[hr][center][img]https://i.imgur.com/bemGSrE.png[/img][img]https://i.imgur.com/fGCaIL3.png[/img][/center][right][b]Interactions:[/b] 
[code]Cornell Park > Naomi Chen's Store.[/code][/right][hr][hr]

Kari picked Cornell Park because she already knew what it felt like when it was normal.

That mattered now. Normal had become a [i]baseline[/i], not a comfort. She needed somewhere familiar enough that she could tell when the shape of it changed. Cornell Park sat near the edge of town, close enough to the woods that the walking paths always felt a little too willing to disappear into them. In the afternoon, it was full of people pretending nothing had happened. Kids screamed near the swings. Parents talked on benches. Someone jogged past with earbuds in. A dog barked at nothing near the tree line. The town had gone back to moving as if it had never seen bodies hit concrete.

Kari sat on a bench with her notebook open on her lap and her friendship bracelet wound tight around her fingers. She had stopped writing the names of her first spells like they were mysteries. [i]Warning, Boundary Disturbance, and Emotional Thread[/i] were [b]not[/b] easy, but they were hers now. She knew the difference between Warning and anxiety. She could tell when Boundary Disturbance was Cornell reacting instead of her own nerves. Emotional Thread no longer drowned her every time she touched it. Not always, anyway. That was why she was here for something else.

At the top of the page, she had written:

[i][code]Rift Reading?[/code]
[u][code]Fracture Sense?[/code][/u]
[code]Bad names. Fix later.[/code][/i]

Under that:

[b][code]Goal:[/code][/b] [i][code]get information from damaged spaces. Not just “wrong.” What kind of wrong?[/code][/i]

Kari stared at the last sentence for a while, then underlined information twice. White Lux was supposed to be information magic. That sounded clean until she remembered information did not arrive in neat sentences. It came as pressure, timing errors, direction, dread, noise, emotional residue, and half-formed meaning that could be real or could be her brain trying to make sense of trauma. Her spells worked because she had learned how to sort the signal from the mess. This new thing had no sorting system yet.

[color=#eac6ae]“Okay,”[/color] she muttered. [color=#eac6ae]“Baseline first.”[/color]

She closed her eyes and let Warning settle at the edge of her awareness. It did not flare. No half-second lurch. No cause-and-effect skipping. No immediate danger. Good. The barking dog was just a barking dog. The kid shrieking at the slide was playing, not dying. Her own heartbeat was fast but not prophetic. Kari wrote: [i][code]Warning clear. No immediate threat.[/code][/i]

Then she shifted into Boundary Disturbance. That one felt different. Less like checking the air and more like pressing her palm against Cornell’s pulse. The park stayed loud around her, but beneath it, something strained. Not breaking. Not yet. Just pulled too tight in one direction. Her attention slid toward the old drainage tunnel at the far end of the slope, half-hidden by weeds and chipped concrete. The same place she had noticed twice before. The same place everyone else kept ignoring.

Kari wrote: [i][code]Boundary confirms disturbance near tunnel. Stable? Persistent? Not active?[/code][/i]

She tested Emotional Thread next, carefully. She did not reach for [i]everyone.[/i] That was the old mistake. Instead, she found one familiar thread first. Elsa. Warm, distant, distracted, alive. Kari let herself hold it for only three seconds before releasing. Then she tested the people nearby without grabbing onto them. Surface impressions only. A parent’s impatience. A child’s excitement. A jogger’s exhaustion. Nothing like collective panic. Nothing like a crowd sensing danger. Nobody else felt the tunnel.

That made it worse.

[color=#eac6ae]“Of course not,”[/color] Kari whispered.

A boy ran past with a melting ice cream cone, laughing while red syrup dripped down his wrist. For one second, it looked like [i]blood.[/i] Kari blinked, and it was just cherry dip. His mother called after him to slow down.  The dog near the trees started growling.

Kari looked up. The drainage tunnel sat dark at the bottom of the slope. The air around it did not shimmer. No monster crawled out. No rift split open. No red sky appeared on the other side. It was just a tunnel. That was what made it hard. The wrong things never had the decency to look wrong long enough to be studied.

Kari turned to a fresh page.

[b][code]New spell attempt 1:[/code][/b] [i][code]read disturbance, not detect it.[/code][/i]

She inhaled slowly and focused past Boundary Disturbance. Not “where is the wrongness?” She knew [i]where.[/i] The question was different. What did the wrongness know? When did it happen? Did something pass through? Was it opening, closing, waiting? Was there an other side, or was Cornell just folding in on itself?

The moment she pushed, the park noise thinned.

Kari kept her eyes open. That was one of her new rules. Closing her eyes made everything feel more dramatic and less reliable. With her eyes open, she could compare the impression to reality. The tunnel remained still, but her perception caught on its edges. The concrete mouth seemed deeper than it should be. The inside was not black anymore, exactly. It had depth behind the depth, like a hallway drawn over another hallway. Kari wrote without looking down: [i][code]depth distortion. pressure. maybe old opening?[/code][/i]

The pressure sharpened. For half a second, she smelled wet stone, rust, and something hot under it. Her hand tightened around the pen. Then the impression collapsed.

A basketball bounced somewhere behind her.

Once.

[i]Twice.

Three times.[/i]

Then it bounced from inside the tunnel.

Kari went still.

Warning did not flare. That was almost [i]worse.[/i]

The basketball bounced again.

No one else reacted.

Kari forced herself to keep breathing. The kids behind her were still excited. The parents were still bored. The dog was afraid, but dogs got afraid of garbage bags and squirrels. None of that proved anything.

[color=#eac6ae]“Okay. So either that was real, or I’m being fucked with...”[/color]

Her own voice came back from the tunnel.

Okay.

Kari’s fingers went cold.

She wrote: [i][code]voice mimic. unreliable. do not answer.[/code][/i]

Then, under that:

[i][code]Do[/code] [b][code]NOT[/code][/b] [code]answer.[/code][/i]

The pen dragged harder than intended.

The park path beyond the tunnel stretched in the corner of her eye. Kari refused to look directly at it at first, because she already knew what Cornell did when it caught her watching. The path was wrong by maybe twenty feet. No, thirty. No, not distance. [i]Relationship.[/i] The path was taking longer to reach the same place. A road could not procrastinate, but that was the closest phrase her brain had. This was exactly the kind of thing she wanted the new spell to explain.

[i][code]Recent? Maybe.
Used? Maybe.
Direction? Down, but not physically down.
Pressure? Inward. Or outward. Both?
Residue? Fear, but not human.
Color? Red, but not light.
Sound? Breathing. Dragging. Her voice.[/code][/i]

Kari stopped before the impressions could pile higher. Her nose had started bleeding. Not badly. Just one warm line slipping over her lip. She wiped it with the back of her hand and stared at the red smear.

[color=#eac6ae]“... That's a sign I need to take it easy... well, easier...”[/color] she said under her breath.

The swings creaked behind her, she turned this time.

The swings were full of children.

They were moving normally. One kid kicked his legs. Another shouted for her dad to push higher. A third twisted in circles until the chain wound tight. Nothing sat there that should not have been there.

Kari looked down at her notebook. Under her notes, in handwriting close to hers but not exact, a new line had appeared.

[i][color=red][b]... You are asking the wrong side.[/b][/color][/i]

Kari stared at it, but she did not panic. Not fully. No one nearby had noticed her page writing itself. That meant either the phenomenon was selective, internal, or not [i]fully[/i] physical. That was a useful thought.

Kari wrote beneath it: [i][code]Wrong side of what?[/code]
[/i]
The red ink bled through the paper before she finished the question. Not normal bleeding. The letters sank downward, like the page had depth inside it. For a second, Kari could see the words falling through layers of white paper into a dark place below.

Then the page snapped back.

Her written question was gone.

So was the line that had appeared.

Kari’s mouth went dry.

The new spell had not given her information. It had given her a conversation she could not verify, with a thing she could not identify, about a place she did not understand. Borderline useless. Worse than useless, maybe. It was the kind of useless that made her want to keep trying.

That was dangerous.

She shut the notebook.

The moment she did, the park returned at full volume. Kids yelling. Dog barking. Parents talking. Cars passing. A lawnmower starting somewhere down the block. The world resumed its performance without missing a cue. Kari sat there for another ten seconds, notebook closed beneath both hands.

[color=#eac6ae]“Nope.”[/color]

Her voice was flat.

[color=#eac6ae]“Not doing this today....”[/color]

The tunnel said nothing. She packed slowly because moving too fast felt like admitting something had chased her off. Notebook in bag. Pen in front pocket. Bracelet back around her wrist. She checked her phone. 4:42 PM. Then 4:42 PM again. Then 4:43. Good enough.

As she stood, the path to the gate looked longer than it should have.

Kari stopped and stared at it.

[color=#eac6ae]“I can see you doing that.”[/color]

Nothing changed for a second.

Then the path shortened back to normal.

Kari did not write it down.

She left the park without looking toward the tunnel again. Behind her, the dog stopped growling. The swings kept creaking. A woman laughed too loudly near the benches, and everyone else kept being normal because normal was apparently the town’s favorite lie.

Once Kari reached the sidewalk, she realized her hands were still shaking. Her head hurt, her nose felt raw, and her notebook seemed heavier than it should have been. The new spell had no name, no method, no safety limit, and no reliable output. It had told her almost nothing except that the damage near the tunnel could answer back.

Or pretend to.

She wiped at her nose again, checked that no blood remained, and looked down Main Street. The library could wait. She needed water, tissues, and something with sugar before she tried to turn psychic nonsense into notes.

Naomi Chen’s store was only a few blocks away.

Kari adjusted her bag on her shoulder and started walking, keeping to the side of the street where the storefront windows reflected her clearly. After the park, she wanted proof that only one of her was following along. The store looked normal from the outside, which immediately made Kari distrust it.

The front windows were clean enough to reflect the street behind her. Shelves of snacks, cheap phone chargers, household supplies, bottled drinks, and overstocked seasonal decorations crowded the inside. A bell chimed when Kari pushed the door open, too loud in the quiet. The air smelled like plastic packaging, floor cleaner, and old cardboard. Somewhere near the back, a refrigerator hummed with a low mechanical rattle that kept almost becoming a growl whenever Kari stopped paying attention.

Naomi stood behind the counter, sorting receipts with the kind of focus that made everything around her look inefficient by comparison. She did not greet Kari. She only glanced up once, saw her, and went back to her papers.

Naomi felt [i]wrong.[/i]

Not Boundary wrong. Not Cornell wrong. Not rift wrong. Just absent. Kari had gotten used to people carrying emotional noise whether they meant to or not. Irritation, boredom, worry, hunger, grief, impatience. Even strangers had some kind of loose thread around them if Kari brushed close enough. Naomi had [i]nothing.[/i] No emotional direction. No readable pressure. No pull. It was like trying to listen through a wall and realizing the wall was not blocking sound. It was eating it.

Kari stared too long.

Naomi looked up again.

[i]“... Can I help you, young lady?”[/i]

Kari jolted and immediately hated herself for it. [color=#eac6ae]“No. Sorry. I’m just looking.”[/color]

“Then look with your eyes. Not your entire body.”

Kari blinked. [color=#eac6ae]“... What?”[/color]

“You’re standing in the aisle like you’re waiting for the building to tell you something.”

Heat crawled up Kari’s neck as her eyes shifted. [color=#eac6ae]“I’m not doing anything.”[/color]

“... That's usually what people say before they do something.”

Kari pressed her lips together and turned sharply toward the drinks, pretending she had meant to go there the entire time. She grabbed a water bottle from the cooler. The refrigerator rattled again behind the glass, and for half a second, the bottles inside looked too far back, like the shelf extended deeper than the store allowed. Kari shut the cooler door fast.

Naomi noticed.

Of course she noticed.

Kari moved to the tissues next. She picked up a small pack, then put it back, then grabbed it again because her nose still felt raw from the park. Her hands were shaking a little. She tried to hide that by reaching into her bag for her wallet, but her fingers brushed the edge of her notebook instead. The notebook shifted, half-sliding upward.

[i]“... Take your hand out of the bag.”[/i]

Kari froze.

The store went quiet in a way it had not been quiet a second ago. The refrigerator still hummed. The street still moved outside. But the space between them [i]locked.[/i]

Kari slowly pulled her hand free. Empty.

Naomi’s expression did not change. [i]“Open it.”[/i]

[color=#eac6ae]“... [i]Excuse me?[/i]”[/color]

“Your bag. Open it.”

Kari stared at her. [color=#eac6ae]“I didn’t steal anything.”[/color]

“I did not ask what you did. I told you to open the bag.”

Kari’s grip tightened around the water bottle until the plastic crackled. [color=#eac6ae]“You can’t just accuse me because I’m nervous. Everyone's nervous these days.”[/color]

“You walked in, stared at me, stood in my aisle muttering, touched five things, put your hand in your bag, and jumped every time the cooler made noise. Believe me young lady, if I called you nervous, I'd be generous.”

[color=#eac6ae]“... Maybe I’m nervous because you’re talking to me like I’m [i]already[/i] guilty.”[/color]

Naomi’s eyes narrowed. “You probably [i]are[/i] guilty.”

That hit harder than Kari expected. Not because it was true, but because it was so blunt. So certain. After the park, after the tunnel, after her own voice coming back wrong, this was almost worse because it was ordinary. No monster. No magic. Just an adult deciding what Kari was before Kari could explain herself.

[color=#eac6ae]“I just came in for water and tissues.”[/color]

“Then [i][b]pay[/b][/i] for water and tissues.”

[color=#eac6ae]“I was-.”[/color]

“After opening your bag.”

Kari looked toward the windows. A woman passed outside without looking in. A car rolled by. The whole town kept moving past the glass like this was not [i]humiliating[/i], like Kari was not standing in the middle of a convenience store being treated like a thief because she could not stop flinching at things no one else noticed.

She opened the bag.

Notebook. Pens. Wallet. Phone. Gum wrapper. Keys. Nothing else.

Naomi leaned forward slightly, scanning without touching. Her gaze paused on the notebook.

“What is [i]that[/i]?”

[color=#eac6ae]“A notebook.”[/color]

“I know what a notebook is, [i][b]child[/b][/i].”

[color=#eac6ae]“Then why did you ask?”[/color]

Naomi’s mouth flattened.

Kari immediately regretted saying it, but not enough to apologize.

[i]“Open it.”[/i]

[color=#eac6ae]“No.”[/color]

The word came out before she had time to soften it.

Naomi’s eyes sharpened. “No?”

[color=#eac6ae]“[i][b]No.[/b][/i] You wanted to see if I stole from you. I didn’t. My notes are [i][b]not[/b][/i] your business.”[/color]

“They became my business the second you walked into my store.”

[color=#eac6ae]“Owning a store doesn't mean you can boss people around, Ms. Chen.”[/color] Kari narrowed her eyes.

The second she said it, Kari felt something ugly twist in the air between them. Not magic. Not exactly. Just the sudden awareness that she had chosen the worst possible response

Naomi went very still.

Kari swallowed, but she kept her ground. Her heart was beating too fast now, Warning still silent because this was not that kind of danger. This was social danger. Adult danger. [i]Reputation[/i] danger. The kind that did not trip her spells but still made her feel cornered.

Naomi stepped out from behind the counter.

Kari stiffened.

“I have had teenagers steal from this store before you even learned to [i]talk,[/i] young lady,” Naomi said. “They smile. They lie. They cry when caught. They say it was a mistake. They say they were just nervous. Do not stand in my store and tell me what I am allowed to do.”

Kari’s face burned. [color=#eac6ae]“And do not stand there and act like you're more important than you actually are because you own a stupid store!”[/color] Kari spat back. Kari immediately regretted saying it, but not enough to apologize.

That stopped Naomi for half a second.

Kari heard her own breathing. Too loud. Too uneven. She forced the water and tissues onto the counter with more control than she felt.

[color=#eac6ae]“I’m buying these. Then I’m leaving. That's it.”[/color]

Naomi stared at her for a long moment.

Then she returned behind the counter and rang up the items with quick, clipped motions. The total flashed green on the register. Kari paid with cash because she did not want to wait for the card reader. Naomi gave her the change without touching her hand.

For one second, Kari almost said something else. Something about Cornell. About how everyone was pretending. About how maybe Naomi of all people should know what it looked like when a place was rotting under clean floors and organized shelves.

Instead, she took the bag.

Naomi spoke before she reached the door.

“Next time, leave the bag at the counter, young lady.”

Kari turned back.

Her throat felt tight. Her hands still shook. The blankness around Naomi remained absolute, unreadable, infuriating.

[color=#eac6ae]“There won't be a next time, because I’ll just go somewhere else.”[/color]

Before Naomi could get out another word, Kari was out of the store. The loud ring of the bell ringing was the last Kari heard of Naomi's store.

Outside, Kari walked half a block before stopping beside an empty storefront. She pressed the heel of her hand against her eye and breathed through the sting in her throat. She would not cry because Naomi Chen was rude. She would not cry because a store owner thought she was stealing. She would not cry because for one horrifying second, being unreadable had felt more frightening than the tunnel speaking back.

She pulled the notebook out just enough to check the cover.

Still there.

Still hers.

No new writing.

Good.

Kari shoved it back into her bag and looked toward the library at the end of the street. Her headache had not gone away. The water helped a little. The sugar could wait. The embarrassment would have to wait too.

She needed context.

If the park could answer back, if Naomi could vanish from her senses while standing right in front of her, if Cornell could stretch roads and then pretend it had done nothing, then Kari needed more than practice.

She needed records.

She started walking toward the library, keeping her reflection in the storefront windows beside her the whole way.

[hr][center][img]https://i.imgur.com/bemGSrE.png[/img][img]https://i.imgur.com/fGCaIL3.png[/img]
[img]https://img.roleplayerguild.com/prod/users/019cb167-a9e2-77e8-a0a3-555f04118e32.webp[/img][img]https://img.roleplayerguild.com/prod/users/019c691d-d580-726b-b8c2-c4d4d9b6d5ce.webp[/img][/center][right][b]Interactions:[/b] None. 
[code]The Library.[/code][/right][hr][hr]

It was thirty minutes past six in the afternoon when Tommy gave up on the second book on the subject I of witchcraft and the occult. He sat it off to the side, on top of the first one. The first one had held his attention for longer, a book about a variety of demons that were said to be conjured up on certain days of the year. But that wasn’t of much use to him. The second was about what the term “witchcraft” actually meant, and skimming bits of various chapters yielded nothing practical either. It was a small wonder that these books were found in the back corner where few went, and not up front where most people actually read around relatively comfortable tables. He sighed and leaned back, pulling out a notepad and a pen from his jacket.

[i]
Ancestors- Talk to them?

Tyler- Teleports around. Has to trade places with something.
Vicky- Smacks things with a magic bat. ??
Me- Make things that thin, order them around.

[s]Try to do Tyler’s thing. Throw a card.[/s] Didn’t work
[s]Witchcraft?[/s] Nope.
[/i]

He sighed. Tommy didn’t have much to go off of. Could he fill another card with something that understood this stuff better? Did it even work like that?

There were monsters running around in the damn streets, what did anything even work like?

He turned around in his chair and stood up, going for a third try with a third book.

[hr]

Kari nearly misses him at first. The occult section was tucked away in the back of the library, a place most students avoided. In recent days, Kari saw why those shelves no longer felt right. Not haunted or magical, but heavier with possibility. Her eyes lingered on the abandoned books beside him. Demons, witchcraft, occult history. Her chest tightened. She knew someone else was watching, too. Tommy looked exhausted in that [i]specific[/i] way like someone who’s stopped sleeping well but still pretends to have things under control. Kari immediately recognized it because she was feeling the same. For a moment, she thought about leaving. Then her eyes caught the notepad: ‘Ancestors — Talk to them?’ ‘Tyler — Teleports around.’ ‘Vicky — Bat.’ Kari froze. The world shifted with that awful little lurch again—the kind she’d noticed since the warehouse. Not a vision, just recognition. Too many threads connecting. 

[color=#eac6ae]“... You were there too.”[/color] It wasn’t really a question. Her voice was quieter than she intended.

Tommy stopped, book in hand. He turned around and looked at her. He didn’t really talk to Kari, but he didn’t really talk to most people. She was usually pretty quiet from what he understood, not quite in the social periphery he knew.

She was there. Everyone was.

[color=a79500]”Yeah. Last time I accept an invitation to a party,”[/color] He snarked, deadpan. [color=a79500]”Almost died, and now-“[/color] He dropped his half-assed notes onto the table.

[color=a79500]”Now Cornell’s on fire.”[/color]

[color=#eac6ae]”It might be a lil more than on fire at this point.”[/color]
Kari sighed-then stopped herself. Hesitantly glancing at the door, before the question quietly left her lips, [color=#eac6ae]”May I have this seat?”[/color]

[color=a79500]”Yeah, sure.”[/color] He took a different one, sitting back down with a book titled [i]Fairies and Folklore: 800 Years of Myth.[/i] [color=a79500]”I’m not convinced anyone else has been back here since the Cold War, everything’s so old. Since when did people read stuff like this until now?”[/color]

[color=#eac6ae]”It's Cornell, half the city is illiterate”[/color] Kari deviously snorted, before she glanced at the book then up at Tommy, [color=#eac6ae]”Question, have you seen anything in these books about something called ‘The Owl’, or something called ‘Observation?”[/color]

As she asked, a smile crept on her face but she fought it down. [color=#eac6ae]”... Or White Lux.”[/color]

[color=a79500]”Nope. Not unless there’s a dictionary back here. You find anything about a lion? Or people who make monsters?”[/color] He asked. [color=a79500]”Because I’ve got basically nothing.”[/color]

Kari paused for a moment where the silence was louder than any word. “Why do you ask that?”

[color=a79500]”When I got magicked, or Kindled, whatever it’s called, I saw people who could make monsters. I can do it too, but they just left me to figure most of it out. Magic is real, they said, then they left in a hurry.”[/color]

He shoved the book aside and withdrew his deck of cards. They felt different in his hand ever since. Tommy opened the top and flicked the flat end with his finger, causing a card to jump up.

Then his woven coyote creature he called the Watcher appeared, curled up at his feet half-asleep.

[color=a79500]”Abracadabra.”[/color]

Kari stared at the creature a second too long. Not the card trick but the creature itself. The way it breathes against the floor… Her stomach dropped. 

[color=#eac6ae]”... Okay,”[/color] Kari couldn't help but laugh. [color=#eac6ae]”So we are doing THIS now.”[/color]

She laughed again… Thin and nervous. Her gaze flicked between Tommy, the creature, and his deck of cards. 

[color=#eac6ae]“My ancestors basically told me I’m supposed to watch people. Protect them. Figure things out before they happen.”[/color]
A pause.

[color=#eac6ae]“Which feels like a really unfair thing to dump on someone before disappearing, by the way.”[/color]

She glances back down at the creature.

[color=a79500]”That’s more than I got. They just told me to [i]be proud[/i] and that I’d know what to do. And I damn well don’t, so I’m just grasping. For whatever looks magic. And this?”[/color] He gestured at the books. [color=a79500]”Not much better so far.”[/color]

Kari let out another quiet laugh, though this one sounded more tired than amused. Her fingers drummed nervously against the table before stopping altogether.

[color=#eac6ae]“Yeah, mine acted like they were dropping off a group project before class started.”[/color]
A pause.

[color=#eac6ae]” But, I don't think we are going to find the answers in normal occult stuff.[/color]

[color=a79500]”I don’t know where else to look.”[/color] He leaned back in his chair. [color=a79500]”Doubt anyone else does, either. I’d [i]like[/i] to, maybe get to figuring out what got done to Cornell while I’m at it. But… Unless there’s a demon named Stolas going around planting magic trees, then yeah, these books aren’t working for me.”[/color]

Kari stayed quiet for a second, eyes lowering toward the books scattered across the table.

[color=#eac6ae]“... What if we’re looking in the wrong Cornell?”[/color]

The words left her before she fully thought them through.

She immediately rubbed at her forehead.

[color=#eac6ae]“Okay, that sounds insane but hear me out.”[/color]

A nervous laugh escaped her.

[color=#eac6ae]“But ever since the warehouse, things keep feeling…”[/color] She searched for the right word. [color=#eac6ae]“Off. Like parts of the city don’t fully match anymore.”[/color]

Her gaze flicked briefly toward the shelves around them.

[color=#eac6ae]“And the monster wasn’t [i]'normal'.[/i] None of this is normal. So maybe the answers aren’t either.”[/color]

A pause.

[color=#eac6ae]“Maybe there are places overlapping ours. Other versions of Cornell. I don’t know.”[/color]
She slumped back slightly in her chair.

[color=#eac6ae]“I just know these books feel…”[/color] Kari gestured vaguely at the occult section. 

[color=#eac6ae]“Too small for whatever’s happening.”[/color]

Tommy blinked.

[color=a79500]”...I’m not sure I know what “normal” means. Not anymore, whatever happened, it happened for a reason. So- So maybe you’re right. I don’t know how you could be, or what that means, or how the [i]fuck[/i] there’s more than one Cornell.”[/color]

They didn’t know this stuff existed, and now they were literal wizards. What else did they not know? Or how much digging they had to do?

[color=a79500]”I think there’s an explanation [i]somewhere.[/i] I’ll take any answer right now, your guess is as good as mine.”[/color] He chose to run with it. [color=a79500]”If there was another Cornell, or two, or three, and we’re in the wrong one, which one’s the right one?”[/color]

Kari stared at him for a second.

Then she laughed.

Not a normal laugh either. short at first, then spiraling into something thin, exhausted, and genuinely neurotic. She covered part of her face with one hand like that might somehow stop it.

[color=#eac6ae]“Oh my God.”[/color]

Another laugh escaped her.

[color=#eac6ae]“See, this is exactly the kind of bullshit that would’ve gotten someone institutionalized like two weeks ago.”[/color]

She shook her head quickly, trying to regain composure, but the smile stayed strained.

[color=#eac6ae]“How do we even know this is our Cornell?”[/color]

A beat.

[color=#eac6ae]“Like seriously how would we know? What if we’ve already crossed into something else and just didn’t notice?”[/color]

[color=a79500]”Fffffuck if I know?”[/color] He threw his hands up. [color=a79500]”Tyler’s acting like a sociopath all of a sudden, Vicky’s got a magic bat, I can make [i]that thing.[/i] Dead people are talking to us, oh, and now people are pretending that party didn’t happen. After people got killed.”[/color]

He crossed his arms and stared up at the ceiling. [color=a79500]”I got nothing for any of those, don’t get me started on [i]that.[/i] I mean, it’s not like we can ask those dead people to give us more answers, can we? Gotta do something, though. Maybe- Huh. Maybe…”[/color]

An idea came to him.

[color=a79500]”Hang on. What can you do? What magic did you actually get?”[/color]

[color=#eac6ae]”My ancestors told me that I have ‘White Lux’,”[/color] Kari shrugged. 

[color=#eac6ae]”Information magic. I was told I had to find an owl- No THE Owl. To learn the family spell.”[/color]

She sighed.

[color=#eac6ae]”I’ve figured out pieces of it, but not the big one.”[/color]

Well, that was ominous.

[color=a79500]”Information. Okay. We need a lot of that. I’ve got three of these monsters. One’s a bird with razors for wings and the other carries things. I can make more, I think…”[/color] Without thinking, he thumped the bottom end of his cards against the table. The whole stack rose up, and he pulled them out. They glittered under the lights as if they were coated in foil.

[color=a79500]”Each one’s got a piece of me, kind of. I bled for one of them. I think I can make more, and stick each one in these cards. So, maybe you’ve got options? What if you learned how to follow where one of them went, that way, we didn’t have to risk our necks? Or… Maybe you make something too? Like- I dunno, a crystal ball, just out of thin air. Then I take that and make another monster out of it and it beams information to one of us.”[/color]

His fingers began to move, and the top card was suddenly spinning between them like a coin.

Kari watched the card spin between his fingers, her expression slowly shifting from overwhelmed to intensely focused.

[color=#eac6ae]“Okay, wait. If each one has a piece of you in it, then they’re connected, right? Because my magic isn’t about making things. It’s about perception. Following connections.[/color]

The words came out faster now, thoughts tripping over each other.

[color=#eac6ae]“So maybe I don’t need a crystal ball. Maybe I just need…”[/color] She gestured vaguely at the spinning card. [color=#eac6ae]“An anchor.”[/color]

A pause.

[color=#eac6ae]“If your creatures can move around independently, then maybe I could eventually learn to see through one.”[/color]

[color=a79500][i]”Now[/i] you’re onto something. That one there, he watches things. I made him to keep an eye out for things and- It feels like hell, but I feel it when he sounds the alarm. So I could make another one, maybe something that’s smaller or faster.”[/color]

Watcher yawned on the ground, and sniffed at Kari.

[color=a79500]”Maybe we make it with both your magic and mine so it’s easier on you. Then send it out to look around.”[/color]

[color=#eac6ae]”Sounds like a plan,”[/color] Kari laughed. [color=#eac6ae]”Shall we begin?”[/color]

[hr]

It was remarkable how little attention the two received. In that back corner of the library, against the wall where books had last been touched before a generation ago, one could forget they had ever even walked in. Tommy had arranged the books off to the side in an organized stack and summoned Porter for a brief moment to store his jacket away.

His small menagerie of beasts lay dormant within the deck. He chose to use the Jack of Diamonds for this experiment he was undertaking with Kari. With the table clear and the card face-up between them, he took to pushing Gold Lux into it. That took some time, mostly because he was beginning to notice that it was harder to build a creature without a reference; Raptor’s was his own blood, Watcher’s was wood and glass, and Porter was based on a backpack. 

There was a lattice structure made of smoke hovering above the card, not unlike a hologram. An orb of some kind, with four diamond-shaped eyes in each direction.

[color=a79500]”This is harder when there’s nothing solid to go off of,”[/color] He finally spoke. 
[color=a79500]”I don’t really know how to touch or chip away at [i]magic,[/i] but this’ll do. How’s yours looking?”[/color]

Kari didn’t answer immediately.

She was staring at the construct above the card with painful concentration, elbows on the table and fingers pressed tightly against her temples. Every few seconds her eyes unfocused slightly, like she was trying to look [i]through[/i] it instead of at it.

[color=#eac6ae]“Bad.”[/color]

A short, frustrated laugh escaped her.

[color=#eac6ae]“I think I’m trying too hard.”[/color]

The lights above them flickered faintly.

Kari’s gaze snapped back toward the floating orb.

[color=#eac6ae]“Your magic feels…”[/color] She hesitated. [color=#eac6ae]“Loud. Not literally loud, just...”[/color]

Her hand gestured vaguely in the air.

[color=#eac6ae]“Structured. Like there’s layers inside it.”[/color]

[color=a79500]”I...”[/color] His face scrunched for a moment. [color=a79500]”Maybe. There’s the magic, and there’s the part of me that it gets. And there’s what I’m turning it into. I don’t understand much of it myself.”[/color]

He left the unfinished thing there and sat a hand palm-up on the table. Thin trails of gold smoke rose off his fingers. The raw stuff. [color=a79500]”Maybe try this?”[/color]

Kari stared at the smoke curling from his hand with immediate suspicion.

[color=#eac6ae]“This feels like a terrible idea.”[/color]

Despite saying that, she leaned forward anyway.

Carefully, Kari held her own hand just above his palm. Not touching. The moment the gold smoke brushed against her fingers, her breath caught sharply.

For a split second, Kari could [i]feel[/i] the shape of it. Tommy’s magic wasn’t random at all. It branched outward in layered threads, all leading back toward him like nerves attached to a central body. The unfinished construct above the card flickered in her vision alongside it, suddenly clearer than before.
Then the sensation hit too hard.

Kari jerked back immediately, nearly knocking her chair over.

[color=#eac6ae]“Jesus Christ on a cro-”[/color]

Her hand flew to her forehead.

[color=#eac6ae]“Okay, okay, I saw something.”[/color]

A nervous laugh escaped her as she stared back at the smoke.

[color=#eac6ae]“I think your monsters are all still connected to you.”[/color]

A pause.

[color=#eac6ae]“Like they’re extensions instead of separate things.”[/color]

[color=a79500]”…Think so?”[/color] He sounded worried, and he really didn’t know what the fuck they were doing here. [color=a79500]”Is that something we can take advantage of?”[/color]

“I think so yeah,” Kari lowered her hand from her forehead. “If they are connected to you then they leave trails. Not physical ones. More like...”

Kari made a vague motion between them.

“... Information. Presence. I don't know yet.”

[color=a79500]”Like you just know they’ve been somewhere?”[/color] He just [i]knew[/i] certain things about the monsters he made. How they were holding up, what amount of strain they could take. It had to be that “Tommyness” in them, because in some small way, they had pieces of what made him Tommy.

[color=a79500]”So… So if they’re connected to me still, maybe now you just stick magic in this thing? Or stick it in the smoke coming off me, and I’ll do it. I think. Honestly, if you don’t know, I sure as hell don’t.”[/color]

Kari stared at the unfinished construct.

Then at Tommy.

Then back at the floating smoke-orb thing.

[color=#eac6ae]“Okay.”[/color]

She lifted one hand slowly, as if approaching a wild animal. The white Lux around her fingers shimmered faintly of a nervous little glow that looked about as confident as she felt
.
[color=#eac6ae]“I’m going to do this [i]veeeeeeeeeeeery[/i] carefully.”[/color]

The construct rotated in place, four diamond-shaped eyes blinking in different directions.
Kari narrowed her four eyes

[color=#eac6ae]“Do not look at me like that.”[/color]

She tried to press the White Lux gently into the center of the construct.

Nothing happened.

She tried again, focusing harder.

Still nothing.

The orb wobbled once, almost offended.

Kari’s face tightened.

[color=#eac6ae]“[i]Rude.[/i]”[/color]

She leaned closer, searching for anything that looked like an anchor point, a seam, an opening, some kind of magical intake valve—anything. Her White Lux slid along the outside of the Gold structure, refusing to sink in.

Then she saw it.

A tiny gap near the bottom of the lattice.
Kari froze.

[color=#eac6ae]“... No, absolutely not.”[/color]

The construct turned slightly.

The gap remained exactly where it was.

Kari stared at it with growing horror.

[color=#eac6ae]“That is not an anchor point. That is a butt.”[/color]

Her White Lux pulsed faintly, like it disagreed.

[color=#eac6ae]“No. Don’t encourage this.”[/color]

Another second passed.

The construct hovered.

The library stayed quiet.

Kari slowly inhaled through her nose.

[color=#eac6ae]“... [i]I hate magic.[/i]”[/color]

Then, with the grim determination of someone committing an unforgivable crime, Kari jabbed two fingers forward and shoved a thin stream of White Lux directly into the bottom of the construct.

The orb spasmed.

[color=#eac6ae]“Oh my God.”[/color] The construct shot six inches upward, spun violently in place, and made a tiny, horrible squeaking noise that absolutely should not have come from something made of smoke and cards. Kari yanked her hand back like she’d touched a hot stove.

[color=#eac6ae]“[b][i]AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH![/i][/b] I didn’t know where else to put it!”[/color]

The White Lux threaded through the construct all at once, lighting the inner lattice like veins under glass. Its four eyes snapped open in perfect unison.
Kari leaned back in her chair, mortified.

[color=#eac6ae]“Okay. So. Good news? I think it worked.”[/color]

She looked at the newly glowing construct, then immediately covered her face with both hands.

[color=#eac6ae]“... I’m [i]never[/i] explaining this to anyone.”[/color]

[color=a79500]”Yeah…”[/color]

Tommy clapped his hands around the creature, and finished its construction. The lines began to fill in, as if a painting were being completed. The empty lines became solid walls, the diamonds turned pearlescent red.

The end result was a glowing orb that could see in all directions, linked to both of them.

[color=a79500]”Me either.”[/color]

It floated back down, and stared at them both with its strange eyes. Tommy felt the odd connection begin to settle in, he felt aware of what [i]exactly[/i] it was looking at.

He tilted his head. [color=a79500]”I’ll call you Balor.”[/color]

[color=#eac6ae]”’Balor’”[/color] Kari parroted, as a catty grin formed on her face. She tried to fight it off. [color=#eac6ae]”You’re going to give our[i] child[/i] a name like that.”[/color] 

There was a beat.

Before Kari erupted into laughter.

Tommy stared back at her. He didn’t see what was funny about it.

[color=a79500]”In one of these books,”[/color] He waved at the stack. [color=a79500]”There’s these things called Fomorian. Big ogre things, and Balor is their king. He’s said to have a magic eye.”[/color]

Of which their “child” had four. The glowing orb floated in place, spinning slowly. Its red diamond eyes blinked at them.

Kari threw her hands up. [color=#eac6ae]”It was just a joke. You don't need to nerd out on me.”[/color] She laughed.

[color=a79500]”I got it,”[/color] He made a [i]snrk[/i] sound. [color=a79500]”Okay, so, it’s alive… Now what?”[/color]

Kari wiped at the corner of her eye, recovering from laughing.

[color=#eac6ae]“Now?”[/color]

She looked at Balor, then at the table, then very deliberately avoided looking at the tiny gap she had violated to make this happen.

[color=#eac6ae]“Now we pretend that was a very professional magical procedure.”[/color]

Balor blinked all four eyes.

Kari’s smile twitched.

[color=#eac6ae]“... Don’t judge me.”[/color]

She leaned forward slowly, trying to focus on the thread of White Lux woven through the construct. It was faint, but there. Not like Tommy’s connection. Where his felt structural, like bones holding the thing together; hers felt thinner, more like a window someone forgot to close.

[color=#eac6ae]“Okay... I think I can feel it.”[/color]

Her voice quieted as her expression shifted into concentration.

[color=#eac6ae]“Balor, go to the end of the aisle.”[/color]

The orb floated in place.

Kari narrowed her eyes.

[color=#eac6ae]“[i]Please?[/i]”[/color]

It drifted forward.

The second it moved, Kari flinched.

For one awful second, she saw the library twice: once from her own seat, and once from Balor’s strange, hovering angle. Shelves stretched differently. Light bent wrong. Tommy’s cards glittered from above. Her own face looked startled and deeply embarrassed.

Kari grabbed the edge of the table.

[color=#eac6ae]“Oh. Okay. That is weird.”[/color]

She blinked hard, forcing herself back into her own eyes.

[color=#eac6ae]“Good news? I can see through him.”[/color]

A pause.

[color=#eac6ae]“Bad news? I hate seeing through him. But… it worked.”[/color]

Balor blinked again from the end of the aisle.

Kari swallowed, a nervous smile creeping back in.

Tommy watched the orb flutter about. [color=a79500]”Maybe shut your eyes when he’s out. Or maybe you can get used to that. Come back here-”[/color] He stuck a hand out, causing Balor to disappear. He re-summoned the construct above its card, so it wouldn’t make Kari vomit from moving.

[color=a79500]”Okay, great. It’s stable. We basically made a drone hooked up to a phone, cool. I guess… Now I just send him flying? Maybe I can see through him too, or something close to it, and just shunt him back into his card when we don’t need him. Usually, I toss one or two of these out and just bring them back that way, instead of making them find me.”[/color]

Kari nodded quickly, though the motion made her stomach twist a little.

[color=#eac6ae]“Yeah. Shutting my eyes is probably smart. I don’t think my brain likes two camera angles at once.”[/color]

She rubbed at the bridge of her nose, then looked back at Balor’s card with a strange mixture of pride and horror.

[color=#eac6ae]“But if you can send him somewhere and bring him back instantly, that’s actually huge.”[/color]

Her voice lowered as the thought settled.

[color=#eac6ae]“We could check places before walking into them. Alleys, empty houses, the warehouse again…”[/color]

The last one came out quieter than the rest.

Kari swallowed and forced herself to keep going.

[color=#eac6ae]“Or places where Cornell feels wrong. If there’s a rift, or something close to one, maybe Balor can get near it without us getting killed.”[/color]

Kari swallowed again. Shifting in her feet.

[color=#eac6ae]“Baby steps.[/color]

[color=a79500]”Yeah. Yeah, we’ll do that. I’ll throw him out and have him look in places. If you need me to pull him back, just say so. Or message me, I’ll write my number down before we go.”[/color]

Tommy pulled his phone out and checked the time. It was getting [i]late.[/i]

[color=a79500]”…Damn. So, I should get going before someone asks what I was up to. How about I send him off and bring him back to me in a bit? See what happens.”[/color]

Kari’s eyes went toward the windows, where the evening outside had already started turning darker than she liked. The library felt safe in that fake way public places did, but the thought of Balor floating through Cornell without either of them nearby made her stomach twist.

[color=#eac6ae]“Okay. But don’t send him too far.”[/color]

She paused, realizing how ridiculous that sounded when talking about a magical eye-drone they had made less than ten minutes ago.

[color=#eac6ae]“Actually, I don’t know what ‘too far’ means yet. So… maybe just somewhere close. Somewhere boring first.”[/color]

Kari looked down at the Jack of Diamonds, her expression caught between worry and reluctant excitement. The White Lux thread inside Balor still felt faintly present, like a tiny open window in the back of her head. She didn’t like it. She also didn’t want to lose it.

[color=#eac6ae]“If it starts feeling wrong, I’ll text you. If I say pull him back, just do it. No questions, no experimenting, no ‘maybe one more second.’”[/color]

Her voice came out firmer than she expected. It surprised her a little, but she didn’t take it back.

She gathered her notebook and pens, then hesitated before writing one more thing at the bottom of the page.

[b][code]Balor — shared sight works. Nauseating. Useful. Dangerous?[/code][/b]

Kari stared at the word dangerous for a second, then underlined it once.

[color=#eac6ae]“This is probably the first smart thing we’ve done since the warehouse.”[/color]

A small, tired smile tugged at her mouth.

[color=#eac6ae]“Which is concerning, because it involved magical butt stuff.”[/color]

She closed the notebook and slipped it into her bag, but her hand stayed on it for a moment.

[color=#eac6ae]“Be careful, okay?”[/color]

The words were soft, but not casual. Not really. Kari glanced once more toward Balor’s card, feeling that thin thread tug at the edge of her awareness.

[color=#eac6ae]“Cornell’s already weird enough without us accidentally making it worse.”[/color]

[color=a79500]”Yeah, I’ll…”[/color] He picked up Balor’s card and stowed it, surprised it even worked. [color=a79500]”I’ll do that. I’m going.  I’ll keep my phone on.”[/color]

Balor followed him out, his eyes taking in everything around him. The way there were less cars than one would expect, even at this hour. The complete lack of people. The wronging tilt of Cornell being so different now. His eyes saw everything the two could see and more.

He drove home quickly.[hr][center][img]https://i.imgur.com/bemGSrE.png[/img][img]https://i.imgur.com/fGCaIL3.png[/img][/center][right][b]Interactions:[/b] 
[code]The Streets of Cornell to the one place she said she wouldn't go.[/code][/right][hr][hr]

The library doors shut behind Kari with a soft mechanical click, and for one second, she stood under the outside lights without moving.

Evening had settled over Cornell too quickly.

That had become one of the town’s smaller cruelties. The sky did not go dark all at once, but it always felt like she had missed a step. One minute there was late afternoon hanging over the rooftops. The next, the streetlights were on, the windows were black, and the spaces between buildings looked deeper than they should have. Kari adjusted the strap of her bag against her shoulder and checked the sidewalk behind her.

Only one shadow followed.

Good.

She hated that she [i]had [/i]to check.

Tommy had already gone, Balor tucked away with him in that Jack of Diamonds card like any of this counted as normal. Kari could still feel the thread faintly, not enough to see through it, not enough to know where it was, but enough that there was a tiny open window somewhere in the back of her head. It made her skull feel drafty. She pulled out her phone before she could talk herself out of it.

Elsa answered on the fourth ring.

“.... Heeeeeeeeeey, what's shakin bacon? You still alive?”

Kari closed her eyes for half a second, facepalming.

[color=#eac6ae]“That is such a bad greeting.”[/color]

“Yeah, well, you answered, so it worked.” Elsa’s voice was low, casual in the way it got when she was trying [i]too[/i] hard to sound casual. “Where are you?”

[color=#eac6ae]“Leaving the library.”[/color]

There was a beat.

[i]“... By [b]yourself?[/b]”[/i]

Kari looked down the street. A car passed too slowly, headlights dragging over the pavement. For a second, the road shone wet even though it had not rained.

[color=#eac6ae]“[i]... Technically.[/i]”[/color]

[i]“Kari.”[/i]

[color=#eac6ae]“I’m alone, yes. I’m walking on Main. I’m not near the woods. I’m not near the warehouse. I'm not near the Steel Mill. I’m not doing anything stupid.”[/color]

“... Sounds like you're near one of the three.”

[color=#eac6ae]“Honestly? I would feel the same way,”[/color] Kari sighed. [color=#eac6ae]”You wouldn't believe this day so far.”[/color]


Elsa was quiet for a beat. Then softer, “What happened?”

Kari started walking because standing still made the street feel like it was waiting for her to make a decision. She kept to the side with the storefront windows, watching her reflection move beside her. Coat, bag, tense shoulders, tired face. [i]Still her.[/i]

[color=#eac6ae]“I practiced earlier.”[/color]

Elsa whispered, “...[i] Magic[/i] practiced?”

[color=#eac6ae]“No, Elsa, clarinet.”[/color] Kari rolled her eyes. [color=#eac6ae]”Of course with magic!”[/color]

“There she is.”

Kari gave a tiny laugh, but it came out thin. [color=#eac6ae]“Sorry.”[/color]

“Don’t be. Be sarcastic. It lets me know you're still you and not possessed by a ghost or something.”

Kari swallowed and passed a closed barbershop. The striped pole outside turned lazily, though the place was dark. Red, white, blue. Red, white, blue. For a second, the red stripe looked [i]too[/i] thick.

She looked away.

[color=#eac6ae]“I went to the park. Cornell Park. I wanted somewhere familiar because I’m starting to realize that’s the only way I can tell [i]what’s[/i] changed.”[/color]

“That is such a terrifying sentence.”

[color[i][/i]=#eac6ae]“I know.”[/color]

“What did you find?”

Kari thought of the drainage tunnel. The basketball bouncing from inside the dark. Her own voice coming back wrong. The notebook swallowing her question.

[color=#eac6ae]“There’s [i]something[/i] near the old runoff tunnel.”[/color]

“Something like a monster?”

[color=#eac6ae]“No. Maybe. I don’t know.”[/color] Kari rubbed at her forehead with two fingers. [color=#eac6ae]“That’s the problem. I can tell when something is wrong now. I can tell when danger is close, when something comes through, when people are emotionally...”[/color]

She hesitated.

“Emotionally what?”

[color=#eac6ae]“[i]Loud.[/i]”[/color]

Elsa did not answer immediately.

Kari kept walking.

[color=#eac6ae]“But that’s not the same as understanding. Warning tells me something is about to slip. Boundary Disturbance tells me Cornell[i] itself [/i]is reacting. Emotional Thread tells me where people are, sort of, and what they’re carrying. But none of that tells me [i]what[/i] is going on.”[/color]

“So you tried to make a new one.”

Kari smiled despite herself. [color=#eac6ae]“I hate that you knew that.”[/color]

“You do this thing where you get scared, then immediately try to make a whole ass system for the thing scaring you.”

[color=#eac6ae]“That is not true.”[/color]

[i]“Kari.”[/i]

There wass a beat.

[color=#eac6ae]“... It's kind of true.”[/color]

“Uh-huh.”

Kari stopped at the corner, waiting for the crosswalk light even though no cars were coming. Across the street, the road stretched past the traffic signal for a second too long. She watched it until it snapped back into place.

[color=#eac6ae]“I tried to read the disturbance [i]itself[/i] instead of just detecting it.”[/color]

“That sounds useful.”

[color=#eac6ae]“It was not.”[/color]

“How not useful?”

[color=#eac6ae]“It gave me fragments. Red. Pressure. [i]Down[/i] but not [i]physically[/i] down. Fear, but not human fear. My voice coming from places my voice should not be.”[/color]

Elsa went quiet.

Kari crossed the street.

[color=#eac6ae]“Then my notebook wrote back.”[/color]

“What?”

[color=#eac6ae]“It wrote, [i]‘You are asking the wrong side.’[/i]”[/color]

[b][i]“Kari.”[/i][/b]

[color=#eac6ae]“[i]... I know.[/i]”[/color]

“No, I need you to understand that I am saying your name in the ‘why are you still walking around alone’ way.”

[color=#eac6ae]“I stopped after that.”[/color]

“You stopped after the haunted notebook started talking to you?”

[color=#eac6ae]“Yes.”[/color]

“I’m [i]sooooooooooooo[/i] proud of you,” There was a silence that stretched on too long. "I'm being sarcastic by the way."

[color=#eac6ae]“That’s fair.”[/color]

Kari passed the alley beside the Riverside hardware store. She did not look down it. She could feel it there, though. Just slightly wrong at the edges, like Cornell had been [i]folded[/i] and [i]un[/i]folded too many times.

Elsa’s voice softened again. “Are you okay?”

Kari almost lied.

She was very good at almost lying now. The sentence rose automatically: [i][color=#eac6ae]I’m fine. I’m just tired. It’s okay. I handled it.[/color][/i]

But the bracelet on her wrist felt tight.

[color=#eac6ae]“[i][b]No[/b][/i].”[/color]

“Okay.”

[color=#eac6ae]“But I’m less confused now.”[/color]

“That sounds like a version of okay.”

[color=#eac6ae]“It’s not okay. It’s just... I think I’m starting to understand how my magic works.”[/color]

“Tell me.”

Kari exhaled slowly.

[color=#eac6ae]“It doesn’t give me answers. It gives me [i]relationships[/i].”[/color]

Elsa said nothing, giving her room.

Kari kept going, faster now because the thought had shape. [color=#eac6ae]“Danger isn’t just danger. It’s a relationship between what is about to happen and what should happen. Boundaries aren’t just lines. They’re agreements. This belongs here. That doesn’t. People aren’t just emotions. They’re connections. Threads. Distance. Pulling away. Coming [i]closer.[/i]”[/color]

The words sounded strange out loud, but not wrong.

[color=#eac6ae]“White Lux is too much because everything is connected to everything else, and I have to figure out which connection matters before something kills us.”[/color]

Elsa breathed out. “Jesus.”

[color=#eac6ae]“Yeah.”[/color]

“So you’re becoming a psychic detective.”

[color=#eac6ae]“Please don’t call me that.”[/color]

“[i]... Magic guidance counselor?[/i]”

[color=#eac6ae]“Worse.”[/color]

[i]“Trauma librarian?”[/i]

Kari laughed once, then covered her mouth because it almost turned into something else. [color=#eac6ae]“That one is kind of close.”[/color]

“Okay. So what did the actual library say?”

[color=#eac6ae]“Normal occult books are useless.”[/color]

“Shocking.”

[color=#eac6ae]“Tommy was there.”[/color]

“The weird guy?”

[color=#eac6ae]“Yeah.”[/color]

“What did you two do?”

Kari winced before answering.

[color=#eac6ae]“We made a magical drone.”[/color]

Silence.

Then Elsa said, very carefully, “You made a what?”

[color=#eac6ae]“A. Magical. Drone.”[/color]

“With the future school shooter?”

[color=#eac6ae]“It was actually a pretty good idea.”[/color]

“Those words are how people die in movies.”

[color=#eac6ae]“It can scout places before we go in.”[/color]

“That is also how people die in movies.”

[color=#eac6ae]“[i]Elsa.[/i]”[/color]

“I’m listening.”

Kari turned onto the next block. The library was behind her now, but she could still feel the shape of it in her head: the old shelves, the table, the stack of useless books, Balor’s four red diamond eyes blinking open.

[color=#eac6ae]“Tommy’s constructs are still connected to him. I can feel the connections. So we made one with some of my White Lux inside it, and now I can sort of see through it if it moves around.”[/color]

“[i]'Sort of.'[/i]”

[color=#eac6ae]“[i][b]Nauseatingly.[/b][/i]”[/color]

“That does not make me feel better, girl.”

[color=#eac6ae]“It shouldn’t.”[/color]

“At least you know [i]that.[/i]” Elsa laughed.

Kari glanced at her reflection in a dark store window. For half a second, her reflection’s mouth was still while she spoke.

She stopped walking.

Elsa caught it immediately. “What?”

Kari stared.

The reflection stared back.

Then it blinked with her.

[color=#eac6ae]“[i]Nothing.[/i]”[/color]

“Kari.”

[color=#eac6ae]“Window was weird.”[/color]

“... You should know not to look in windows after dark”

[color=#eac6ae]“I know.”[/color]

There was a silence.

“[i]I hate this town.[/i]”

[color=#eac6ae]“Yeah, me too.”[/color]

Kari started walking again.

For a little while, neither of them spoke. Elsa stayed on the phone anyway. That helped more than Kari wanted to admit. The simple sound of someone breathing on the other end made Cornell feel less able to swallow the street whole.

Then Elsa said, [i]“... Do you think Isabelle is dead?”[/i]

Kari’s steps slowed.

The question hit clean through everything else. The park. Naomi. Tommy. Balor. The window. All of it fell away, and she was back at the warehouse, seeing Isabelle lifted wrong, seeing that thread yanked out of place.

[color=#eac6ae]“I don’t know.”[/color]

“Do you feel her?”

Kari closed her eyes for one second too long.

She had tried. Quietly. Privately. More than once. Every time, the answer was either nothing or something too tangled to trust. Isabelle had not felt like a normal absence. She had felt interrupted.

[color=#eac6ae]“Not clearly.”[/color]

“That’s not a no.”

[color=#eac6ae]“No.”[/color]

Elsa’s voice dropped. “Kari.”

[color=#eac6ae]“I don’t want to say it means anything.”[/color]

“But?”

Kari swallowed.

[color=#eac6ae]“But when someone is gone, I think there’s [i]supposed[/i] to be an end to the thread.”[/color]

“And Isabelle?”

Kari looked toward the hills beyond Main Street, where the last light sat dirty and low behind the old buildings.

[color=#eac6ae]“Isabelle feels like someone cut the thread and tied it somewhere[b][i] I[/i][/b] can’t reach.”[/color]

Elsa did not answer, and Kari wished she had not said it.

Then her phone buzzed against her cheek.

She pulled it away and looked at the screen.

Kersten.

The text was plain enough that it took a second to become frightening.

[i][code]hey weird question do u know anything about the runoff channels under the east side of the steel mill?[/code][/i]

Kari stopped walking.

Elsa’s voice came through smaller now, tinny against the night air. “Kari?”

Kari stared at the message until the letters stopped looking like letters.

[color=#eac6ae]“No.”[/color]

“What happened?”

Another text came in.

[i][code]camille thinks there’s a way under. not going in far. just looking.[/code][/i]

Kari’s mouth went dry.

[color=#eac6ae]“[i]No no no no no[/i]....”[/color]

“Kari, what happened?”

Kari typed too fast.

[i][code]Do NOT go near them. Leave. Now. I’m serious.[/code][/i]

She sent it.

Then another.

[i][code]Where are you exactly?[/code][/i]

Then another.

[i][code]Kersten answer me[/code][/i]

Elsa’s voice sharpened. [i]“Talk to me.[/i]”

[color=#eac6ae]“Kersten just texted me about the runoff channels under the east side of the steel mill.”[/color]

“The steel mill? [i][b]Why?![/b][/i]”

[color=#eac6ae]“Because apparently everyone in this town is competing to see who can make the worst posssible fucking decision.”[/color]

[i]“Kari.”[/i]

[color=#eac6ae]“They’re there with Camille.”[/color]

[b][i]“Call them.”[/i][/b]

[color=#eac6ae]“I am.”[/color]

Kari hit Kersten’s contact.

It rang.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

Voicemail.

She called again.

Voicemail.

Her stomach pulled tight, but according to Emotional Thread, they were [i]fine.[/i] That did not ease the girl.

Her phone buzzed again.

Not Kersten.

Camille.

[i]A picture.[/i]

Kari opened it.

For half a second, she did not understand what she was seeing. Concrete wall. Rust streaks. A narrow maintenance passage. A line of dark water running along the side.

Except the water was not on the floor.

It clung to the wall in a vertical sheet, crawling upward through cracks in the concrete like it had decided gravity was optional.

Kari’s ears rang.

Elsa said, “Kari?”

Kari did not answer.

The picture shifted in her hand.

Not actually. The image did not move. But her White Lux caught on it anyway, and suddenly the steel mill was there in the back of her skull. Not visually. Structurally. Boundary Disturbance slammed into focus so hard she nearly dropped the phone.

The mill was screaming with [i]wrongness.[/i]

With the feeling of a place being rubbed thin from the inside.

Kari grabbed the side of the empty storefront beside her and bent forward, breathing through her teeth.

Elsa’s voice spiked. “Kari!”

[color=#eac6ae]“[i]I think something came through.[/i]”[/color]

“What?”

Kari tried to answer, but the words tangled. The mill was not close enough for her to feel like this. It should not reach this far. Boundary Disturbance had limits. Everything had limits.

Cornell kept proving that wrong.

[color=#eac6ae]“The mill.”[/color]

“The steel mill?”

[color=#eac6ae]“Something just came through.”[/color]

“Kari, [i][b]what[/b][/i] came through?”

A beat.

[color=#eac6ae]“... [i]I don't know.[/i]”[/color]

She called Kersten again.

No answer.

She called Camille.

He picked up on the second ring.

For one second, there was only breathing.

Too close to the phone.

Too quiet.

[color=#eac6ae]“Camille?”[/color]

Static shifted.

Then a whisper.

[i]“Kari?”[/i]

Relief hit so hard she almost missed the fear under his voice.

[color=#eac6ae]“Camille, where are you?”[/color]

Metal screamed somewhere behind him.

Not struck. Dragged.

The sound ripped through the call, long and awful, like something huge had leaned its weight against a wall that was not supposed to move. She checked Emotional Thread and could only sense [i]fear.[/i]

Camille gasped.

Kari pressed the phone hard against her ear. [color=#eac6ae]“Camille? Camille, listen to me. Get out. Get the fuck out right now.. Where’s Kersten?”[/color]

His breathing hitched.

“Kari-”

Something slammed into metal.

The call cut off.

Kari stood frozen on the sidewalk with the dead phone against her ear. The pull of Emotional-Thread was [i]overwhelming[/i].

Elsa was still on the other line, her voice distant and panicked. “Kari? Kari, answer me. What happened?”

Kari lowered the phone.

For a second, she could feel too much.

Kersten. Maybe. Camille. Maybe. Fear moving wrong. Not behind them. Ahead of them. Like something in the mill knew the shape of their panic before it happened. Like the building had already made room for where they were about to stand.

Kari’s hand shook as she switched back to Elsa.

[color=#eac6ae]“I’ll call you back.”[/color]

[i][b]“Kari-”[/b][/i]

She ended the call before Elsa could sound any more afraid.

For a second, the sidewalk went quiet around her. A traffic light clicked above an empty intersection. A loose sign knocked softly against brick. Somewhere behind her, a car rolled past too slowly, then turned onto a side street and disappeared. Without Elsa’s voice in her ear, the town felt wider. Like every street had opened its mouth at once.

Kari looked[i] east.[/i]

She could not see the steel mill from where she stood, but that did not matter. Everyone in Cornell knew where it was. Even when buildings blocked it, even when the river fog hid it, even when you tried not to think about it, the mill lived at the edge of town like a stain that had soaked too deep to scrub out.

Boundary Disturbance kept pulling at the back of her skull, but Emotional Thread was worse.

It screamed without sound.

Kersten’s fear came in bright, jagged bursts, panicked and disorganized. Camille’s was lower, trapped under shock, like he was trying very hard not to fall apart and failing anyway. Kari could not hear their thoughts, but she could feel the direction of them. East. Down. Inside.

Every step toward the mill made the threads sharper.

Kari tried to breathe through it and failed.

[color=#eac6ae]“This is stupid,”[/color] she whispered.

She kept going anyway.

Kersten still had not answered. Camille’s number would not reconnect. Kari tried both again as she moved, cutting through Main, then behind the hardware store, then down the narrower streets that led toward the industrial side of town. Each call either rang until voicemail or died before the first tone finished. She texted while walking fast enough that her thumb hit the wrong letters twice.

[i][code]Answer me. Leave if you can.[/i][/code]

Then, after staring at the screen for a second too long:

[i][code]Please.[/code][/i]

No response.

Boundary Disturbance kept pulling at the back of her skull. The pressure grew worse with every step. [i]Heavier.[/i] Like the mill was not a building anymore, but a bad direction. Kari crossed an intersection without waiting for the signal. Halfway through, the painted crosswalk lines stretched under her shoes, dragging east like someone had pulled the road thin. She looked down. The white stripes ran too long for a second, then snapped back so suddenly she stumbled.

[color=#eac6ae]“Nope. Keep walking.”[/color]

Her voice sounded steadier than she felt.

Her stomach pulled tight, and Emotional Thread answered so violently she almost dropped the phone.

Kersten.

Camille.

Not words. Not images. Just direction and feeling.

Fear.

Close enough to reach for, far enough to be useless. Their terror pulled east, hard and frantic, like two hooks set under Kari’s ribs. It did not tell her where they were exactly. It did not tell her what had them. It only told her they were scared, they were together or close enough to blur, and their fear was moving wrong.


The service road ahead was mostly dark. Gravel replaced pavement in broken patches. The fence along the mill property leaned inward, rusted chain-link trembling in the wind. Beyond it, the old steel mill rose in pieces: pipes, skeletal catwalks, broken windows, black brick, dead machinery. Most of it was still hidden by distance and bad light, but the shape was there. Too big. Too quiet. Waiting at the end of the road.

Kari’s stomach turned cold.

She was closer than she ever meant to be. That was a lie. She had meant to be this close. She had just not wanted to admit it until the mill was already in front of her.

Her phone rang.

Kari nearly dropped it.

For one awful second, she thought it was Kersten. Or Camille. Or no caller ID. Her hand shook as she looked at the screen.

[b][code]Zakira.[/code][/b]

Kari stared at the name while the ringtone cut through the empty service road. The mill loomed ahead, dark against the last weak strip of sky. Somewhere near the fence, metal clinked softly. Chain-link. A gate. Something loose moving when there was not enough wind to move it.

The phone rang again.

Kari answered.

[color=#eac6ae]“Zakira?”[/color]