Malou brought her hands to her temples, slid her fingers into her curly roots to massage her scalp for a moment. Closing her eyes, she recalled the bits and pieces of information about magic her father had shared with her so long ago.

“Dad said magic was like willing your imagination into real life, but that some people—scholars, there were scholars of magic before—said it was like the spark or essence of life. The will to exist or something. Like I remember him explaining that a flower blooming is like a type of passive magic. He also said that some scholars thought of it more like a source of infinite energy. Though I guess not so much anymore?”

“No, not so much anymore. Seems your father at least told you that magic was sealed away a long time ago. Keep going.”

Malou couldn’t help but feel like the professor was studying her more keenly than she ever had before, so diverted her eyes to the marble floor to keep herself from pacing. “He said that the Tranquil Era began the moment magic was sealed away, but over time, magic has started to leak back out into the world. For some reason, I always thought of magic a bit like dust. There’s dust everywhere. Here, out there in the world, even out in space. Sealing away all the dust on this planet doesn’t consider the magic everywhere else. Eventually, magic would make its way here again.”

Haddou raised an eyebrow. “Yes, I’ve heard similar theories. But also three thousand years is a long time for anything to hold up perfectly. That all you know, kid?”

“He said that before magic was sealed away, everyone was born with an innate ability to use it, but everyone uses it differently. Since everyone imagines differently.” Then suddenly she remembered the most important thing he’d told her. The cautionary tale of Ediz the Destroyer, a man who had used magic to kill people and turned into the god of death. In the story, the only way to stop him had been to seal away all magic. “What’s the same for everyone is that magic can’t be used to harm.”

“Good.” Haddou smiled—one that crinkled smile lines near her eyes. “That saves us time and we don’t have a lot of it since the bastard should be heading here soon. I’ll tell you more about the seal later. It’s a long story. Did Lavrras really tell you nothing about meditating? I suppose you were very young when he died. Maybe I should be impressed you know this much?”

Malou chewed her lip to keep herself from taking Haddou’s bait and telling her that her father had taught her first how to preserve memories through associations reinforced with magic. You have such a strong will, he’d said. All you have to do is will yourself to remember. He’d held her hand, touch warm with magic, and coached her through reconstructing the moment in her imagination as detailed as possible, from the taste of toothpaste in her mouth to the worn-in linen sheets soft against her skin. Now imagine yourself remembering this moment in the future—anytime in the future, even in the afterlife. For some reason, she felt like she had to keep this to herself, or she’d be dishonoring the memory.

Part of her wondered though if she had not only preserved her childhood memories but also who she had been. Had she been stuck all this time as that naïve little girl, trusting the same people, honoring the same promises, even as her situation changed?

“Nothing to be impressed about,” Malou offered instead, shaking her head at herself. “I only remember that he meditated a lot, and it was impossible to get his attention when he was. Gavriel and I even drew all over his face once.”

Haddou cackled. “Serves him right for not explaining it to you. Meditating gives you access to your ancestors, Malou. Meeting them is the only way to get a rank. Generally, someone who uses magic but hasn’t met their ancestors is unranked, and it usually takes at least six games before your rating is high enough to earn the Apprentice rank.”

Everything racing through Malou’s mind about whether she could meet with her father in his afterlife by meditating must’ve been clear on her face because Haddou raised her hands, bracelets clinking down her arms.

“Stop,” Haddou said, crossing the room to squeeze Malou’s shoulders. Her grip was firm, but her tone was soft. “You’re hearing what you want to hear, but that’s not what I’m saying. Ancestors like your dad, yes, but many, many others who have left an imprint through magic in your blood or on your soul. It’d be him but not him.”

But it’d still be a magical preservation of him, an artifact of an imagination a decade gone. It’d be the closest to having him back that she’d ever get. Maybe she could ask him questions. Maybe he could give her the answers he should’ve given her long ago.

Releasing Malou, Haddou held up three fingers. “There are three different types of ancestors. The first is a bloodline ancestor. Lavrras would be your bloodline ancestor because you share blood and he was at least Apprentice rank. Everyone has bloodline ancestors—many of them.”

Haddou lowered one finger, gold rings flashing in the light, and continued, “You could also have a soul ancestor. A soul ancestor is a past version of you who was strong enough to pass along an imprint to their reincarnations when passing. Usually, they’d be Grandmasters or Elders. You might have one or two, but they’re pretty uncommon. Even more rare are soulbonded ancestors.”

Vaguely, Malou remembered a story her father had told her about Sonomyn the Scientist. She pressed herself to think back, imagining herself in her childhood bed with her father brushing curly bangs from her face, until the memory struck through her with a spark of magic. Sonomyn the Scientist had longed for a family his whole life but had agreed to become bonded to an ancestor so he could learn more about magic and save the world.

By becoming soulbound to his ancestor, though, he had to carry around the consciousness of this ancestor—who had a wife of his own, children of his own—and he no longer felt like himself, her father had said. He was never convinced he was himself enough to love another as deeply as his ancestor loved his wife or that his child would ever feel like his own, and so he gave up his dream of having a family.

That’s a sad story, she remembered saying.

Some stories are sad, had been his response.

Haddou only had one finger left. “Soulbonds are rare to begin with, but the idea is that if you pass before you release or are released from your bond, then your souls remain imprinted on each other. A soulbonded ancestor is the imprint of the person your ancestor was soulbonded to when they passed. Any of these could come to you when you meditate. We have more ancestors than we could ever hope to know, and you don’t get to choose who comes to you when. You may never get a chance to meet him.”

That didn’t mean she wouldn’t get a chance, though. She didn’t care how much meditating she’d have to do over her lifetime, she wouldn’t ever stop trying. Part of her—that little girl who wished she’d asked her dad to stay when he’d asked the night he’d died—wished he’d told her about meditating before. Maybe she could’ve already met him.

“My point here is really that meditating is the only way to meet your ancestors,” Haddou said, “and meeting your ancestors is where you’ll do most of your training. Meditating helps you achieve a state of mind most conducive to reflecting your true imaginative vision. What that means is different for everyone, and we’ll go more into that on Selfday. Unfortunately, Zeynel decided to leave on time for once in his life. Asshole usually leaves me waiting. Take this.”

Haddou reached into the pocket of her kaftan and pulled out a marble that looked like it’d been shaped from lapis lazuli. When in her hand, the same electric feeling from the watch shot through her. More like a surge of magic this time. Magic wasn’t laced into the marble but more like pushed into it. The surface of the blue marble in her palm seemed to swirl, dark blue veins twisting with shimmering gold.

Malou wrapped her fingers around the marble to keep herself from continuing to stare into it.

“Yes,” Haddou said, “there’s magic stored in there. You’ll need it for what I’m about to have you do. For having not met your ancestors yet, you did pretty well to overwrite my magic. You said you can’t do much else but humor me. And quickly.”

Again, she stopped short of giving Haddou a full answer. Folding her arms over her chest, she paced around the cabinet. “Just small stuff. Making Zeynel’s messages invisible, intangible, or unperceivable. Dad taught me how to push magic into my muscles when we trained without Gavriel. He was so impressed. I really thought I was some genius. I haven’t had to do that in a while, though. I’ve used magic to cure a few hangovers, too. Ah—and earlier, I cut open this letter I need to give to Gavriel, too. But how do you know Zeynel left his office?”

Haddou’s eyebrows lifted for a moment. “My swift has been clinging to his windowsill all day. You’ll meet her on Selfday. All any of us can do without the marbles is small stuff. Have you tried making yourself invisible? Given all that, you should be capable.”

Malou definitely had questions about the swift, but there wasn’t enough time to digress. The underground tunnels didn’t connect with Ehlers Hall, but it was still only a ten-minute walk.

“I’ve been trying, but I haven’t figured it out entirely yet. I get stuck between what’s in my imagination and the execution. How do you do it?”

“Doesn’t matter how I do it. We all have our ways. Give me your hands. Palms-up.” Haddou pulled another marble out of her pocket, so both their clasped hands had one between them. “Close your eyes. Easier to visualize. How would you imagine yourself being invisible? What would it look like if you were watching yourself through my eyes? Talk me through it.”

Malou hadn’t thought of imagining it that way. Maybe that was why it didn’t work before. She’d been focusing on using the same technique she used to disappear paper and clothes. Theoretically, that should’ve worked, but theory and praxis were different things.

Eyes closed as instructed, she imagined herself standing in front of Haddou. She thought aloud, “This is a small space, so just being invisible could still lead to liability. Especially around Zeynel. I wouldn’t be surprised if he showed up expecting me to be here. So… maybe something like fading into fog or smoke? They’re both immaterial. Nothing there to touch. I’m material, though, so I’d need to become immaterial somehow. Dissipate or something.”

“Clever and creative,” Haddou said and sounded like she meant it. “You have good instincts, but you need to be more specific than that. What would it mean to be immaterial?”

“Having no body. I’d be just a floating consciousness.” Malou felt capable of imagining herself as just her consciousness, disconnected from her materiality. She’d be completely present here, perceiving what happened yet not being perceived herself. “But then what happens when I need to be material again? I’d need to materialize again somehow. I’d have to reimagine myself. Every tiny detail.”

“Unless you want to be missing a fingernail or something even more important.”

Malou couldn’t help but open her eyes to face Haddou’s smirk. “Personal experience?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know? Keep going. Eyes closed. You’ve made messages invisible, so tell me how you made them visible again.”

Nodding, Malou continued, “I see it how it was before. Not necessarily every detail, but more like imagining it’d never been invisible in the first place. Could I return my materiality as if I’d never made myself immaterial? Maybe if I imagined that working beforehand—when I made myself immaterial.”

“So reversing your magic rather than overwriting. That’s good and specific enough to work. Efficient, too.” Haddou removed her hands from Malou’s so that she was left holding the marbles. “Try it. Imagine drawing magic from the marbles first.”

She curled her fingers around the marbles, focusing on the image of them in her mind. Metamorphic crystalline mosaic spheres in shades of blue and veined with shimmering metallic gold swirling like an atmosphere of super-condensed magic. Warmth seeped into her palms, and she pulled that heat into her flesh, her blood, her bones. Her heart raced with it, and she felt flush with life in a way she’d never felt before. As if all this time she’d been hardly alive at all.

Swallowing hard against the urge to lose herself in that feeling, she imagined the magic coursing through her until she was aware of every single fiber of her body. Aware of the slight dampness of her socks against the soles of her feet. Aware of the air against her teeth and tongue and down her throat as her lungs drew breaths in and out of her lungs. Aware of the baby hairs all over her brushing ever so slightly against the clothes of her uniform. Everything that made her a material being.

As the magic overcame her like a fever, she imagined that when she let go of this hyperawareness, she’d let go of her materiality as well. In feeling nothing, she’d be nothing. She’d sense everything happening in the room because her consciousness would fill it. She’d be present immaterially here until she imagined her materiality again and reclaimed awareness of her entire body as if she’d never been immaterial.

“Well, damn,” Haddou muttered, her gaze searching the small room. “Now that you can’t talk back to me, I’m going to say one thing. You cannot save the Teir on your own. Lavrras knew how to use magic better than you and that didn’t save his life, did it? And he wasn’t protecting it alone. He found people to trust, and I believe that he’s shown you exactly who those people were.”

Trying not to focus on what Haddou said about magic not saving her father, Malou considered the professor’s meaning. Her father had trusted her mother, but she’d abandoned Malou after his death. He’d trusted Zeynel as well, but he kept even more secrets from her than she kept from him. While her mother pretended to love her, she still believed Zeynel truly cared for her. Other than the Blind Collective, who else had her father trusted?

Only one other person came to mind. Gavriel cared about her and would never leave her, but he kept secrets from her just like Zeynel. The letter Zeynel asked Rupa to deliver to him cemented that as fact. But didn’t that also tell her just how much her father trusted him?

“From what I can tell,” Haddou continued, staring at the cabinet in the middle of the room, “Lavrras may have even partially bonded you to one of them. Don’t hide from them anymore. Tell them everything.”

Before Malou could process what that might mean, a door clicked open opposite of the cabinet and Zeynel, wearing his regular robes, walked in with a deep scowl. So there was a secret passageway to the Room of Antiquities after all.

“The call went as expected,” Zeynel said, clearly irritated. She hadn’t seen him since last Selfday when he’d dismissed her. His hair was more of a mess than usual, his stubble more of a beard, and he looked like he hadn’t slept much. He stepped up to the cabinet, pulling one door after another until he found the drawer where the Teir was supposed to be kept.

Haddou scoffed “I figured. That can’t be all you wanted to talk about, though.”

From a pocket, Zeynel retrieved the silver box that he’d put both lenses of the Teir into after he’d taken them from Malou. It caught the gleaming in the chandelier light for only a moment as he set it inside the drawer. “That’s it, Anka. They’ve wanted it for years, and even though we’ve managed to keep it from them at every grab, we’ve lost too many people. We’re done.” He shut the drawer, closed the doors one after another.

Zeynel did have a plan, but it seemed like it was one where he was giving up. Leaving the Teir here meant Revern could walk in at any time, dig around until they found this room, then go through every door and drawer in that cabinet until they had it at long, long last. This couldn’t be the best plan he could come up with. He had to have something else in mind. Keeping it here only for a while, maybe until the next time Revern asked for it, then he’d set it back into motion.

“Don’t joke,” Haddou said with a sharpness to her voice. Her brows set, and the muscle in her jaw tight. Malou had never seen her so serious. “I’ll take it. That was always the plan, wasn’t it? I’ll bring it to Khalasaj Tower with me for a while until they’re satisfied that it’s not here. Then I’ll bring it right back like I’ve done time and time again. We can’t just let them have it.”

If the empire got their hands on it now, wouldn’t it make the sacrifice of everyone who’d died to protect the Teir in vain? Brosch’s death. Her father’s death. How could he even consider giving up?

“It’s too late for that now.” He pressed his hand against the cabinet door and leaned against it. “Maybe if we’d met yesterday, but they know as much about you as they knew about the others. Anselm, Omoni, Faisal... Lavrras.” He placed a hand on his forehead and, for a moment, anguish flashed across his features. “They would’ve tracked you. They’re probably already watching you.”

“Isn’t there a third option here?” Haddou growled. “If not me, then—”

“No.” The word was so simple, final. Zeynel pulled away from the cabinet and faced Haddou. “This is it. There’s nothing more either of us can do.”

Haddou’s jaw slacked, but she slowly shook her head and sighed. “A terrible way to honor Lavrras’s decision to trust you with it, but you’re the one who’ll have to live with it. And there is at least one person who will never let you forget this. She will never forgive you.”

“Maybe it’s better that way,” Zeynel said, and Malou wanted to yell at him for it.

Even if it seemed to pain him to leave the Teir for the empire to simply take after everything that’d happened, Malou didn’t care. He was wrong to stop fighting. He was wrong that it was too late to save the Teir. He was wrong to leave through the secret door without another word.

At least when her father had left that night, he’d told her that he loved her.

“Malou,” Haddou said, drawing her attention away from that night again. “Hope you can materialize again. And with all your fingernails.”

If she wasn’t so mad, it might’ve been more difficult to remember the feeling of her body. She remembered all the heightened awareness she had and imagined anger exploding through her. Tensing all her muscles and tightening her throat so she felt like she had to gasp for air. Making her heartbeat quicken and her blood run so fast she could hear it.

“Not bad. Keep that.” Haddou took back one of the marbles, stuffing it into her pocket. Malou did the same. “So that probably wasn’t what you expected to hear today.”

In her ear, Laure said, “The Teir is automatically synchronizing with me again. Also, that key Premier Casals gave you is synced with the Teir. Thought you’d like to know.”

“No,” Malou said, breathy. The pocket watch must’ve been how Zeynel had turned off the Teir. That was why he called it the key. Why had he given it to her and then refused to protect the Teir? Was this some kind of pre-emptive apology?

Haddou wrapped an arm around her shoulders and guided her up the stairs. “Let’s go, kid. Everything might seem hopeless, but the Teir isn’t as easy to use as you’d think. It’ll take even the empire’s top scientists a while to figure out how to get the information they want out of it, and that’s all the time I need to steal it back with a little magic.”

For some reason, that didn’t comfort Malou at all.

“At least say something,” Haddou said.

Should she tell Haddou about the pocket watch? Should she ask to go with her to steal the Teir back from the empire? Malou rubbed her face, wanting more time to think. Quietly, she said, “I don’t know what to say.”

“That’s alright. You don’t have to know what to say. Just remember what I said about trust and let that guide you from here.” Haddou rubbed her upper arm. At the top of the stairs, she pushed open the door and they stepped into the foyer. “Where are you headed?”

Laure said, “The key has disconnected from the Teir. Probably out of range. I’m not syncing with the Teir anymore, either, but the synchronization rate this time was better. Would’ve been fully synced in less than half an hour.”

Malou would have to figure out why later. “Dinner,” Malou said, then studied the second letter Rupa gave her as they headed to the west entrance’s double doors. “With Gavriel. I have that note for him from Zeynel. Apparently, he has a lot to tell me.”

“Every time I stopped cheating, that brat beat me. Make him tell you where he learned to play so well. Wasn’t from Lavrras, that’s for damn sure.”

“He said you cheated him out of a lot of wins, too.”

Haddou chuckled, stepping outside into the fresh air. “That I did.” Then she stopped, tugged Malou behind her. “That bastard fucking meant that it when he said that we had no time... Go hide in the tunnels. I’ll find you later.”

In the distance, at least twenty armored touring cars poured in through Tousieux University’s front gates. The university had one road that cut between the expansive front lawns and ended in a roundabout leading back to the gate. The second road hugged the wall surrounding campus and intersected the first at the front gates. Four groups broke off—one going west, two groups going east, and one heading straight for the roundabout.

“Malou,” Haddou repeated, shoving her back toward the door to Ehlers. “Go.”