The next anomaly hit on a Wednesday.
It started small.
A flicker.
A cough.
A nothing.
Isla was in the textile lab, hunched over a fourteenth-century cope, painstakingly couching a loose gold thread back into place, when the overhead lights blinked.
She glanced up.
“Don’t you dare,” she warned the fluorescent tubes.
They hummed in offended denial.
Then flickered again.
The radio on the shelf crackled.
Cut out.
Came back on mid-song.
Her scalp prickled.
“Okay,” she said to the empty room. “That’s… not great.”
Her thumb burned.
Not a flare.
A sharp, insistent stab.
She hissed and dropped the needle.
Blood beaded at the pad of her finger where the metal had pricked her.
“Fuck,” she muttered, sticking it in her mouth on reflex.
The metallic taste hit her tongue.
The room… shifted.
Not visually.
Energetically.
Like someone had turned up the gravity by half a notch.
Her breath caught.
The hum from below—coal room, hoard, cracks—spiked.
“Isla,” Cael’s voice snapped in her head.
She flinched.
“What?” she thought back, half-annoyed and half-relieved.
“Foundation,” he said, tone taut. “Now.”
She didn’t argue.
She snatched a paper towel for her finger and bolted.
The hallways felt longer.
The elevator ride slower.
By the time she pounded down the last flight of sub-basement stairs, her heart was in her throat.
Tim met her at the bottom, walkie in hand, face tight.
“You felt it,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “What—?”
A low rumble rolled through the floor.
Not enough to knock anything over.
Enough to make dust dance.
“Cameras glitched,” he said. “Sensors spiked. Sister Agnès texted me from the cathedral—something rattled in the crypt.”
“Crack-thing?” she asked, even though she already knew.
“Has the vibe,” he said.
They pushed through the old foundation door.
The corridor beyond pulsed with heat.
The coal room’s air hit her like a wall.
Cael stood in the middle of the space, bare feet braced, shoulders hunched, hands out.
He looked like he was holding something invisible between them.
Sweat beaded on his forehead.
His jaw was clenched.
The crown on the tarp glowed too bright to look at.
The scale was a small sun.
Between them, the air shimmered.
Like heat over asphalt.
“Stay back,” he snarled without looking at them.
Isla stopped.
“So much for easing into this,” Tim muttered.
“What’s happening?” she demanded, voice high and thin.
“It… found… a seam,” Cael ground out. “Between the two tethers. Trying to… braid them.”
Her stomach lurched.
“Braid,” she repeated. “As in… connect the convent and the museum?”
“And the cathedral,” he bit out. “Triangulation. Clever… for a mold.”
The air buckled.
For a split second, Isla saw—
—La Boca Del Mundo under her feet—
—the museum’s foundations—
—the cathedral’s crypt—
—all overlaid.
Three places.
One crack.
She stumbled.
Tim grabbed her elbow.
“Easy,” he said.
Her vision swam.
The scar on her thumb blazed.
“Fuck,” she hissed, cradling her hand.
“It’s using you,” Cael snarled. “As… conductor.”
“Flattering,” she gasped.
He gritted his teeth.
“Not the word I’d use,” he said.
The shimmer thickened.
Became… visible.
A faint, oily smudge in the air between the hoard pieces.
Not a full crack.
A thread.
A tendril.
It probed.
Slid.
Tried to wrap around the bright points of tether like ivy around a trellis.
Cael snarled.
Flame licked the back of his throat.
“Don’t—” Isla began.
“If I do not burn it,” he snapped, “it will… cinch.”
Her heart hammered.
“Can you… shock it,” she said, words tumbling out. “Like… static. Enough to make it let go. Not enough to… feed it.”
He blinked.
“Static,” he repeated.
“Disrupt,” she said. “Don’t incinerate. Make it… recoil.”
His eyes narrowed.
He bared his teeth.
Shifted his stance.
The runes along his ribs flared.
“Brace,” he said.
Tim hauled Isla back another step.
She dug her heels in.
Cael sucked in a deep breath.
Held it.
Then exhaled—
—not a gout of flame—
—a spray of sparks.
Tiny.
Bright.
They crackled through the shimmering air like thrown gravel.
Where they hit the tendril, it sizzled.
Reared.
Hissed.
The sound wasn’t sound.
It was pressure.
Pain.
Her ears popped.
The thread writhed.
Tried again.
Cael blew again.
More sparks.
More sizzle.
“Again,” Isla gasped. “Like… shaking a rug.”
He huffed a laugh that was half-grimace.
“You and your metaphors,” he said.
He braced.
Exhaled once more.
Sparks flared around the tendril.
Some stuck.
Hung there.
Little burning motes clinging to its surface.
It shuddered.
Then—
Snapped.
The shimmer collapsed.
The air whooshed, as if a vacuum seal had broken.
The crown’s glow dimmed to something almost bearable.
The scale steadied.
Cael staggered.
Isla tore free of Tim’s grip and lunged forward, catching his arm.
He was hot.
Too hot.
Like metal left in the sun.
He sagged.
She braced.
He was heavier than he looked.
Tim jumped in, grabbing his other side.
Together, they lowered him to sit on the tarp.
He panted.
Sweat ran down his temples.
His eyes were bright gold.
“Stupid,” he rasped.
“Effective,” Isla said, heart still hammering.
“Stupid-effective,” Tim amended.
Cael let out a breath that might have been a laugh.
“The worst kind,” he said.
Isla sank back on her heels, chest heaving.
“That was… different,” she said. “Not like the crack trying to force itself through. More like… testing… connections.”
He nodded, slow.
“It learned,” he said. “Fast. It tasted… our trick. It wanted to… use it.”
“To join the tethers,” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “We gave it… rope. It tried to make a noose.”
She swallowed.
“Did we… stop it?” she asked.
“For now,” he said.
She wanted to throw something.
Preferably at the concept of “for now.”
Tim exhaled shakily.
“Jay?” he said into his walkie. “Tell me you saw that.”
Jay’s voice crackled, high and breathless.
“Uh, yeah,” he said. “Sensors went bananas. Cameras went static for, like, thirty seconds. Cathedral reported candles blowing out in the crypt. Hammond had a blip. Leona’s already on my ass.”
“Of course she is,” Isla muttered.
“She wants everyone in the war room in ten,” Jay went on. “Her words, not mine.”
“Tell her we’re… stabilizing,” Tim said. “We’ll be up.”
Jay paused.
“Is that true?” he asked.
Tim looked at Cael.
Cael met Isla’s gaze.
Her thumb still throbbed.
Her head buzzed.
But the air felt… clearer.
The hoard’s hum steadier.
“Yes,” she said. “For now.”
Jay sighed.
“I hate those words,” he said. “See you in ten.”
The line clicked off.
Isla turned back to Cael.
“We need to teach it that braiding hurts,” she said quietly. “Every time it tries to link the tethers, we… shock it. Enough that it starts to… associate that move with pain.”
He nodded, slow.
“Behavioral conditioning,” he said. “You sound like you’ve trained… beasts.”
“Just interns,” she said weakly.
Tim snorted.
“We can’t be down here every time it twitches,” he said. “We need… failsafes. Wards. Something that pings us when it starts to braid.”
“I can set algorithmic alerts on the sensors,” Jay’s disembodied voice said from the walkie on Tim’s belt. “If three or more sites spike simultaneously in a certain pattern, it pings our phones.”
“That covers the ‘data’ side,” Isla said. “What about the ‘magic’ side?”
Cael leaned back against the wall, eyes closing briefly.
“Wards,” he said. “Yes. Charms. Old words. New… circuits. My sister would… delight in this.”
“We don’t have your sister,” Isla said gently.
“We have… you,” he said. “And… witches.”
“Stop saying that,” she said, out of habit.
He cracked one eye open.
“You and your Maya,” he said. “Your Sister Agnès. Your Leona. Your… laundress in the records. Women who talk to cracks. You have a… coven, curator. Use it.”
The word coven made her Catholic upbringing flinch.
It also made something inside her sit up.
“You’re not wrong,” she admitted.
She thought of Sister Agnès’s flinty eyes.
Of Maya’s fearless mouth.
Of Leona’s ruthless pragmatism.
Of Abuela’s looping script.
Of the unseen laundress whispering into steam.
“We could… layer,” she said slowly. “Your fire. Their prayers. Maya’s… chaos. My… scales and threads. Wards that are… interdisciplinary.”
Tim raised a brow.
“Interdisciplinary magic,” he said. “Halpern would be so proud.”
“He’d write a paper,” Isla said.
Cael smiled faintly.
“You will write it,” he said. “After.”
“After what?” she asked.
“After we do not die,” he said.
She rolled her eyes.
“You’re very optimistic,” she said.
He opened both eyes.
Met her gaze.
“No,” he said. “I am… invested.”
Her chest ached.
She squeezed his forearm briefly.
“Don’t move,” she said. “I have to go lie to Leona.”
He caught her hand before she could pull back.
Not tightly.
Just… catching.
The contact sent a small, sharp spark up her arm.
“Isla,” he said.
She swallowed.
“Yes?”
“Do not… downplay,” he said. “This time. She needs to know that braiding hurts. That we stopped it. That we… can stop it. For now.”
“You want to give her that much,” she said carefully.
He nodded.
“She will see the spikes,” he said. “She is not a fool. Better she hears from you that there is… a strategy… than she flails in the dark.”
“And if she asks how we did it?” Isla asked.
He smiled.
“Tell her… static,” he said.
She snorted.
“Dragon static,” she said. “Sure. That’ll go over great in the report.”
Tim pushed to his feet.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go dazzle them with our half-truths before Jay says something that gets us all investigated by Homeland Security.”
Isla squeezed Cael’s hand once more.
He let her go.
She stood.
Her legs were shaky.
Her heart wasn’t any steadier.
But the path up the stairs felt clearer.
Sister Agnès.
Maya.
Leona.
Tim.
Cael.
Her.
A mess of lines.
Not all clean.
Not all straight.
But there.
“We’re doing this,” she muttered under her breath as she and Tim headed for the door.
“Doing what?” he asked.
“Writing the damn story,” she said. “Before someone else writes it for us.”
He smiled wryly.
“About time,” he said.
***
End of Chapter 24.## Chapter 25: War Room
The “war room” was really just Conference Room B with the blinds drawn and the HVAC turned up too high.
Isla sat at the rectangular table with a rapidly cooling paper cup of coffee in front of her and tried to act like she hadn’t just been in the basement watching a dragon blow sparks at an invisible thread of nightmare.
Leona stood at the far end, tablet propped in front of her like a lectern. A blown-up version of the museum’s floor plan was projected on the wall behind her, little blinking dots indicating sensor locations. Half of them were pulsing yellow.
“Three simultaneous spikes,” she said, tapping the screen. “Foundation, cathedral, and an off-site rural node we’re still triangulating. That’s new.”
The deputy director looked like he’d aged ten years in the last ten minutes.
“Is the building in danger?” he demanded. “Do we need to evacuate?”
“Not right now,” Leona said. “There was a surge. It passed. The structure’s holding.”
“For now,” Sister Agnès added under her breath.
Dr. Malik sat hunched over a laptop, fingers flying as he pulled in more data. His glasses had slid halfway down his nose. His sweater had the beginnings of a coffee stain on the sleeve.
Tim stood against the wall near the door, arms crossed, face blank in that way that meant he was anything but calm.
Jay was perched on the edge of the sideboard, laptop on his knees, eyes flicking between windows of code and the live camera feeds.
Isla was the only one at the table who looked like she might bolt.
She didn’t.
Leona’s gaze slid to her.
“You felt it,” she said.
It wasn’t a question.
“Yes,” Isla said. “In the textile lab. Lights flickered. Radio cut out. My thumb—” She caught herself. “—my hand… burned.”
Sister Agnès’s eyes sharpened.
“Your scar,” she said.
The deputy director frowned.
“Scar?” he said.
“Old cut,” Isla said quickly. “From the Schmiedler object. Dr. Ward and I have been… monitoring.”
Leona’s mouth twitched.
“Her… sensitivity,” she said smoothly. “It correlates strongly with these events.”
The deputy director did not look reassured.
“So what just happened?” he asked. “In layman’s terms.”
Leona clicked something on her tablet.
The projected map shifted to a graph.
Three colored lines danced across it.
“This,” she said, pointing to a red spike, “is the foundation. This blue one is the cathedral. Green is the rural anomaly we tagged last week. When they all jumped at once, our friend in the cracks tried to… align them.”
“Align,” Dr. Malik repeated. “As in… create a resonance between the sites. Increase amplitude. Like tuning forks.”
“Exactly,” Leona said. “If it had succeeded, we might have seen more than lights flickering.”
“Like what?” the deputy director asked, voice tight.
Leona hesitated.
“Best case,” she said. “Localized tremors. Some cosmetic damage. Worst case…”
“The floor opens,” Sister Agnès said calmly. “And something answers.”
A chill walked down Isla’s spine.
“We stopped it,” she said, before anyone could spiral.
All eyes swung to her.
“How?” Leona asked.
Isla’s mind scrambled for the pre-agreed half-truth.
“We noticed the pattern,” she said. “Red, blue, green spiking together. Jay’s alerts pinged. Tim called me. I… did what we’d talked about.” She looked at Leona. “Static.”
Dr. Malik’s head snapped up.
“Static?” he echoed. “You mean… interference.”
“Yes,” Isla said quickly. “We created an energetic… disruption… in the foundation corridor. Enough to break the alignment. Like… rubbing a balloon on your hair and holding it up to a TV screen.”
The deputy director looked lost.
Leona did not.
“You used the hoard,” she said softly.
Isla’s pulse jumped.
She didn’t flinch.
“We used what we have,” she said. “Old things. Bound things. Things that already… hold charge. We let them… spark. Just a little.”
She saw it in Leona’s eyes: the recognition.
You used the dragon.
*We* used the dragon.
Leona didn’t say it aloud.
Not yet.
Dr. Malik leaned forward, curious despite the tension.
“Can you quantify it?” he asked. “The discharge? Voltage? Frequency?”
“No,” Isla said. “We were a little busy not getting eaten.”
He blinked.
“Fair,” he said.
The deputy director scrubbed a hand over his face.
“Are you telling me,” he said slowly, “that the safety of this building rests on… static electricity and a conservator’s thumb?”
“Better than resting on prayer and denial,” Sister Agnès muttered.
“Hey,” Jay said. “We’ve also got sensors and cameras and a very grumpy security team.”
Tim’s mouth twitched.
Leona tapped the screen again.
“We got lucky,” she said. “Whatever you did downstairs worked. This time. But the entity is… learning. It tried to braid the tethers. Next time it may pull harder. Or in a different direction.”
“So we get ahead of it,” Tim said. “We put up… wards.” He glanced at Isla, like he was stepping into unfamiliar vocabulary. “Charms. Whatever you want to call them. We give it more reasons to stay away from here and more reasons to chew on the convent.”
The deputy director paled.
“You’re serious,” he said.
“Yes,” Tim said.
Leona’s gaze swept the room.
“We can’t rely on last-second interventions every time,” she said. “We need layered defenses. Physical. Technological. Magical.”
The deputy director flinched at the last word.
“Do we have to call it that?” he asked.
“What would you prefer?” Leona asked. “ ‘Advanced metaphor management’?”
“Energetic protocol,” Isla suggested blandly.
Dr. Malik brightened.
“I like that,” he said. “Sounds science-y.”
“Fine,” the deputy director said. “Energetic… protocols. Whatever you call them, they need to be… discreet. The board will not sign off on candles and chalk circles in the galleries.”
“Obviously,” Isla said.
Her mind, however, immediately supplied an image of chalk circles around the reliquary cases and had to be forcibly redirected.
“We don’t need showy,” Leona said. “We need effective. Symbols carved into foundations. Herbs in wall cavities. Poems slipped into cornerstones. There are… subtler traditions.”
Sister Agnès nodded.
“The cathedral’s already been doing that,” she said. “Quietly. We tuck certain words behind statues. We anoint thresholds. We ring the bells when the ground hums.”
Dr. Malik looked faintly horrified.
“You’re telling me my entire career as a physicist has been… blessed… by nun graffiti?” he said.
“Yes,” she said serenely.
“I love this,” Jay whispered.
Leona looked at Isla.
“You’re central,” she said. “Your sensitivity. Your… connection. We can’t build a ward system without you.”
Ice and heat warred in Isla’s chest.
“Central” sounded dangerously close to “keystone.”
“What does that actually look like?” she asked. “In practice. I can’t be everywhere at once.”
“We map where you feel it most,” Leona said. “We anchor there. We ask the land what it wants. We listen. We don’t just impose.”
“That language,” Sister Agnès said approvingly.
Isla’s pulse thudded.
“I can… do that,” she said slowly. “With help.”
“We all help,” Sister Agnès said. “No lone heroes.”
Tim’s gaze met hers.
Message received.
Leona flicked to another screen.
“First step,” she said. “We gather our… coven.”
Dr. Malik choked on his coffee.
“I did not sign up to be a warlock,” he spluttered.
“You did when you took that grant from the Institute for Paranormal Kinetics,” Leona said dryly.
He blinked.
“How did you—” he began.
“I read your CV,” she said. “We meet in the foundation corridor tonight. After closing. Dr. Reyes, Officer Ortiz, Sister Agnès, myself. Anyone else you trust not to panic at the sight of chalk.”
Isla’s mind flashed immediately to Maya.
“Yes,” she said. “My… friend. Maya. She’s… good with chaos. And words.”
“We’ll need words,” Sister Agnès said.
“And Cael,” Isla added, before she could overthink it.
The room went very still.
The deputy director frowned.
“Cael?” he said. “Do we have a staff member by that name?”
Leona’s eyes never left Isla’s.
“We do now,” she said.
***
Tim caught up with Isla in the stairwell after the meeting.
“You just told them,” he said quietly. “About Cael.”
“Not… everything,” she said. “But I couldn’t keep pretending we’re doing all this with… static and elbow grease. If we’re going to build wards, we need him. And Leona already knows. She just needed me to say it out loud.”
He leaned against the wall, rubbing his jaw.
“Gray area,” he said.
Her shoulders sagged.
“I know,” she said. “I hate it. I also hate lying to people who are actively trying to keep the city from falling into a crack.”
He nodded slowly.
“I get it,” he said. “Just… be careful. With how much of him you give them.”
Her chest tightened.
“I’m trying to keep from giving all of him to any *one* of them,” she said. “Or the crack. Or the board. Or… myself.”
His mouth quirked.
“Ambitious,” he said.
She huffed a laugh.
“Come tonight,” she said. “To the ward… thing. Circle. Whatever it ends up being. If I’m going to stupidly put myself in the middle of a ritual, I want you there.”
He smiled, small and real.
“You couldn’t keep me away,” he said.
***
Cael listened to her recap with his hands steepled under his chin, eyes half-lidded, as if watching some internal replay of the war room.
They sat on the tarp, the hoard humming quietly around them.
“Leona wants me,” he said when she finished.
It wasn’t question.
“Yes,” Isla said. “As… asset. As… tool. As… fellow crack-wrangler.”
He hummed low in his throat.
“Better than as… specimen,” he said.
“She’s not… Halpern,” Isla said. “She’s not the board. But she’s also not… the sorcerer who cursed you. She wants to bargain. Not bind. For now.”
His jaw clenched.
“For now,” he echoed.
She reached out.
Laid a hand on his forearm.
His skin was warm.
Always a little too warm.
“I won’t let her chain you,” she said quietly. “Not again.”
His gaze snapped to hers.
Heat flared.
“You cannot promise that,” he said.
“I can promise I won’t help her,” she said. “I can promise I’ll stand in the way. Even if it’s… stupid.”
He studied her.
Then, slowly, he nodded.
“That I believe,” he said.
She exhaled.
“Tonight,” she said, “we… write on the walls.”
A flicker of something like amusement crossed his face.
“My sister would be very pleased,” he said. “She loved graffiti.”
That startled a laugh from her.
“Of course she did,” she said.
He sobered.
“You are sure you want Maya here?” he asked. “Circles are… messy. They echo. They remember who stands in them.”
“Yes,” she said. “I’m tired of pretending this part of my life doesn’t exist when I’m with her. And she volunteered to keep me human. Seems only fair to drag her into the most inhuman part.”
“Fair,” he said.
He tilted his head.
“And Tim?” he asked.
Her heart thudded.
“Yes,” she said. “He’s… part of this. Whether he likes it or not.”
“You like him,” Cael said.
Not accusing.
Just a fact.
She shifted.
“Yes,” she said. “As a friend. As… more, maybe. I don’t know. I don’t have the bandwidth to unfuck my love life right now.”
His mouth twitched.
“Unfuck,” he repeated, amused.
She flushed.
“You know what I mean,” she said.
He nodded.
“You are allowed to like him,” he said. “You are allowed… many things.”
Her throat tightened.
“So are you,” she said.
He looked startled.
“Me?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “You’re allowed to… want. Not just hoard. Or guard. Or burn. Even if what you want doesn’t fit neatly into… dragon stories or human ones.”
He stared at her.
Something raw flickered across his face.
Then he looked away.
“My wants are… inconvenient,” he said.
“Join the club,” she muttered.
He huffed.
“Tonight,” he said, shifting back into practical mode, “we draw circles. We carve words. We… ask the stone to take our side.”
“Do you think it will?” she asked.
He considered.
“It already has,” he said. “We are still standing.”
***
They gathered in the foundation corridor after closing.
The lights were dimmed.
The air was thicker.
Leona stood with her tablet under one arm, chalk in her other hand.
Sister Agnès had a small bottle of holy water and a bundle of dried herbs.
Maya carried a mason jar full of river stones and looked like she was vibrating out of her skin with excitement.
Dr. Malik hovered near the back, a notebook in hand, looking like he wasn’t sure if he should be there or in a lab.
Tim leaned against the wall, arms crossed, eyes scanning.
Cael stepped out of the coal room’s shadow and into the outer corridor.
For a second, the group tensed.
Not because of horns or scales.
Because of the weight of him.
Even dressed down, he radiated something that made the air bend.
Leona’s eyes flicked up and down, cataloguing.
Sister Agnès’s mouth pursed.
Dr. Malik’s jaw dropped.
Maya grinned like Christmas had come early.
“Everyone,” Isla said, heart pounding. “This is… Cael.”
He inclined his head.
“Dragon,” Sister Agnès said bluntly.
Dr. Malik squeaked.
Leona smiled thinly.
“Welcome to the war room,” she said.
He gave her a long, measuring look.
“Hunter,” he replied.
The word landed between them like a marker.
Maya leaned toward Isla.
“If they make out, I’m going to have to recalibrate my sexuality,” she whispered.
“Don’t you dare,” Isla hissed back.
Leona’s mouth quirked.
“Truce, for now,” she said to Cael. “We have a mutual… pest.”
He snorted.
“You poke it,” he said. “I kick it. Try not to get under my claws.”
Sister Agnès made a small sound that might have been approval.
“Good,” she said. “Honesty. Saves time.”
Leona looked at Isla.
“You lead,” she said.
Isla’s stomach dropped.
“I—what?” she stammered.
“We’re here because of your bindings,” Sister Agnès said. “Your hoards. Your cracks. You have the… sight. The scar. We can lend words. Muscle. Blessing. But the stones… listen to you.”
Maya bumped her shoulder.
“You got this,” she murmured. “Worst case, you accidentally summon a minor demon and we get a funny story.”
Isla took a breath.
Another.
Her thumb ached.
The scar glowed faintly under the skin.
“Okay,” she said. “We… start with listening.”
She stepped to the center of the corridor.
Closed her eyes.
Let her senses sink.
The hoard’s hum.
The double tether.
The faint, restless itch of the crack-thing at the edges.
She let it all wash over her.
Didn’t flinch.
Didn’t grab.
Just… noticed.
Then she spoke.
“Stone,” she murmured. “We’re loud. We know. We keep stacking things on you. Stories. Bones. Gold. We forget you were here first.”
Her voice sounded strange in the narrow space.
Soft.
Resonant.
“We’re trying to do better,” she went on. “We’re trying to… fix… what others broke. We’re going to ask you for… help. To keep the hungry thing from eating more than it already has. To keep this place—these stories, these people—from falling through the floor. We can’t make you. But we can… bargain.”
Sister Agnès stepped forward.
Sprinkled a few drops of holy water onto the concrete.
“Earth, receive,” she said quietly. “Not as command. As request.”
Maya pulled a stone from her jar.
It was smooth.
Pale.
Worn by water.
“From the river,” she said. “Where the fort used to watch, pretending it was in charge. The water knows better. It remembers how to go around things. How to carve. How to move without breaking.”
She placed the stone at Isla’s feet.
Leona stepped up.
Laid a small, metal device next to it.
A sensor, its tiny light blinking green.
“We measure,” she said. “We record. Not to own. To understand. To notice when patterns shift. To respond, not react.”
Dr. Malik added a piece of chalk.
“Yes, even the scientists bring offerings,” he muttered. “Fine. There. Mathematics. We’ll draw you when you twitch.”
Tim hesitated.
Then unhooked his museum ID badge and set it down too.
“Security,” he said. “Such as it is. Cameras. Locks. People who will run *toward* the weird instead of away. We’re yours. For now.”
Cael watched.
Then stepped forward.
He lifted the smallest coin from the hoard—a tarnished silver piece, barely worth anything in human money.
He held it up.
“This,” he said softly, “was the first thing I ever took. Before crowns. Before chalices. A farmer dropped it on a road. I picked it up. I said ‘mine.’ I tied a piece of myself to it and did not burn my first village that night.”
He smiled faintly.
“The farmer found two coins in his pocket when he got home,” he added. “Dragons are not always thieves.”
He placed the coin beside the others.
“And me,” he said. “Fire. Teeth. Old vows. New ones.”
Isla swallowed.
She knelt.
Laid her hand over the little pile.
Stone.
Water.
Sensor.
Chalk.
Badge.
Coin.
“Together, then,” she whispered. “Stupid. Brave. Bound.”
Her thumb burned.
The scar flared.
A thin line of light traced itself along the cracks in the concrete, spiderwebbing out from under her palm.
It didn’t explode.
It didn’t rip open.
It just… glowed.
Soft.
Like phosphorescence in the surf.
Sister Agnès exhaled.
“Good,” she said. “Start with a whisper.”
Leona’s eyes shone.
“Now,” she said quietly, “we write.”
They spent the next two hours scrawling symbols.
Under pipes.
Around vents.
Along the seam where original stone met twentieth-century concrete.
Sister Agnès wrote Latin phrases in a neat, angular hand: *Non nobis Domine.* Not for us, Lord.
Maya wrote curses that were prayers and prayers that were curses, in Spanish and English and something that was just emotion shaped into letters.
Dr. Malik scribbled equations in the margins, creating little knots of variables that hummed.
Leona drew sigils that looked like circuitry and script braided together.
Tim added simple shapes: arrows pointing to exits, loops around camera brackets, small Xs at stress points.
Isla traced chalk lines around sensor housings, careful not to set off any alarms.
Cael drew no symbols at all.
He pressed his palm to the stone in various places.
Breathed.
Exhaled tiny sparks that left no scorch marks, only a faint warmth.
At one point, he straightened and found Maya watching him.
“You’re not drawing,” she observed.
“I wrote enough on these walls three hundred years ago,” he said. “The stone remembers.”
“What did you write then?” she asked.
He smiled wryly.
“My name,” he said. “Over and over. Like a child. ‘Cael was here.’”
She snorted.
“Tagger,” she said.
“Yes,” he said.
When they were done, the corridor looked… the same.
To a casual eye.
Chalk marks could be mistaken for maintenance notes.
Sensors for regular building monitors.
The little pile of offerings had been tucked into a gap between wall and floor, out of sight, but not out of reach.
To Isla’s other senses, the difference was stark.
The air… layered.
Words.
Symbols.
Intent.
Hoards.
Prayers.
Becoming, slowly, a net.
“Will it hold?” the deputy director asked from the doorway, where he’d lurked for the last half hour, looking increasingly out of his depth.
“For now,” Leona said.
Isla almost laughed.
Instead, she straightened and brushed chalk dust off her hands.
“We won’t know until it’s tested,” she said. “And I’d really rather not schedule that.”
Sister Agnès chuckled.
“The devil loves tests,” she said. “We will fail some. We will pass others. We will grade on a curve.”
Dr. Malik blinked.
“We’re… grading… the crack-thing?” he asked.
“Always,” she said.
Maya stretched her arms over her head and cracked her back.
“That was the most wholesome graffiti session I’ve ever participated in,” she announced. “Ten out of ten, would ward again.”
Tim smirked.
“We’ll add it to your volunteer record,” he said.
Cael leaned against the wall, arms crossed, eyes half-closed.
“Stone… approves,” he said.
Isla looked at him.
“Really?” she asked.
He nodded.
“It feels… heavier,” he said. “In a good way. Anchored. The crack-thing will have to… work… to slip through here.”
Relief loosened something in her chest.
“Good,” she said.
Leona watched them all with an expression that was hard to parse.
Part calculation.
Part awe.
Part… something like hope.
“Get some rest,” she said. “All of you. We’ll see how the night goes.”
They dispersed.
One by one.
Sister Agnès back to her cathedral.
Dr. Malik to his equations.
The deputy director to his carefully worded emails.
Maya to her plants.
Tim lingered just long enough to squeeze Isla’s shoulder.
“Call if it twitches,” he said.
She nodded.
Then it was just Isla and Cael in the dim hallway.
He pushed off the wall.
Stepped closer.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
She considered.
“Less like I’m the only thing standing between this place and a sinkhole,” she said. “More like… I’m part of a… net.”
He nodded.
“Good,” he said. “You should not bear it alone.”
“You either,” she said.
He smiled crookedly.
“Too late for that,” he said.
She reached up.
Without overthinking it.
Brushed a bit of chalk dust off his cheek.
His breath caught.
Her thumb brushed the line of his jaw.
Heat flared.
Not magic.
Not entirely.
“Consent?” she whispered.
His eyes darkened.
“Yes,” he said.
She leaned in.
Slow.
Gave herself time to bail.
Didn’t.
Her lips brushed his.
Just once.
Soft.
Brief.
Testing.
The hoard hummed.
The crack-thing snarled, faint and far.
Tim’s offer sat like a weight in her chest.
Maya’s threats vibrated in her ear.
Abuela’s stories whispered under it all.
Cael made a small, surprised sound against her mouth.
Didn’t move.
Didn’t drag her closer.
Let her set the pace.
She pulled back.
Heart pounding.
“Data point,” she said, voice shaky.
His pupils were blown wide.
“Yes,” he said hoarsely. “We will… analyze later.”
She laughed.
A little wild.
“Go to bed, dragon,” she said.
He smiled.
“You too, witch,” he murmured.
She rolled her eyes.
Walked away.
Did not look back.
The halls felt less hostile.
The cracks hummed.
The wards whispered.
Her lips tingled.
Her thumb ached.
Her heart… burned.
In a way that, for once, felt less like an impending collapse and more like a star forming.
***
End of Chapter 25.
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