' Breathe in.'

'Now breathe out.'

'Now breathe in again...'

Standing in the middle of a crowd, any crowd, was difficult. Standing in the middle of a crowd that included several witches was almost intolerable. But she had been forced to be here, almost threatened. Because Mara Vale wasn't just any witch born, she was a seer of magic. Threadseer they called her. Mostly behind her back when they didn't think she was listening. And seeing the threads of magic and being able to interact with them meant that she was often called upon by those of power to unravel their messages and origins. Nowadays, it made for a halfway decent income.

The trouble with being around a crowd of witches, though, meant that she saw magic almost everywhere. In the merchandise, around the people, trailing through the air. It was enough to give anyone a headache. But more especially her. Mara pinched at the bridge of her nose as yet another magical artifact was being pulled out to put on display in the stall set up across from where she sat. There was a tangle of threads around it, whatever it was. She had to fight off the urge she had to make a bolt for it, just to get a moment of quiet. To help her resist, she took a huge gulp of coffee, the bitter taste distracting her and helping keep her grounded in the chair she had finally sat down in.

The witch coven that dominated the city in which she lived always held a yearly festival to draw in new customers. Spells and services were offered to those who could pay, shows and performances held regularly to keep visitors entertained, and merchandise was being offered everywhere. Mara was always roped into attending by her mother, was always forced to stand, or sit, in a booth that stated in bold colors and wording that she could help those seeking for the unraveling of mysteries. And every year, she always got a killer headache. Especially when the festival drew in a werewolf or Fae. Those were the worst.

Tapping at her leg to the rhythm of a drum beat spilling out of the Bluetooth speaker she was allowed to keep with her, Mara squinted in the opposite direction of the vendor in question, watching a trail of magic looping through the air where one of the floating lanterns had just drifted by. She wondered when she was going to be allowed to take a break. Her thermos of coffee was starting to get dangerously low. And she supposed she ought to have something more to eat rather than just the pretzel sticks she had brought along with her. Picking one of these up absently from the Ziploc they were spilling out of, she quietly munched on it and resisted the urge to sigh. Again.

The festival smelled like smoke, lavender, sugar, and blood. Music drifted through the crowded streets in uneven waves, swallowed beneath the constant noise of merchants barking prices, humans laughing drunkenly around bonfires, and witches bartering over spellwork hidden carefully beneath harmless appearances. Lanterns hung overhead in long winding strands of gold and silver, casting warm light across hundreds of moving bodies packed tightly between tents and crooked wooden stalls.

To most people, it looked beautiful.

To Silas Wren, it looked wounded.

He moved quietly through the festival crowd with his hands buried in the pockets of his dark coat, careful not to brush against anyone as he walked. No one spared him more than a passing glance. Why would they? He looked harmless enough. Soft-spoken. Pleasant-faced. Just another man wandering through the endless spectacle of the Witching Festival with curiosity in his eyes and a careful smile resting naturally across his mouth. A borrowed name helped with that.

Silas Wren.

Small. Forgettable. Unimportant.

Nothing like the name he had been born with. No one here knew what he was. No one here could feel him. That alone should have made him relax. Instead, the deeper he walked into the festival, the tighter something in his chest became, because everywhere he looked, magic was bleeding.

The threads were impossible to ignore here. To normal witches, magic was invisible unless actively summoned. Even those who wielded it could not truly see the tapestry beneath reality itself. They plucked at threads blindly, tearing pieces free to force spells into existence through ritual and sacrifice. But Silas saw all of it. Every strand. Every fracture. Every bruise left behind.

The entire world shimmered with soft flowing currents invisible to everyone around him, magic weaving gently through the air like heatwaves beneath sunlight. Endless silver-blue threads tangled through living things, buildings, soil, breath, heartbeat, moonlight. Normally those threads moved naturally together in seamless harmony.

Here, they recoiled.

A witch passed him carrying enchanted jewelry, and Silas physically winced. The necklace glimmered beautifully beneath the lantern light, but around it the threads looked ruptured, violently snapped apart and stitched together wrong. Magic leaked from the object in bruised bursts of deep violet and sickly blue, staining the air around it like ink spreading through water.

Another booth sold protection pouches. To humans, they looked charming. Small velvet satchels filled with herbs, bones, crystals, dried flowers. To Silas, they looked mutilated. Broken strands twisted violently around each pouch, tied into crude knots that pulsed unevenly against the natural weave of the world. Every item here carried the same marks — ruptures left behind where witches had torn magic apart and forced it into obedience.

And the worst part was that most of them smiled while doing it.

Children ran through the streets carrying charmed lanterns that flickered with fractured remnants of trapped moonlight. Spellcasters sold tarot decks humming with severed threads still twitching weakly beneath their surfaces. Potions glowed in glass bottles like bottled stars while bruises spread invisibly through the weave surrounding them.

The deeper Silas walked into the festival, the thinner the natural magic became. At first the threads had flowed densely around him, vibrant and alive beneath the surface of reality. Now they stretched further apart, retreating and shrinking away from the center of the festival itself like living things pulling back from pain.

Silas swallowed quietly, his jaw tightening.

Everywhere he looked, magic had been broken apart and reshaped into tools, charms, trinkets, weapons. Used. Consumed. Something deep beneath his ribs twisted painfully at the sight. Not anger entirely. Not sadness entirely. Something stranger. Grief, perhaps.

And somewhere behind him, hidden beneath the constant noise of the festival, he felt her.

The moonlit presence that had followed him his entire life stirred softly against the edges of his thoughts. Not words exactly. Never words. More like emotion wrapped carefully inside instinct. Sorrow. Discomfort. The gentle ache of something ancient witnessing its own body carved apart piece by piece.

Silas lowered his eyes briefly.

I know, he thought quietly.

The feeling lingered anyway, a whisper beneath his skin.

By the time he reached the center of the market, the pressure had become unbearable enough that he finally slipped away from the moving crowds and settled onto the edge of a stone fountain tucked between several merchant stalls. From there he simply watched.

Humans wandered the festival blissfully unaware of what surrounded them. Witches bartered proudly over half-destroyed pieces of the weave while supernatural creatures drifted through the crowds like shadows wrapped in skin. Vampires moved elegantly beneath lantern light. Werewolves laughed too loudly near bonfires. Spellcasters traced symbols across wooden tables while selling charms to desperate people willing to pay enough coin.

Silas observed all of it silently.

And then he noticed her.

At first, it was nothing more than the rhythm of movement. A woman seated alone several booths away, fingers tapping lightly against her leg in time with the music lightly pulsing through the speakers at her feed. The motion itself was small, almost absent-minded, but something about her expression caught his attention immediately.

Irritation. No. Discomfort. Not fear. Not overwhelm. Something sharper. The same quiet tension sitting beneath his own skin.

Silas studied her carefully from across the market. She was a witch. He could see the damage magic had left around her just like every other spellcaster here, fractured threads clinging faintly to her skin from years of pulling apart the weave. But unlike the others, the broken magic around her felt thinner somehow. Less invasive. Less violent.

And stranger still, she kept looking around the festival with the exact same subtle discomfort he felt himself, as though the air here bothered her. As though she could feel something wrong beneath all this smiling celebration. For the first time since entering the festival, genuine curiosity flickered across Silas’s face. And without entirely meaning to, he kept watching her.

It was about the time that she had had her dozenth pretzel stick and had absently reached for the end of a ponytail that wasn't there that Mara decided that she had had enough for the moment. Briefly tracing her fingers over the intricately nodded braid that her mother had insisted on weaving her dark hair into at the back of her head, she had just reached for a small sign she could put on the table when she felt like she was being watched. She paused for just a moment before following through with the action and picking up a small wooden plaque that she then propped up on the table in front of her. It said simply: "gone to lunch, be back soon."

Rising from her chair, Mara casually brushed off her pants, straightening her denim jacket that she had slipped on over her lightweight knitted sweater, and used the motion of reaching for her almost empty thermos to look around. She nearly dropped it.

There was a man watching her.

She studied him for a moment out of the corner of her eye as she pulled out her phone to switch off the music, as she reached down and powered off the speakers. There was something strange about him, about the way the threads were circling around him. She had never seen them look so... calm. A faint crease formed between her eyebrows before she smoothed it away in a practiced wiping of her expression. Something about this man made her feel jittery in a way that had nothing to do with the coffee she had consumed. Putting her phone away, she casually put her hands inside her jacket pockets, loosely gripping the silver nail she had stowed away in one of them, and made her way around the table.

Mara tried not to look like she was heading for the stranger, while her steps inevitably took her in that direction. She kept her eyes moving around, as if observing things she passed, but was in reality trying to figure out what she was looking at. For the first time in her life, she wasn't sure. Using the hand that wasn't gripping the nail, she ran her fingers through the space around her head, lightly stroking along some threads of magic that were weaving through the air, trying to get a brief reading from them, but found the magic incredibly unhelpful. She was no more enlightened than if she hadn't touched it in the first place. Sliding her hand back into her pocket, she kept the frustrated look from appearing on her face out of sheer force of will.

Very deliberately, the woman crossed the distance and took a seat next to the stranger on the edge of the fountain. She stuck her feet straight out in front of her, crossing her legs at the ankles. And then she really looked at him. "Who are you," she found herself asking quietly, her dark eyes flickering over his face, the silvery white markings on her temples seeming to intensify for a moment as she did so.