"Illusions?" he'd scoffed. "Amberine, you have a mana of fire in your blood. Don't waste it on parlor tricks."
Amberine drew a long, unsteady breath. That mory of her father—his scorn laced through every word—carried a weight that pressed at her chest, lingering despite the comforting hush of the Practice Garden. Every ti she thought she'd moved on, sothing as innocent as a half-lit orb would drag her right back to that day. Just a moth, one epheral creature of light, but it had embodied everything she'd secretly longed to be. Delicate, yes, yet shining on its own terms. Powerful in a way that didn't involve raw destructive force.
She ran her fingers over the orb's cool surface, recalling how, back then, she'd been so thrilled to succeed that she hadn't noticed how truly fragile her illusions were. Two flutters of those glowing wings, and poof—sparks scattering like dandelion fluff in the wind. She'd never felt such a mix of heartbreak and joy as she did in that mont. When her father sneered, it wasn't just the illusion that dissolved, but a piece of her confidence, too.
She glanced up at the sky, now a canvas of deepening blues. The horizon was still lit with a faint wash of purple. The stars blinked in slowly, timid at first, as if unsure whether night had the courage to fully chase away day. Strange that she'd co this far—barefoot, no less—without a direct plan. Yet each step had felt necessary, a slow peeling away of the illusions she'd worn around her own mories.
Standing here, in the remains of a training garden no one bothered with anymore, she felt her mind rove over the years. She rembered how she used to rush across campus at dawn, skipping breakfast, determined to claim this place before other novices arrived. It had given her a sense of ownership. A place she could fail in private, re-try illusions in secrecy, away from pitying glances. She'd vanish back into the dorms as soon as the TAs showed up, illusions swirling half-finished in her wake. It was her personal rebellion—embracing illusions with every ounce of Ifrit's fire swirling within her veins.
"Illusions are worthless," her father had said. Or sotis, "They're trifles, Amberine, not real magic." She squeezed her eyes shut against the rembered sting of it. Lately, she'd begun to realize that illusions had a gentle power her father could never understand. They could shape comfort, color emotion, and express the intangible. Perhaps they were "frivolous," but so what? Weren't so of the best parts of magic a little frivolous?
Pulling back from the orb, she let her gaze shift across the old practice circles carved into the dirt. Many were nearly invisible now, scuffed by ti and the occasional stray footsteps. A few runic lines stood out like scarred mories: an incomplete summoning diagram, so half-faded illusions of miniature animals that once road these grounds. She smiled at the thought. Younger students of the past had poured their hearts into these lines, only to outgrow them and move on to bigger spells in newer arenas. The epheral nature of it all made her heart ache in a sweet-sad way.
She rubbed her arms, suddenly feeling the evening chill. The day's warmth was seeping away, leaving behind a crisp twilight air that made her skin prickle. Overhead, a few of the campus's floating lamps began to glow, casting gentle, swaying halos of light that elongated the shadows of the surrounding pillars. She turned back to the orb, but her thoughts strayed to the orphanage children—Tamryn especially. If illusions had been her first love, it was for the sa reason Tamryn liked gentle magic: it let you whisper to the world rather than force it.
The mory of that epheral flower she'd just stabilized for so unknown student lingered in her mind. Soone had co here, perhaps a child from the local district, or a shy new student not keen on the official training fields. They'd tried to create beauty, had half-succeeded, then left it behind. She found herself murmuring, "I hope you keep trying," a silent benediction to whoever cast that half-faded attempt.
Her eyes flicked to the southwestern sky. The sun had nearly set, leaving just a faint band of orange light that tinted the old stone walls with gold. In that glint, the garden looked almost alive again, as though it rembered the days when novices bustled here, illusions popping like fireworks, TAs shouting encouragent or exasperated warnings.
"Guess I should go," she mumbled, hands brushing off the last of the dusty chalk from her robes. But her body hesitated. Sothing in her refused to let this mont end. Just a little longer, she thought. She walked to one of the old benches, sank onto its mossy surface, and closed her eyes. For once, she let the swirl of campus noise fade—crickets chirped, a distant echo of laughter from the next courtyard, the faint hum of a floating lamp overhead.
The day she'd conjured that moth returned, unbidden but now less painful. Sure, it ended with her father's condescension, but the conjuring itself had been pure magic—her heart in epheral form. Maybe illusions were epheral, but epheral could be powerful too. A single mont of wonder could imprint a lifeti of inspiration. She realized that no matter how many tis Draven or her father or anyone else criticized illusions, it didn't cheapen what illusions gave her: a sense of intangible possibility.
She inhaled again, deeper this ti, letting the scents of damp grass and old chalk swirl together. If Ifrit's fire had taught her resilience, illusions taught her nuance. She needed both, didn't she? This quiet synergy of fla and phantom was her. That acceptance swelled inside her, an ember of confidence that felt oddly comforting.
A subtle breeze brushed past, stirring the vines overhead. Leaves rustled in a lazy hush, like a lullaby. Amberine felt her own mana flicker along her fingertips. She was tempted to conjure sothing simple—maybe a moth, for old tis' sake. Part of her worried it'd co out crooked as well, that all the scars of the past would mar her illusions. But maybe it wouldn't. Maybe her illusions had grown as she had, shaped by new experiences, refined by heartbreak and small victories at the orphanage.
Instead of conjuring anything, she just rested her hand on her knee, letting the idea simr. Actions speak louder later, she told herself with a lopsided grin. She cast one last glance at the orb, faintly glowing a few paces away, and let a gentle swirl of fla aura pass from her palm into the air—a silent wave goodbye to the mory of what she'd been. It crackled softly, then vanished, leaving only the hush of the garden behind.
She stood, feeling a renewed spark of determination. It was ti to move. The Mirror Room, she suddenly recalled, was only a short walk away. Another relic of the past, a place where illusions were tested in front of reflective surfaces, so students could see their flaws in real ti. She'd avoided it for ages, partly because rumors said it had beco a dusty storage nook, partly because it was tethered to so early illusions fiasco she'd once had with a friend group that no longer existed. But tonight, the idea of revisiting it felt... right.
Stepping back onto the main walkway, she noticed how the campus had changed in these short minutes. Lamps were now fully lit, casting overlapping circles of illumination on the stone paths. A pair of robed figures drifted by, low-levitation spells keeping them a few inches off the ground. They gave her a quick nod, presumably noticing her bare feet and the odd expression on her face. She nodded back politely, not bothering to explain.
A mory jolted in her mind: a ti she'd tried a levitation cantrip along this very path, only to crash into a row of potted shrubberies. She had been so embarrassed that she used illusions to mask the damage. As if that could fool the groundskeeper for long. She suppressed a laugh, realizing how petty and small those old humiliations seed now. She'd lived through them, hadn't she?
She cut through a narrow arch, ducking beneath low-hanging vines. The door to the Mirror Room—a battered wooden thing with a tarnished knob—lood at the end of a corridor. It felt both nostalgic and foreign at once. She reached out, half expecting it to be locked or sealed by wards. But the handle turned smoothly, if with a little creak, and she stepped inside.
A wave of stale air t her, dust swirling under the faint lamplight. Imdiately, she sneezed, then coughed, which quickly devolved into a husky, startled laugh. "Still allergic to nostalgia," she muttered, voice echoing off the stone walls.
The place looked even more neglected than she'd pictured. Broken chairs, piles of old illusions apparatus, and chipped mirror fras lined the periter. A heavy sense of quiet weighed down on everything, as though the room itself was sleeping, unvisited for too long.
She stepped over a fallen stand that might once have held a crystal lens, scanning the walls. Yes, this was definitely the room. She recognized a half-carved glyph in the far corner where she and a friend had tried to combine illusions. That attempt ended with scorching half the plaster. She rembered running out, squealing in terror, illusions popping around them like fireworks.
Her eyes landed on a half-intact mirror near the center. Thick, dusty. She approached it carefully, breath held. She could already see the warp in its surface, courtesy of a hairline crack that spider-webbed across the top corner. But it still managed to reflect an image: a dim silhouette of a woman with tousled hair and bare feet, wearing rumpled mage robes.
Amberine. Grown older. Or at least she hoped so.
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