Chapter 2

The cathedral smelled like wax.

Fabrisse Kestovar slid through the side passage of the sanctum with the pace of someone who had been very late. The sanctum, a towering crescent-shaped chamber big enough to house a thunderbird, served both as cathedral and ceremonial hall for the Twelvefold Flame, one of the oldest mage orders on the continent. Today, however, it was under the administration of the Unified Synod of Thaumaturgic Study, the academic branch of the Order, tasked with training apprentices and preserving magical theory.

To become a student of the Flame, one must have faith. That was how magic worked, Fabrisse had been told.

“Curses,” he muttered under his breath. “I’m going to miss the breakhour crumblecake again . . .” They only served the mingleberry glaze during Grand Gatherings, one of the few perks of studying in a holy-academic institution—a sanctified sprawl that functioned somewhere between a monastery, a university, and a lifelong magical probation. And since stealing mingleberries from the scullery was near-impossible, it had naturally become his favorite. 

Most initiates entered the Synod at age ten, robed and reverent. The gifted ones graduated by eighteen, and became an official member of the Order of the Twelvefold Flame. The rest—those less aligned with flame or fate—might linger until twenty-one, still hoping the spark would catch.

Fabrisse would turn nineteen in a month. His spark had not so much caught as wandered off and filed for retirement.

He tugged his robes into something he deemed sufficiently respectable and slipped into a column’s shadow just as Archmagus Murelien Draeth raised his arms in oration.

“. . . For it is not through force that the Reliquary shall yield, but through alignment; of thought, of spirit; of sacrifice.” The Archmagus’ voice resonated with the authority that would’ve impressed Fabrisse if not for the fact he’d never once updated his speech.

The young man kept his head low and angled his body behind a broad scry-pillar, half-obscured by incense haze and ceremonial banners, all cut into those impractical triangle shapes he’d never quite understood.  From here, he could just make out the front row—all high-ranking magi in brocaded robes, each one still as a warded statue, apart from Archmagus Rolen, who was solemnly scratching his behind.

And there, of course, was Mentor Lorvan.

Stern as ever, back ramrod straight, jaw set in the way it always was whenever Fabrisse did something predictable and mildly embarrassing. Which, judging by the tick in Lorvan’s left eyebrow, was approximately now.

Their eyes met across the sanctum. Fabrisse tried a tiny, apologetic smile. Lorvan did not return it.

“And so it is decreed by the Will of the Flamus Arcane,” came the booming voice from the dais, “that only the Worthy may draw forth the knowledge sealed within the Astral Reliquary! Only the Devoted shall behold the glyphs of awakening!”

Fabrisse mouthed the words in perfect sync, not from piety but from sheer repetition. He’d heard them chanted since he was ten. He could probably recite them backwards while drunk—and, in fact, he once had. Word for word, with such precision it could have summoned Archmagus Rolen himself. Unfortunately, it happened to be during his confession to the girl of his dreams.

She did not accept.

Fabrisse exhaled and began inching along the column with the care of someone trying to not leave any colorful spark. Not that he was particularly worried about leaving a mark. He had failed in that portion of the exam too.

But if there was one thing Fabrisse Kestovar had never failed, not once. It was Stealth. His self-taught brand of magic.

Fabrisse started executing the ‘Side-Slink of Moderate Dignity’ as he wiggled behind the crowd. He fully intended to slip into one of the outer rows before anyone—

A hand grabbed his sleeve.

“Where are you off to this time?” Lorvan hissed, just quiet enough not to draw the dais’ attention. “Bumbling around collecting Stupenstone again?”

Fabrisse winced. “It’s called Stupidst—”

“I read your notes, Kestovar.”

“That was a working title.”

Lorvan’s eyes narrowed into pale slits. “If you’re caught smuggling rock samples into the sanctum again, I will personally transmute your lunch rations into beet paste for the next Span of the Sundering.” A Span equated to roughly twenty years, because apparently Mage Orders couldn’t afford to count the days like the inept civilians.

It wasn’t like he wanted to ‘bumble’ around. At least not when he first joined the Synod. But years of academic stagnation had led to him no longer caring about his academic performance. It wasn’t like he would’ve learned much more had he paid attention in class.

Fabrisse tried to come ụp with something clever to say, but all he could come up with was, “Yes, Mentor. No stone, totally empty-handed today.” He said as he accidentally dropped a stupenstone onto his boot.

“That is a stone.” Lorvan’s glare intensified.

Stupenstone—formally classified by the Collegium of Geomantic Rarities as Silico-Dormant Obscura, Grade Theta—was a mineral so profoundly useless it had been removed from no fewer than three official textbooks by frustrated archivists who couldn’t find a single practical application for it.

It didn’t resonate with aether.

It didn’t store energy.

It didn’t glow, chime, float, scry, shimmer, burst, or even hold a decent enchantment longer than a soup spell.

It was also hideous—a lumpen, mauve-flecked stone that looked like someone had attempted to sculpt a toad from chewing gum and then abandoned the effort halfway through.

And yet.

Fabrisse Kestovar had a collection of no fewer than twenty-eight catalogued pieces and another six he refused to name until they ‘revealed their purpose.’

Most magi assumed he was simply lazy or mad, but the truth was far more benign—Fabrisse was, in a theoretical sense, a petramancer.

Unfortunately, Fabrisse couldn’t actually do petramancy. The order didn’t teach traditional magic, his wandwork was so poor he couldn’t levitate a pebble, and his only published paper—“Stupenstone: A Case for Intentional Obscurity in Aether-Inert Geologies”—had been withdrawn from review after the editors realized he’d included a stanza in place of his methodology section (also because he had not yet been of age at the time of publish, which he found utterly ridiculous). 

Fabrisse offered a hopeful smile and bent down, one hand reaching for the unfortunate lump of mauve embarrassment. “It’s the only one I brought today,” he whispered.

“I’ve told you to stop being obsessed with stone,” Lorvan said, voice lower now. “You’re essentially limiting your potential.”

With a grin that could only be described as proudly unrepentant, Fabrisse replied, “Limiting? No, no, I’m specializing. There’s less competition in the Quiet Foundation of Stone. Also, you can’t collect different shades of fire, no?”

“There’s less competition because stone is rubbish,” Lorvan said as he tried to take the stone from Fabrisse’s hand. Fabrisse pulled back, and the stone slipped from his hand again. This piece of rock was a particularly slippery one. He sighed and bent down to retrieve it once more.

Technically, one could pursue petrothaumaturgy and become a petrothaumaturgist (which would be different from a petrothaumaturge), a title used exclusively by people trying to justify licking rocks in pursuit of magical potential. But why would anyone?

Even among the magically inclined, Stone was considered a dead-end element—resistant to manipulation, sluggish to respond to emotional stimuli, and prone to resonance decay faster than any other stable base. 

Most working petrothaumaturges barely registered past a Rank III Resonant Threshold—the magical equivalent of being able to warm a cobblestone with great effort and a headache. The legendary high watermark of the field, Professor Margenholt of the Quiet Foundation, had once reached Rank VI. She was given an award, two grants, and promptly died of boredom while trying to commune with an uncut feldspar. For reaching a Rank VI! A star student of the Ninth Tier within the university system could be immediately handed a Rank IV upon graduation.

He was halfway to retrieving the stone a second time when the Archmagus’s voice changed.

“This gathering, however,” Murelien Draeth said. His voice was suddenly devoid of pomp. “was not called simply to reaffirm our commitment to the Reliquary.”

The crowd stilled. Rolen stopped scratching.

That wasn’t part of the script.

Draeth continued, “For the first time in forty-seven years, the Eidralith has responded.”