Chapter 7
HARPER
The deeper we walk into Anvaris, the more the town reveals its living pulse.
Morning light clings to the cobblestones, catching on the runed lanterns that hang from wrought iron brackets above the street.
The air is thick with enchantment, not the refined, formalized magic of Vireldan but something older.
.. earthborn. Shopkeepers pull open wooden shutters with a practiced hand, revealing booths and windows full of shimmering tinctures, glimmering relics, steaming pastries, and rows of spell components stacked like precious metals.
It is a place that feels awake in a way the academy never quite manages, as though even the wind curling through the town carries whispers of spells murmured centuries ago.
Liam stays close to me, his steps steady, his glances sharp and frequent, protective in a way that tightens and warms something deep in my chest at the same time.
Theo trails ahead with confident, measured waves of his wand, navigating the uneven stones with uncanny grace.
Trevor walks slightly behind me, but his presence remains constant, as though he is trying to memorize every tremor in the air and every shift in my breathing.
There is an awareness about him that borders on unnerving, yet never crosses into intrusion.
It is Liam who first notices the wand shop, a narrow building nestled between an apothecary whose windows glow like molten copper. A carved wooden sign swings gently above the door despite the still morning air. The lettering is elegant but worn from time:
MERROW it becomes impossible to distinguish between my body and the force swallowing it whole.
Sound follows, not separate from the magic, but part of it. A rising roar, a crackling wail, the unmistakable timbre of something breaking open in the deepest part of my mind.
And then the visions strike.
They arrive as if hurled into me, too sharp to be dreams yet too unreal to belong to the waking world.
First comes a single child’s cry, high and piercing.
Then another joins it. And another. The sound layers, builds, becomes a tide of small, terrified voices that crashes hard enough to ripple through my bones.
Images flicker with painful brightness: a child stumbling through smoke, tiny hands reaching for help that does not come; the shadowed form of a woman collapsing beside a burning doorway; the silhouette of a village swallowed by flame.
The heat intensifies until I feel fire licking at my skin, though I know I am still standing in the wand shop, somehow still gripping the wood that is pouring this nightmare into me.
I smell smoke so vividly it burns my throat, hear the crack of timbers collapsing, see figures running, falling, disappearing behind roiling black smoke.
And then the vision sharpens to a single focal point.
A pair of eyes.
They do not belong to a child, nor to a villager, nor to anything human.
They shine through the smoke like molten gold newly poured into a mold, dark irises rimmed with bright flecks that shimmer as if each one were alive.
They hold a depth that is not merely ancient but endless, like a creature that has watched the world rise and fall more times than it can be bothered to count.
The eyes narrow slightly, fixing on me with an awareness so direct it feels like a hand closing around my heart.
For a breathless second, I am certain the eyes are not part of the vision at all. That they are looking back. That they see me as clearly as I see them.
And then, they vanish.
Vanished not as images fade, but as though something reached through the darkness and tore them away before I could understand what I’d seen.
The entire vision collapses in on itself.
The fire disappears. The cries dissolve. The suffocating heat evaporates.
The wand’s glow gutters out, leaving a smoke-tinged stillness in the air so abrupt it feels like falling.
I stumble backward, my throat tight and raw, my chest laboring for breath that refuses to come in clean, steady waves.
The shop around me, once tidy and quiet, is now in total disarray.
Several wand racks have toppled over. Enchanted instruments lie scattered across the floor in tangled heaps of metal and wood.
Glass cases are cracked, one entirely shattered, glittering shards strewn like fractured stars across the planks.
Even the shimmering silver dust drifting lazily through the room feels like the aftermath of something catastrophic.
Liam is on me in an instant, his hands firm on my shoulders, anchoring me to a world my mind hasn’t fully returned to. His voice reaches me as though from behind a wall of water, muffled and urgent.
“Harper, look at me. You need to breathe. Breathe...just breathe.”
I blink, struggling to draw my surroundings back into focus piece by piece.
Merrow stands several feet away, his usually composed expression cracked open by something between awe and alarm.
Another wandwright has joined him, Welt presumably, and his face is full of a reverence tinged with fear.
Neither approaches. Neither speaks. Neither seems certain the magic in the room has settled enough to be safe.
I force in a breath, sharp and trembling.
Then another, slower, dragging through my lungs like a blade scraping iron.
The wand lies in my hand still, warm, almost feverishly so, but no longer hostile or overwhelming.
It hums faintly, like a living thing whose heartbeat has finally slowed from a sprint to a steady pulse.
“What was that?” Liam demands, his voice a quiet storm. “What did you see? Harper, what happened?”
I cannot answer. Not yet. Not when the golden eyes still burn in the back of my mind like an ember refusing to die.
I straighten, just barely, and my fingers tighten around the wand with a resolve that surprises even me.
The aftermath of the vision still clings to my skin, but beneath the fear is something else: a certainty that whatever this wand showed me, however horrifying or incomprehensible, it was not a mistake.
This wand chose me.
“I’ll take it,” I say.
My voice is rough, unsteady, scraped raw by what I just endured, but the words come with a strange, stubborn clarity.
Liam looks startled, but I do not give him room to argue.
I step forward, pull a handful of coins from my pocket, and place them on the counter, far more than necessary, but I cannot bring myself to care.
Neither Merrow nor Welt attempts to stop me, nor do they count the payment.
They simply watch, silent and wide-eyed, as though uncertain whether they should bow or run.
I do not wait for them to decide.
Without another word, I turn on my heel and walk out of the shop. The bell above the door gives a soft, startled jingle that feels absurdly out of place after the storm that just tore through the room.
The morning air outside is cold and crisp, but it hits me like a slap. I suck in a breath that tastes of frost and woodsmoke, grounding myself in the ordinary smells of Anvaris. The wand pulses once in my grip, a faint throb, subtle as a whispered reminder.
Liam calls after me softly, “Harper, wait-”
But I keep walking, needing distance, needing quiet, needing anything that is not the memory of burning children or golden eyes staring through smoke.
And yet, no matter how far I step from the wand shop’s door, the vision clings to me, heavy, unshakable, and terrifyingly vivid.