“Okay,” Ramona said. Her voice came out rough. “Okay. We need help.”
Felix’s expression softened immediately. “Good. What do you need?”
Zara pulled out her phone. “I’ve made a list. Okay, now, Kashvi, first…”
The help started small,growing over the next week and a half.
Kashvi took one look at the grimoires spread across the living room and immediately started cross-referencing them with digital archives, building a database of every severance ritual variation she could find.
“There are patterns,” she said three days into her research, laptop balanced on her knees, Gerald asleep on the armrest beside her. “Look. Every failed severance ritual in the historical record has one thing in common — the magical bond was created under duress or deception.”
“Well, I had both,” Ramona said. She was on the floor, surrounded by handwritten notes. “Accidental summoning definitely counts as duress.”
“Exactly.” Kashvi pulled up another document. “But here’s the thing. Most of these bonds were eventually broken. Not through the standard severance ritual, but through…” She squinted at the screen. “Something called a ‘willing dissolution.’ Both parties had to actively want the severance while also acknowledging what the bond had given them.”
Zara, who had been reading silently in the corner, looked up. “Acknowledging what it had given them?”
“Gratitude, I think?” Ramona tilted the screen to study the wording. “The translation is rough.”
Kashvi nodded. “It seems like denying the bond’s value made it impossible to break. You had to… honor it? Before letting it go?”
Ramona and Zara exchanged a look. Through the tether, Ramona felt something complicated, like Zara’s uncertainty mixing with her own.
“We’ll keep that in mind,” Zara said carefully.
Felix, who had been listening from the kitchen while doing dishes, called out: “Wait, what about an unbinding ritual instead?”
“An unbinding?” Kashvi’s head snapped up. “Felix, no?—”
“What’s the difference?” Ramona asked.
“Severance cuts the connection,” Kashvi said quickly, already pulling up new tabs on her laptop. “It’s surgical. Precise. An unbinding is…” She paused, searching for the right word. “Broader. It dissolves all magical bonds associated with the spell. Not just the tether, butanythingin the vicinity.”
“That sounds good,” Felix said, coming into the living room with a dish towel. “Right? More thorough?”
“It’s also significantly more dangerous.” Kashvi’s voice had gone sharp with concern. “Unbinding rituals don’t discriminate. They can unraveleverything. Including things you don’t want unbound.”
“Like what?” Ramona asked.
“Like…” Kashvi gestured vaguely. “Protective wards. Or existing contracts. Or anything that was magically formalized. It’s unpredictable.”
Zara had gone very still. “Contracts,” she repeated softly. Her eyes seemed far away, like she had gone deep into a thought.
“Yes. Any magical contract that was active when the tether formed could potentially be affected by an unbinding.” Kashvi looked between them. “That’s why most practitioners avoid unbinding rituals unless absolutely necessary. The collateral damage can be extensive.”
“So we stick with severance,” Ramona said firmly. “We’re not risking that kind of chaos.”
“Agreed,” Zara said. But her voice was still distant. Thoughtful.
Felix shrugged, returning to the kitchen. “Just a thought. Seemed simpler.”
“Simpler isn’t always better,” Kashvi muttered, making notes on her laptop. “Especially not with magic.”
But Ramona noticed the way Zara kept glancing at Kashvi’s screen for the rest of the afternoon. The way her expression would go distant, like she was working through some complicated equation in her head.
Through the tether, Ramona felt something she couldn’t quite name. Not worry, exactly. More like… possibility.
She didn’t ask in front of the others. They had enough to figure out with the severance ritual. But the seed had been planted.
