I feel a tide rising inside me, something bolting upright and alert.
Fusion. Merging your element with another.
A lost art.
A dangerous one.
He steps down from the podium and begins to pace slowly in front of us, hands clasped behind his back. “Over the next term, you will learn to sense the subtle currents of your element, to work with its natural tendencies rather than against them. You will practice projection until it becomes second nature, then experiment with defense and resistance drills. If you excel—and show the discipline and respect required—some of you may glimpse state manipulation before graduation.” He pauses beneath the symbol mobile, which is casting tiny shadows on the ceiling. “Any questions?”
A barrage of hands rise. And I’m grateful to slink back behind my fellow students as they eagerly discuss theory and ask questions specifically related to their elements.
Meanwhile, my mind is racing. Everything he described—the rarity of certain types of magick, the sheer impossibility of what some wielders can do—is going to make this year more complicated than I thought.
Professor Barrows’s words repeat through my mind.
Elemental fusion. A lost art. But perhaps lost for a reason.
I glance down at the sapphire ring on my hand, brushing thegemstone, feeling a vibration against my skin like the rumble of water rushing underground.
Was that what we did?I silently ask the ghost of the boy I once knew.
Wherever he is, he doesn’t answer. But his old warnings echo louder now, each one ringing with a truth I was too young to grasp back then. That there is a kind of magick that shouldn’t exist in me, and yet it does.
Something cold coils inside my chest, creeping into every vein until my whole body feels wrong, like something waiting to wake fully. And I can’t shake the sense that this place, this school, is watching. Waiting. Whispering, like it knows that whatever I am, it isn’t what I’ve been pretending to be.
CHAPTER 13
Beneath every calm surface lies a current strong enough to drown. Mastery is knowing the depths you stir.
—The Art of Water Magick, Vol. I
It isn’t until the second week of school that we finally begin actual lessons in magick.
Aside from our classes in the Logistics building, where we meet as a full cohort, we’re now split into groups for Elemental Mastery I. Water-wielders meet at the Lakehouse, fire at the Caldera, earth at the Garden Grove, and air at what is known by students as the Mountain.
The Lakehouse stands with quiet elegance at the northern edge of Lake Caldrith. Crafted from pale stone and smooth river wood painted a soft eggshell-white, it’s accented with light-blue shutters and trim, mirroring the colors of the sky and the lake beyond it. The architecture is simple and clean—timeless and calming to the eye. Two stories high with a pitched roofthat slopes down gracefully, it has wide-set windows that line both floors, letting in an endless view of the lake.
A large open deck extends from the rear of the house, the cedar planks jutting out over the water, the wood gently weathered by decades of mist and rain. It too offers uninterrupted views of the ever-changing water.
At first glance, it is the perfect image of calmness and serenity. But as I step closer, I canfeelthe power under its stillness. Water, after all, can drown, carve stone, and pull entire ships under without warning.
In the courtyard stands a fountain carved from pale moonstone that glitters faintly in the afternoon sun. The base is a wide, round pool, its edges wrapped in flowering vines. Set into the stone is a brass plaque, worn at the edges as if countless fingers have traced it for comfort. The inscription is simple, but it lands in me like something spoken aloud:
A tide-child is never lost. Return to the beginning—to wonder—and you will find your way home.
I look up to the heart of the fountain, where three mermaids rise from a curling wave of sculpted sea foam. Their long tails coil together, forming the base of the sculpture. Each mermaid faces a different direction—a trinity of elemental wisdom. I find myself drawn to them, taking in their expressions, carved so delicately they seem alive somehow. Their lips brush over words I can’t hear but desperately want to know. Whispering of pasts seen and futures unknown.
A bell rings out—low and resonant, like the kind you hear in temple courtyards. It ripples through the air, a single perfect note.
The illusion shatters, and I blink—the fountain is just stone and water again.
I slowly walk past it and into the Lakehouse.
* **
The class isa mix of first- and second-year water elementals. Twenty of us in total.
Professor Ondine Neris is in her late sixties and carries herself with the grace of still, deep water. Long, white hair flows down her back, her pale skin so smooth it looks almost luminous. But it is her eyes that stand out—so light blue they look nearly translucent. It’s almost unnerving. Like she’s not from this world but perhaps lives beneath the surface of the lake itself. She wears a flowing dress of layered blue silk with a simple belt made of rope to give it shape. On her left wrist are two ornate seashell bangles, her only adornment.
