18th December (Thursday), past one in the afternoon
I lingered at the table long after everyone else had drifted away. Even Jason, or rather, Joan behind Jason’s borrowed smile. The cafeteria had quieted to that soft, echoing hum that only cos once the crowd has thinned, trays clattering in the distance, shoes squeaking faintly across the tiles. I sat there with my half-empty glass of water, staring through it like it might help see the truth clearer.
I kept replaying everything in my mind. Every conversation, every gesture, every shared look since we first t. Trying to trace back where their influence might have begun. But that kind of manipulation… it’s like fog. You only notice it when you’re already lost inside it.
Trust was never sothing I’d planned to give them anyway. Cooperation, yes—mutual interest, shared risk, overlapping goals. That much was manageable. But trust? That was never part of the deal. Still, sitting there now, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d already given them more than I should have. In words, in silence, in attention, in fucking everything.
I’d been in toxic relationships before. Penrose, for example, but at least he was honest about being the devil. His threats were sharp and visible, his power laid bare like a blade in the open. He never pretended to be anything else, than what was his nature. But Joan… Joan were sothing else entirely.
Either way, stewing in that thought spiral wasn’t going to help. I needed action, sothing tangible.
I pushed away from the table, the chair legs scraping softly against the floor, and stepped out into the cold air. Snow flurries danced around the walkway, the campus muted under the pale gray sky. Pulling my scarf tighter, I took out my phone and dialed Malik’s number.
The line began to ring as I started walking.
“Alexa?”
“That’s , Malik. What’s up, kiddo?” I answered, tucked into the shadow of a nearby tree.
“Can we have that talk you promised earlier?”
“Talk?” I frowned. I couldn’t place what he ant. “…Sure?”
“Could we et in person?” There goes my afternoon painting session, I thought.
“Yeah. Where are you?”
“At Nick’s house.” I called my Spellbook and, a second later, asked it to bring into Lebens’ training hall. “Are you there? I heard a weird noise for a second.”
“I’m not there anymore...” I said, searching through my aura for Malik’s knuckle dusters. I teleported to their location. They were tucked in the pockets of the jacket hanging in the small room Lebens had given him. He stood by the window, phone in hand, looking like a boy half his age.
Malik was four years younger than , but sotis he still felt like a child, raised in a rough neighborhood, hardened by circumstance, yet softened by a grandmother who refused to let him turn cruel. He saw the world in black and white, which made him stubbornly reliable and, at tis, too simple for his own good.
“I’m here now.” I ended the call. Malik jumped, startled.
“Jesus! Good God, you can’t be sneakin’ up like that!” he shouted as he turned. “There should be a noise when you teleport. So kind of warnin’ so people don’t freak out.”
“Nope. There definitely shouldn’t be.” I smiled, pulling a chair from under the desk and sitting. “So, what’s going on, kid?”
He leaned against the wall, hands clasped behind his back, head tilted away, not eting my eyes. He seed smaller that way, like soone trying to hold himself together.
“I wanted to continue our talk,” he said finally. “You said we would, once you had more ti and weren’t in the middle of monster negotiations.”
“Monster negotiations?” I asked. “What do you an?”
“Maybe you phrased it differently. I don’t rember. You ant the Shattered.”
My chest went cold. I was running on fus and, frankly, my mory felt threadbare. “Excuse , Malik, but I’m… I can’t recall exactly what you an.”
He stared at , intensity flaring behind knit brows. “You can’t? We talked after you planted your eye cards, before Nick and Caroline ca back from scoutin’. Before you started, uh… painting dick on the pavent.”
A hollow opened up inside . I searched my mind and found nothing: no mory of that conversation, no trace. Panic and dread rolled through like a sudden chill.
“Are you okay?” Malik asked, dropping to his knees without thinking, looking up at . I hadn’t realized I’d been staring at the floor.
“I don’t rember, Malik. I can’t rember that conversation at all. Walk through it, please. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he said, softening. “If you want, I can show you.”
“Show how?” I asked.
“If you take us to that room, I can access the echo of the event and replay it. I can see it again, and I think I can pull it back for you too, since you were part of it. But we have to go there.”
“Sure,” I said, placing a hand on his shoulder and asking the world to switch places for . The world obliged.
The air folded in on itself, and when it unfolded again, we were standing inside that sa apartnt. The one we’d once used as a hideout near the Solitary Twin. The space was still and dim, the shadows stretched long across the tiles. Malik found another chair and dragged it close, sitting beside with deliberate care.
“Can I hold your hand for that?” he asked quietly, eyes on the floor. The shyness in his voice softened .
“Of course.”
I extended my hand, resting it in his. His palm was broad and warm, roughened by training, yet the way he held was careful, almost reverent.
The mont our skin touched, light spilled out of him. Gold and violet shadowlight, swirling like liquid dawn. It flowed both outward into the room and inward toward , asking permission to enter. I lowered my defenses and let it in.
The world shifted.
I saw myself walking into this very room, my past self, my movents confident and sharp. Malik sat by the couch, absentmindedly rubbing Loki’s belly. When he turned toward , his face fell, eyes lowering.
“Malik sad?” Loki’s voice rang out in that uncanny, cheerful tone of hers.
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“No, no!” he blurted, too quickly. I moved toward the window in the vision, watching the city’s reflected skyline through the blinds. He took that mont to steal a glance back at , shoulders slumped. “…Maybe a little,” he admitted at last.
I turned then, my past self’s tone steady, almost commanding. “You’re afraid it won’t work?”
He looked up. “It’s good to hear that, but I’m scared sothin’ will go terribly wrong.”
“I can teleport away if it does. That’s why it has to be .” The conviction in my own voice startled now, hearing it from the outside.
“I know,” he said, “but I also know how intense you can be. That’s why I’m afraid.”
“You’re afraid you’ll be stuck here if I die?”
“No.” He hesitated, hands tightening around Loki’s fur. “I think we’d manage to get out, sooner or later. With Nick and Caroline’s help. I’m afraid of losin’ you.”
The way he said it, quiet but raw, hit like a blade in soft flesh.
“Oh, Malik…” My past self softened but kept her distance. “What you’re feeling isn’t love. It’s attraction. You don’t know well enough for it to be more than that.”
He looked up sharply. “How… how did you know?”
“Just a guess,” I said in the echo, “based on your behavior.”
“Yeah,” he admitted after a pause, his voice cracking. “I love you. From the first ti we t, I knew it. And it was clear when I saw your face, Al—”
My past self reacted instantly, covering his mouth with her hand. He nearly stumbled back.
“Our golden, four-legged friend doesn’t need to hear everything, right?” she said, eyes flicking toward Loki.
“Loki likes love!” the dog barked happily, wagging her tail.
I could almost laugh at the absurdity if it didn’t ache so much to witness.
I watched myself wait, patient, until Malik realized what had just slipped out. Only then did I lower my hand.
“—when I saw your face, Jess…” he finished laly, gaze dropping again.
“Unfortunately, Malik,” I said gently but firmly, “I don’t feel the sa way. Hell, I didn’t even feel that way about Jason and look where that got us. So take this as a lesson. It’s just a crush. You’re young, full of hormones, and apparently I’m wearing a far too flattering suit for all of this. Oh, Reality…”
Through the bond, I saw it then, Nick and Caroline approaching, their auras brushing against mine even in the mory.
“The gang’s on their way, boy. I’m sorry about this,” I told him, pointing at the space between us, a silent barrier of reason.
“Can we talk about it more? Later?” he asked, voice small.
“Maybe once we’re not in the middle of negotiating with walking nightmares, okay?”
“Sure,” he murmured, sounding like a scolded puppy, and turned toward the window, staring out at the city beyond.
The vision dimd, fading back into the present.
Malik’s hand was still in mine.
And with that touch, the echo of another mory rose, Liora’s vision, the one he’d shown when he first stepped into my soul as living shadowlight: a man seeing the love of his life for the first ti. I had offered a mory to him then, to make him mine, and he chose that one? Of all the fragnts of who I was, he reached for that spark, the first sight of love.
He sought sothing in that mirrored his own creation.
At least now, I knew it wasn’t anything more vital I’d lost, just a mory of longing dressed as revelation. I could have spent my whole life haunted by the idea of sothing irreplaceable slipping away, never knowing it was simply this.
I withdrew my hand and looked at him. His eyes searched my face, hopeful and unguarded.
“You think it’s love,” I said softly. “And I won’t deny that it feels like it. But what I said then still stands. I don’t love you, Malik, and—”
“Maybe you will one day?” he cut in, desperate hope flickering behind his words. “If we just spend more ti together.”
“More than likely,” I answered, voice steady, “you’ll grow to resent .”
“I don’t think so.”
I sighed and folded my arms, not unkindly. “Okay. Listen to , Malik. What you’re feeling, it’s real in its way, but it’s not love. Love needs ti. It grows when you truly know soone, when you’ve seen their beauty and their failings and still choose them. We haven’t had that ti. You don’t know truly yet.”
But his gaze didn’t waver. “You’re wrong. I’ve seen you, the real you. Curious beyond reason when you ran into the voidlings. Fearless when you saved my grams. Loyal when you ca back for Nick and . And when you ran headlong to rescue Jason, a man you didn’t love but swore to bring ho. I saw the nature of your heart, Alexa.”
Nature.
The word itself was a trigger, a thread leading back to Joan, to the Shattered, to unanswered question humming under my skin.
I had promised Malik in that mory that I’d bring Jason back, no matter what. I felt that conviction then. Pure, selfless and absolute, and yet, when I finally faced the Shattered, it wasn’t devotion or rcy that guided . It was the cold arithtic of my transactional nature.
And it had won.
Easily.
Without much of a fight.
Joan were the Archmage of Nature, weren’t they? Masters of growth, of balance, of adaptation. The Shattered could shift appearances, bend bodies and mories, but what if Joan’s real gift was subtler. Changing and influencing the nature of things and people alike? The essence. The core. If they saw human nature as just another ecosystem to tend or exploit, then influencing would be as simple as redirecting a river or coaxing a vine to grow toward the light.
Maybe that’s what they’d done all along. Reshaping themselves to match whatever I needed to see, whatever I wanted to hear. A mirror made of empathy and deception. Or maybe… maybe I was just being paranoid.
I looked back at Malik’s face. What he’d said was beautiful, earnest and raw, and I could feel the sincerity radiating from him. It moved , even if I couldn’t et it in kind. The thought of the disappointnt that would follow my continued rejection twisted my stomach, but I couldn’t lie to him, couldn’t lead him by the nose with half-truths. He deserved better than that. Malik was a good young man, and how I handled this mont would shape how he thought about love and about won for years to co.
“Thank you,” I said softly. “Your words helped a lot, Malik. Not just now, but in the past few days too. The way you see … that’s how I wish I really was.”
“You are,” he said, quick and fierce, as if willing it to be true.
“I’m glad you shared your feelings with ,” I continued gently. “But I hope you understand that, with everything going on around and after what happened with my last relationship, I can’t start anything new right now. Okay?”
I gave him an excuse I knew he’d latch onto. The idea of forces beyond our control, the kind of narrative that would make sense to his heart still wired for heroes’ honor.
“Yes, I know,” he said after a pause. His shoulders straightened as he clasped his fists together. “I should focus on improvin’ myself too.” Then he looked up at again, eyes clear, expression steady for the first ti since this conversation began. “You’ll always have a place in my heart, Alexa.”
I smiled for him, making sure it looked genuine.
“You too, Malik,” I said quietly. “And I’ll do my best to make you proud for choosing .”
And I ant it. Both parts of it. I wanted to be better, not because I needed redemption, but because this kid’s unwavering faith sohow demanded it of . In that way, he’d carved out a place in my heart after all. Just not the one he hoped for.
“Can we go back to Earth now? This place gives creeps.”
“Of course,” I said with a faint smile. “Though before that, there’s soone I’d like you to et, if you don’t mind.”
With a flick of my will, the world folded and shifted. A blink later, we were back inside Lebens’ hall. At the sa ti, I reached through my bond and pulled Liora beside us. The three of us appeared almost simultaneously, the air shimring with faint traces of golden-green light.
Malik jumped back, instinctively raising his hands into a fighting stance. “What the hell is that?!”
I lifted both palms, gesturing for him to calm down. “Relax, Malik. That’s Liora. My Lóng. We’re soulbound to each other. This little rascal is actually the reason I didn’t rember your love confession.” I shot the dragon a look.
Liora’s horns flared with green shadowlight, but his scales dimd to a soft grey as he coiled in midair.
[He is sad about it.]
“Don’t be sad,” I said gently. “I knew I’d have to pay with a mory, and I agreed. I just didn’t know which one you’d take. It worked out in the end, because Malik here was kind enough to remind what I’d lost.”
Malik’s eyes widened. “You gave up a mory for it?”
“Yes. That was the price.” I smiled faintly. “And for the record, it’s a he.”
“You’re so cool, Lio!” Malik exclaid, the earlier tension dissolving. Liora seed to brighten at that, spinning around the boy in loose, joyful circles. The air shimred in his wake, threads of rainbow shadowlight chasing him like playful ghosts. Malik laughed, trying to turn fast enough to keep up, his grin spreading from ear to ear.
For a mont, it was… peaceful. Watching them—boy and dragon—felt almost normal. A rare pocket of calm in a world that had long forgotten the aning of it.
But my thoughts, traitorous as ever, soon drifted back to Joan.
The Shattered.
The lies wrapped in charm, the truth hidden behind a borrowed face.
They had played , beautifully and effortlessly. And if they could deceive that easily, what else were they capable of?
I exhaled slowly, eyes narrowing. I’d have to free Victor as soon as possible and dig deeper into the Shattered’s nature, their real motives. I couldn’t afford to be caught blind again.
Maybe, in the end, I’d have to take Jason back from them, whether they wanted to let him go or not.
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