Chapter 71

Fabrisse spotted the scullery maid just as she emerged from the east gatehouse kitchen, balancing a cloth-covered tray in one hand and muttering under her breath about ‘those noodle-limbed faculty boys and their fire rites.’ The smell hit him before the sight did—fresh-baked bread, still warm enough to leave heat ghosts in the air. His feet moved without permission.

“Afternoon, Marla,” he said, putting on what he hoped was a harmless grin.

Marla squinted up at him. “Well if it isn’t the stone-toting noodle boy himself. Shouldn’t you be . . . oh, I don’t know, learning to levitate something without spraining your fingers?”

Marla was one of those people who seemed to exist outside the formal structure of the Synod, and yet knew everything that happened within it. She had never worn a robe in her life, but could recite the list of instructors most likely to pass out during a fire rite and the students who snuck snacks into Transmutation Theory. She was brisk, sharp, always smelled faintly of flour and rose ash, and had the rare gift of being able to scold and spoil someone at the same time.

“Working on it,” he said. “You, uh . . . delivering that somewhere urgent?”

Marla huffed and tilted the tray so he could glimpse the edge of a golden-brown crust. “Urgent as in ‘don’t let the head lecterns eat my eyebrows if it’s late,’ sure. But urgent as in ‘couldn't spare a heel to a growing boy with a bruised academic record’? Maybe not.”

Fabrisse perked up. “I’d consider it a charitable donation to the undernourished.” He paused. A brief thought surfaced, telling him that he could always ask if they needed help in the scullery. A few hours of dish-duty might earn him meals without dipping into his savings.

He extinguished the idea immediately. No. That’s not why I’m here.

He had to earn the grant. Or, at the very least, a position on merit—through his magical prowess, not pot-scrubbing. He was a student at the Synod, not a kitchenhand with glyph-scuffed sleeves. His mother hadn’t sent him here to munch on bread during break time and come back smelling of soaproot.

Marla rolled her eyes but didn’t pull the tray away. "You know, my husband used to say things like that. 'Oh, Petey, love, just a spoonful of honey for the nerves, your body runs on magic, mine runs on jam.' And now look at him, sitting at home in bed all day with Laika curled across his stomach like he’s the emperor of breadland.”

Ohoho. Maria babbling can only mean one thing: she’s in good mood today. And if she’s in good mood? Somebody’s bound to get some free bread if they try hard enough. 

“I’d be happier if you handle little Laika for me, to be honest.”

Fabrisse smiled politely. “Laika’s the pup that chased that philter hawk off the roof last spring, right?”

“She’s a terror,” Marla said, proud. “Little legs like fury. But loyal. Unlike some students who forget their manners and try to charm free loaves without even asking about my week.”

“I was going to ask,” he said. “How was your week?”

Marla drew herself up, shifting the tray to one hip like she was preparing for a long march. “Oh, a whirlwind, darling. First the ovens shorted out while we were baking, because someone in Alchemy decided to reroute our aether grid. Don’t ask me why, probably trying to boil their laundry or something. Then the junior scullery girls mixed the basil glaze with the chili oil again, which would’ve been fine if the basil hadn’t already been laced with shimmerroot for Professor Yoren’s ‘digestive lecture banquet,’ whatever that means.”

Fabrisse kept nodding along, but soon, the sounds no longer reached his ears.

The tray. The aroma. It was stronger now: rich and buttery, with the unmistakable scent of warm creamy tart, laced with sugar-glazed crust and a whisper of steaming mingleberry jam. It drifted past his nose, bypassing thought and heading straight for his soul.

Hohoho. This is it. I’m so close. The moment is ripe. All I have to do is reach out—say something gentle, clever, grateful—

“Mr. Kestovar.”

The voice dropped like a cold stone into a bowl of soup.

Fabrisse froze. The sugar-honey fog vanished in an instant. Marla’s voice cut off as both their heads turned.

Lorvan stood three paces behind him, arms folded, expression very much Not In A Tart-Eating Mood.

Fabrisse felt himself wilt. “. . . Mentor.”

Lorvan glanced at the tray, then back to Fabrisse. “Why are you not assisting with the ritual preparations? This is your assigned contribution, is it not?”

Ah, the dreaded rituals.

Technically, they were part of an ‘Introductory Ritual Mechanics’ practicum that was mandatory for students at every level, non-introductory included. In practice, it meant spending two hours barefoot in the east courtyard, throwing starpetal blossoms into a runic basin while chanting about ‘inner clarity and harmonic grounding’ until someone passed out from incense exposure.

But it was a required participatory credit, and some students—like Severa, blessed be her smug enthusiasm—actually loved it. She claimed the petals responded to her ‘innate cadence.’ Liene would usually enjoy the rituals too, but only because she had an infatuation with petals.

“I was just—”

Lorvan raised an eyebrow. “You do realize credit participation is mandatory?”

“That ritual’s ridiculous. They’re just throwing petals into a runic basin and chanting in a circle until someone faints from incense.”

“Yes,” Lorvan said. “A perfect academic tradition.”

“I was going to go,” Fabrisse muttered. “Eventually.”

“And yet here you are, loitering by bread.” Lorvan glanced pointedly at the uncovered tray, then back at him. “Tell me, Kestovar. I thought you were taking your academic standing seriously now. Or are you planning to fail a fifth unit just to prove you’re artistically misunderstood?”

That stung more than Fabrisse wanted to admit.

“I’m not planning to fail,” he said, quieter.

“Then prove it. Go help. Credit is credit. Unless you’d rather throw away this term’s progress.”

Fabrisse sighed, then gave Marla an apologetic look. “Rain check on the loaf?”

Marla gave a pitying smile and whispered, “Check under the linen flap on the far right. Corner piece. I won’t tell if you won’t.”

Fabrisse slid the corner into his sleeve like it was a relic, then trudged toward the central green where the students were already gathering in a petal-laden spiral.

He hated everything about petals.

***

“Hi, Fabri. You’re late,” came the chipper voice of Liene Lugano as he approached the green field.

She stood near the outer ring of the ritual circle, waving a hand over her head like she was hailing a ship rather than greeting a fellow student. Fabrisse’s reply died in his throat when he saw what was on her head.

A wreath. Or . . . it had started life as a wreath. It was now an uneven crown of crushed starpetals, trailing vine, and something that resembled at kitchen twine. A single charmed blossom rotated slowly above her brow like it had aspirations of being a halo, but was far too tired for the job. Somehow, the entire ensemble hovered between sacred and unhinged.

She had always had a talent for taking perfectly elegant elements and turning them into the utterly bizarre, devoid of any grace.

She grinned. “Do you like it? I was aiming for celestial priestess, but I think I landed closer to forest hermit.”

“You look like a very floral comet crash survivor.”

“Thank you,” she said with twinkled eyes, as if that had been a compliment. “It’s my ritual hat.”

“There are no ritual hats.”

“There are now,” she said, and spun on one foot, nearly clocking a first-year with the trailing end of her vine sash. “Anyway, you can throw petals clockwise with the rest of us or pretend to rearrange the salt bowls for the next twenty minutes. Personally, I find the clockwise motion deeply healing.”

He stared at the circle. A few upper-years were singing a hymn. Someone had started burning the incense again—oh joy, today was neroli and fireleaf. His sinuses already felt insulted.

Standing near the stone dais, crotchety as always, was Headmaster Draeth.

Fabrisse had only ever seen him during rituals. Not in lessons. Not in staff meetings. Not even during the Eidralith incident. Only here, looming like a statue that someone occasionally dressed in new ceremonial robes. Sometimes Fabrisse wondered if Draeth was actually bound by contract to appear only when petals were involved.

But what really caught his attention were the three other figures in the distance.

Sil. Dir. And Rolen.

They were here.

Again.

Fabrisse felt his shoulders tense.

The last time he’d seen all three archmagi in one room, he’d accidentally revealed that the Eidralith had gone completely dark the moment it slammed into his forehead, and that the Stupenstone he was holding at the time might’ve reacted to it. Sil, the one who looked like she’d been stitched together from old starlight and surgical precision, had asked whether he’d felt any ‘irregularities in his essence.’ Dir had nearly launched a memory extraction ritual on the spot. And Rolen . . . well, Rolen had scratched his eyebrow and said the stone hit him with a ‘BAM.’

Sil and Dir weren’t even Synod staff. They were Order, Bureau, or both—so their presence now, at a school ritual that involved flower-petal tossing and poorly tuned hymns, felt like a deeply suspicious coincidence.

Fabrisse glanced at Liene’s ridiculous crown again and muttered, “What are the odds the archmagi are here for the petal choreography?”

Liene shrugged. “Maybe they just like incense.”

A breeze stirred the petal circle, and a hush moved through the students like a shiver along the edge of a blade. The singing faltered. Even the incense smoke changed course, curling toward the stone dais.

That’s when Severa appeared.

She emerged from the far side of the green, flanked by two second-years carrying crystal chalices, polished silver orbs, a brass censer engraved with swirling glyphs, and something Fabrisse was almost certain was a petrified owl skull.

Severa herself looked like she’d been carved out of ritual doctrine. Her robes were white and crimson, dyed in the formal gradient of Invocation majors. Her hair had been twisted into a crown braid so flawless it looked enforced by contract, and her expression was something calculating; it always was. In her hands, she held a tri-tiered staff, its head inscribed with rotating glyph rings that spun with slow deliberation.

“Oh no,” Fabrisse muttered. “She’s the officiate.”

“Of course she is,” Liene said. “She wrote a thesis on the metaphysical efficacy of group intonation and star-aligned rituals. She probably thinks this is foreplay.”

Fabrisse glanced sideways. “You’re not wrong, but I’m choosing not to unpack that.”

Severa stepped up to the inner ring of the ritual circle, planted her staff with solemn gravity, and raised one hand. “Prepare yourselves,” she intoned. “The resonance tide begins on my mark.”

Fabrisse braced himself to fake-chant for the next hour.

And then, as if summoned by tradition alone, Draeth stepped forward to deliver the Invocation Address.

His voice carried through the hush like thunder wrapped in velvet.

“As we enter this moment of harmonic convergence,” Draeth began, “let us give thanks to the steady flame of the Twelvefold Path. To the luminous shepherd who guides us still—Thaumarch Muradius, whose wisdom illuminated the Rite of the Accordant Core, whose vision unites the sanctums of learning, whose very breath shields our fledgling souls from dissonance.”

The same old praises of the Thaumarch. They always felt like they’d been carved from the same tablet. Draeth delivered them with just enough gravity to pass as sincere, but Fabrisse had begun to hear the fatigue beneath the words, or at least not as much reverence as all the other sections of his pompous speech.

Muradius. That name again. I’ve never met this Muradius, outside of his 500 public murals.

All he knew of the man came filtered through the mouths of Synod officials—through speeches like this, where his name was offered up like divine insulation against doubt.

For someone who supposedly cared so deeply about “the academic flourishing of the next generation,” the Thaumarch never once set foot in the Synod. Never wrote a letter. Never even offered a public blessing to the school that chanted his praises every equinox and solstice like clockwork.

And then the world paused.

A white glyph, like a line etched into the back of his skull, appeared. He blinked, and the System flared in the corner of his vision.

[Sidequest Received: ‘Calibrate That Which Is Broken’]
Objective: Touch the third bowl of salt when Severa begins the third verse. That third bowl holds a secret.
Secondary Objective: Don’t let Severa see. She’ll ruin it.
Reward: [Skill Unlock – Trajectory Insight (Passive)]

– Allows you to view the growth path of any trainable skill and how to most efficiently rank it up.
– Also lets you see if your current training method is terrible. Probably is.

[Accept Sidequest?]

Yes

No

Fabrisse stared at the prompt. Then glanced at Severa, who had now lifted her arms and was beginning to recite the first verse.

Touch the bowl? During a ceremony overseen by literal archmagi and the best star-student in possibly decades?

What’s the Eidralith quest philosophy? Does it just throw darts at a ritual chart and hope for the best? Or is this its idea of guided learning?

“Are you kidding me?” he hissed, just loud enough for Liene to hear.

She raised an eyebrow. “What is it?”

“Nothing.” Why is the reward so good? Why are every good rewards tuck behind the most ridiculous quests?

He accepted.