The Hunter crossed his arms, watching her work. “A filter… but it can’t be static. The Void’s core currents are fluid. If we make it too rigid, it’ll fail when the next shift happens.”
Sybil paused, tapping the quill against the parchment. “No, not rigid. Dynamic. A spell that adapts as the Void shifts. Something that can modify itself based on the patterns it recognizes.”
“That’s what we were trying to do already,” Elara said, finally finding her voice. “But we keep hitting the same wall. It adapts, but not fast enough.”
Sybil sat back in her chair. “It’s because you're asking too much of a single spell. You’re trying to make it interpret the core shifts and adapt to them all at once. That’s too much. You need to separate the functions—one spell to identify the shifts, another to react. You’re overloading it.”
Elara's eyes widened. “If we split the tasks, we reduce the strain on the tether. The adaptation becomes more efficient.”
“We need to test the theory again,” the Hunter said, holding Sybil’s gaze. “But this time, with two separate components. If we can get them to work in tandem without overloading?—”
“Then you might finally see some results,” Sybil cut in, her tone dry but not unkind, a flicker of approval in her eyes.
The Hunter exhaled slowly, frustration still lingering in his posture, but there was a flicker of something else—determination, maybe. He ran a hand through his hair, then nodded, the tension easing slightly from his shoulders as he moved to sit beside his cousin.
“All right,” he muttered. “Let’s see if this works.”
The shiftin their dynamic was immediate. Where Elara and the Hunter usually worked in near silence—turning ideas over before daring to test them—Sybil was the opposite. Loud. Impulsive. She flung out theories and tried them before they were fully formed.
Every few minutes, she was off again—scribbling equations, muttering incantations, tossing spells into the air just to see what stuck.
It was jarring at first. Elara’s head ached from the noise. But Sybil’s reckless pace did something unexpected: it brokethe stagnation. They stopped circling the problem and started cutting through it.
Failures came faster—and so did answers. Each half-formed spell either sparked a new idea or showed them exactly what wouldn’t work.
Elara and the Hunter focused on refining the first spell—theidentifier—while Sybil stress-tested the second: thereactor.
The identifier was precise, tracing the core currents of the Void, pinpointing the stable fluctuations. Elara could almost feel the ether responding to her adjustments, the spell becoming more fluid, more in tune with the Void’s unpredictable nature. Meanwhile, Sybil's reactor spell was wild, adaptive—just like her. It didn’t wait, it shifted, responding instantly to the fluctuations the identifier picked up, adjusting to the flow.
The problem had never been their theory—it was how much they had demanded from a single spell. Trying to force one incantation to do everything: interpret, adapt, react. It had been doomed from the start. But now it felt… right. Like they were finally moving forward.
Sybil leaned back and stretched as the light in the library softened, the last of the sun slipping beneath the horizon. Elara barely noticed the hour, still riding the adrenaline of their progress. They’d made real strides—more than she’d expected.
Still, they weren’t finished. A few more days to refine everything. Maybe the Hunter could convince Osin to allow it.
Just a little longer.
Elara’s thoughts trailed off as Sybil set down the book the Hunter had given her earlier. She glanced up to find Sybil no longer interested in it, now flipping absently through the notes spread across the desk.
Her brow furrowed as she read the title:Whispers of the Weft.
A literary novel, of all things. It wasn’t what she had expected. Written by Lachlan Alden, the back cover described it as “a captivating tale of a tailor who stitches dreams into reality, weaving stories that interlace both the fabric of her creations and the destinies of those who wear them.”
Elara blinked, utterly baffled. Of all the things the Hunter could have handed her...
“Well, I’d best be off,” Sybil said, dragging herself up from the chair. Her eyes slid over to Elara, a smirk playing at her lips. “If you actually manage to pull this off…” She shook her head, a quiet scoff escaping. “I’ve warned you about him, haven’t I?” She jerked her chin toward the Hunter. “Always ends with something burning or someone bleeding.”
The Hunter rolled his eyes as he stood and stretched, his shirt riding up just enough to reveal a sliver of muscle, the faint line of a scar, and a trail of hair disappearing beneath his waistband.
Heat flared in Elara’s cheeks as her gaze lingered a beat too long. She snapped it upward—straight into his knowing look, one brow arched, amusement flickering in his eyes.
Her heart stuttered, cheeks burning as she tore her gaze away, cursing herself for getting caught.
Elara didn’t need to look to know Sybil had noticed. She felt it—the prickle along her spine. When she finally glanced over, Sybil’s smile was pure mischief, but her eyes held something sharper, more calculating, that made Elara’s stomach tighten.
She leaned in, voice low. “You’re wasting your time with all this. There’s a faster way. A cleaner way.”
Elara’s pulse thundered in her ears. She didn’t dare move as Sybil’s breath ghosted over her ear. “What the Void consumes, only death can retrieve.”
