I reach out without thinking. My hand’s shaking so bad I can barely control it, but I extend my fingers anyway. The fox could bite me. Could dissolve back into shadow. Could reject me like everyone else probably should.
Instead, it steps closer.
Its fur is impossibly soft under my fingertips. Cold like winter morning air, but solid. Real. Like touching starlight that somehow has texture and weight.
“You’re not scared of me,” I whisper.
The fox makes a sound deep in its throat. Not quite purring, but something close. Something that sounds almost like contentment.
And the Ether responds.
Silver light starts swirling up from the stone around my knees, black threads weaving through it like careful embroidery. Some of the silver light drifts toward the fox, drawn to it like metal to a magnet.
The fox doesn’t flinch as the Ether touches its shadow-form. Instead, veins of silver begin tracing through its dark fur, not changing it but enhancing it. Making it more real, more solid, morethere.
People gasp. Step back. I can practically feel them getting ready to run, to abandon this place and me along with it. But the fox just purrs deeper, leaning into both my touch and the silver light that’s weaving itself into its being.
I’m so tired of being afraid of myself. So tired of apologizing for existing.
Maybe I no longer have to.
“Fix it,” I tell the light, my voice cracking around the words. “Please. I don’t want to break things anymore. I want to make them better.”
The Ether listens.
It spreads out from where I’m kneeling in waves of silver shot through with black, and this time it doesn’t destroy anything. This time it builds.
The cracks in the courtyard stone seal themselves, but not just sealed—stronger. The fractures fill with veins of silver that pulse like a heartbeat, like the sanctuary’s learning to heal itself. The walls around us don’t just repair—they grow. Stone flowing upward like water, adding height and thickness until they’re more fortress than building. Protective. Defensible.
The shattered windows don’t just piece themselves back together. They reform larger, clearer, with glass so pure it’s almost invisible. But I can feel the wards woven into them, magical barriers that will keep out anything that means us harm.
Watchtowers emerge from the corners of the walls, graceful spirals of stone that reach toward the sky. Places to watch for threats. Places to see danger coming before it arrives.
The main gates thicken and strengthen, ancient wood becoming something that would take an army to breach. But they don’t look forbidding. They look welcoming to anyone who comes in peace. Deadly to anyone who doesn’t.
I don’t fix everything, though. The flowers that grew from the cracks during my explosion—I leave those. They’re beautiful. Crystalline petals that catch the light and throw it back in rainbows. They’re proof that maybe I can make something good happen, even when everything goes wrong.
The fear in the crowd shifts, slowly, like ice beginning to thaw. I can hear whispered conversations, voices climbing from terror toward something else. Wonder, maybe. Or at least the possibility of it.
But there’s something else. Something the Ether wants to build that I don’t understand at first.
In the center of the courtyard, where the worst of the destruction was, a fountain begins to rise. Not water, but something else. Light that flows like liquid silver, pooling and cascading in patterns that hurt to look at directly but somehow comfort the soul.
At its base, words appear in the stone. Carved deep, filled with that same liquid light.
May Mirrors Weave The Way They’re Meant
My throat closes up. The words don’t make sense to me, but they feel important. Like a promise or a prayer carved in stone.
But the fox presses closer to my hand, and somehow I understand this isn’t really about blame or forgiveness. Seth was caught betweenthings bigger than him, forces he couldn’t control. Whatever hold Phil had over him, whatever threats or promises or lies—Seth was as trapped as I was. Maybe more trapped, because at least I knew I was in a cage.
The memorial isn’t for the spy who sold us out. It’s for the person who deserved better than being trapped between impossible choices.
I blink, suddenly aware that I’m still kneeling by the fountain, one hand trailing in the liquid light. The courtyard comes back into focus around me—the strengthened walls, the watching crowd, the weight of all those eyes on me.
“She made it stronger,” someone says behind me. Zira, I think. Her voice is soft with something like awe.
The fox nuzzles my palm once more, sparkling eyes meeting mine for a long moment. Then it starts fading, its edges blurring until it’s just shadow again, then nothing.
