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Forty years later, it happened once more — this time involving five women over the course of four weeks. The pattern was familiar: awakening, walls falling apart, creatures slipping through, and a slow, painful recovery. The Elder Council’s report on this incident felt more detached than the first, more like a formal record than a personal account. They had seen it unfold before and already had a plan: suppress them, contain it, and wait for it to pass.

The third wave happened sixty years ago, involving seven women, and the ward failures were so severe that sailors along the coast even recorded them as unexplained weather. This time, some parts of the Elder Council’s files are missing—not by accident but deliberately taken. The missing pieces left clear shapes behind, as if they were meant to be noticed.

Bexley looked up from the records. “The redactions are interesting. I’ve noted their locations. The content is missing, but the shape of what’s missing tells you where to look.”

Fiora tilted her head. “That’s either very useful or very ominous.”

“Both,” Bexley said, clearly pleased she’d called it.

Althea gazed at the three waves one after the other, and it was clear to her, as always, even before her brain fully processed the bad news.

Three awakenings. Three ward failures. Three periods when Spelltide Cove’s protection had become unreliable, allowing dangerous things to slip through. It was right there on the page, repeating, and — the more she looked at it — not subtle.

I am the fourth wave. And I’ve been here less than two months.

The fire in her palms, well-behaved all morning after several weeks of relative stability, ticked up. She pressed them flat against the table.

“The ward anchor degradation began the night of the boardwalk fire,” she said.

“Yes.”

“The creature activity escalated within a week.”

“It’s right there in the records.”

“The warehouse ambush was aimed at our patrol. Someone used the destabilization — used me — to gather intelligence on our route.” She looked down at the table. “I am doing to this town what the previous three waves did, but on a faster timeline.”

Valene set her coffee down hard enough that it rattled.

“No.” At volume.

“Valene—”

“The data doesn’t say that, and you know it doesn’t. The data shows they happened at the same time. You’re saying one caused the other. Those aren’t the same thing.”

“The correlation is⁠—”

“Strong. Yes. And none of it tells you which way the arrow is pointing. You know that. After seventeen years of building campaigns on exactly this distinction, you know better than to stand here and tell me that correlation means what you’re saying it means.” Valene picked up her coffee again. “You’re frightened. That’s understandable. Stop letting it do your thinking for you.”

Althea looked at her.

“I love you,” Valene added. “I’m also right.”

The espresso machine vented a brief burst of steam toward the table. This was not helpful.

Fiora pulled the two yellow-tabbed documents closer. She had a way of following Valene’s bluntness with the supporting evidence, a beat behind and twice as damning. “Look at this.” She tapped the pages. “Every wave, the same pattern: no training, no framework, nobody telling these women that honesty settled the magic down and suppression made it worse. They were terrified, and the Elder Council’s answer was more suppression, which is⁠—”

“Functionally identical to what makes the magic worse.” Althea hadn’t wanted to follow that, but she had.

“Look at the failures,” Fiora continued. “They don’t look like someone with trained magic losing control. They look like someone fighting their own body. Like being told to hold your breath and keep holding it until something breaks.” She tapped the document. “These women weren’t destroying the wards. They were being destroyed, and the wards went with them.”

This was not a comfortable observation.

It was a better observation than the one she’d been making.

“It doesn’t change the timeline. The degradation started with my arrival.”

“An active, deliberate effort to exploit it.” Fiora kept her finger on the document. “That’s two distinct problems. You keep solving for one and calling it an answer.”