Prisoner
Math didn’t fight.
He’d seen what Kai could do in her own domain, and Sanistral had had centuries longer to shape his. Sanistral might be godlike here—but even without that, Math was outnumbered, outmatched, and weaponless.
He didn’t resist as a guard hauled him off. Along the way, he dug his fingernails into his palms hard enough to hurt—really hurt—and tried to project a warning to Kai.
He had no way of knowing if it worked—or if Sanistral had blocked it.
Math watched his surroundings closely—and the more he saw, the more his unease hardened into dread.
The palace lay in darkness. Only the wing where he and Kai had been quartered glowed with magical lamps. Beyond that, the guards led him deeper—into silence and shadow.
The guards didn’t seem to notice.
They weren’t the only ones, either. In the darkness, Math heard the faint scuff of feet on marble, the rustle of moving fabric. Servants moved through their routines—cleaning, carrying, working—all in utter silence and pitch blackness, not whispering a word.
Maybe that was enchantment, too—but to what end?
“Be honest,” he said to the guards. “Does he make you wear those helmets all the time?”
“Shut up,” one snapped.
“Yes,” the other muttered.
He nearly tripped on the steps, prompting one guard to curse.
“He can’t see,” the man complained.
“Of course he can’t,” the woman snapped. “He’s still al—” She stopped herself. “Go pull off a damn lamp cover.”
He’s still … what? Still alienated? Still allowed? Still allergic?
Still alive. He’s still alive.
The stories made grim lord servants sound mechanical—no longer people, just animated husks obeying commands. But these guards had personalities. Not ones he liked, but still … personalities.
The room brightened painfully as a guard uncovered one of Sanistral’s magic lamps, forcing Math to turn his face away.
The light revealed they’d descended deep into the palace—far enough that no windows could reach.
He’d stumbled onto stairs made of unpolished stone, far older than the marble above.
They led into a dark corridor carved from the same aged rock.
The air smelled stale, laced with the faint, sweet odor of long-decomposed corpses.
Math studied the guards. What once seemed like a bad security flaw—fully concealing uniforms—now felt more sinister. Maybe the helmets didn’t hide the guards’ identities. Maybe they hid that the guards were little better than animated corpses.
“I could make a light, if that would help,” Math offered. Maybe if they let him cast something, he could slip in more.
“Shut up,” the man muttered—without conviction.
The prison wasn’t too bad—just dark and dusty. It didn’t smell like any living thing had been here in a long time.
The guards shoved him into a windowless cell, cooler than the swelter outside. That was its only mercy. He doubted they’d remember he had needs like food or water.
He thought of the city lights and shivered. He knew the answer now. Why weren’t there lights in the houses?
Because the dead didn’t need them. How many people in Monchlen were still alive?
He suspected he wouldn’t like the answer.
As soon as the door slammed shut, he summoned a light—proof he could still cast. The room was small and dingy, but dry, and thankfully corpse-free. The walls were bare, but if he were a graver, he wouldn’t make his work visible. It’d be hidden—on the far side of the wall, or embedded within it.
To test the theory, Math cast a first-circle Storm spell to dry and weaken the mortar.
But the mortar resisted. Sanistral hadn’t barred him from casting—he’d just shielded his property. Math suspected even chipping a single stone would be impossible.
He thought about what Kai might do—
And realized he couldn’t feel her at all.
Logically, he knew she was fine. Logically, Sanistral wouldn’t hurt her. Logically, the reason he couldn’t feel her was because the damn grim lord had spelled the cell to block it. He knew that.
And still, all he could hear was his own pulse.
All he could feel was rage. The only thing that kept him from punching the wall was his memory of watching a knight do exactly that after someone smuggled in a little wine.
The fool had been circling Land magic at the time. He broke every bone in his hand.
So Math didn’t punch the wall.
Instead, he sat down to study the limits of Sanistral’s carefully built prison.
Hours later, Math found a mistake.
The mistake was this: he could still see.
He could still see because his light spell was still functioning. His light spell was still functioning because it didn’t affect any of the objects that Sanistral had graved.
The grim lord had made his possessions both indestructible and immune to magic, but only his possessions.
Math could make himself incredibly strong but still couldn’t punch his way out.
He could light a fire or manifest a weapon (if only), but he couldn’t destroy, alter, or damage the floors, walls, or ceiling.
But he could still use magic.
It was a huge flaw. Maybe it wouldn’t have been if he were a graven wizard—he’d have nothing to grave but his own skin, after all—but Math was a wild mage. He didn’t need a surface to write on, just belief and imagination.
Tri-Mother. Math shook his head. No wonder the Idallik Knights hammered home the idea that only certain spells should be cast, and only with proper understanding.
He couldn’t even say they were wrong. He thought of little Hamu, calling lightning from the sky as a screaming baby.
How destructive that child could be when upset.
The Idallik Knights weren’t teaching how to cast spells—they were teaching how not to. Training the wild talent out of novitiates so they could safely interact with society.
So why the emphasis on manifesting weapons? Why was that the hallmark of graduation?
Because you only manifested one. And doing it—only it, every time—meant more than control. It meant your mind had been honed into something reliable, predictable—safe.
Math shook his head. He was getting ahead of himself—and distracted. A yawn reminded him why: it was an ungodly hour. He considered stopping to sleep, then dismissed the idea. A first-circle Wood spell would keep him awake for days, if needed.
He couldn’t waste time. Come morning, Sanistral would summon Kaiataris and demand her answer. Math needed to be free before that happened.
He knew—because he’d seen Kai do it—that one could magically cross a span without traveling the space between. Dangerous, she’d said. If you couldn’t see your destination, you had to rely on complex math to define your exact position in the world.
And yes, that sounded dangerous—probably fatal if you got it wrong.
But what if you could see your destination? Kai hadn’t hesitated to use her graved jewelry mid-fight. If you could see the endpoint, everything was simpler.
So Math tried to copy her spell.
He’d never created one before—but he wasn’t inventing anything. The spell already existed. That was the point.
This wasn’t a spell any Idallik Knight knew. The idea that he’d grown skilled enough for higher-circle spells was easier to accept than being able to instantly jump between two locations.
Thinking of it that way didn’t help. It still sounded impossible. But maybe it made more sense to treat the land as a single, connected whole. On the scale of a continent, what were ten feet? This spot might as well be that spot. Maybe they weren’t different at all.
Maybe they were the exact same spot.
Math slumped to the dusty floor and thumped his head against the stone wall.
It was not the same spot.
Math slammed his fists into his thighs and tried again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
When he finally got it right, it was so ordinary he almost missed it. The only reason he noticed was the ball of light—he hadn’t hung it in the center of the cell.
So when the angle changed, he assumed the light had shifted.
Except it hadn’t moved. He had.
He’d driven himself into mental exhaustion—shadows had blurred together, and up looked like down.
That time, when he told himself he was on the other side of the room, his body had said, Sure. Why not?
It took half an hour to manage it again.
Then ten minutes …
Then he did it twice in a row.
In deference to Kai’s warnings about burnout, he was careful not to push too hard. As long as he let his body recover and didn’t pull too much power at once, he would be fine.
Strangely, it didn’t take nearly as much energy as he’d expected.
By the time he could reliably shift across the room with a thought, it was nearly dawn. A lifetime of early mornings tending chores and children told Math the hour better than any clock.
He was running out of time.
Math peeked through the small window set in the door and laughed. It was dark out there, of course—but he could see, and that was enough. He threw a light spell into the hall. When no one reacted, he flung himself after it.
It felt no different than it had in the cell. One moment he was here—then he was there.
The iron-studded door might as well have not existed.
He was free.
Math grinned, cupping the light spell in his hands to dim its glow. Out of his cell didn’t mean out of danger—but it was a start.
Shouting rang out behind him.
At the end of the hall, two armored guards leveled swords his way.
Math ran.
Even if Math outran the guards, he wouldn’t lose them—he was the only one running around lit up like a festival cart. He needed to find Kai. In another time or place, a narrow corridor might’ve been ideal for an ambush—but only if he were better armed and armored.
Math tried to retrace his steps from the night before. A few turns later, he found himself in an unfamiliar corridor lined in white marble. Intricate, gold-filled designs covered every surface.
The back of his neck prickled. Magic pulsed from the carved runes around him. Sanistral wasn’t hiding his spellwork here. No—he was showing off.
He had to keep running.
At the corridor’s end, Math stumbled to a stop. The chamber beyond was immense—jaw-dropping. If not for the guards, he might’ve stood there gaping like an idiot.
The chamber stretched vast and vaulted, smelling of spice and decayed parchment.
Unlike the rest of the palace, this chamber glowed with its own illumination: globes of light spun overhead in slow, lazy orbits.
The walls sloped inward—wide at the base, narrowing toward the ceiling—like the inside of a hollow stepped pyramid.
Which it might have been.
The floor concerned him more than the walls, mostly because the floor didn’t seem to be in any particular hurry to meet the walls.
Instead, a twenty-foot-wide chasm ringed the room, broken only by a narrow bridge from the doorway to the central platform.
The drop vanished into darkness—too far to see the bottom.
There was no sign of any water, but a fall like that would kill most people.
Assuming they were alive enough to be killed, he added, thinking of his pursuers.
The central platform was pure white marble. He had no idea what the room was for.
Then he looked up—and saw the bodies.
The sloped interior of the hollow pyramid bristled with iron hooks. From each hook hung a corpse—desiccated, twisted, and unmistakably dead. They dangled like a grotesque tapestry collection.
Math had only a few seconds to absorb the sight before noticing something even more disturbing: there were no other exits.
He was trapped.