“A fool’s errand,” Maren said, though her tone was sad rather than biting. “His parents drained the local lines dry trying to stabilize the manor. They killed themselves and nearly took the town with them. Why study a graveyard?”
“It wasn’t just a graveyard, Maren,” I whispered, sliding a heavy, leather-bound folio from the shelf. Dust motes danced in the beam of Maren’s lantern.
Maren stiffened, her gaze unfocused as she stared at the dark rows of books. “I remember where I was. Standing in my mother’s kitchen. One second, the kettle was whistling, and the next... silence. Not quiet—silence. As if the world had stopped breathing.”
“And then the scream,” I added, the memory shivering through me cold and sharp. I had been ten years old, clutching a doll in the infirmary while the glass jars rattled off the shelves. “The sound of the earth tearing open.”
“The sky turned that awful bruised violet for weeks,” Maren said, rubbing her arms as if warding off a chill. “We didn’t see the sun for a month. The ‘Grey Year,’ they called it. Crops withered in the fields because the soil forgot how to nurture them. And the river...”
“Ran black for three days,” I finished, opening the folio on a reading lectern. The parchment crinkled, brittle with age. “People talk about the heavy taxes or the council’s incompetence, but they forget that before the Collapse, you didn’t need a master Brewworker to keep a loaf of bread from molding in an hour. The ambient magic used to be gentle. Now it bites.”
“It went feral,” Maren agreed, moving to look over my shoulder. “When Fenrik’s parents broke the line, they snapped the leash. That’s why we have talking soups and drakes with incompatible anatomy. The valley has been bleeding magic for thirteen years.”
“I have a feeling the Stormgarde’s manor wasn’t supposed to be a graveyard. It was supposed to be a dam.” I pulled a heavy scroll case from the bottom shelf, blowing a cloud of dust fromthe leather cap.Cadastral Survey of Lumenvale: Pre-Collapse.“Here.”
It wasn’t a standard map. It was a mana-chart, drawn in ink that still shimmered with faint, bioluminescent properties. The physical geography of Lumenvale was sketched in black—the mountains, the river, the forests. But the ley-lines were drawn in silver.
I traced the silver veins with a trembling finger.
“Look,” I whispered. “Maren, look at the flow.”
“It’s the valley,” Maren said, squinting in the gloom. “There’s the river, there’s the...” She stopped. Her hand gripped my shoulder, hard. “That’s not right.”
Ley-lines ran like rivers: parallel, occasionally branching, feeding the land evenly. But on this map, the silver lines didn’t flow past Abberwyn, they all collided with it. Six major arteries of magic, spanning the entirety of Lumenvale, converged on a single point on the cliffs. They slammed into Crumbling Manor like spokes on a wheel.
“It’s a nexus,” I said. “The manor is filtering the magic for our valley, but look, it’s the pressure valve for the entire kingdom.”
“The Collapse,” Maren breathed, her eyes wide. “It wasn’t a local accident. If those lines destabilized...”
“It would have been a very big leak of magic,” I finished. “Fenrik’s parents died preventing a shockwave that would have leveled everything from here to the capital.”
I stared at the ink, the pattern suddenly making horrific sense. The manor sat on top of ungodly power. Infinite power.
“Kelda,” I said. “She doesn’t care about the estate. She doesn’t want the title.”
“She wants the tap,” Maren whispered.
“She wants to control the flow,” I corrected, rolling the map up. “If she controls the manor, and the curse breaks through the filter ... she can channel all of that raw energy. She wouldn’t just be a wealthy Hearthcrafter. She’d be the most powerful mage in Lumenvale.”
The silence in the shop grew heavy, pressing in on my eardrums. We weren’t dealing with a petty land-grab. We were standing in the path of a woman who intended to become a god, and Fenrik was the lock she had to break to open the door.
A puff of smoke drifted down from the high stacks. The rhythmic snoring above us cut off abruptly, replaced by the ominous sound of claws clicking against wood.
“Run,” I whispered.
Whisk launched himself from the top shelf. He plummet with style, wings tucked, aiming straight for Maren’s head. He was only the size of a house cat, but a house cat made of obsidian scales and righteous indignation was not to be trifled with.
“He’s protecting the inventory!” Maren shrieked, ducking as a jet of black smoke singed the air where her ear had been.
“We need a distraction!” I shouted, clutching the map case to my ribs.
I grabbed the nearest book from the ‘New Arrivals’ display, a lurid paperback with a shirtless centaur on the cover titledHoof-Hearted: A Stallion’s Love. I chucked it across the aisle.
“Whisk! Rare first edition! Unsigned!” I yelled.
The book-dragon banked mid-air. He dove for the airborne romance, catching it in his talons before it hit the floor, cradling it protectively as he rolled into a heavy pile of periodicals.
“You have terrible taste in literature!” Maren gasped, creating our opening.
