Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Chise had been traded before. Just never this officially.

She stood on the stage, her head bowed low, a curtain of red hair hiding her face. Years of being shuffled from one foster home to the next had worn her down, stripping away the last threads of hope that she might belong somewhere. Now, under the glaring stage lights, she had stopped pretending to fight.

Her stomach twisted as the auctioneer’s voice cut through the heavy silence, announcing the start of the bidding. She hadn’t meant to look up earlier, but the bright, blinding spotlight had seared into her eyes, forcing her gaze back to the floor. She could feel their stares, the crowd hidden beyond the light. Hundreds of faceless figures, watching, appraising, judging. Her cheeks burned with the knowledge, and she clenched her fists tight to keep them from trembling. 

“1 million pounds.” A voice from the darkness.

Her breath caught, but she forced herself to remain still.

“2 million.”

The numbers felt surreal, distant, like she wasn’t even part of this transaction. What did it matter? She had sold herself, her life no longer belonged to her. She had no illusions about what she was worth or what the prices meant. She squinted against the glare of the light, trying to make out the faces in the crowd, but it was futile. The stage was blinding, and the audience was cloaked in shadows. She couldn’t see them, but they could see her. That thought made her stomach churn. She dropped her head again, hoping the spotlight couldn’t reveal the fear in her eyes.

“5 million pounds,” a firm, measured voice cut through the rising bids.

The auctioneer hesitated, waiting for a counteroffer, but the room fell silent. Chise’s heart pounded as she heard footsteps approaching the stage. 

“Going once... going twice...” The auctioneer’s voice echoed, final and unyielding.

“Sold!” 

The word rang out and a gavel struck wood, sealing her fate.

Chise stood frozen for a moment, the reality sinking in. Five million pounds. She didn’t know if that number was high or low, or what it said about her worth. She didn’t know if she wanted to know. Her legs wobbled as one of the auction staff ushered her off the stage. The blinding light disappeared, leaving her blinking in the dim hallway, but the knot in her stomach only tightened.

Her buyer. She would meet them now, she realized. Her chest felt hollow, her throat dry. What would they want from her? Would they put her to work? A maid, a cook, something... manageable? Or was there something worse waiting? She had no idea what people did with those they purchased, and her imagination was cruel in filling the gaps.

She followed the auction staff silently, each step heavier than the last, her mind reeling with questions she didn’t want to ask. Finally, they stopped at a door and opened it, revealing the room inside. Chise hesitated on the threshold. A man stood waiting, his back to her. He was tall, with a sleek black ponytail and a sharp grey suit. 

“Step inside,” the staff urged, and Chise obeyed, her legs trembling. The man turned to face her, and she froze.

Three jagged scars raked across the left side of his face, cutting deep and uneven, a brutal contrast to his otherwise polished appearance. His dark eyes fixed on her with an intensity that stole the breath from her lungs. Already on edge, her nerves frayed to their limit, Chise inhaled sharply, the sound breaking the silence of the room.

The man extended a hand, his expression stern but not unkind. “I’m Mikhail Renfred, representing the College of Sorcery.” His sharp gaze softened slightly as he took in Chise’s hesitant demeanor. “The College is looking forward to meeting you.”

The College of Sorcery? Chise blinked, caught off guard. She’d assumed a family or a private individual would buy her, someone looking for a servant or worse. The idea of a college buying her felt strange. Impersonal, but maybe that was better. She supposed a large institution would need help, and it wasn’t surprising they had the money for such an expense.

Renfred noticed her hesitation. His outstretched hand hung in the air for a moment before Chise wiped her clammy palm against her side and cautiously reached out. Her smaller hand slid into his, and the handshake was brief, businesslike. Neither of them seemed sure of what to say next, and a heavy silence fell between them.

Renfred cleared his throat, taking the lead. “Your name is?”

“Chise Hatori.” 

Renfred gave a short nod, scanning her disheveled state again. There was no judgment there, but his gaze lingered as if assessing her condition. “Miss Hatori, the College purchased you because you’re a rare mage, a sleigh beggy. We would like to study your nature, as this is a unique opportunity for magical research. In return, we will provide you with food, shelter, protection, and a place in our classes alongside the other students. You won’t face any magical dangers on the college campus.”

Chise blinked, trying to process his words. Her stomach knotted at study your nature, but the rest, food, shelter, protection , sounded almost too good to be true. She had prepared herself for labor or worse, and yet this... this didn’t sound so bad. It was strange, unfamiliar, but not immediately frightening.

“Magical dangers?”

“Yes,” Renfred tilted his head slightly, almost in surprise. “The fae, magical beasts, spirits, otherworldly beings. Creatures that could pose a threat to someone like you. The College is heavily protected by wards and staffed with skilled sorcerers who ensure the safety of everyone on campus.”

Chise stared at him, her mind struggling to keep up. Magical dangers? The fae? Her breath hitched. Could he be talking about the creatures she’d seen, the ones that haunted her since childhood, the ones that no one else could see? The thought sent a chill down her spine.

Renfred frowned slightly, reading the confusion on her face. “How much do you know about magic? Did your parents ever teach you anything about it?”

Her throat tightened. The mention of her parents brought back memories, shouting voices, cold stares, the overwhelming sense that she had never been wanted. She looked away, her voice small and uneven. “I don’t know anything about magic.”

Renfred waited, his gaze steady, but Chise didn’t offer more. After a beat, he nodded as if deciding not to press her further. “That’s fine. You’ll learn. The College is the best place for someone like you. You have much to understand about who you are and the world around you. I'll try not to overwhelm you with everything at once.”

Chise gave a small, uncertain nod, swiping her sweaty palms against her side again. She still didn’t understand most of what he was saying, but it didn’t seem like she had much choice in the matter of conversation.

Renfred glanced at the clock on the wall. “We should get going. The College is expecting us.”

Chise’s stomach lurched at the idea of leaving, though she couldn’t say why. Renfred held up his wrist, revealing an intricate watch. “We will travel with this teleportation device. It’s faster than traveling by foot or train. We’ll be at the College in an instant.”

Before Chise could protest or even fully process his words, he reached for her hand. She flinched slightly but didn’t pull away, and in the next breath, the room around her dissolved. A sudden rush of cold air pressed against her skin, and for a split second, she felt weightless. Then the world snapped back into focus.

Chise staggered slightly, the solid ground beneath her feet unfamiliar. She blinked, her heart pounding as she took in her new surroundings. The towering brick walls and sprawling buildings of the College loomed before her. Somewhere in the distance, the hum of magic vibrated faintly in the air, tangible and strange.

Renfred voice was steady when he spoke, as if this were just another day. “Welcome to the College of Sorcery.”

Renfred stepped into the headmistresses office, Chise following cautiously behind. The space was grand yet welcoming, with a striking polished, red wooden desk at its center and floor to ceiling windows that flooded the room with golden sunlight. A faint floral scent lingered in the air, light but intentional, as if chosen to put visitors at ease.

Behind the desk sat the headmistress, a woman with silver streaked hair pulled into a tidy bun. Her sharp eyes scanned Chise with clinical precision, but there was no malice them, only curiosity and a faint trace of warmth. She gestured to the chairs in front of her desk.

“Miss Hatori, please, sit,” she said, her voice even and composed, yet carrying an undertone of authority that left no room for hesitation.

Chise sat stiffly, her hands clenched in her lap. Renfred, who had been quiet since they arrived, stood to the side with his arms crossed, his presence solid and stead.

The headmistress tilted her head slightly, studying Chise’s posture, her downcast eyes, and the faint tremor in her hands. “You’ve had a long day, I imagine,” she said, her tone softening just enough to feel genuine. “Let me first say that we’re pleased to have you here at the College. Your presence is a rare and wonderful opportunity.”

Chise blinked, unsure how to respond. The woman’s words didn’t feel cruel or mocking, but they didn’t sit comfortably, either.

“I know this must all feel overwhelming,” the headmistress continued, leaning forward slightly, resting her elbows on the desk. “But I want you to know that you’ll be safe here. The College is a place for those who don’t fit the mold of the outside world. Those who are unique, misunderstood, even feared. Here, we celebrate those differences and build a community where you can find your own sense of belonging.”

Chise hesitated, her gaze flickering to the large windows behind the headmistress. The light outside seemed impossibly bright, too stark compared to the dim uncertainty that weighed on her chest. She hadn’t felt like she belonged anywhere for as long as she could remember.

The headmistress watched her carefully but didn’t press. Instead, she leaned back in her chair, her sharp gaze softening as she shifted the conversation. “Now, let’s discuss the practicalities of your stay. We need to determine what year to put you in, when is your birthday?”

“February. I’m 15.”

The headmistress paused in thought before responding. “Given your lack of magical background, we’ll place you in your first year. Most are around your age. It will give you the best chance to build a foundation of knowledge.”

Chise nodded. It would be best to start at the basics, anyways. 

“As you’ve probably guessed, your situation is unique. You are a sleigh beggy, a rare and powerful type of mage. That power, however, comes at a cost. Sleigh beggy’s absorb and exude magic constantly, far more than their human bodies can handle. It’s why most don’t live long lives.”

Chise’s chest tightened at the words, but she said nothing.

The headmistress studied her for a moment longer before softening her tone. “This is why we brought you here. We want to study your unique nature and, hopefully, find ways to extend your lifespan. You’ll have access to the best magical resources, the finest education, and a safe haven from the dangers of the outside world.”

Chise nodded faintly, unsure of how to respond. The word study stuck out in her mind, stirring a quiet unease. Sensing the conversation had run its course, the headmistress shifted to a more practical tone. “Let’s move on to your classes,” she said, pulling out a printed page from her desk drawer. “These are the introductory courses we’ve arranged for you. You’ll start with the basics to ensure you’re caught up.”

Chise took the schedule with both hands, her eyes scanning the list of subjects. It felt surreal, holding a physical piece of her new life. The headmistress folded her hands and offered a small smile. “That will be all for now. Renfred will escort you to your dormitory.”

Chise stood as Renfred inclined his head respectfully. “Thank you, Headmistress,” he said, then gestured for Chise to follow him. She nodded silently, clutching the folded schedule in her hands as they exited the office.

The grand hallway outside felt cooler, the quiet hum of magic in the air more noticeable now. Renfred walked a step ahead, his pace steady, his voice calm as he began pointing out landmarks. “The College can be disorienting at first,” he said, glancing back briefly. “We’ll take the long way so you can get your bearings.”

As they passed a large, open room, Renfred gestured toward it. “That’s the cafeteria. You can come back after you’ve settled in. I’m sure you’re starving.”

Chise nodded mutely. Truth was, she hadn’t eaten all day. The nerves and hopelessness from the morning had churned in her stomach like a parasite, making the thought of food almost unbearable. But now, with the weight of her schedule in her hands and the faint flicker of routine on the horizon, she realized just how empty her body felt.

They continued down a long hallway when Renfred spoke again, gesturing toward a set of metal double doors ahead. “These are the Medical Quarters. You’ll need to stop by for your medical exam before the semester begins. Nurse Alexandra Heath will explain the testing you’ll undergo.”

Chise’s steps faltered, and her stomach twisted. Suddenly, she wasn’t hungry anymore. She’d almost forgotten what it meant to sell herself to the College. Walking these halls and receiving a schedule had made her feel like any other student starting their first year. But now, faced with those cold, uninviting doors, reality hit her like a sharp slap. Her eyes lingered on the metal doors. They looked sterile, clinical, and wholly unwelcoming. She imagined what might wait behind them: a stark room with steel walls, a hard metal table where she’d be strapped down and examined under glaring lights. The thought of lying there, helpless, in a paper gown sent a chill through her. She clenched her hands into fists, pushing the anxiety down. After all the kindness the College had shown her today, would they really turn around and treat her like that?

They continued walking down a hallway lined with identical doors, each marked with a number. The repetition of the pattern was almost hypnotic, but Chise’s mind remained preoccupied with her thoughts.

“My apprentice is a student here as well,” Renfred said, breaking the silence. “She’s in her third year. Perhaps she could give you a tour of the school tomorrow?”

Chise glanced at him from the corner of her eye, unsure how to respond. Renfred’s tone was neutral, but there was a gentleness to the offer that made her hesitate. Her past attempts at making friends had always ended in disaster. Taunts, whispers, and cruel laughter at her expense. The memory of those experiences made her chest tighten, but Renfred’s suggestion seemed genuine. She still had so many questions about the magical world and the College that she hadn’t been ready to ask him. A tour might be helpful, even if the thought of interacting with another person filled her with quiet dread.

“That would be nice,” she said finally, her voice soft. It wasn’t the whole truth, but after everything Renfred had done for her today, politeness felt like the least she could offer.

“Good,” Renfred said, his tone light. “I’ll have her stop by your dorm at noon tomorrow.”

He slowed his pace as they approached a door marked 217. “This is your room,” he said, stopping in front of it.

Renfred turned to Chise, extending his hand again. Chise hesitated for only a moment before taking it, the gesture feeling slightly more natural this time.

“It was a pleasure to meet you, Miss Hatori,” Renfred said, his voice calm but sincere. “I look forward to seeing how you settle in. You have great potential, and I trust you’ll make the most of this opportunity. I hope to see you in my classes in the future.”

Chise nodded, holding his gaze. She didn’t know if her gratitude reached him fully, but she tried to convey it through her expression. “Thank you, Professor Renfred, for your kindness and patience today. I’ll do my best to meet the College’s expectations. And I hope we’ll meet again soon.”

Renfred gave a slight bow, a small smile tugging at his lips. “Until then, Miss Hatori. Take care.”

Chise stepped into the room, the door clicking shut behind her. The dorm was small but comfortable, exactly what she had envisioned a dorm room to look like. It had a simple bed, a wardrobe, a desk, and a window overlooking the grounds. A small bathroom was also attached to the room. 

Chise drew the curtains, shutting out the unfamiliar world outside. She needed a moment alone, away from prying eyes and the weight of the day pressing on her chest. The small room was quiet, offering a fragile sense of safety that felt foreign yet comforting. She opened the wardrobe, her fingers brushing against the neatly arranged clothes inside. A few uniforms hung in her size, alongside a pair of shoes, winter clothes, and folded stacks of socks, panties, and pajamas. It wasn’t much, but to Chise, it was more than she had ever been given in the foster homes she’d passed through. The sight stirred a flicker of gratitude for the College, for its strange kindness in rescuing her when she’d hit rock bottom.

For a moment, she let herself sit with that feeling. Then it slipped away, replaced by a familiar weight as her thoughts turned back to the unspoken terms of her stay. She thought of the metal doors to the Medical Quarters, looming cold and uninviting, and the dread of whatever tests awaited her. The unknown twisted in her stomach, tangling with the exhaustion from the day’s events.

Her stomach growled loudly, breaking her thoughts. She hadn’t eaten anything since morning, and the gnawing hunger reminded her of her body’s limits. She considered returning to the cafeteria Renfred had pointed out earlier. But the thought of facing people, of walking through the unfamiliar halls with her nerves already on edge, made her stomach churn. Anxiety tightened its grip on her chest, turning her hunger to nausea. She shook her head. Food could wait.

It was only 8 p.m., but Chise was spent. Her body ached with exhaustion, and her mind felt heavy and clouded. With the wardrobe still open, she pulled off her pants and slipped into a fresh pair of panties followed by clean white pajama bottoms. As she pulled off her shirt, her eyes caught something in the full-length mirror opposite the wardrobe.

Her shirt was still clutched in her hands as she turned slowly to face the mirror, her breath hitching at the sight of her reflection. The mark along her collarbone was stark against her pale skin, dark and unyielding, like ink spilled across a blank page. Her fingers brushed over the mark, tracing its lines as if to confirm it was truly there. The sight sent a shiver through her. She had tried to ignore it earlier, to push it out of her mind. But here, under the quiet light of her dorm room, she couldn’t look away.

It had started as a dark blotch a few weeks ago, faint and indistinct, like the beginning of a bruise. Every day, Chise studied it in the mirror, squinting and tilting her head as if a different angle might make the mark more clear. She couldn’t decipher the letters yet, but she had a sinking feeling that it was the same kind of mark as the one on her forearm.

That mark had appeared when she was much younger, starting as an identical smudge before forming into legible letters over weeks. She remembered the moment it finally became clear, how she had stared at the word with a mixture of awe and confusion. Her mother had a matching mark, too. Chise could still picture it on her mother’s skin, though the memory was hazy now, like a photo left too long in the sun.

Her mother had told her once that the marks were special, something important, though she couldn’t recall exactly what. That memory had been overshadowed by others: the fights, the yelling, the way the marks seemed to wedge themselves like thorns between her parents. The marks weren’t a blessing, not in her household. They were a source of tension, of pain. So they stopped talking about them, their existence swept under the rug and ignored like so many other things in their fractured family.

Chise had spent years not knowing what the mark on her forearm meant. No one ever explained its purpose, why it had appeared, or why no one else but her and her biological family seemed to notice it. To the outside world, the marks were as absurd as the creatures that haunted her, a figment of her overactive imagination, nothing more.

When the mark on her collarbone began to form, the same questions resurfaced, only sharper this time. What was its purpose? Why could no one else see it? Was it supposed to mean something, or was it just another sign that she was different in all the worst ways? She touched it often, running her fingers over the rough edges of the bruise-like blotch, as if her touch might somehow decode its meaning.

Chise’s thoughts drifted back to three days ago—the day she first saw the mark on her collarbone fully formed.

Her most recent foster mother had shoved a cardboard box of Chise’s belongings into her arms, her expression strained but unwavering. “I’m sorry,” the woman said, her voice brittle with frustration. “But I can’t do this anymore. You have to go.” Chise had seen this scene play out before. She wasn’t close to this family, she never was with any of them. No matter how hard she tried, the results were always the same. The creatures that haunted her, unseen by anyone else, followed her everywhere. They forced her into corners, reduced her to trembling, and made her look like a freak to those who couldn’t see what she saw.

Still, when the words came, they hurt. They always hurt. Chise’s chest felt hollow as she stood there, clutching the box of her meager belongings. How many families had turned her away? How many times would she have to start over? Would she ever find a place where she belonged, or was she destined to live this nightmare of rejection forever? Something had to be seriously wrong with her. Why else would every family discard her so easily? She took the train back to the foster center, a long and silent ride through the gray haze of her thoughts. The weight of abandonment sat heavy on her chest, and she retreated to the train’s tiny bathroom, locking herself inside. There, she let the tears fall. They came hard and fast, shaking her frame as the sobs poured out of her.

An hour passed before the storm of her emotions began to subside. Her throat burned, and her head throbbed from crying, but she felt like she had let it all out. She splashed cold water on her face, hoping to tone down the puffiness. As she leaned over the sink, she noticed the first button of her shirt had come undone in her disheveled state. The loose collar gave her an unexpected glimpse of her chest and the mark on her collarbone.

Chise had been checking the mark every day since it began forming, her curiosity mixed with dread. Until now, it had been illegible. A blotchy stain that might take weeks to become clear. But as she pulled the collar further to one side, she saw it plainly. The mark was complete.

There was no mistaking the words now. They were clear, dark, and sharp against her pale skin.

She stared at them, her heart sinking lower with each read. Over and over, her eyes traced the letters, as if hoping they might change.

And then, she dissolved.

The tears returned with violent force, pulling her back into the whirlpool of despair she had just begun to crawl out of. She sank to the floor of the cramped bathroom, her arms wrapped tightly around herself, sobbing until her stomach twisted in protest. She barely made it to the toilet before emptying its contents, shaking as the force of her grief consumed her.

Her mind spiraled. The mark wasn’t just a mystery, it was a condemnation. She was unlovable. She brought no value to anyone, not to her foster families, not to the world. Even her own mother couldn’t love her. She was a burden, a problem, something to be discarded and forgotten. She didn’t know what the mark meant, or where it came from. But what she could understand was enough. It felt like a label, a permanent declaration of her worthlessness. An omen.

When the train finally pulled into the station, Chise didn’t go back to the foster center. What would be the point? She had no value to offer any family. No one would want her, and she was tired of being passed around like unwanted luggage. For a dark moment, the thought of ending it all flitted through her mind. But there was one last option, one last way she could at least make herself useful to someone. So she decided she would sell herself at an auction.

Chise blinked, her vision blurry as tears traced warm paths down her cheeks. Slowly, the dorm room came back into focus—the wardrobe standing open, the soft glow of the lamp on the desk. She stood in front of the mirror, her used shirt clutched loosely in one hand, her gaze fixed on the mark etched across her collarbone.

The tears came quietly now, no longer the violent storm they had been on the train. Instead, a heavy cloud hung over her, oppressive and unrelenting. She didn’t know what hurt more, the memory of being abandoned by yet another foster family, the weight of discovering the mark in full, or the whirlwind of everything that had followed: selling herself, being purchased by the College, and being told that her life, her very existence, was a subject of study.

She let the shirt slip from her hand and fall to the floor. Turning away from the mirror, she rummaged through the wardrobe, her fingers trembling as she pulled out a pajama shirt. It was soft and clean, the kind of clothing she’d rarely been given by foster families. For a fleeting moment, she thought about how the College had provided her with more than she’d ever had before. But even that small flicker of gratitude couldn’t pierce the weight pressing down on her.

Pulling the shirt over her head, she turned to the mirror again. Her breath caught.

The shirt was white, simple, and meant to match the pajama pants she wore. It wasn’t cheap fabric, but her skin was pale, too pale, and the mark on her collarbone, a deep, obsidian black, stood out like a brand, stark and undeniable beneath the thin fabric. It wasn’t hidden at all. 

A wave of revulsion swept over her. She wanted to claw at the mark, to tear it away from her body, to erase it from existence. Her fingers twitched at her sides, but she forced herself to stop. Instead, she grabbed a thick winter sweater from the wardrobe, pulling it on over the shirt. The heavy fabric smothered the sight of the mark, and she exhaled shakily. Without another glance at the mirror, Chise turned and stumbled to the bed. She climbed beneath the blanket, curling into herself as her tears continued to flow, quiet and steady.

As she stared at the wall, she remembered how the headmistress had told her that sleigh beggys typically didn’t live for long. She found that this didn’t bother her in the slightest. 

Chapter Text

Chise had a fitful sleep her first night at the College, waking multiple times to unfamiliar sounds. The rustle of leaves, the wind moving through the forest nearby, the constant hum of crickets outside. It was a far cry from the city sounds she was used to. She even heard the distant, eerie howling of wolves. She had never heard them in real life before, and the sound raised the hairs on her arms. Beautiful, but mournful. Wild.

By morning, the wolves were silent. The soft notes of birdsong pulled Chise from sleep well before Alice was due to arrive. The pale light that filtered through her dorm window did little to calm the tight, anxious churn in her stomach. She had plenty of time to spare, but that only made the lingering dread more present. The medical quarters. Renfred’s comment echoed in her memory. “Nurse Alexandra Heath will explain the testing you’ll undergo.” It wasn’t a demand, but the implication was clear. It was her responsibility to take the first step. The only question was when.

She lingered at the cafeteria first, hoping food might quiet the nerves. Hunger had slipped past her yesterday, smothered by uncertainty and exhaustion, but now her body refused to be ignored. She ate slowly, letting the warmth of the meal ground her, until her mind wandered again, back to those cold metal doors she’d seen the night before. Two hours still remained before her tour with Alice.

Without giving herself time to hesitate, Chise stood and made her way toward the medical quarters. The metal doors were just as she remembered. Tall, industrial gray with no windows, scrubbed to a sterile brightness, with faint scratches marring the surface. She took the cold handle in her palm. It bit against her skin, her hands already clammy from nerves. Chise drew a shaky breath and pulled the door open.

She had braced herself for a sterile lab: steel surfaces, sharp smells, humming machinery. Instead, warm light poured through tall windows with spruce paneled grids. Bone white curtains, lightly swaying, divided the space gently, not harshly. It was… calm. Human, even. Her shoulders eased slightly.

“Good morning!” came a cheery voice from behind one of the curtains. Metal rings clinked as the curtain shifted open. Chise turned just in time to see someone, or something, emerge.

She nearly jumped. Not out of fear, but sheer surprise. The figure before her was large. About the height of a tall woman, but the body was unmistakably that of a caterpillar. All green and segmented, she had four arms, two of which adjusted the simple cloth tied around her chest in a makeshift halter. Her upper torso and face were humanlike, though her tennis ball eyes gleamed, more insect than human.

“You must be Miss Hatori!” the creature said brightly. “The headmistress told me you'd be arriving this week. I’m Nurse Alexandra. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Thank you,” Chise replied automatically, snapping her mouth shut as soon as the words left her. She wasn’t trying to be rude, but her reaction must’ve shown on her face.

Nurse Alexandra smiled with practiced ease. “No offense taken. I imagine you’ve never seen anyone quite like me.”

“No, miss. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“It’s alright, many new students haven’t had much exposure to magic. I’m usually one of the first non-humans they meet. I’m a Muryan. A wizard who has undergone a transformation of the body. There are several faculty here who have undergone similar changes. You’ll likely meet them in your classes.”

Chise nodded, still unsure how to respond.

“Now then,” Nurse Alexandra continued briskly, “we’ll need to get through your intake. That means some paperwork, a basic physical, and a few magical tests. Since sleigh beggy's tend to have short lifespans, the headmistress and I agreed on monthly checkups. We’re hoping that with the right magical training and support, we can extend your life significantly.”

Chise hesitated. Testing. The word echoed in her mind, unsure of what it meant. Still, Nurse Alexandra’s tone was kind, and nothing here had felt threatening so far. She took another breath and gave a quiet nod.

They went through the intake paperwork first. Nurse Alexandra asked questions and filled in the blanks herself, her many hands working together gracefully. Chise noticed that the nurse kept her own notes to herself. Subtle, but clearly done with purpose. The physical that followed was surprisingly familiar. Height, weight, blood pressure, basic measurements. Nothing invasive. Nothing painful. If Nurse Alexandra noticed the strange markings on Chise’s collarbone and arm, she didn’t comment on them. Once the physical was complete, Nurse Alexandra set aside her chart and turned to her.

“Now,” she said, “we’ll begin the magical assessment.”

A familiar chill spread down Chise’s spine. Her palms began to sweat again.

The nurse handed her a smooth, rounded crystal. “Let’s start simple. I want you to try turning this into a flower.”

Chise blinked. “I… I don’t know how to do that.”

“Don’t worry,” Nurse Alexandra reassured her. “Just picture what you want it to become. Hold the image clearly in your thoughts. Magic, especially in sleigh beggy's, responds strongly to intention.”

Chise glanced down at the crystal. Was this the dreaded testing? No straps, no needles, no painful prodding? She exhaled, relief softening her shoulders. Her imagination had run wild for nothing.

“Okay, I’ll try.”

She closed her eyes and tried to will the crystal into a flower. Nothing happened.

“Try to picture a flower,” Nurse Alexandra said gently. “Really see it in your minds eye.”

Chise searched her memories, trying to envision an example of a flower. And then she found it.

A field of poppies, orange and endless. Sunlight spilling over the blooms in thick, golden waves. She was small again, barefoot in the grass, a flower clutched in her chubby hand, its petals reaching over her skin like a hug. Her mother’s silhouette waited in the distance, haloed by light. She ran to her, laughing, and offered the poppy like a gift. Her mother knelt to take it, smiling. The memory swelled behind her eyes, vivid and bright.

“Chise!”

Her eyes snapped open. Nurse Alexandra was standing several feet back, her mouth parted in shock, clipboard dangling forgotten in one hand. Chise looked around and nearly gasped.

The medical room had vanished beneath a wild transformation. Clear, crystalline flowers had erupted across the floor, spreading in all directions like frost. Hundreds of them, each shaped like poppies, glistened with refracted light. Shards of glassy crystal clung to the windows and ceiling, forming jagged icicles that hung low and cold. The golden sunlight that had once warmed the space was now dim, refracted and scattered by the formations. Chise’s heart sank.

“I’m so sorry,” she blurted, stepping back and nearly crushing one of the glass flowers beneath her heel. It cracked like ice. “I didn’t mean to—it was only supposed to be one!”

Nurse Alexandra raised a hand. “It’s alright. Don’t worry.” Her voice was calm, but Chise could tell there was something underneath it. Something like concern. Or fear. 

“This reveals a great deal about your nature. You didn’t do anything wrong, Chise. This wasn’t a test meant to pass or fail.”

Chise looked down at her hands. They were still trembling. She had tried to make something beautiful, something small and kind. But instead, she’d filled the room with fragile, gleaming danger. Shards of crystal stretched in every direction. One wrong step and it wouldn’t just break, it would cut. She imagined if she fell on the flowers, she would slice her hand open like a fruit.

“I’ll take care of the cleanup,” Nurse Alexandra continued. “There’s nothing else we need from you today. Please come back in a month for your next checkup.”

Chise nodded numbly, murmured a thank you, and slipped out the door. The corridor outside felt too bright, too open. Her steps echoed against the stone floors. Of course she’d messed it up. She should’ve known better than to expect anything different. Her first act of magic, her first real one, and it was already…wrong. And now someone else had to clean up after her.

Later, Chise waited in her dorm for the arrival of Renfred’s apprentice. The past 48 hours had been packed. So much change, so quickly, it felt like she hadn’t had time to breathe. Meeting new people in rapid succession was unfamiliar enough. Meeting people who were actually kind to her? That was even stranger. She figured it was only a matter of time before someone looked at her the way people in the outside world had. 

At noon, a knock echoed through her dorm. When Chise opened the door, a tall girl with sharp features greeted her. She stood at least a foot taller than Chise, her lean frame accentuated by her casual posture. Her blonde ponytail swayed as she tilted her head.

“Master sent me. Said you’re new and might need help finding your way around.” The girl said briskly. Then, with a crooked grin, “I’m Alice. Ready for the grand tour, newbie?”

Chise blinked at the suddenness but managed a small, polite smile. “Hi. I’m Chise. Nice to meet you. And yes, I’d really appreciate your help.”

“Great. Let’s get moving.” Alice turned on her heel without waiting for a reply, and Chise quickly fell into step beside her.

They started with the other dorm wings, which Chise hadn’t realized existed. Then Alice led her to the library. Chise paused in the archway, quietly awestruck. It was massive, two stories high, with towering oak shelves that reached toward the ceiling. A staircase wrapped up to the upper level, and the room glowed warmly under golden sconces.

“I’m guessing you’ll spend a lot of time here. Master told me you’re from the outside world. No magical background, huh?”

“Not really…” Chise admitted, rubbing her arm.

“You’re not the first. You might have to study a little harder, but you’ll catch up. Most students here grew up with magic, founding family kids and all that. But the curriculum’s solid.”

Chise nodded slowly. Growing up being passed from foster family to foster family, she’d never felt rooted anywhere, never had a real chance to succeed in school. She was used to being behind, to switching schools too often to keep up. Even if she tried her best here… would that be enough?

“I’ll try. I think I can manage the studying part” Chise hesitated. Alice picked up on it.

“Hey, it’s alright to be nervous. What’s great about this place is that we’re all kind of weirdos here. What makes us stick out in the outside world? That’s exactly what makes us fit in here.”

Chise glanced at her, surprised, and smiled. “Thank you, Alice.”

After they explored the library, Alice took her through the rest of the campus: sprawling lecture halls, laboratory classrooms, smaller seminar rooms. In the underground levels, they passed quiet, windowless study rooms and training rooms.

“There are vaults underneath these,” Alice said, lowering her voice a little. “Magic treasuries. Off limits to students, but everyone knows they’re there.”

Chise’s eyes widened. “Really?”

“Yeah. Master told me, but I’ve heard rumors from other students too. He’s on the board, so he knows all the behind-the-scenes stuff. I’m hoping to work here after I graduate.”

“You and Renfred seem close.”

“Close?” Alice snorted, voice returning normal decibel. “I’d hope so, with all the crap I deal with. He saved me from a bad place and took me in. Least I can do is pull my weight. But don’t get the wrong idea. I’m not some charity case. He trains me. I keep him alive. That’s the deal.”

“Keep him alive?” Chise echoed.

“I’m training to be his bodyguard,” Alice said proudly. “When I graduate, I’m applying for the master’s program.”

“What’s that?”

“If you finish five years at the College, you get your general degree. After that, you can apply to specialize. It’s another two years, more like one-on-one training in your chosen field. No extra boring classes, just the stuff you actually want to learn. Only the top students get in, though. Most people don’t bother. They just want to graduate and get a job.”

“What can you specialize in?”

“Combat, alchemy, runecraft, magecraft.” Alice ticked them off on her fingers. “Anything they teach here. Pick your poison.”

Chise considered. Would she want to stay here longer, if given the chance? She wasn’t sure. She didn’t even know enough about magic to guess what might interest her.

Feeling more comfortable around Alice now, she asked, “Alice… what else did Renfred tell you about me?”

“Just that you were new. That you didn’t know much about magic and might need help adjusting.” She slowed a little. “He asked me to keep an eye on you.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all. He doesn’t usually ask me to do stuff like this, so I figured it was important. I’ve never given a school tour before.”

Chise smiled. “You’re doing a great job. Thank you.”

“Honestly, I think he just wanted me to make a friend.”

Chise wasn’t surprised by that. Alice was a little rough around the edges. Blunt, sharp-tongued, someone who said exactly what was on her mind. Chise could see why some might be put off. But she also saw something steadier beneath that edge.

As they walked, one hallway caught Chise’s attention. The doors here were all different. One was worn oak with a bronze doorknob, another painted a faded mandarin orange, and a third white with delicate floral carvings etched around the frame. The doors continued on.

“These are the professors’ studies,” Alice explained. “Some don’t live on campus full time, so their studies are magically linked from their homes to the school.”

“Does Renfred have one?”

“Yeah. That’s how I’ll get home later.”

“You don’t use that teleportation thing he does?”

“I can, but you need to be a really skilled alchemist to do it safely. It drains a lot of magic, too. The study doors are rune linked portals. Way easier and safer.”

At the end of the hall, they stepped into a covered walkway that opened to the air on either side. In the distance, trees lined the edge of the campus.

“What’s out that way?” Chise asked, nodding toward the forest.

“Fae territory, mostly. The school’s got wards to keep them out.” Alice squinted toward the treeline. “You can hear the wolves at night if your window’s open.”

Chise’s heart skipped. “I thought I imagined that.”

“Nope. Real wolves. Or something close enough.”

Ending their tour, Alice and Chise found themselves in the courtyard. The trees were in bloom, lush, flowering, and full. Ripe tomatoes hung from the branches like red lanterns. A dozen or so trees framed the open space, forming a quiet pocket of nature within the brick walls of the College. The greenery sparkled, and the courtyard was still. Classes wouldn’t begin for a few more days, and the two girls were alone.

In one corner, Chise noticed several flower pots lined up in tidy rows, each sprouting small, leafy bushes. Above them, something shimmered, so faint she might’ve missed it if it weren’t for the movement in them. A soft, translucent net, similar to mosquito netting, hovered in the air. She stepped closer.

Something was caught in the net, buzzing and frantic. A tiny creature, no larger than her thumb, thrashed against the invisible barrier. It was fuzzy, yellow and black, with delicate wings, a vaguely humanoid body, with a face twisted in fear. Its wings were hopelessly tangled in the shimmering net, flapping harder with every passing second.

“Those bushes are being cultivated for the courtyard,” Alice said, following Chise. “The ward keeps pests away while they’re still young.”

Chise’s eyes didn’t leave the creature. “What is it?”

“Oh, that?” Alice leaned in, hands on her hips. “That’s a bumblefae. Damn wards catch everything. It’ll wriggle free eventually.”

But Chise was already reaching out. She moved slowly, her fingertips hovering just above the fae’s trembling wings. “It’s okay, I’m not going to hurt you. I’m just going to help.”

The bumblefae froze, its eyes locked on hers. Its frantic buzzing slowed. Chise’s hands worked delicately, carefully freeing the fragile wings from the ward’s threads. The creature’s body warmed under her touch, and its tiny chest slowed in its heaving. When it was finally free, it lingered in her palm for a breath. Then, light as a dandelion, it lifted off, its wings catching the sunlight as it disappeared into the sky.

Chise turned back. Alice was staring at her, a flicker of something unreadable passing across her face.

“It was stuck,” Chise said simply. “It was scared.”

“Well. Lucky it was you who found it.”

They let the moment pass and wandered toward the other end of the courtyard. Tomatoes hung low on the branches of the fruiting trees, and they plucked a few, biting into them as they found a patch of sunlight in the grass. 

“I thought tomatoes grew on bushes,” Chise said, eyeing the half-bitten fruit in her hand with a furrowed brow.

Alice let out a short laugh, leaning back on her hands. “What, are you writing a gardening manual now? This is a magic school, puppy. You think the trees care about your rules?”

“At least the magic trees make good snacks,” Chise said, laughing softly.

The sun beat down on them, and though it wasn’t quite summer anymore, the warmth soaked into Chise’s skin. The school had been cool and crisp, but here in direct sunlight, she could feel her temperature rising. She slipped off her cardigan and tied it around her waist, only to freeze when she noticed Alice staring.

Chise followed her gaze, and her stomach dropped. Her forearm. The black lettering there stood out bold and clear in the sunlight. She had lived with it for so long that she hardly registered its presence anymore, something that had been there as far back as she could remember. In the outside world, no one had ever acknowledged it. When she was younger, she’d asked about it a few times. Adults had looked at her like she was insane. But Alice wasn’t looking at her like that. She was staring at Chise’s arm with stunned recognition.

“Sorry—I just… you so rarely see them,” Alice said. “I think I’ve only seen them on a handful of other people in my life. Yours is... really bold. It just caught me off guard.”

“You can see this?” Chise asked, blinking in disbelief.

“Of course I can see it. What the hell?” Alice looked at her like she’d just asked if the sky was real. “Everyone here can. This is a magic school, remember?”

“No one’s ever been able to see it before. I thought I made it up.”

Alice sat up straighter, more serious now. “That’s because most people out there don’t have the sight. People who don’t practice magic can’t see soulmarks. Or spirits, or fae, or half the weird shit we deal with here. But you? You weren’t imagining anything, Chise.”

Relief hit Chise all at once. Everything she had seen over the years, the shadowy figures, the monsters, the whispering things in the dark, the things that chased her. The words on her skin. All of it, dismissed by everyone else as delusion. But they had been real. She hadn’t been broken. She had just been alone.

“I’ve got one of my own.” Alice extended her leg and bent it up toward her chest, then rolled up her pant leg. Just above her ankle, a line of thin, messy handwriting curved along her skin.

You're safe now.

Chise read it carefully. The words struck something in her, a longing, or a sadness she couldn’t name.

“What does it mean? Why do we have them?”

“They’ll go over all of this in class eventually, and there are tons of books in the library if you’re curious." Alice let her leg fall back down, brushing off her pant leg. "A soulmark shows the first words someone says to you. Someone you're soulbonded to.”

Chise blinked. “Soulbonded?”

“Yeah. Like a soulmate, kind of. Ever heard of those?” Alice’s tone was teasing, but not cruel. “But it’s not always romantic. Mine came from someone who’s like family to me. A soulbond just means your lives are meant to be tied together somehow. It could be love. Could be something else. That said, most people only ever have one, and it’s usually the romantic kind.”

Chise let the idea sink in. A soulmate. Someone out there she was destined to meet. To love? It was something she had never let herself believe in. Friendship alone had always been hard enough. 

Alice seemed to soften. “It was the first thing Master said to me. That’s how I knew I could trust him.”

Chise looked down at the words inked into her own arm. Her gaze drifted upward, to the collar of her shirt, where another mark was hidden. One that had only appeared a few days ago.

“Alice, what does it mean if you have… two?”

“Shit. You have two? That’s gotta be some kind of sleigh beggy thing,” Alice muttered in awe. “You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you? Two soulbonds… that’s rare. Most people don’t even get one.”

They sat in silence after that, both reveling in the shock of the conversation. Alice didn’t ask to see the second mark. For that, Chise was grateful.

Chise's hand drifted instinctively to her collarbone, where the second mark rested beneath the fabric. The words there weren’t kind like Alice's was. They weren’t soft. They were cruel. Cold.

She wanted to cry. She wanted to bury her face in her hands and sob until the hurt went away. But she didn’t. She had learned not to. Tears had always been met with frustration. Her foster families never understood them. Didn’t want them. So Chise learned to hold it in. To swallow the pain. Even now, with someone sitting beside her, someone who maybe wouldn’t punish her for it, she didn’t cry.

Instead, the fear crept in. Fear of what the future might hold. Of the stranger who would say those words to her. That the mark was counting down toward someone who would break her, not love her. Anger that such a person existed. Sadness that they might not love her, not really. Not like she wanted to be loved.

And if it was a soulmate… how could that possibly be right? How could someone meant for her speak such hateful words?

But if it was a soulbond, someone important, not necessarily romantic, did that make it better? Or worse?

She didn’t know.

Chapter Text

ONE YEAR LATER

Elias had learned the shape of humanity, but not the warmth.

He approached the wooden, shore facing cottage, the sea wind tugging gently at the edges of his cloak. He had only been gone a single day. Out in the human world, as Rehab had urged. Observing. Studying. Trying, in his way, to understand. She had told him to make friends, to watch, to learn. For months now, he had done exactly that. And each time, he returned with more questions than answers.

When he showed his true face, humans recoiled, cowered in fear. When he wore the illusion of one of their own, they passed through him like wind, uneasy, sensing what their eyes could not explain. So this time, he had remained hidden. A cold breeze in an alley. A still shadow at the end of a train car. Watching, learning. Always apart. He had not spoken to anyone. He had not dared.

He wasn’t made for that world. Most humans saw only a monster. Sometimes, he believed them.

Now, he approached his home. Her home. But something was wrong. Even far from the cabin, he could feel it, like a splinter in the air. A silence too thick. A stillness too complete.

The sea fog had rolled in thick while he was gone. It clung to the shoreline, seeping into the wood of the house, twisting around the trees like fingers. The cottage itself looked unchanged, but a heaviness pressed into his gut the closer he got. This was no ordinary fog. This place, unbound by space and time, always held some haze to it. But this fog was heavy, tasting of static and rot. Wild, ungrounded magic had passed through here recently. Something powerful and unstable.

He stopped in front of the door. There were no birds. No wind. Not even the ancient pulse of energy he usually felt when Rehab was near. 

“Rehab, I’m back,” Elias called through the oak door, though his voice didn’t echo. The sound fell flat. He opened the door and stepped inside.

The cottage looked exactly as it always had. The same crooked rug. The stack of unread books. A half eaten plate of food sitting on the table, steam long gone cold. She had been here recently.

“Rehab?” he called again.

No answer.

He moved slowly through the cottage, every movement deliberate. He scanned the room, the shelf where she kept her plants, the cushions she always forgot to fluff. The blanket was draped across the couch carelessly, the way it always was when she napped there. Reflexively, he picked it up and folded it, smoothing the corners just as she’d taught him. A habit. A small thing. The illusion of order.

But something was wrong. The silence curled in the air like a living thing. He passed the hearth, passed the old lamp she’d meant to fix, until he stood at the door to her bedroom. It was ajar, just slightly. Just enough to see the pale stretch of a hand resting atop the comforter.

Elias paused. Then he pushed the door open. Rehab lay on the bed, face tilted to the ceiling, limbs spread wide as though she had been dropped there, no, thrown. Her body sprawled in an unnatural way that didn’t make sense. He waited for the rise and fall of her chest, the shift of her fingers, the subtle breath that always marked her presence.

Nothing. He stepped closer, and her face stopped him.

Her skin was gray, drained of life, and her lips hung open in a frozen gasp. Her eyes, those warm, commanding eyes, were wide, glassy, and fixed on something far beyond him. They weren’t blank. They were afraid.

Elias's breath stuttered in his throat. Something inside him pulled taut, like a rope snapping against tension. He moved to the edge of the bed, slowly, as if one wrong step might shatter what was left of the world.

He knelt beside her. One hand reached out, trembling slightly as he placed it over hers. Cold, still. Gone. He could not breathe. His body bent forward without thought, folding into the space beside hers, as if gravity had changed direction and pulled him to the bed. A sound rose in his throat, low and feral, but never left his mouth. He stayed there, curled around her silence, as a bottomless hole cracked open inside him.

Then—

The creak of a floorboard.

A young woman—no, a sleigh beggy—stood there, her wild chestnut hair tangled like brambles around her pale, sunken face. Her eyes, wide and unfocused, flitted around the room, unable to settle on anything for more than a second. Her hands twitched at her sides, fingers flexing as if grasping for something invisible.

“How did you find this place?” Elias asked, his voice low, controlled, though his chest felt hollow. Rehab’s lifeless body was still pressed against him, and yet his focus now rested on this intruder.

The girl tilted her head sharply, her gaze snapping to him. She blinked, as if seeing him for the first time, then laughed. A sound too sharp, too high pitched to be sane. “Find? Find what?” she muttered, glancing over her shoulder as if she’d forgotten where she was. Her voice wavered, alternating between a whisper and a shout. “I was... I was walking. No, running. Or... was I being chased?” Her head jerked again, her eyes narrowing as if accusing him. “Were you chasing me?”

“No,” Elias said firmly, rising slowly to his feet. “You need to leave. Now.”

The girl’s lips quivered into a strange, lopsided smile. “Leave? But I just got here. This... this is a safe place, isn’t it?” Her eyes darted around the room again, then landed on the bed. Her smile faded instantly. “Oh. Oh, no, no, no,” she whispered, stepping backward, her bare feet scraping against the wooden floor. “She... she was wrong. She looked like one, but she wasn’t one.”

Elias’ stomach turned. “What did you do?” His voice dropped to a dangerous growl, but the girl didn’t seem to hear him.

Her hands shot to her temples, gripping her head as if trying to stop it from splitting apart. “She looked like one. A monster! Yes, yes. They’re everywhere, you know. Hiding, always hiding. But I can see them. Oh, I can always see them.” Her voice cracked, a hysterical laugh bubbling out. “You have to kill the monsters before they kill you.”

Elias stepped toward her, his shadow stretching across the room. “She was no monster. She was my mentor. My family.”

The girl flinched, shrinking away from him. “No, no, you don’t understand! She had—” Her hands flailed in the air as if grasping for the words. “She had this... this light, this power! It was pouring out of her. Dripping, oozing, and it wouldn’t stop, wouldn’t stop!” Her eyes filled with tears, her voice cracking. “It was screaming at me. I had to... had to take it. Had to make it stop.”

“You drained her magic,” Elias said, his voice sharp and cold, cutting through the girl’s incoherent rambling. The sleigh beggy before him, wild and erratic, was the embodiment of everything he had known. About their madness, their instability. He had known that sleigh beggy's could lose control, consumed by their unchecked power. But they usually destroyed themselves, burning out like dying stars. This one, though, had taken Rehab.

His Rehab.

Elias felt something primal rising within him, a deep, searing fury that burned in his chest. It wasn’t just rage, it was grief, raw and unrelenting, tearing through him like jagged glass. He had to stop her. Not just for Rehab, but for himself. For anyone else she might harm.

The air in the room grew heavy, oppressive, as shadows thickened and spiraled around him. Elias stepped forward, his form twisting and expanding with each step. Thorned vines erupted from his body, slithering outward to encase the walls, the floor, the very air. His torso swelled, muscles rippling like cables of steel under his now massive frame. His legs dissolved into a serpentine tail that coiled menacingly. His harrowing skull elongated, his crimson eyes blazing like embers in the void.

He towered over the girl now, the antlers on his monstrous form brushing the ceiling. The sleigh beggy froze in place, her wild gaze finally focusing on him, her lips quivering as she stumbled back.

Then he let it out. The sound was deafening, a guttural roar that reverberated through the walls and carried the weight of his grief and unrelenting rage. It wasn’t just a sound, it was the embodiment of everything he felt: pain, fury, and the overwhelming need to destroy.

The sleigh beggy broke. With a strangled scream, she turned and bolted for the front door, her bare feet slipping on the wooden floor in her desperation. But Elias was faster. With a wave of his massive arm, thorned vines erupted from the floor, slamming into the doorway and creating a jagged, impassable wall. The girl skidded to a halt, panic consuming her as she turned to face him.

In less than a second, he was upon her, his darkness engulfing the entire cottage. Her back pressed against the wall of thorns as he loomed closer, his glowing eyes boring into hers. She screamed, incoherent and frantic, clawing at the air as if she could fend him off. “You monster!”

Elias moved with brutal precision. His claws plunged into her chest, piercing through flesh and bone as if they were paper. He felt her heartbeat falter under his grip, the last surge of life ebbing from her as he tore her heart free. She collapsed, her lifeless body crumpling to the floor, and with her death, a surge of magical energy exploded outward, crackling in the air like lightning.

Elias stared at her body, breathing heavily, the grief momentarily drowned out by the intoxicating hum of her unleashed power. He couldn’t let it escape, couldn’t let it dissipate into the Earth. His towering form shuddered, driven by instinct as he bent over her. His jaws opened wide, revealing rows sharp, of jagged teeth, and he began to feed.

Each bite was savage, deliberate. Flesh, bone, and magic became one as he consumed her. The innocents of a human soul as well as the raw power she had stolen from Rehab surged through him, mingling with his own. He didn’t stop, not until every limb, every fragment of her soul, was devoured. And to his shame, he relished it. The taste of her magic, the act of consuming her, it was both vengeance and survival.

Elias woke drenched in cold sweat, a pang of hunger hitting him like a wild animal. His tongue swiped across the inside of his teeth. The remnants of the dream clung to him like mist, leaving the taste of a soul in his mouth and a black ache in the pit of his stomach.

His jaws snapped shut with a sharp click. Restraint. Practiced restraint, refined over centuries. Instinct clawed at the edges of his mind, but he reeled it in within a second. His body eased as he came to himself.

He was not there. Not in Rehab’s home, suspended outside time and space. He was here. But the dream still pressed at the edges of his mind, a memory burned into him like a scar. He hadn’t dreamt of that day in years, but it was never gone. Only dormant. Always waiting. The actual event had taken place centuries ago, yet it never felt far. It was rare for him to lose control like that now, to revert, to devour like the thing he had once been. But in that dream, he always did.

The sleigh beggy’s scream rang in his mind, the voice shrill, furious, dying. You monster!

The darkness outside the window told him it was still deep in the night. He wouldn’t be able to sleep again, not after that. He rarely could. With a fluid motion, Elias rose from the bed, slipping into a pair of white, fuzzy house slippers. He exited his bedroom, descended the stairs in silence, making his way to the kitchen. The kettle was set with a flick of his hand. As the water began to heat, he crossed to the front door and took his cloak from the rack. He shrugged it on, the black cotton brushing against his skin like a familiar touch, soft and well-worn. 

He stood in front of the kettle, unmoving, his crimson eyes locked on the glossy curve of its surface.  Rehab had given Elias more than a name, more than a home. She had given him direction. She had taught him more than just magecraft, she had taught him how to live like a human, to live with purpose. A gift he could never repay.

A familiar, gnawing grief stirred in his chest. She had been a mother to him in every way that mattered. He exhaled slowly and shook it off. Instead came the fear. Fear of the dream, of losing control again. Fear of caring for someone the way he cared for her, and suffering the price.

When the kettle whistled, he poured the water, steeping his tea with practiced motions, then carried the teacup out onto the front porch. The forest stretched before him in shadows, thick and impenetrable, cloaking the cottage in solitude. The night was black, but not as black as what lived inside him. The darkness beyond the trees called to him. He could feel its pull, like claws sinking into his spine, inviting him to return to what he once was. Before Rehab. Before restraint. Before memory and mercy.

He refused the call without hesitation. He wore his self-control like a second skin.

He sipped his tea and stood in silence, letting the cool night air sweep over him. And then, from within the black stillness, a flicker. Small and fleeting. He blinked.

There it was again, a pinprick of gold hanging briefly in the air before vanishing. Then another. And another. The fireflies came slowly, like stars slipping down from the sky. They moved through the trees in lazy spirals, drifting across the garden like flecks of amber caught in a current. They made no sound. They asked nothing of him. But they moved.

Elias stared, watching the dark begin to bloom with light. It was… nothing. Insignificant. A few insects dancing in the air. And yet, it stirred something in him. This was why he had chosen the path he did. Rehab had taught him not merely to mimic human life, but to appreciate it. The small, fleeting joys. Moments that meant nothing to the world, but everything to the soul.

He could have stayed a beast. Could have stayed in the dark. But even now, centuries later, these moments, the golden flicker against shadow, the warmth of a cup in his hands, the ache of missing someone who made the world make sense, these things still mattered. They made him feel human, even if he wasn’t.

He looked to his left. There was no one beside him. No one to share the light with.

What was the point of all this, this humanity, this effort to understand beauty, if there was no one to share it with? 

It had been a full year since Chise’s life had changed. Since she stepped into the halls of the College of Sorcery and into a world that had given her a second chance.

She wasn’t the same girl who had arrived, hollow eyed and hopeless. Now, she had friends in her classes. Alice had become someone she trusted deeply. She was learning to wield magic, practicing magecraft in her free time with growing confidence. She laughed more. She studied late into the night. She wasn’t drowning in despair anymore.

And yet… something still felt missing. Some piece of her remained adrift. Like parts of her soul were still waiting to be shaped.

She had come to the church hoping for inspiration, a spark to ignite an idea for the research paper looming over her. The Magical Essence of Churches sounded like a straightforward enough topic, but she had come to a dead end in her research. The more she read in the library, the more lost she felt.

Now, her boots crunched on the gravel path as she wandered deeper into the graveyard, her gaze flitting between the gravestones. Each told a story, but none of them spoke to her. Names etched into weathered stone, dates marking beginnings and ends. Families buried together, some graves decorated with wilting flowers, others forgotten by time. No stories called out to her. No epiphanies bloomed.

As she wandered further, the fog thickened, and her stomach twisted. It felt... wrong here, like the air itself was watching her, waiting for her to notice. Memories of her childhood unwillingly surfaced. Nights spent running from unseen horrors, breathless and terrified. She shook her head, trying to dismiss the unease, but it clung to her.

Then, a flicker of movement caught her eye. Her heart stuttered. At first, she thought it was just the fog playing tricks on her, but the shape grew clearer, larger. Something was moving between the graves, too big and too deliberate to be a trick of the light.

Her breath quickened. The figure emerged fully from the mist, towering and spindly, its form grotesque and spiderlike. The glow of its too bright eyes cut through the haze. It moved with jerky, unnatural precision, its voice a high pitched squeal that grated against her ears.

"Wherefrom?"

The single word sent ice down her spine. She didn’t answer, it didn’t feel like a question meant to be answered. Her muscles coiled, and instinct took over, her feet moving before her mind could catch up. She was running. The creature gave chase, its limbs clattering against the earth in a nightmarish rhythm.

“Whereto?” it shrieked behind her.

She sprinted through the fog, her vision narrowing, her lungs burning. "WHERETO?"

She pumped her legs harder, the fog blurring her vision. She could feel it closing in, its presence pressing.  Adrenaline surged through her, but it wasn’t enough. The demon was faster.

She had been around the school for so long that she had completely dropped her guard.

And then a voice cut through the chaos: “Isabelle?”

Her head turned sharply. A man stood at the graveyard’s edge. Tall, skinny, raven haired. His red eyes glowing faintly through the fog told Chise that he wasn’t human. 

For a moment, time slowed. Something inside her recognized him. She had met him before, her soul whispered, even if her memory hadn’t. 

Then he saw the thing chasing her.

Chise redirected herself and hurled herself toward him, her body acting on instinct. The creature's breath was hot on her neck, its many legs thudding against the ground, and just as she thought it would reach her, the man stepped forward.

His arm shot out, wrapping around her solidly and pulling her into him with surprising strength. Before she could process it, the man extended his free hand toward the demon. Then, with deliberate precision, the man's fingers closed around the demon's mask like visage. The monster hissed and thrashed, its grotesque face wrapped in his outstretched hand. A sharp crack echoed through the graveyard, followed by another, and then the mask shattered into countless pieces. The creature disintegrated, its fragmented body dissolving into ash.

Chise staggered back, the world spinning as relief washed over her. Her knees trembled, but the man steadied her with a firm grip before letting her go.

"Y-you saved me," she stammered, her voice shaky. "Thank you."

His expression flickered, softening for a beat, then returning to something distant. “You shouldn’t be here. This place is too dangerous for someone like you. There are demons here, things I can’t keep at bay. Go home.”

Chise opened her mouth to respond, but then he doubled over, a ragged cough tearing through him. He collapsed to his knees, his hand clutching his side. Blood seeped through his blazer, staining the dark fabric.

She rushed to him. “What’s wrong?” she cried, kneeling beside him, panic rising.

His bloodied hand lifted, trembling, brushing the ends of her hair. “Your hair…” he whispered. “You look like her. My Isabelle.”

“I, uh,” Chise faltered, not knowing what to say to that. “You’re hurt, don’t move.”

But it was too late. His fingers dug into the dirt, and then black flames engulfed him. She gasped and stumbled back as his body twisted and grew, an inferno licking at the sky. 

“Isabelle,” a pained sob echoed from the smoke. In seconds, a massive black hound stood before her, the size of a lion, howling to the heavens. Chise recognized him instantly from her research. A church grim. A guardian spirit bound to the graveyard.

“Isabelle…” he growled through trembling breath. “My sister…”

The name echoed in her mind, the question hanging in the air from earlier, when she first locked eyes with the man.

Isabelle?

Her breath caught. Her gaze fell to her arm, the same name, etched into her skin like a whisper from a life she’d never lived. For years, she had stared at it, traced it with trembling fingers, trying to guess what it meant. Just a name. One word. So specific, yet meaningless, until now.

It had followed her, silent and constant, a question no one else could hear. A quiet promise. And now this fae, this black hound, this grim was howling for Isabelle like the name itself was breaking him open.

Her heart thudded wildly. Her throat tightened. She had never hated it, not like the words carved into her collarbone, but it had haunted her in a different way. Not cruel. Just… incomplete. It couldn’t be a coincidence. Her mind raced, scrambling for logic, for doubt, for anything that could make this not what it felt like. 

The dog tried to move, and blood pooled into the grass.

“Please, wait!” Chise threw herself against his heaving side. “You’re way too hurt. Don’t move!” She wrapped her arms around him, gripping tight despite his size. “I don’t care if you’re fae or not.” He snarled, trembling, lips pulling back to bare his teeth, but Chise held her ground. She pressed her face into his blood-matted fur. His growl weakened. His massive body shuddered once, then collapsed.

Chise didn’t hesitate after that. It took everything she had to cast the spell to get them to safety. She had only read about it in books, never practiced it, never dared to try it. But there wasn’t time for fear. Not with blood soaking into the grass beneath the dog’s body, not with the air still thick with the memory of demons. She couldn’t leave him. Not after what he’d done for her. He had saved her, and now it was her turn.

Chise knelt beside him, her hands trembling as she pressed her palm into his fur. “You don’t get to die here, not after that.”

Her magic stirred, sluggish at first, then surging, drawn by urgency and instinct. She called it forward, letting it rise like a tide. This spell was far beyond her level. But she was a sleigh beggy, and she had begun to understand that desperation had a way of breaking the rules.

“Nettle in the shadow,” she breathed, eyes squeezed shut, her fingers tightening in his fur. “False holly in a ring…”

The air crackled. The spell tore through the space around them like a blade through cloth. The next second, they were gone. When she landed in the medical ward, it was unsteady, and the floor was cold beneath her. Her body felt wrong, like she'd been taken apart and hastily reassembled. Her head swam and her stomach lurched, bile rising in her throat.

The black dog lay still beside her, chest rising and falling in shallow, pained breaths. Blood stained the tile, but he was alive. Safe.

Chise sat in the medical ward, perched on the chair beside the black dog’s bed. The room was quiet except for the rhythmic ticking of the wall clock and the faint sounds of birds outside the window. She had been there since she brought him back from the graveyard, unwilling to leave his side. The image of him collapsing, his wounds gushing blood, replayed in her mind like a haunting nightmare. The memory tightened her chest, and she gripped the blanket draped over her knees.

Nurse Alexandra stopped by every once in a while to check in on the pair. Her kind smile was reassuring. “No need to fret, Miss Hatori. Fae are resilient creatures. He just needs time. They’re not like humans.”

She had hoped, perhaps too optimistically, that her excess sleigh beggy magic might aid in his recovery. Fae healed quickly, but seeing him motionless stirred a knot of guilt and worry in her stomach. Now, sitting at the foot of his bed, she stared at the textbook open in her lap, unable to focus. The words blurred together as her mind wandered.

The sun dipped lower in the sky, golden light streaming through the window, falling across the room in soft patterns. It brushed against the dog’s face, casting a faint glow over his fur. Noticing this, Chise stood and approached the window, her fingers carefully adjusting the blinds to keep the light from his eyes. A sound, soft and almost imperceptible, froze her in place.

She turned quickly to see his body stir, his head shifting against the pillow. Chise quickly stepped back to her chair, her heart pounding as she watched his eyelids flutter open. The dog’s amber eyes blinked slowly, taking in the room, the bandages wrapped around his body, and finally, Chise. He stared at her for a long moment before he spoke, his voice low and hoarse. “Isabelle…”

The grief that saturated his voice made her hesitate to correct him. He scanned her face, his gaze sharpening as he seemed to wake more fully. “You look like my Isabelle.” 

Chise held her breath, unsure of how to respond. She didn’t want to shatter whatever fragile comfort he had found in seeing her. His gaze shifted briefly to the window. “Hair… sunset red. Eyes the green of new spring leaves." His eyes drifted back to hers, lingering. "She was about your height too.”

“When you’re healed, I can go back and help you look for her.” Chise offered.

“No need. She sleeps beneath the Earth now.”

Oh, Chise thought with sympathy. She must be dead.

A silence settled between them, soft and respectful. Chise looked at him, his still, canine form, and said, “I’ve never met a dog like you before.”

At that, his brow furrowed. “Dog?” 

Black fur ignited, curling into dark, smokey flames that rippled across his body. Chise flinched back in surprise as the transformation overtook him. Within seconds, the hound was gone, replaced by the young man she’d seen in the graveyard, the same familiar amber eyes as his dog form. The bandages she and Nurse Alexandra had wrapped still clung to him, now reformed around his human arms.

“Isabelle and I are both human.” 

Chise studied his face, noting the weariness there, the pain that didn’t seem to ease with healing. She wondered why the dog believed he was a human, though she didn’t press him. After a moment, his focus flicked to his surroundings. “Where are we?”

“At the college,” Chise explained gently. “You were bleeding badly when you passed out. I brought you here to heal. Were you attacked?”

His eyes widened, just slightly, but enough to betray something. Pain, memory, fear. It rippled over his face before he could hide it.

“Yes, I...” He paused, swallowing hard. “I was attacked.”

“Was it the same demon who was chasing me?”

He hesitated. “No. It was… something else.” His voice lowered. “Another kind of monster.”

Chise was curious, but didn’t press. He was staring past her now, eyes unfocused, as if replaying something he didn’t want to see again. After a moment, he blinked and looked at her again. “Did you face any resistance leaving the graveyard?” 

“No… it was quiet after you collapsed. I tried to get us out of there quickly.”

He let out a breath he seemed to have been holding, shoulders slacking as tension seemed to leave his body.

“I’m Chise Hatori,” she offered. “You can call me Chise.”

“I see you, sleigh beggy,” he replied. “You can call me Ulysses. That’s what Isabelle called me.”

“Ulysses…” Chise repeated the name quietly, “What were you doing in the graveyard?”

“I was watching over Isabelle,” he said. His tone was steady, but it didn’t quite match the troubled flicker that crossed his face. It sounded like a truth repeated so often it had started to crumble.

Chise glanced down at the bandages still wrapped around his arms. “Then we’ll make sure you heal quickly, so you can return to her.”

Ulysses didn’t respond, and Chise didn’t ask more questions. She recognized the look in his eyes. That aching, hollow space where someone used to live. It matched something inside of her, too. 

They didn't conversate much for the rest of the night, but as she watched over him, something inside her clicked into place. Something familial, like she had found a long lost sibling who had waited lifetimes to find her. For a brief moment, she imagined herself small again, lonely, alienated, afraid, and someone just like him, keeping the dark away.

Chapter Text

Pain was a familiar friend to Ulysses.

It had walked beside him through empty fields, shadowed his steps through an abandoned graveyard, curled up beside him when memory and magic failed. He didn't fear it anymore. But when he first saw her, small and fierce despite the way she trembled, something shifted.

Pain flinched. And hope, thin and dangerous, stirred where it wasn't welcome.

The next time he woke, still in the Medical Ward, it felt like surfacing from a long, suffocating dream. The haze of the graveyard that had held him captive for years seemed to lift, replaced by awareness brought on by the sleigh beggy's magic. He lay still, the reality around him seeping through. The soft light from the window, the faint hum of Chise’s magic lingering in the air, it all felt distant and unreal.

As the next few days wore on and Chise remained by his side, he found himself grappling with a truth that he could no longer ignore. The life he had lived in the graveyard, the endless waiting, the desperate hope for Isabelle’s return. It was like a spell had finally been broken. He spent the following night wide awake, staring at the ceiling, piecing together the shards of a reality he hadn’t been able to face before.

It started with the memory of that day in the graveyard, just moments before Chise had arrived. He hadn’t known it would be the day everything changed. To him, it had been like every other day: standing vigil by Isabelle’s grave, waiting for her to come back. He had never considered leaving. How could he? He had promised her, even in death, that he would always stay by her side.
But then he saw her.

“Isabelle?” he had called, his voice trembling with disbelief. She stood at the edge of the graveyard, her figure silhouetted against the gloom. Something was off, but he didn’t notice it at first. All he could see was her, his Isabelle, finally returning to him.

“I knew you'd return,” he said, pushing himself up from the cold earth. His heart surged, and he ran to her. “I waited.” 

She didn’t respond, but he didn’t care. He reached out to her, desperate to touch her, to confirm that she was real. But when her hand met his forearm, it wasn’t the soft, warm touch he remembered. It was sharp, excruciatingly so. Ulysses yelped in pain, jerking his arm back to see what had happened. Her fingers were no longer fingers; they were talons, grotesque and blackened, digging deep into his flesh. He gasped and staggered back, but her grip held tight.

“Isabelle…?” His voice trembled. “What are you—” She yanked him forward, her arms moving with a terrifying urgency, dragging him towards the shadows of the graveyard, while her legs shuffled awkwardly behind her, as if she had forgotten how to use them.

The smell hit him next; the rancid, salty stench of decay. His canine senses screamed at him to run, but his heart refused to accept what his mind was beginning to understand. This wasn’t Isabelle.
Still, he couldn’t bring himself to hurt her. Even as she dragged her talons deeper into his arm, he couldn’t fight back. “Isabelle,” he whispered, his voice barely audible over the pounding of his heart. “What’s happened to you?”

When her other hand shot towards him, claws raised to strike, he saw her face more clearly. The greenish tint to her once milky skin, the way her flesh sagged unnaturally, the blank expression devoid of the warmth he remembered, it wasn’t her. It was a twisted, defiled imitation of her.

She grabbed his shoulder, her talons piercing through his muscle like knives. He gasped, choking on the pain as she dug deeper. He knew she was only inches from his heart. Tears blurred his vision as he looked into her clouded, lifeless eyes. “Isabelle,” he pleaded. “Please… stop.”

But she didn’t. Her claws tore through him as she dragged him, and he was unable to fight anymore. She was slow, her movements jerky, like a puppet tugged by tangled strings. The pain was unbearable, but worse than the physical agony was the realization that his beloved Isabelle was truly gone. This thing, it wasn’t her. It had never been her.

As they passed another headstone, Ulysses found a shred of strength left in him. He tore himself free from her grasp, her claws ripping deeper into his flesh as he broke away. Blood poured from his wounds, but he didn’t stop. He scrambled backward, his heart pounding as she advanced on him again. He didn’t want to hurt her, or what was left of her, but his instincts wouldn’t let her take him. And so he ran. He ran as fast as his battered body would allow, tears streaming down his face. He finally stopped when he knew he had lost her, and he doubled over, gasping for air. His hands pressed against his wounds, trying to staunch the bleeding, but it was no use. The world around him spun, and he sank to his knees, his strength fading. He looked around, but she was nowhere to be seen.

He closed his eyes, his heart aching with grief. Maybe, he thought, he would die here. Maybe he would finally be reunited with Isabelle, the real Isabelle. And then he heard it.

“Wherefrom? Whereto?”

The screech of a spirit pierced the silence, and his eyes snapped open. The world swam in front of him, dim and smudged, but the sound was unmistakable. He should have expected this. In places like this, demons always came in waves. If one creature found you, another always followed. But he wasn’t ready. Not this time. Not with his wounds still open and bleeding. Not when Isabelle’s twisted image had only just faded from view.

He gritted his teeth and forced himself upright, swaying, breath shallow. Through the haze, he saw a figure running towards him, a girl with red hair like the setting sun. His heart skipped a beat as recognition flooded through him. It was her, really her, not the monstrous imitation he had seen earlier. 

“Isabelle?”

But as she drew closer, he realized it wasn’t her. Still, something about the girl called to him, stirring a part of him he thought had died long ago. He straightened, his pain momentarily forgotten as he watched her approach.

This girl… she wasn’t Isabelle. But in that moment, as she ran towards him with desperation in her eyes, she felt like a beacon of hope. A light cutting through the darkness.

Back in the Medical Ward, Ulysses felt the weight of clarity pressing down on him like a stone. He turned his head slightly, hearing Chise’s steady breathing beside him, her presence grounding him. Her magic still lingered faintly in the air, a soothing hum that chased away the remnants of the oppressive darkness he had lived in for so long.

Would he even still be alive if Chise hadn’t appeared when she did? Her quick thinking had saved him, taking him to safety, tending to his wounds, and staying by his side while he recovered. She had offered him her magical energy without hesitation, even though it drained her. Ulysses felt an unfamiliar pang of guilt at the thought. He owed her more than he could ever repay. Chise’s sleigh beggy magic had done more than heal his wounds; it had torn away the veil of his illusions. It had unmasked the false pretense he had been living under, shaped by his own hands. As he stared at the ceiling, unable to sleep, he replayed his life in his mind, the truth creeping in like cold fingers.

When he was just a dog, living with his real family and by Isabelle’s side, he hadn’t understood what he was. He thought he was human, just like Isabelle. He thought they were equals, inseparable. But then Isabelle had died, and he had waited for her, day after day, on her grave, refusing to leave. He hadn’t understood that death was final, that Isabelle wasn’t coming back. He had died there, too, physically and emotionally, waiting for her. And then he had awoken as a fae, a church grim, tasked with protecting the graveyard. He had clung to the same illusions, believing himself human because he had once been treated as such. His fae magic had shaped itself around that belief, allowing him to take human form when he chose. But now, with Chise’s magic coursing through him, there was no hiding from the truth. He wasn’t human. He wasn’t a dog, either.

So what was he?

The question gnawed at him as he lay there. Church grims didn’t leave their graveyards, they were bound to them. Yet here he was, far from the graves he had guarded for so long. If he wasn’t a church grim anymore, what did that make him? What was he supposed to be? A hollow sense of purposelessness threatened to swallow him, and Ulysses realized that he needed something, anything, to define himself again.

As Chise slept, he quietly shifted into his human form, the transformation seamless now that his injuries had mostly healed. He sat up slowly, careful not to disturb her, and slipped off his blazer, exposing the bandages still wrapped around his arm. He cradled his uninjured forearm, his eyes tracing the mark etched into his skin in delicate black script.

I-uh… Thank you.

Soulmarks. Ulysses had always known what they were, though he couldn’t recall how or when he had learned of them. Perhaps it was an inherent knowledge that came with being fae. He understood that soulmarks weren’t always romantic, as humans often believed. For the fae, they could signify deep familial bonds, connections forged through loyalty and love. He didn’t recall the first time he had seen it. It was something that had always been there. He had always assumed it was Isabelle’s words. Who else could it have been? She had been his whole world, and he had pledged his life to her, even after death. But now, as he stared at the mark in the quiet of the Medical Ward, he understood. It wasn’t Isabelle’s. It was Chise’s. He had heard her say the words, and in that moment, something deep within him had recognized them.

Quietly, Ulysses slipped out of the Medical Ward, the cool night air hitting him like a slap. He returned to the graveyard, retracing the steps that had brought him so much pain. The graveyard was silent now, the fog hanging low over the headstones. He searched for hours, looking under every rock, every stone, every shadow, but Isabelle’s possessed corpse was nowhere to be found. Whatever had come for him that night had disappeared.

He stood over Isabelle’s grave as the first light of dawn crept over the horizon. The temptation to stay was overwhelming. He could feel the pull of the graveyard, the familiar ache of waiting for her. But he knew better now. That part of his life was over. No amount of waiting would bring her back. Isabelle was gone. She wasn’t coming back. Her body may have remained, but her soul, everything that had made her who she was, was gone. The necromancy in the graveyard had proven it to him in the most painful way possible. Whatever demon had used her corpse to try to take him away, it wasn’t her. She was at peace now. She had to be.

His thoughts turned to Chise, back in the Medical Ward. She had given him something he hadn’t realized he needed, a reason to keep moving forward. Her loyalty, her quiet compassion, her willingness to stay by his side even when he didn’t deserve it, it all made him want to be better. To protect her the way he had failed to protect Isabelle. By the time he returned to the Medical Ward, the sun was fully up. He slipped back into the bed as if he had never left. Chise stirred slightly but didn’t wake. Ulysses watched her for a long moment, his gaze softening.

It wouldn’t be so bad, he thought, staying with her for a little while longer.

Mid morning came, and Ulysses laid in bed, still in human form, as Nurse Alexandra unwound the bandages from his shoulder. Chise was still curled in the chair beside his bed, a blanket draped loosely around her shoulders, one arm dangling over the edge. 

Her soulmark was visible again. He had glanced at it a few times when she forgot to hide it. The same words, in the same place as his; delicate black script on pale skin. He hadn’t asked about it. She had tried not to show it, and he had honored that choice. But now, he let himself look.

Isabelle?

It had been the first word he’d said to her. He watched her now, wondering how much she remembered of that moment. If she had made the connection almost immediately, like he did.

“You must be special to her,” Nurse Alexandra noted, “She’s barely left that chair since you were brought in.”

“I just helped her, when she needed it.”

“Chise isn’t careless, not when it comes to others. If she’s chosen to stay close, there’s usually a reason. Especially for someone like her.” She moved, working to unravel the bandage around his arm. “Whatever the nature of your bond, I suggest you take care not to strain it. Her system’s sensitive, emotionally and magically. She’s stabilized, but it doesn’t take much to tip the scale.”

Ulysses’s eyes stayed on Chise. “Understood.”

At the sound of conversation, Chise stirred. Her eyes blinked open slowly, heavy with sleep. She glanced at Nurse Alexandra and gave a polite, sleepy nod. “Good morning.”

“Good morning,” Ruth added.

“They’re fully healed!” Alexandra said brightly to Ulysses, peeling the last of the gauze away with a satisfied hum. “You’re ready for discharge this morning.”

Ulysses flexed his fingers, testing the motion. The wounds that had been gouges of rot and despair only a few days ago were now reduced to faint scars. Faint memories. His eyes flicked up and caught Chise watching, her expression unreadable.

“Will you go back to the graveyard?” she asked hesitantly.

“I think I will stay at the college a bit longer.”

She nodded, but her shoulders tensed, and too late, she realized her blanket had slipped. The mark on her forearm was exposed. Ulysses’s gaze lingered. Chise flushed, hastily drawing the blanket back over her arms. He didn’t speak for a long moment, only let his eyes return to hers with quiet understanding.

“It seems you’ve broken my spell, sleigh beggy,” he murmured at last.

After the discharge, the two of them made their way to the cafeteria. Ulysses had remained in his human form, partly out of courtesy, (eating as a dog would draw unnecessary attention), and partly to better engage with the strange world he was slowly stepping into.

The scent of food was overwhelming. Pleasant, but… foreign. He scanned the bustling room with a furrowed brow, uncertain of where to go or what to do. Chise grabbed a tray without hesitation and began selecting her breakfast. Ulysses followed, eyeing the options warily. Eggs, fruit, toast, bacon, so many smells mingled together. Nothing like the earthy, silent meals of his former existence.

He mirrored Chise and filled a plate haphazardly. He sat beside her at a corner table and picked up a strip of bacon, turning it between his fingers. It cracked slightly. He took a slow bite, and his mouth watered with the flavor.

“This… isn’t food,” he said flatly.

Chise smiled behind her teacup. “It’s bacon.”

“It’s a crunchy mystery,” he said as he chewed faster, and reached for another piece.

“It’s good with eggs,” she laughed, motioning to his plate.

He stared at the scrambled eggs, forked a bite into his mouth, and chewed contemplatively.

“Passable,” he declared.

“I have classes today,” she said. “What will you do here at the college?”

“I will come with you.”

Her brows lifted slightly. “You want to sit through lectures?”

“If that is permitted. Or I can wait outside each door and escort you to the next.”

“Won’t you get bored?”

He shook his head. “I am a dog, Chise. I don’t get bored. I am accustomed to waiting. I don’t mind, as long as I know you will return.”

There was no embellishment in his voice. Just the simple truth. She looked at him, her expression softening. “You mean because of how long you waited for Isabelle?”

Ulysses nodded, his gaze dropping to his hands, which toyed idly with his fork. “I don’t know how long I waited for Isabelle. Perhaps it was only a few months… perhaps hundreds of years. Time was lost to me there. But now, here, it’s different. You are here, and I know you’ll return. That’s enough.”

Chise reached across the table and laid her hand gently over his. “You won’t have to wait like that again. I promise.”

He looked at her, really looked, and saw the honesty in her eyes. It moved through him like warmth spreading into long frozen limbs. “Thank you.” 

True to his word, Ulysses followed Chise to her classes. He shifted into his dog form, padding silently through the corridors. Each time she disappeared behind a door, he waited just outside, still and silent. He watched students pass. Some avoided him. Some stared. None mattered.

Every time she emerged, his tail thumped in acknowledgment. Just once. She always came back. And with each return, the tight coil of fear in his chest loosened a little more.

Between classes, during a lull in the flow of students, Chise crouched down beside him and scratched gently behind his ears. Her fingers were warm and kind.

“Thank you for staying with me,” she said.

Ulysses leaned into her touch, his tail swaying once, slow and sure. “Of course, Chise.”

Her hand lingered a moment longer before she stood again, and they moved on together.

Day faded into night, and Ulysses followed silently at Chise’s heels, paws padding softly against the stone as they made their way through the quiet campus. The night was cool, and her footsteps had grown slower since dinner, perhaps with tiredness, or thought. He didn’t ask. He merely stayed close, his pace matching hers.

She opened the door to her dorm and stood aside, gesturing for him to enter first. Ulysses padded inside, eyes sweeping the modest room: clean, lived in, and sparse. It smelled of her, light and floral.

“If we move the desk from the corner,” she said, pointing, “we could fit another bed. If you have any belongings, I have plenty of space in the wardrobe. I only have a few clothes myself.” Her voice faltered, like she was embarrassed to admit it.

“I have no belongings,” he replied simply. “And I don’t need a bed.” His gaze lingered on the hardwood floor, the soft lines of moonlight cutting across it. “The ground suits me. Always has.”

Chise closed the door behind them. “What? No way. You’re not sleeping on the floor.” Her brow creased with something between indignation and concern. “It’s not right. I’ll find a second bed.”

Ulysses gave a quiet, amused huff. “Beds are too warm. The floor stays cool. My coat is enough.”

He shook out his fur to prove the point, sending a puff of black fluff into the air. She sighed but didn’t argue further. “Just don’t blame me when you wake up stiff.” 

He padded to the foot of her bed and turned twice in a slow circle before lying down, tucking his limbs in neatly and resting his chin on his paws. From the corner of his eye, he watched her move to the wardrobe. His flopped ears perked towards sounds of fabric rustling and a drawer closing. She took her pajamas and slipped into the doorway, to what he assumed was the bathroom. He let his eyes close. When she returned, she wore a white cotton set that covered her from neck to ankle. He noticed, as he had in the medical ward, the way her sleeves seemed to carefully hide the mark on her forearm. Even though her efforts were subtle, they were deliberate, and Ulysses couldn’t ignore the faint outline of the mark on her forearm through the white fabric.

She tried to hide it. She always did.

“Chise,” he said, lifting his head. “You don’t have to cover it. I saw it, in the medical ward. I know what it says.”

She froze. Her hand rose reflexively to the back of her neck, crossed her collar bone, as if bracing herself against being seen. She didn’t speak, just walked to the bed and sat with her back to him. The blanket bunched in her lap. He waited.

“I didn’t know what it meant,” she said at last. “Not for most of my life. I didn’t even know what magic was. Or what I was.”

There was something brittle in her tone, something held together by thread. “After my dad left… and my mom…” Her voice fractured. She clutched the blanket like it could keep the memories from surfacing. “I was alone out there.”

He raised himself slowly and studied her. “How did you find the college?”

“They found me.” She gave a faint laugh, though there was no humor in it. “They bought me at an auction. Said my magic was useful.”

He straightened upright. “What?” He leapt lightly onto the bed, landing beside her in one smooth motion. She startled, eyes wide, but didn’t retreat. “Chise.” His voice was sharper now, “You sold yourself?”

Her cheeks flushed, and her gaze dropped to the blanket. She didn’t answer immediately, her hand rising to the back of her neck again. Ulysses reached out with a gentle paw, resting it lightly on her arm. She flinched but didn’t pull away.

As his paw lowered her arm, his gaze caught on the faint outline of another mark. One just visible through the thin fabric of her pajama top, near her collarbone. He leaned in, tilting his head. “You have two marks,” he murmured, his voice soft with realization.

Chise froze, her breath catching in her throat. She didn’t stop him when his paw lightly pressed against her shirt, stretching the white fabric taut to reveal the black, branded words beneath.

You were made to break

The words punched the breath from his lungs. What kind of monster would say that? To Chise? Soulmarks were supposed to be bonds, truths spoken in moments of connection, not weapons carved into skin to haunt someone for the rest of their life. Who the hell had spoken those words? Who had looked at her, small and hurting, and decided she was meant to be ruined? She deserved kindness and protection. Not this.

“Oh… Chise.” His chest ached. “Who gave you that?”

She shook her head, her voice cracking. “I don’t know. It showed up the night I got kicked out of my last foster home. I didn’t know what it meant. I didn’t even know what soulmarks were.”

He had no answer. Only quiet grief. He couldn’t imagine the pain of carrying such cruel words, not knowing what they meant, at such a young age. “I’m so sorry,” he said softly, nuzzling her arm in an attempt to comfort her. “I’m sure those words… they were taken out of context. We don’t know the whole story. Maybe it’s not what it seems.”

Chise sniffled, brushing away a tear. “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t have to mean anything. I don’t believe in fate. Nobody can tell me what path I’m supposed to take.”
Ulysses studied her, sensing the determination in her words. “You don’t have to believe in fate for it to shape things. Sometimes it moves through us anyway.” 

A long silence passed between them. Chise dried her tears, and the room was dim and still.

“My sister Isabelle used to ask me to stay by her bed, when she was scared or upset.”

Chise turned, expression softened. “Would you like to stay here tonight?”

“If it brings you comfort.”

She nodded. “It does.”

He settled at the foot of the bed once more, curling into himself. He didn’t speak again, and neither did she. The quiet between them stretched. Outside the window, the campus lights flickered against the dark. 

The next day, after classes, Ulysses followed Chise to the library, settling at a corner table tucked between towering shelves. Chise flipped through her notebook, the edges of her paper folded and marked with hastily scribbled notes.

“It’s just…” Chise sighed, rubbing her temple. “I did all this research on churches, but I still don’t have enough to flesh out my paper.” 

Ulysses, sitting at her feet, thumped his tail. “Perhaps I could be of use to you. I did stay at the church for quite a while.”

Chise’s eyes brightened. “That’s great, thank you! I do have a section written about church grims… let me find it.” She flipped through her paper, cleared her throat, and read aloud: “Church grims are a type of fae assigned to protect churches and their graveyards. They are hounds, ferocious to their enemies and loyal to what they protect. They chase away and destroy grave robbers and otherworldly spirits that threaten the churches and the church grounds.”

She glanced up, and Ulysses frowned slightly. “That’s all you could find?”

Chise nodded. “There’s not much information in the books here about them.”

“Well, there’s a lot more to it than that, but I don’t know if my experience is the same as every other church grim’s.”

Chise leaned forward eagerly, gripping her quill. “That’s fine! Personal experience is valuable too.”

And so, Ulysses began to recount what it was truly like being a church grim. The monotony of watching over the same graves for years, the rare instances of actual threats, and the creatures drawn to the graveyard’s liminality, caught between life and death. Chise took diligent notes, recording every detail, from the way the night air would hum with unseen presences to how his magic felt when warding off spirits. He described the thrill of chasing away intruders, the tension of sensing something malevolent lurking in the mist, and the eerie silence that would sometimes settle over the churchyard, too deep, too still.

Chise scribbled down every word, and eventually she leaned back, stretching her fingers. “I think I’ve got it. The graveyard represents death, renewal, and loss.”

Ulysses, having watched her work, tilted his head. “No, no,” he sat up straighter. “Let’s recircle.”

Chise raised an eyebrow. “Recircle?”

“Yes. You missed the most crucial part.”

Chise blinked, quill poised above the page. “…What?”

“Squirrels.” Ulysses gestured with his muzzle. “You should mention the squirrels in the graveyard. They represent… rebirth.”

There was a beat of silence as Chise stared at him. “Right. I’ll be sure to include that.”

Ulysses nodded in approval, satisfied with his contribution.

After dinner, as they stepped into the cool night air, Ulysses turned to Chise. A full moon lit up the midnight blue sky.

"Instead of returning to your room, could we stop by the gardens?"

Chise glanced down at him. "The gardens?"

"There’s something I noticed in passing," he explained. "I wanted to investigate further."

She hesitated, eyes lifting to the blinking stars above. Then she gave a small nod. "Alright."

They made their ways to the garden, and he led her through the school’s hedge maze. His steps were measured, purposeful, as if some unseen force was tugging him forward. The farther they walked, the more he felt an insistent hum in his bones. It was like the earth itself was drawing them forward.

"Do you feel that?" he asked, glancing back.

“Yes,” she admitted, pressing a hand to her chest. There was a distinct pull in the air, a current of energy that wrapped around them. It wasn’t unpleasant, but it was powerful. The hedges fell away into a clearing, where an open field brushed the edge of the forest. Standing against the darkened treetops was the source of the glow.

A tree. Towering, alive, and lit from within. Its bark pulsed with soft golden light, veins beneath thick wood. The light moved, breathing. He didn’t have to see the roots stretching beneath the earth to know they ran deep. Deeper than the foundations of the college itself. Perhaps this tree had been here first. Perhaps this was why the college had been built in this exact location. Tiny lights danced in the air around it: neighbors, fae creatures drifting in lazy, mesmerizing patterns, feeding off the magic the tree exuded.

Ulysses felt it immediately, how the ground hummed, how the air thickened around them. The magic here wasn’t just strong, it was anchored. It called to something wordless in him, a tug as old as instinct. And not just to him. He could feel Chise reacting to it too, the way she stepped forward, just slightly, as if her body understood before her mind.

As they approached the tree, with aching clarity, Ulysses thought of Isabelle. He had spent years waiting in a graveyard, clinging to the belief that she would return. But it had been a lie, one that he had created and lived to guard his heart. Isabelle was gone. The mark on his arm told him the truth. His path had never been to wait in that graveyard until the world turned to dust. His path was here, walking beside the girl who had broken the spell over his mind and given him the chance to truly see.

Ulysses turned to Chise, watching the way her expression softened in awe, the golden glow of the tree reflecting in her eyes. She seemed so small compared to the vastness of this power, yet completely unafraid of it. His chest tightened, but he didn’t hesitate. He stepped forward, shifting into his human form. Tendrils of energy wove around them as he did so, curling at his feet, drawn to the shift in his being. The magic here heightened his senses, made him feel more grounded than he had in years. He breathed it in, feeling it settle in his chest like a warm ember.

Then, with all the reverence he could muster, he bowed to Chise, until his head was below hers. A gesture of respect. A gesture of something more.

"Chise," he said, lifting his gaze to meet hers, "I will give you everything I am. Allow me to follow where you go."

"Ulysses..."

"I am requesting to be your familiar."

She stiffened, understanding the enormity of what he was asking. Familiars were more than mere companions. They were bound souls. It wasn’t a contract that one could simply walk away from.

"No," she said, shaking her head. "Ulysses, I could never bind your life to mine. I’m a sleigh beggy. I don’t know how much longer I’ll live. When I die… you would die too."

He smiled then, faint but resolute. He knew this, and he had already made peace with that fact. “Whether it be only weeks or a couple of years, that doesn’t matter to me. I’ve already lived a lifetime. Let the end be with purpose.”

Chise hesitated, looking like she wanted to argue. He expected that. He reached for his sleeve, rolling it up to reveal the inked words across his skin. Then, he gently took her wrist, pushed the fabric of her sleeve up, and raised her arm beside his.

Two sets of words stared back at them. The same script. The same ink.

Isabelle?

I—uh, thank you.

Chise stared. Her fingers trembled. Slowly, her other hand came up, reached out to touch the mark on his arm. And the moment her fingers met his skin, something shifted. A pull. A surge. Then, they were no longer standing beneath the tree.

The moonlit night and golden glow of the tree was gone, replaced by the amber warmth of sunset. Pine trees lined the shore of a quiet lake, their reflections trembling across the still water. The air smelled of moss. A girl sat at the edge of the lake, knees pulled to her chest, her face buried against them. Her red hair flamed over her shoulders, encasing her frame, and her small shoulders trembled with soft, hidden sobs. A dog approached her, large, dark furred, moving with cautious purpose. He didn’t bark or whine. He simply leaned into her, nuzzling gently, his presence a silent comfort.

“Isabelle… were they making fun of your red hair again?” the dog asked.

The girl didn’t answer, not right away. She only sniffled, curling tighter into herself.

The dog— Ulysses; younger, simpler, full of instinctive love— nudged her. There was no hesitation in his devotion. No barrier between her pain and his desire to ease it.

“I think it’s beautiful,” he said, and she looked up. Spring green eyes rimmed red. Freckles traced across her nose. Tears clinging to her lashes. But when she met his gaze, she smiled. 

The vision shattered. Ulysses gasped, staggering back. Across from him, Chise did the same. They stared at each other, wide eyed.

"That was—"

"Was that—"

"—Isabelle."

Her name hung between them like a bell still ringing. Ulysses’s chest tightened. The lake. The memory. It hadn’t just replayed behind his eyes, Chise had seen it too. Felt it. 
How had she seen it?

The mark? Sleigh beggy instinct? The tree’s magic, which amplified what was buried deep? Magic sharing wasn’t supposed to reach that far, not without intent. Unless… unless this was the start of something else. A familiar bond shared more than just power. It shared minds. Memories.

He glanced down at the mirrored marks on their arms. The magic between them pulsed faintly, like it knew. “You don’t have to say it. But I hope these mean something to you.” 

Chise met his eyes, silent.

“I’ve seen you,” Ulysses continued, voice quieter now. “As you’ve seen me. Chise… I thought I was a human, but you helped me realize I am not. I am not a dog either, nor a church grim. I need a purpose. I have nothing else. My Isabelle is gone, and I have no one else but you.”

His voice wavered, just slightly. He had failed to protect Isabelle, but here, with Chise, he had a second chance to make things right. 

“I know you don’t believe in these marks, but I do. I believe this mark is a message. There’s no one else I am meant to follow. If I am to have anything, any purpose at all, let it be this.”

Chise took a breath. Let it go. And nodded.

"...Okay."

The relief in him was quiet, but deep.

He stepped closer. Above them, the great tree stirred. Its branches swayed though no wind moved, golden light spilling down like rain. The wood shivered like it was exhaling, and the ground beneath their feet beat with a living thrum. “Then there’s no better time than now,” he murmured.

The spell rose between them like mist off water, natural and waiting only to be spoken aloud. Words unburied themselves from the earth, coiling into their mouths. And together, with voices steady, they spoke:

"May we be bound by threads of silver. May we be bound by roots of blood.”

The tree’s bark creaked overhead, a low sound, not unlike speech. The words were an echo, like they were standing in the shadow of something ancient, something that had happened before and was happening again.  

“May we be tied by false holly. May we be held together by green ivy.”

This was a place of old bonds. A place where once, long ago, another sleigh beggy had stood. With a wolf. With the first bond of its kind. 

They didn’t know this, not yet. But the tree did. The tree remembered. 

“Seven switches of yew, seven times knotted.”

And the trees magic wove around them, surging, strengthening their bond. Tendrils of energy, woven and shining, wrapped around their arms and wrists, threading through their bodies like threads through cloth. The bond gripped tight, held them together, twisting deep into marrow and memory. And then the tendrils of energy around them turned into chains.

“Bound til Ouroboros lets go of his tail."

A final clank rang out, iron against iron as the chains snapped taut, and the bond sealed itself. Ulysses inhaled sharply. He could feel her now: her magic, her emotions.

"I shall stay at your side forever. Will you give me a new name for the new me?"

Chise’s fingers curled around his.

"I will," she whispered.

And the tree rustled in approval, its golden light brightening for a final breath.

"Ruth."

Joseph moved through the dim interior of his cabin, a secluded log structure hidden deep in the woods. Burnt wax and brittle herbs masked little; the room still reeked faintly of rot. Shelves lined the walls, each crowded with vials holding the remnants of the lives he had stolen. Hair. Fingernails. Teeth. Each one cataloged, each one a trophy. This place, wrapped in layers of warding spells, was invisible to the world. No one could find it but him. He didn’t know yet that one day, he would abandon it. That his ambition would grow too large for the forest to contain. That the wards would crumble with time and neglect, left behind like the bones of everything else he had discarded.

At the far end of the room, he crouched over a worktable, fingers dancing across aged parchment and stained tools. His next creation would be ambitious. A chimera, a patchwork of magic and rot. And he had found the perfect animal for his design: a fae, a church grim. He had watched it for weeks, lurking at the edge of the graveyard where it met the woods, cloaked in the trees’ shadows. How poetic, he thought. Sister and brother, reunited in death. All thanks to his necromancy.

The cabin door creaked open. Joseph straightened. Standing in the doorway was a girl: red haired, head tilted slightly too far to one side, eyes clouded over. His first success. A human corpse, reanimated and obedient. No soul. No will. A soldier forged from silence and death.

But her hands were empty. Joseph’s face darkened. “I told you not to return without the dog.”

She said nothing. Just stared ahead. He approached, circling her like a wolf studying prey, eyes scanning the places where her limbs had been stitched together. She was flawless. There should have been no deviation. No error. So why had she disobeyed? She should have tracked the grim without fail. He had seen her do worse. “Unless…” His eyes narrowed. “He’s gone somewhere you cannot reach.”

Wards. Protection. A boundary she could not pass. A place stronger than his influence. That was the only answer.

Joseph exhaled slowly. He did not want to face the dog himself. Those days were behind him. He no longer indulged in direct conflict. He let the dead do the fighting for him.
He turned from the girl, dismissing her with a flick of his hand. “No matter. If I can’t have that one, I’ll find another. There are always more bodies. More beasts to shape.”

Chapter Text

THREE AND A HALF YEARS LATER

Elias worked in the living room, brewing an elixir for a customer. The customer was a mother of four who lived in the town nearby. After trying everything available on the market, she could not get the tough stains removed from her sons clothes. So she had come to the ancient magus for help. 

“Return same time tomorrow,” he had told the woman. “And I shall have the elixir you request ready.”

Elias had a simple solution for her. It was a basic elixir, all he had to do was combine some baking soda, dish soap and water and cast a spell. However, like all magic, there was a catch. Elias had to pay close attention to the bubbling of the soap in the first hour, and make sure it didn’t over bubble to not cause a frothy mess. If it did bubble too much, Elias had to still the movement of the water molecules. 

Elias now stared at the bubbling of the soap, pausing every few minutes to calm the water molecules and evaporate the bubbles. This was child’s play, really. 

He looked out the window in front of him, the view of his garden in front of his house and the fields and forest beyond them. It was nearing the end of summer, and with the autumn season approaching, he would have to plant different crops. A messenger crow flew to the window, pecking on the window like a knock on the door. Elias opened the window, accepting the letter in the crow's mouth and tearing it open. 

Dear Mr. Ainsworth,

We hope this letter finds you in good health and high spirits. Following the retirement of our esteemed magus instructor, the College of Sorcery is seeking a new magecraft professor for the upcoming academic year. Given your unparalleled expertise in magecraft and experience mentoring apprentices, we are confident that you are the ideal candidate for this role.

The position comes with a competitive stipend and comprehensive benefits, including unrestricted access to the college's extensive magical archives, rare ingredients, and advanced research facilities. Additionally, the college is deeply committed to the professional growth of its faculty, offering grant funding for spell development, research projects, and other scholarly pursuits.

We believe your unique perspective and mastery of magecraft would greatly enrich our institution and inspire a new generation of sorcerers and mages. Should you accept, we would be honored to welcome you to our faculty.

Please let us know your decision by the end of the week.

With great respect,

The College of Sorcery

Elias considered the proposal, turning the letter over in his hands. His thoughts drifted to Renfred, the only instructor at the College he knew by name, and not one he recalled fondly. Renfred, like most of the College’s faculty, was a sorcerer: a man who had built his power through discipline, study, and sheer determination. For sorcerers, magic was a science, a thing of formulas and natural laws, something that could be defined, structured and learned.

Magecraft was nothing like that. Magecraft was older, wilder and stranger. A craft rooted in instinct and the unseen connections between all living things. Mages worked with spirits and the land itself, drawing power not from books, but from bonds and bargains. It was not a thing to be mastered, but a thing to live with, to respect and heed. It was a thing that lived in Elias’s bones and blood, not in books. And for that, the sorcerers had always regarded him with suspicion. They did not understand magecraft, and so they feared it. Feared him.

The College prided itself on its scholarship, but its halls were filled with people who would never truly accept him, or his ways. Why would they? Mages were nearly extinct; magecraft, a dying art. Sorcery could accomplish much of what magecraft could, and with fewer dangers, fewer mysteries. To most of them, Elias’s presence would be a relic best left forgotten.

No. He would not place himself at the mercy of those who would only mock or reject him. Better to remain apart, to practice his art in peace, than to teach among those who believed his very existence was an aberration.

Elias became so engrossed in the letter—and his simmering annoyance at the college—that he forgot to glance back at the glass beaker of elixir.

It started with a hiss. Then a gurgle. By the time Elias looked up, the potion was already rising like a hostile soufflé.

"Ah," he said flatly, blinking at the towering foam. He reached out a hand to calm the molecules. 

But the potion was rising faster than he could stop, and before he could utter the spell, an explosion hit with a force that seemed wildly disproportionate for dish soap and baking soda. Foam blasted into the air, splattering the ceiling in erratic patterns.  A massive wave of curdled potion splashed over the worktable, dousing Elias from head to toe.

He froze, dripping with thick, foul smelling liquid. A glob of foam slid down from the top of his wolf like skull, narrowly missing his eye.

"Wonderful," he muttered, as the stench of sour milk and rotting lemons began to invade his senses. "Exactly what this day needed."

As he peeled his soaked apron away from his chest with a wet squelch, Silver Lady appeared in the doorway, wide eyed. She wore her usual pink dress, perfectly pristine.

“Silver Lady,” Elias said, his tone as grave as ever despite the ridiculous sight he presented. “Can I trust you will be careful in cleaning this up? The mixture is curdled. Wear gloves, and don’t get it on your skin.”

Silver Lady’s gaze darted between Elias, the foam dripping ominously from the ceiling, and the massive puddle spreading across the floor. She didn’t speak, but her arched eyebrow suggested a question: What exactly have you been doing in here?

Elias coughed, the stench proving too much for even his iron resolve. “I need to wash this off immediately.”

As he turned to leave, Silver Lady’s eyes danced with silent laughter, though she made no sound. She simply shook her head once, the corners of her mouth almost turning upward. Elias paused mid step, his shoulders stiffening. 

“Do you find this funny?” he asked, his voice cool but clearly perturbed.

Silver Lady offered no verbal response, but her slight smirk widened as she tilted her head toward the foam that was still dripping from Elias’ antlers. A large blob slid down and landed with a splat on the floor beside him.

Elias sighed, pushing past her. "I fail to see what part of this disaster warrants amusement."

He made a beeline upstairs, barely pausing to close the bathroom door behind him. The stench clung to his skin, thick and putrid, invading every sense. Even his nonhuman nose, which was usually so resistant, was overwhelmed. It took less than a minute for him to wrench on the shower, stripping off his sodden clothes with haste. The scent seemed to intensify, thickening the air in the small room until even Elias gagged, a rare, unwelcome sensation. He tossed everything out the window, not caring where it landed. 

Elias jumped under the running water, hastily washing the elixir off of his skin. He scrubbed and scrubbed, and once he could no longer detect the smell upon his skin anymore, he turned off the shower and stepped out. Already having showered this morning, his shower robe was in the laundry. All there was to protect his modesty in the walk from the bathroom to his bedroom for new clothes was a regular sized towel. 

Elias took the towel and wrapped it around his lower half. It wasn’t large enough to cover his whole body like his robe was, didn’t offer the comfort of concealment, but this would have to do. For a moment, he paused before the foggy mirror. It was rare for him to regard himself like this—bare chested, his imposing frame on full display. It was only that he was missing the upper portion of his bathrobe that made him look. The sight was oddly foreign. Had it really been so long since he’d seen this form uncovered?

His gaze dropped to the mark just below his collarbone. The place where black ink interrupted the smooth plum hue of his skin. The soulmark stood out stark and delicate, its script winding with an elegance at odds with the heaviness it carried. He’d nearly forgotten it was there, so long had he pushed it to the edges of memory. Standing in the stillness of the afternoon, it seemed to pulse with quiet accusation.

Elias pressed his palm lightly to his chest, as if to obscure the words, or perhaps to reassure himself they hadn’t deepened or changed. The mark was beautiful, almost poetic in its flourish, but the truth it bore was nothing gentle.

He remembered when it had first appeared, unasked and unexplained, a bruise blossoming into ink and certainty. Even now, he could recall the confusion, the brief spark of hope, and the chill that followed.

Dirt clung to his palms, pressed under his fingernails, a badge of honest labor. Elias had grown to love those afternoons of gardening. His and Rehab’s little life together, outside of the bounds of time and space, was quaint but filled with the compounding curve of Elias’s understanding of human life as well as magic. Elias had tried his best in learning human emotions, carefully grasping new concepts every day. This was the life of a human, he supposed, planting and sewing, reaping the harvest and doing it all over again. Their way of life was hard work, but the direct benefit he reaped from the hard work provided a sense of accomplishment and comfort. 

Still a young apprentice, Elias wore black slacks and a white button up, now covered in dirt and sweat from the days work. He stood outside the house now, standing in front of the door that opened up to the living room. The door had a window, revealing Rehab inside, as she was preparing dinner for them. Elias stared back at his reflection in the window. Whenever he saw his reflection now, he was reminded to check on that thing that was forming on his chest.

Elias unbuttoned his collar, pulling it to the side, inspecting the black bruise that had been forming below his collar bone for the past few days. It had only gotten darker. He had no idea what it was. He opened the door, calling out to his mentor who was inside. “I seem to have something growing on my chest. Do you know what this is?”

Rehab set down the knife in her hands, pausing her chopping of the vegetables, stepping forward to inspect the black bruise.

“Oh, that’s a soulmark!” Her mouth opened wide in exclamation, turning into a smile. “Soon enough, that bruise will form into a word or a sentence. Those will be the first words your soulmate will say to you.”

“Soulmate?” 

“Yes— like a bride.” Rehab paused. “Or, that is usually who it is. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a bride. It could be someone you will be very close to, like you and me. Usually they will have a mark too, the first words you say to them.”

Elias straightened at this. He remembered the lesson that Rehab had taught him about brides. A bride was someone a man took to be his, to live together, and to share their life together forever. Elias had been confused. Like him and Rehab? No, Rehab had instructed. Their relationship was more like mother and son. A marriage held a different kind of love.

But a soulmark was words from someone who could be a bride, or could be another part of his family? Elias’s head spun in comprehension. 

“Do you have one?”

“No, soulmarks are very rare.” Rehab sighed, returning to her cutting board. “You’re very lucky to have one, Elias. This just means that you have more family out there somewhere, waiting to meet you.”

Elias had watched the mark’s progress each day with mounting anticipation. It was like tending a garden; planting the seeds, nurturing them, waiting for the moment when something new would blossom. Each morning, he checked his reflection, searching for change beneath the fabric of his shirt.

When the mark finally emerged, its script unmistakable, Elias traced the words with trembling fingers. His heart, once bright with hope, plunged. The thrill of anticipation curdled into something sour and hollow. It was as if, on the day of harvest, he had returned to his field only to find every crop withered, the fruit of his patience turned to rot.

The message was unmistakable. He could see how those words could be true to others. Shame settled over him like dust.

Rehab checked on him often, her concern gentle but persistent. “Did it appear yet?” she’d ask, voice full of expectation.

He shook his head, staring at the floor, unable to speak. How could he ever show her this?

But one afternoon, when he was slow to answer, Rehab set aside her work and came to his side. “Elias?” she prompted softly, searching his face. “What’s troubling you?”

He hesitated, the words caught in his throat. Finally, he managed, “I do not understand.”

Rehab sighed, her expression softening. She reached out, her hands gentle as she began to unbutton his shirt, drawing the fabric aside. When her eyes found the mark, she inhaled sharply, her brows knitting in surprise and sorrow. She looked at Elias for a long moment, sympathy etched across her features.

“Elias… Sometimes things aren’t what they seem at first,” she said quietly. “Not all gifts feel like gifts when they arrive. Even if they seem bitter at first, they can still become something more. If you let them. ”

He looked up, struggling to name the ache inside him. “And what is this feeling? Why does it leave me so… empty?”

“Disappointment,” Rehab replied, and for a moment she seemed older, wearier than before. “It hurts, I know. When you hope for something bright, and instead you get something that stings. But even pain can teach us, Elias. Even the worst words can help you grow, if you’re willing to let them.”

He tried. In the years that followed, Elias did his best to turn the mark into a lesson, to let it temper him rather than break him. But the words carved themselves deeper with every passing year, echoing through his mind whenever he faltered. Was it a prophecy, or a curse? Had all his effort to become someone worthy been wasted, undone by a single brand upon his skin?

He wondered, sometimes, if he was destined to fulfill those words, if he was only becoming what the mark foretold. They became a silent companion, a reminder that no matter how carefully he tended the garden of his soul, there were weeds he could never quite uproot.

In his long years, Elias saw soulmarks on others, too. Rare and precious things, displayed with pride, sometimes whispered about behind cupped hands. He would catch the flash of a word at someone’s wrist or the curve of a sentence on an ankle, always met with laughter or knowing glances. He learned that such marks were treasured, even sought after, a sign of fate’s blessing.

After Rehab’s death, Elias wandered. For a time, the fae took him in, though never fully, never kindly. Their realm was a place of glittering strangeness, dazzling and cold, where hospitality was a performance and smiles often hid sharpened teeth. They called him halfling, for he was part fae, yet even that name was laced with unease. There was something else in him they could not name, an origin they could not place. He was always held at arm’s length, never quite trusted, never quite one of them. The fae let him linger at the fringes of their revels, always an outsider, their laughter sometimes edged with mockery he couldn’t always decipher. 

Even among the fae, soulmarks were worn without shame. The faerie King and Queen wore theirs openly. Titania’s mark curled across her abdomen: Ah, there you are, queen of boundless wonders. Oberon’s echoed hers on his own skin: Must you make such an entrance? Their marks seemed playful, almost loving, meant to be seen.

The fae seldom wore much clothing, as if daring the world to witness their fate spelled out in ink. Elias wondered how many marks went unseen, and how many were hidden out of shame or pain. He kept his own veiled, tucked beneath layers of fabric, pressed to his chest like a secret he wished he could forget.

Elias came back to himself, still standing in the bathroom of his home. Right, he had just showered and still needed to get clothes. He walked to his room and dressed, and then went downstairs to help aid Silver Lady in the cleanup of his mess. To his surprise, the living room was spotless. The foam was gone, the furniture wiped clean, and the air carried no trace of the vile, curdled potion. Silver Lady had already returned to the kitchen, preparing a meal.

Elias paused in the doorway, surveying the immaculate room. “Impressive work, Silver Lady,” he said, his tone laced with genuine approval. “Thank you.”

She turned, smiling briefly as she reached for something on the counter with her gloved hand. A piece of paper, damp but still intact. She handed it to him.

Elias immediately recognized the College of Sorcery’s seal. He sighed, their offer pressing down on him once more. “You can just throw that away. They know my response.”

Silver Lady arched a delicate eyebrow. She tucked the letter into her apron pocket instead and resumed her work, leaving Elias to stare after her.

Chise sat in the headmistress’s office, Ruth resting by her feet, his dark fur blending with the shadows under the desk. Five years at the school had changed Chise. She sat straighter now, a quiet confidence radiating from her that wasn’t there before. She had learned to adapt, to forge friendships, and most importantly, to believe in herself. The classes had been challenging, some nearly impossible, but magecraft had been different. It had felt natural, like slipping into water after years of standing parched in the sun. After all, she was a sleigh beggy. A mage at heart.

The headmistress leaned forward slightly, folding her hands atop the desk. “So, Chise, what have you decided? Will you accept the College’s invitation for the masters program?”

“Yes, I would like to specialize." Chise said without hesitation. "But only in Magecraft.”  Her voice was steady, resolute.

The headmistress arched a brow, though not unkindly. “Are you aware that our magecraft instructor retired at the end of last term?”

Chise nodded. “Yes, but I assumed the school would find a replacement.”

The headmistress sighed softly, her gaze sympathetic but firm. “Unfortunately, we haven’t yet. Mages are a dying breed. For now, other professors will teach the subject, but since they are sorcerers, not mages, their ability to teach magecraft is limited. There will be a greater emphasis on theory this year and significantly less practical application.”

Chise frowned, disappointment flickering across her face. “But I can still specialize in it, right?” she pleaded. Ruth stirred at her feet, his ruby eyes glancing up at her with quiet support.

The headmistress studied her for a long moment, then nodded. “I had a feeling you’d insist. You know what specialization entails. It means you’re no longer technically a student. You’ll be working alongside the faculty, assisting in lessons, with fewer structured classes and more self-directed work and responsibility.” 

Chise nodded, understanding the gravity of the transition. “I’m ready for that.”

The headmistress’s gaze softened. “I believe you are. Just remember, with that freedom comes risk, especially without a dedicated magecraft instructor.  Your experience will be… unconventional. We’ll do our best to support you, but you’ll need to take extra care with your magic and your health. ”

Chise nodded, undeterred. “I understand. I’ll be extra careful.”

The headmistress leaned back, her expression softening. “The school has invested a great deal in your education, Chise, and we want you to succeed. Magecraft is a demanding field, and as a sleigh beggy, it’s vital that you learn to control your magic. When we do find a magecraft instructor, it would benefit you to seek additional training with them. Outside of the classroom.”

Chise blinked, sitting up straighter. “You mean… ask them to mentor me?”

“Precisely.” The headmistress inclined her head. “It’s not a requirement, but it’s a suggestion. You have a unique gift, Chise, but it will take guidance and discipline to truly master it. A mentor could help you not only control your power but understand it on a deeper level.”

Chise’s heart swelled with resolve. She hadn’t come this far to falter now. Magecraft was her path, and she would walk it, no matter how steep or uneven it became. “I’ll do whatever it takes.” 

The headmistress nodded approvingly. “That’s what I wanted to hear. Very well. Specialization in magecraft it is.”

Chise stood to leave, Ruth rising silently at her side “Thank you, headmistress.”

The headmistress smiled and returned to her work, and as Chise and Ruth stepped out of her office, Chise’s hand brushed over Ruth’s head. For years, she’d known her place as a student, sheltered by structure and certainty. Now, she stood on the edge of something unfamiliar. No longer just a pupil, but not quite a teacher, either. The responsibilities ahead felt daunting, but there was a strange excitement beneath her nerves. This was magecraft, her calling, the one branch of magic that felt like home. Whatever the future held, she was ready to meet it. 

Ruth padded silently through the dense forest, the crunch of leaves beneath his paws muffled by the dampness of the night air. This had become part of his routine over the years: searching while Chise slept, then catching up on rest himself during the day as she attended classes. Some nights he stayed by her side; other times, like tonight, he followed old trails and lingering questions into the darkness. 

For the first few months, the graveyard had been his starting point. He combed through its shadows, retracing steps, seeking answers to the questions that gnawed at him: What really happened to Isabelle? What was that creature that had tried to take him the day he met Chise? The graveyard had yielded nothing, forcing him to expand his search outward. Tonight, he ventured miles beyond its borders, the scent of decay in the air drawing him forward like a thread unraveling the darkness.

The metallic tang grew stronger. He followed it cautiously, his sharp senses scanning for movement, for danger. The forest opened into a small clearing, and there, beneath a twisted tree, lay the source.

A wolf. Its body was broken and bloodied, its stomach torn open. The sight was brutal, an echo of violence Ruth hadn’t witnessed since his days as a church grim. He stiffened, the fur along his spine prickling.

As he sniffed around the scene, the air felt heavy, saturated with malice. This wasn’t a predator's work. It was something darker, more sinister. The grotesque wounds, the violent display... it was too familiar. His thoughts leapt back to the graveyard, to Isabelle’s patchwork form which had tried to cause similar destruction. Could it have been the same creature?

The snap of a branch behind him jolted him from his thoughts. He spun around, muscles taut, his keen eyes scanning the shadows. Far ahead, through the tangled trees, branches shifted unnaturally. He narrowed his eyes and advanced cautiously, each step deliberate, his ears twitching at the faint sound of movement.

“Who’s there?” he growled, his voice steady but sharp.

A small, trembling voice answered, “P-please… help us.”

Ruth’s heart sank. He edged closer to the source of the voice, his eyes adjusting to the dim light. Beneath a jagged rock formation, three young fae wolves huddled together, their thin bodies shaking from cold and fear. The eldest, barely more than a year old, stepped forward despite his trembling legs, shielding the smaller pups with his body.

“Our mama… she’s gone,” the eldest whimpered. “There was a monster…”

Ruth’s stomach twisted as dread settled deep in his chest. The boy’s words confirmed his worst suspicions. “A monster?” he asked, his voice softer now, though his sharp eyes darted to the shadows around them.

The boy nodded, his voice breaking. “It had four legs, but its face, it looked like a clown! It chased her. We hid. It didn’t see us, but it… it got her.” He choked back a sob, his younger siblings pressing closer to him.

Ruth lowered his head, a heavy sigh escaping his throat. He knew what the boy described. He’d seen creatures like that before, lurking near the graveyard. Things not of this world, driven by twisted purpose.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Ruth said gravely. “This forest isn’t safe.”

“We don’t have anywhere else to go,” the eldest said, “We’ve been looking for our pack, but we’ve been on our own for days. Mama was supposed to bring us back to them.” His voice broke. “We haven’t eaten for days. Mama was looking for food…”

Ruth hesitated, his gaze flickering between the frightened pups and the forest beyond. Logic told him to leave them, that they were a distraction from his search, but his heart wouldn’t allow it. These children were scared, hungry, and alone. He couldn’t abandon them.

“Come with me,” he said at last, his voice firm. “I’ll take you somewhere safe. I can get you food.”

The pups hesitated, their wide eyes searching his face for sincerity. Then, as if sensing the strength of his resolve, they rose shakily to their feet and followed him. Ruth led them through the forest, his pace slowed to match their exhaustion.

“Our mama… she’s not coming back, is she?” The eldest whispered.

Ruth’s heart twisted. He’d learned, over time, how to comfort Chise. How to listen, when to speak softly, how to steady her with his presence. But these pups were so young, so raw with grief, and their questions had no gentle answers.

He was quiet when he spoke. “No. She’s not coming back.”

He pressed closer to his siblings. “We were so scared. Was she… was she scared too, do you think?”

Ruth hesitated, searching for words that might help. “Maybe. But I think she was mostly worried about you. She did everything she could to keep you safe. That’s what mothers do.” 

The pups huddled together in silence. Ruth wished he could do more, say more. He wished he could tell them everything would be all right. He wished he could be what they needed, the way he had learned to be for Chise. For now, all he could do offer what comfort he could by getting them to safety.

Halfway through the journey, the youngest, a tiny girl with barely the strength to lift her head, collapsed. Without a word, Ruth gently lifted her in his jaws and carried her the rest of the way.

It took twice as long as usual to reach the outskirts of the College’s magical grounds, but Ruth knew they were safe here. Near the ancient tree where he had once bonded with Chise, he found a small cave, hidden but close enough for him to return quickly with food. He ushered the pups inside, setting the girl down carefully.

“Stay here,” he instructed. “I’ll be back.”

When he returned, it was with a large slab of raw meat, pilfered from the College’s kitchens. The pups devoured it ravenously, tearing into the flesh with desperate hunger. Ruth watched them in silence, sitting at the cave’s entrance like a sentinel, his gaze fixed on the horizon.

“Thank you,” the eldest said softly, his voice trembling but sincere. He stepped forward, the fur along his back twitching nervously. “What’s your name?”

“Ruth.”

“I’m Harlow,” the boy said, motioning to his siblings. “That’s my sister, Hazel, and my brother, Hunter.”

Ruth dipped his head. “Harlow, I’ll help you find your pack. But for now, you must stay here. It’s safe.”

Harlow’s eyes filled with cautious hope. “You’ll come back?”

Ruth glanced at the horizon, where the first streaks of dawn painted the sky in pale shades of red. He stood, his frame silhouetted against the growing light. “I’ll return when night falls. Stay hidden until then.”

As Ruth turned to leave, Harlow brushed his nose against Ruth’s leg, a hesitant, grateful gesture. Ruth paused, surprised, and gave a gentle nod in return.

Whatever had killed the pups’ mother was still out there. It wasn’t the same thing that had taken Isabelle, but Ruth was certain it had come from the same graveyard. Could it somehow be connected to her death? As he padded toward the College, his senses sharpened, determination flaring in his chest. He would protect the living, even as he hunted the shadows of the past.