Amberine didn't rember consciously choosing to wander. One mont, she was still at that high corridor window, heart caught in a tangle of mories about her father, about Draven, about the children at the orphanage. The next thing she knew, she was walking barefoot across the university grounds, the looming spire behind her receding with each step.
It was nearing twilight. Not the solemn hush of nightti, but that strange, golden hour where the campus's ancient stones seed to reflect every color of a dying sun. The lamps overhead were only half-awake, their mana-charged glow flickering like slow blinks, so the entire scene took on a dreamlike haze. Shadowy corners softened, and the edges of archways and statues blurred gently, as if the world around her were still deciding whether to slip into night or cling to the day.
She'd abandoned her boots a few minutes ago, sowhere near the southern courtyard. They had started to feel confining, a physical reminder of how her life had begun to box her in with endless tasks and unfulfilled goals. Walking in bare feet gave her a small sense of rebellion she didn't realize she craved. The grass felt damp and springy under her toes, and here and there, tiny pulses of leftover enchantnt tickled her soles. Soone, once upon a ti, had enchanted these lawns to hum a pleasant lody with each footstep, but that was long ago. Now, it only gave the faintest static shiver, the final echo of an old spell's last breath.
She stopped to examine a sculpture she passed by. Back in her early first-year, she used to plop down near its base to eat bread rolls and daydream about the "glorious future" she was certain awaited her. The statue itself was of an ancient mage, arms lifted to cradle a spherical constellation array. She rembered trying to emulate that pose, arms trembling, determined to conjure a minuscule orbiting glyph sphere above her head.
Of course, she'd failed. She was only eleven or twelve then, newly admitted, too proud for her own good. She'd tried to brute-force a delicate synergy spell, ignoring every textbook that insisted synergy spells required precise layering, calm mindsets, and patience. Amberine had never been big on patience. Not then, maybe not even now. She huffed at the mory, surprising herself with a little laugh.
Her gaze drifted up to the statue's face. The mage looked serene, eyes cast to the heavens, as though communing with stars. The runes at the statue's base had faded badly. She could barely make out the swirling lines that once labeled each of the cosmic orbits. The entire sculpture felt older sohow, smaller, just like so much of the campus did these days.
"I thought you were enormous," she murmured, reaching out a hand to brush the statue's chipped ankle. Back then, the prospect of joining the rank of fad mages carved in stone had seed both inevitable and exhilarating. Now, she noticed the cracks and the wear that ti had inflicted, and she felt a pang of kinship. She, too, had cracks where illusions and reality t.
With a soft sigh, she wandered onward. The path led her around a rose-hedge that had overgrown into a wild tangle, each blossom half-choked by creeping vines. She marveled at how the caretaker staff must've given up pruning here. Either that, or fewer students road this stretch, so no one cared enough to keep it neat. Her father would have scoffed at the disarray, calling it a sign of laziness. She guessed Draven might have found it a perfect taphor: all that wasted potential in twisted branches because nobody bothered to maintain the structure.
Her father and Draven—they were so different on the surface, yet a single passing thought could link them in her mind. Each demanded standards—too high, she used to think. Yet in her father's eyes, illusions were childish. In Draven's eyes, illusions were just another tool, albeit one requiring mastery. She wasn't sure whose perspective stung more.
A fallen broom, battered and half-lost in the grass, caught her eye. She stepped over it absently, only to spot a pair of underclassn gawking at her bare feet. She resisted the urge to snap at them. Let them think she was eccentric or unhinged. She had no energy to defend her barefoot wanderings. Instead, she lifted her chin and kept going, ignoring the mild embarrassnt crawling at her cheeks.
Then ca the courtyard she rembered—though "lesser courtyard" was probably a more apt na. It once had a song-spell embedded in the mosaic tiles. If you stepped in the right pattern, they'd ring out a snippet of so ancient lody. Now, it just felt lifeless underfoot, the mosaic chipped, dull patches in place of old, vibrant colors. She wondered if so exuberant mage or too-clever student had broken it. Possibly a ltdown from a poorly anchored synergy spell.
She paused. Let out a slow, asured breath. Not the short, irritated huff she used around Elara or Maris when they teased her about her undone assignnts, but a real breath. One that expanded her ribs and forced the tension in her shoulders to ease. She didn't know why she needed that mont of calm so badly, only that it felt essential.
"I used to know these halls like the back of my hand," she said softly, just to test the resonance of her voice in the empty air. Once, she'd prided herself on navigating every secret passage, every hidden nook. She was the curious, rebellious kid, always prying at locked storerooms, trying to glean bits of advanced magic. Now, entire sections of campus had faded from her routine. She realized, with a touch of sadness, that she'd beco an upper-year version of the sa old kind of student she'd once pitied: living on a single direct path from dorm to lecture hall, from library to cafeteria, ignoring the corners that had once sparked her excitent.
She glided through a vine-covered archway she barely recognized: the old entrance to the Practice Garden. The sign overhead was chipped, the letters flaking. She hesitated. mories stirred. This was the place where novices tried their first spells under watchful TAs, a soft landing for mistakes.
Her father had never believed in "soft landings." She'd practiced illusions alone, usually at night, away from his disapproving gaze, forcing Ifrit's fire lineage to remain dormant. She'd stand in an empty courtyard at ho, coaxing illusions out of sheer stubbornness, telling herself illusions were just as worthy as any fla.
A heaviness sank in her chest. She took the final step forward, crossing into the Practice Garden of Echoes. The na was apt. She felt echoes, intangible and gentle, stirring around her ankles like morning mist. The faint hum of half-finished spells clung to the shrubs. If she closed her eyes, she could almost see flickers of old illusions: orbs, phantom animals, flutters of codic illusions that younger students had tried for laughs.
But it wasn't just old illusions. It was her own reflection in these spaces, a ti when she was unstoppable—or so she believed. She bent down, trailing her palm over a half-erased training circle scratched into the dirt. If she pressed her mana lightly, she sensed a faint echo respond: the mory of a summoning attempt, no more than a flicker of residual arcane signature.
Smaller. The garden was smaller than it had been in her mind, a trivial piece of campus overshadowed by newer, bigger training zones. Yet to her, it'd once felt expansive, an entire realm of possibility.nnShe paused by a single orb lying half-buried near a mossy bench. The orb glowed feebly, flickering with instability, as if the remains of a half-hearted practice session had never been dispelled. Amberine laid a hand on it, biting her lip at the faint jolt of mory.
Years back, she'd done exactly this. She'd been maybe eleven, fresh to the university, full of brash confidence that illusions were going to be her calling. Everyone else had been busy with elental basics, but she—she wanted illusions. She'd hamred the sa incantation at this orb for hours, sweat streaming down her temples, Ifrit's fire dancing at her core. But illusions demanded subtlety, not raw fla. She'd conjured a tiny, fragile moth made of shimring blue light.
She rembered it so vividly. The wings had quivered, the body lopsided. But it lived for a few seconds. She'd practically cried with joy, feeling that flush of victory. She'd created sothing epheral and lovely, sothing that soared even for a short ti.
Then her father discovered her tinkering with illusions at ho. She could still hear that sneer in his voice.
"Illusions?" he'd scoffed. "Amberine, you have a mana of fire in your blood. Don't waste it on parlor tricks."
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