before handing it over. She scanned it, tucked it into the inner fold of her sleeve, and escorted him to the threshold. A polite nod—nothing more—and he was gone.

The quiet pressed in as she closed the door. Only she and the stone remained.

Her gaze drifted back to the stone resting on the workbench under the ocean blue lamp. Was it soulbound to her? Highly improbable. She hadn’t felt the telltale aetheric resonance when she touched it—the subtle tug, like two harmonics finding each other in the aether. And yet . . . what if it was?

What would that entail?

Memory stirred—a lecture, a cautionary tale told in half-admiring, half-pitiful tones. Thaumarch Reno Agustin, driven mad after soulbounding with a legendary-tier quartz. And Agustin’s command of the aetheric force had been leagues beyond hers.

If it made him insane, what chance did she have?

She licked her lower lip, and only now did she realize how dry it was. So what of it?

The same Reno Agustin had risen to Thaumarch—one of the three most powerful thaumaturges of his age—by soulbounding artifact after artifact. Insanity or not, power like that was the stuff of dynasties.

This could be her chance. The beginning of her own ascent.

She would risk her sanity.

Severa reached out. Her fingers brushed the quartz.

At once, it flare, icy and unsoiled, like moonlight refracted through a plate of glacier. Her heartbeat quickened.

Then nothing.

The glow died as though swallowed whole. She felt a small, sharp pang at the back of her head, no worse than a passing headache, but that was it. Her aetheric force didn’t stir, no strange resonance pulsed through her veins.

She stayed there for a full minute, staring at the inert stone. That was it? That was the Legendary-tier item? She bit her lip, irritation prickling up her spine. Maybe Kestovar has been wrong after all. What a colossal waste of time.

Still, a deal was a deal, and she was—if nothing else—curious about what he could actually show in a duel. She would tutor him.

She was turning to set the quartz down when the world ruptured.

A blinding light burst behind her eyes, so fierce she forgot to breathe. Shapes spilled into her vision. Tight, angular strokes flooded in, as though carved by some unseen blade, lined in precise rows. They shapeshifted between pale silver and a deep, shadowed black, each mark bristling with mechanical precision unlike any script she had ever seen. Not runes, not glyphs—these symbols had no breath of the living world in them. They were numbers, though not the kind she knew—numbers stripped to bone, their shapes clean as ice and without adornment.

They streamed past her vision faster than thought.

And then . . . silence.

The light burned away thought, leaving only the stream of cold, alien symbols. Then, between one blink and the next, the rows froze and rearranged themselves into something that spoke.

A thin, scrawled line etched itself across her eyes.

[Welcome, User . . .]

She squinted. Hold on. What’s in front of me?

[Nah, bruv, who’s pullin’ my chain at this hour?]

Her breath snagged. She wasn’t reading these words; they were inside her. Clear, crisp, and toneless, yet somehow dripping with . . . condescension.

[Nah this some type shiiii man. Not another arrogant young master.]

What in the dragon’s dong is this?