She lifted her hand, palm open. Instead of casting a spell, she simply rotated her wrist, as though feeling for something unseen. The air shimmered faintly.
At first I thought it was a trick of the dim light. Then I saw them.
Filaments of gold.
Fine as spider silk and faintly luminous, stretching in delicate lines through the air. They crossed and overlapped, some taut, some slack, some splitting and drifting away from one another.
“They are always here,” she said quietly. One of the strands trembled beneath her fingertip. “They connect to everything in this room. Everything that has ever been here.”
“Gods,” I muttered.
“This,” she continued, brushing the filament gently, “is a single sequence. Watch.”
She pressed lightly and the flame of a nearby candle surged higher, then guttered low, as though time around it had hiccupped.
“I did not speed the flame,” she explained. “I shifted along its strand.”
Then she moved her hand slightly to the side. Two faint threads diverged from a single point.
“And here,” she said, guiding my attention, “is where a choice divided the weave.” The threads pulsed softly like stars. “To weave, you must first see the threads, call them to you the same way you would with your air magic, then you can decide which path to take.”
“You make it sound so simple.” I bit the inside of my lip.
“It is. When you call for the threads, you’ll feel them the same way you feel air gathering before you shape it. You’ll recognizea pull in the air. A pressure. As though something is waiting for you to notice it. Why don’t you give it a try?”
Magdalena lowered her hand and the gold dimmed at once, the filaments thinning until they were nothing more than faint glimmers in the air.
“They do not vanish,” she said quietly. “You are simply no longer looking at them. Now you.”
I swallowed and drew in a slow breath.
I’d been practicing the grounding exercises recorded in my journal that helped me connect with my air magic.
With air, I felt for the current first, the subtle shift before wind answered. So I searched for that same tension now.
At first there was only stillness.
Then—
A faint resistance brushed against my awareness. It was a feather-light touch. Not like before when I’d cast the spells to slow time, or even like in Morgäven. This was something… quieter.
And it…waited.
My breath hitched.
There. Gods that was it.
I opened my eyes and reached toward it the way I would air. Not grabbing, not commanding, inviting.
The pressure tightened. Then, a single filament of gold flickered into view before me.
Thin. Trembling. Real.
“Blessed Mother, you’re doing it,” Arielle muttered, trying to restrain her excitement.
Magdalena did not speak.
I let my attention settle along the strand and then I thought of the candle. As soon as it entered my mind the candle flame ahead of us quivered. Then it bent forward a fraction, as though the moment itself had taken one small step.
