Spell of the Roaring Storm

1. Sakura

ONE

SAKURA

The crystals are crooked.

I’ve adjusted the rose quartz display seventeen times this morning. Maybe eighteen. At some point, counting became less important than achieving the impossible—perfect alignment in a universe that clearly has other plans.

“You’re fine.” I nudge the largest piece, a pale pink chunk that keeps tilting left no matter what I do. “You’re beautiful and powerful and today is going to be amazing.”

The crystal doesn’t respond. Obviously. I’m not that far gone.

Yet.

My studio—Radiant Aura, because I’m nothing if not optimistically on-brand—occupies a converted greenhouse on the eastern edge of Moonthread Square.

Glass walls and ceiling, enchanted for privacy during sessions.

Living vines climbing the framework outside, their leaves catching the morning light.

Wind chimes by the door that I definitely did not spend three hours selecting.

Everything is ready. Salt room pristine, the walls glittering with embedded crystals that took me two full days to arrange. Treatment spaces organized with geometric precision. The air smells of sage and lavender and desperate, terrified hope.

Three weeks of preparation, stacked on top of the months it took just to feel steady enough to try.

This is it. Today it’s real—not the quiet, half-open version I’ve been running since I got here, but the actual thing. The fresh start I’ve been chasing across the magical world for two years.

Mistvale will be different.

It has to be.

The mist curling past my windows seems to agree, soft and golden in the morning light. In the months since I crossed Mistvale’s border, I’ve learned that the mist has moods. Everyone talks about it like it’s sentient—temperamental, opinionated, occasionally dramatic.

Right now, it feels welcoming. Warm. The kind of acceptance I’ve been chasing my entire life.

Don’t get attached.

You said that about the last four places too.

I ignore it. I’m excellent at ignoring practical thoughts. It’s one of my finest qualities, right up there with accidentally creating weather events during emotional moments and talking to inanimate objects.

The bell above my door chimes, and I spin around with my most professional smile already plastered in place.

And immediately encounter the oldest woman I’ve ever seen, carrying a covered dish and wearing an expression of profound amusement.

“You’re the weather witch.” She doesn’t phrase it as a question. Just walks past me into my studio like she owns the place, sets her dish on my reception desk, and turns those too-bright eyes on me with unsettling directness. “Grandmother Peach. I brought cobbler.”

“I—thank you?” The scent hits me—warm peaches, brown sugar, buttery crust. Unfairly good. “I wasn’t expecting customers yet. Or cobbler.”

“I’m not a customer, dear. I’m the matchmaker. Just stopping by to welcome you to the neighborhood.” She pats my arm with a hand that’s warmer than it should be, given her age. “The mist told me you were here. Also, I saw the moving boxes. Mostly the boxes.”

“The matchmaker.” Because that’s clearly the detail to focus on. Not the bit about mist being chatty.

“Mmm. When witches and familiars need finding, I help them find each other.” She studies me with those sharp eyes, and I resist the urge to fidget like a child caught stealing cookies. “You don’t have a familiar.”

“No.” The word comes out flat. Defensive. A sore spot I really don’t want to poke at today of all days. “I don’t.”

“Interesting.”

Silence stretches between us. She stands in my studio, radiating cryptic energy, while I try to figure out if this is a normal Mistvale welcome or some kind of test I’m already failing.

“Is it?” The question escapes before I can stop it.

“Very.” Grandmother Peach smiles, and it’s both warm and unsettling in equal measure. “You have interesting weather, dear. Try not to flood the square.”

Before I can ask what that means—before I can ask any of the dozen questions crowding my tongue—she’s heading for the door. Pausing on the threshold. Looking back with that knowing expression that makes me want to crawl under my reception desk and hide.

“The bear is patient.” She adjusts her shawl. “But not infinitely so. Don’t take too long.”

Then she’s gone, swallowed by the golden mist, leaving me alone with crooked crystals and a peach cobbler and the distinct feeling that I’ve just been warned about a danger I can’t name.

“Right.” I stare at the empty doorway. “That was normal. Totally normal welcome wagon behavior. Nothing ominous at all.”

Thunder rumbles in the distance.

I freeze. Close my eyes. Take a deep breath.

Not mine. Probably not mine. The sky was clear five minutes ago, but that doesn’t mean anything. Weather changes.

Just not usually because of my feelings.

The wind chimes by my door jingle frantically, responding to a breeze that hadn’t been there a moment ago. I run through the grounding exercises I’ve done a thousand times before, the ones that sometimes work and sometimes don’t and never seem to matter when my emotions decide to throw a tantrum.

Earth beneath me. Sky above. I am calm. I am centered. I am not going to create a storm on my opening day.

The thunder fades. The wind settles. The chimes go quiet.

I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding.

See? Fine. Everything is fine. One cryptic old lady isn’t going to ruin this.

The door chimes again.

My first real client.

She’s a nervous-looking witch in her thirties, clutching an appointment card like it’s a life raft and radiating enough anxiety that I can taste it in the back of my throat. Sharp and metallic, like pennies on my tongue.

“Sakura?” She checks my sign, then my face, then the sign again. Her aura is a mess of tangled grays and murky yellows—fear and worry knotted so tightly, I’m surprised she can function. “I’m here for the chakra balancing?”

“Of course! Come in, come in.” I usher her inside with my brightest smile. Welcoming. Professional. Definitely not someone whose emotions manifest as catastrophic weather events. “Let’s get you set up in the treatment room.”

Her name is Millicent. She runs an accounting practice for magical businesses—brownies, mostly, which explains the anxiety. She hasn’t slept properly in three weeks because she’s convinced she miscalculated a brownie clan’s quarterly taxes and they’re going to curse her entire bloodline.

“They’re very particular about numbers.” She twists her hands as I guide her to the massage table in my nicest treatment room—the one with the amethyst clusters and the enchanted window that shows a perpetual sunset.

“Very particular. And they have long memories. Did you know brownies can hold grudges for seven generations? Seven! That’s my children’s children’s children’s children. ”

“I’m sure it’s fine.” I pat the table, encouraging her to lie down. Brownie accounting curses are not in my wheelhouse. “Let’s focus on releasing that tension, okay? Deep breath for me.”

She breathes. A shaky, shallow thing that barely fills her lungs.

I settle my hands above her sternum, feeling for the energy blockages. There—her heart chakra is a disaster, fear and self-doubt knotted so tight, the real her can’t get through. Her throat chakra isn’t much better. Lot of things she’s been holding back.

I can work with this.

The healing energy flows and Millicent sighs, shoulders dropping. That—that’s why I do this.

When I’m working, really working, my magic behaves. Focuses on the task at hand instead of responding to every stray emotion that wanders through my chest.

I am so absorbed in untangling Millicent’s anxiety that I almost miss the pressure shift.

Almost.

Her fear spikes—some stray thought about brownie vengeance, probably, seven generations of curses cascading through her mind—and my own nerves answer before I can stop them. That’s the worst part of this job.

The energy I’m channeling wavers. Fluctuates.

Easy. Stay calm. Ground yourself.

But the ground feels shaky today. Has felt shaky since I walked through Mistvale’s border and the magic here pressed against my skin in a way I’ve never felt. Heavier. More aware. More responsive to every shift in my emotional state.

Millicent is spiraling. I feel it—the cascade of what-ifs tumbling through her mind like dominoes. What if she made an error? What if they find out? What if they come for her in the night with their tiny accounting ledgers and their ancient grudges and their generational curses?

My power surges in response. Reaching for the sky without permission.

No, no, no—

Thunder crashes directly overhead.

Millicent screams and sits bolt upright just as rain begins pelting the glass ceiling with enough force to sound like artillery fire. Water streams down the walls of my beautiful greenhouse studio, obscuring the view of the square, trapping us in a cage of my own making.

“What—” She stares up at the deluge, then at me, then at the tiny lightning bolt that crackles between my fingers before I can shove my hands behind my back. “Did you just—was that—”

“Sometimes storms come up suddenly around here!” My voice pitches too high. Too bright. Too obviously lying. “The weather in Mistvale is very unpredictable! Let me just—”

I breathe. I ground. I do everything I’m supposed to do, and the storm keeps building anyway because my body has apparently decided that matching my client’s anxiety with apocalyptic weather is an appropriate therapeutic response.

The wind chimes outside are screaming. Not jingling—screaming, a discordant shriek of metal on metal that makes my teeth ache.

“I should go.” Millicent scrambles off the table, backing toward the door. “I’ll reschedule when—when the weather clears.”

“Please, let me—”

But she’s gone. Fleeing into the downpour I created, her umbrella whipping inside out before she makes it three steps from my door.

I stand in my beautiful studio with rain hammering the glass and lightning flickering in clouds that weren’t there ten minutes ago, and I feel everything I’ve been holding at bay come crashing down.