FIFTEEN
The days blurred together in a haze of research, exhaustion, and the ever-present threat of each looming midnight.
Silas marked the passage of time in his journal, each day meticulously recorded, and each midnight tallied with his irritable, sharp strokes of ink etched into the corner.
For another four nights, they were yanked across whatever distance lay between them, crashing together with a mixture of pressure, pain and then finally, relief being close to her.
So far, it proved a force that neither could resist, even with each test they concocted.
They’d tried a simple distance test, moving far from one another before midnight struck.
He’d stood at the edge of the Lunarian district, while Amelia was beneath the farthest northern mountain at the opposite end.
The relentless tugging sensation in his chest had grown with each step away, like they were magnets and his body yearned to be reconnected.
When midnight arrived, pain flared behind his ribs and he was jerked to the centre of town, Amelia slamming into him with a force that had them slipping on the slick middle-of-the-night ice.
Amelia had pushed him away, groaning her annoyance. “Noted,” she said, brushing snow from her pants. “Distance doesn’t matter.”
Then they tested restraints. Which in hindsight, was a truly terrible idea. Amelia had even tried, albeit half-heartedly, to talk him out of it. Silas had wanted to cover all bases.
Silas braced himself in his room, secured to the wall by a set of runed bindings that should secure all magic. Amelia had fixed the bindings before midnight, standing back to admire her handiwork with a quiet smile.
“I don’t like that look,” Silas had said warily.
Biting her lip, she backed away, a hint of mischief there that had him shifting restlessly beneath the bindings.
“I like you like this,” Amelia admitted.
Silas narrowed his eyes. “Tied to the wall?”
That smile grew, a wicked edge to it as she reached behind for the door with a half-shrug. “Helpless.”
Her laugh as the door closed told him she was joking. Or at least, he hoped she was.
When midnight ticked over, Silas barely had a moment to take in a breath before being wrenched by an impossible force, magical chains snapping easily. He collided with Amelia in the hallway again, breaths uneven, pulses hammering in unison.
“Another bust,” she’d uttered, pulling away with a sigh.
During the day they’d conducted a series of tests on the blades, exposure to light sources, magical pulses, encumbrance materials. They had cut through and endured all without any noteworthy physical or magical reaction.
Silas had left notes for his mother every day, asking for her assistance. He knew Veralind was holding on to information, and that his father’s journals were somewhere on the Finley estate. She hadn’t responded to any, nor had they seen her since their first evening.
He had felt abandoned by his mother many times, but this felt deeply personal.
The bitter sting of betrayal was not soothed by the time spent with Amelia.
Watching her work, with her diligent, steadfast nature had become the most difficult part of his days.
He had always admired her, from afar. His current proximity and growing understanding of how she operated, it watered a seed within, and it grew wildly and out of control.
He would constantly glance up from his notebook just to glimpse her as she concentrated. If she met his eyes across the worktable, he swore she must feel how his stomach flipped. But she only looked away, returning to her work.
By the fourth day of his promised week in Lunarian, they were both exhausted. The long days and longer nights taking its toll.
They were busy crafting magical wards from runed copper plates to set between the blades, to note any nullification of the midnight pull. The runes were strong, inscribed for stability, strength, and endurance.
They’d spent the morning scouring texts on the connection theory between the Monoliths, to understand how it worked. One could not fix what one does not understand. Unfortunately, the information was speculation, nothing concrete.
Amelia sat on the lab floor, hunched over the notes sprawled around her, penning quietly. Silas was finishing the welding of two copper plates. Stiff in the shoulders, he set his tools down and reached for his pencil to make a note.
The skin of his hand buzzed oddly as he stretched out, and before he could brush his fingers over the pencil, it rolled a fraction away from him.
Silas froze.
Hovering over the pencil, his eyes widened as he stared. Slowly, he lowered his hand, taking up the pencil between his fingers. Silas glanced at Amelia, focused on her notes, before looking back to the pencil, puzzled and uncertain what had just happened.
He cleared his throat quietly, made his note, and set it aside.
His eyes lingered to her again as she leaned back to rub a hand over her face.
“You look tired,” he remarked, choosing to brush the moment aside.
Amelia exhaled through her nose, looking blandly up at him. “So do you.”
He couldn’t argue with her. Silas felt drained, and the looming midnight meant rest was still out of reach. It was wearing on them both.
Silence stretched, heavy and long.
Finally, Amelia set down her pen. “Do you think we’re making progress?”
He hesitated, gaze flicking to the two blades resting on the worktable.
They looked so innocent, but they knew better.
Their results had so far yielded little but a display of resilience against any material or runed objects.
His confidence dimmed with each passing day that they would find a way to use them or break the bond.
Silas shook his head. “I don’t know.”
He couldn’t bring himself to speak the truth. That he was afraid there really was no breaking the bond. That only midnight waited for them, night after night…until there were no more midnights left for them.
She cleared her throat. “I was wondering if we should visit Fabian again.” Amelia shifted some papers around, avoiding his eyes.
“Were you?”
She gripped a book and looked up. “It was odd and horrible, yes. But it’s been the only solid answers we’ve had so far. I think it’s worth seeing what more we can find out.”
Silas nodded. “I agree.”
Her brows lifted. “You…agree with me?”
He smirked, fingers tapping rhythmically on the table. “It’s been known to happen.”
Amelia didn’t respond, sending the book in her hands a wide-eyed look as though disagreeing wholeheartedly. She shuffled her papers together and stood from the ground, stretching out her limbs. “We can see him in the morning, then. I’m finished for tonight.”
“I’ll just set these up, then I am too,” he said.
Amelia wandered over to help him set the copper plating, a magical shield between the blades.
He exhaled with exhaustion. “All right, let’s get out of here.”
The next morning, they walked the icy streets to experience the wonders of ‘Archmage’ Fabian Eros once more. Stepping into the alleyway that housed his shop, the twisted staircase came into view.
He felt it immediately, and knew Amelia had also, their footfalls slowing in unison. The alley leading to Fabian’s dwelling felt different, threatening.
Last time, it had smelled of incense, a cloying warmth tucked between tilted walls and the crumbling frame of a shop.
Now, the air was brittle and wrong, like some great disturbance plagued the area.
They moved up the staircase, silent and cautious.
Silas’ boots crunched on shattered glass as they approached the crooked wooden door, which was half open, swaying gently on its hinges.
“Winslow,” he murmured, halting.
Amelia stopped behind him, her breath visible in the cold. “The door wasn’t like that before.”
“No,” he said grimly, “it wasn’t.” He moved forwards apprehensively, easing it open, the wood creaking like a groan.
Inside, Fabian’s chaotic but vibrant shop was in absolute ruin.
Shelves were toppled, books torn from their spines, arcane glasswork shattered across the floor.
The incense scent was gone, replaced by the unmistakable tang of blood and burning wood.
A single candle burned on at the far side of the room, flickering low, as though it were the only thing left untouched.
Amelia stepped in beside him, scanning the wreckage.
“This doesn’t look like a robbery,” she said quietly, “it looks ransacked. Like they were looking for something.”
Silas knelt near a collapsed bookshelf, brushing away shards of what had been a Wayglass. “I wonder if they found what they wanted.”
He crossed to Fabian’s chair, the one he had sat in during their visit. It was tilted, one of its legs broken. Silas crouched beside it.
His fingers grazed a strange mark scorched into the floor.
It wasn’t blood.
It was a glyph. Jagged, burned into the stone as though made hastily. A crude line ran across it, reversing it. His palms tingled as he looked at it, like something writhed beneath his skin, before disappearing again.
His brows furrowed. “A warding glyph, but it’s slashed. Broken.”
“Do you think he cast it?”
He swallowed, glancing to where she hovered above him, anxiously tugging at her fingers. “I think he tried.”
Amelia looked around uneasily. “Do you think he’s…gone?”
Silas glanced at the rushed glyph, possibly a last-ditch effort for protection. He stood. “I think so. Perhaps, then…they did find what they were after.”
They searched the room quickly and quietly. Cabinets, drawers, beneath the tables. Amelia uncovered one of Fabian’s hand-drawn maps of the Rift, half-burned and stabbed through with a knife.
There was no sign of Fabian.
No body, no note. Nothing.
It was as they were leaving that they found anything of interest.
A single scrap of paper, jammed under the corner of the toppled desk near the tilted door, as though it had fluttered there in the chaos.