Winter had barely loosened its grip when I finally got out of bed. The fever had left me weak, but the air outside was sharp and clean, and I wanted to breathe it. Mother said we needed to restock the pantry, so we went to the market together.

  The streets felt strange after so many weeks indoors. Snow still crusted the roofs, but the market pulsed with color and breath, the hiss of chestnuts roasting, and the chatter of neighbors rediscovering their voices.

  Everywhere, flags.

  They hung from windows and well-posts, their fabric snapping like laughter in the wind. Some I knew, the blue crest of our town and the red-and-white of the guilds, but one caught the sun in a way that stopped me. Gold, shimmering, stitched with three crests: one large in the middle, two smaller beside it.

  I tugged on Mother’s sleeve. “Why are there so many? And those… I’ve never seen them before.”

  She brushed snow from an apple, her gaze following mine to the gold banner. “Victory day. For the Great War.” She pointed with her chin. “The middle crest is House Leghanna. The smaller ones are House Leoxeion. They lost. The third is House Lewallin. They kept their swords sheathed.”

  I looked up again. The wind billowed the silk, and for a heartbeat the two smaller crests seemed to strain at their stitches, desperate to pull free from the central one.

  “Everyone’s celebrating,” I said. “Even the ones who lost?”

  “They’re not celebrating the war,” she murmured, slipping the apple into her basket. Her voice was low, meant only for me. “They’re celebrating that it ended.”

  Her words hung between us, wiser and sadder than any flag. We moved through the crowd, but the celebration felt different now; the laughter had an edge, like a released breath held too long. Overhead, the Leghanna flag snapped with victorious gold, while below, Mother’s hands weighed the muted brown of bread and the tired green of turnips.

  We walked home without speaking. The flags waved from every other post, a golden sea of someone else’s memory. I pulled my shawl close, not against the cold, but against the sheer weight of the story they told—a story where our tiny struggle for bread coins had no crest and no place.

  ***

  The next day, Mother and I went to the smithy. While they spoke, I drifted closer to the forge. Wilhelm worked, hammer rising and falling, steady as breath. I crouched, watching the sparks…

  …then the world shuddered.

  A roar.

  Then fire.

  It didn’t start as sound; it started as pressure.

  A violent WHUMP punched the air from my lungs and hurled me into the wall. My skull cracked stone.

  Then came the heat, wild and living, tearing at my breath.

  Through the glare, Wilhelm was on his knees, already burning. His scream tore once, then vanished in the roar.

  Mother shouted a spell I barely heard… “Aquos… Et Velo… Extinguer Ignem… Eninshigal…” her voice cracking as wind howled through the forge, feeding the flames instead of killing them.

  Father stood frozen for one heartbeat, his face a mask of pure, uncomprehending horror. Then he bellowed, grabbing the soaking hides from the quenching barrel. He didn’t throw them. He charged into the heat, beating at the flames clinging to his son, smothering them with his own body. The hides steamed and shriveled on the anvil. His own sleeves began to smoke.

  He’s going to burn with him.

  The thought was ice-cold and absolute.

  The world was fire and noise and panic, and then, slicing through it all, a new voice slipped into my mind. Not the god's calm baritone, but something lighter, almost melodic, like something ancient.

  “Use the G-Pen.”

  I spun, seeing no one. “Who are you?! I shot back, choking on smoke. What good is a pen against this?!”

  “Trust your craft,” the voice replied, a whisper of wind through leaves. “Use it.”

  The voice didn’t waver. I shut my eyes, desperate, and forced myself to remember. The cool plastic felt similar between my fingers. The slight groove where my thumb rested. The scent of ink that clung to me like breath.

  Nothing.

  “Dammit!” I hissed. Wilhelm’s scream cracked the air again. I clenched my fists until my nails dug into my palms. I didn’t just imagine the pen; I summoned it.

  A flicker. A flash. Weight.

  It appeared.

  I grabbed it. My hand moved, not from instinct, but from habit, from muscle memory carved by years of deadlines. Something inside me broke loose: panic, prayer, and memory.

  And before I knew it, I was on my knees, with a G-Pen in my hand.

  I didn’t think.

  I drew.

  Circles within circles.

  Lines crossing, weaving, forming a shape that felt right.

  A small curve above, waves, maybe. And another circle below, to anchor it.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  It wasn’t a word. It wasn’t a spell.

  It was instinct.

  The lines began to glow soft blue, like moonlight through water.

  Wind erupted from the floor—cold and sudden. Water swirled from the glowing pattern, washing over the flames. The forge hissed, steamed, and died.

  Wilhelm still burned. I sacrificed all art for speed, my strokes a frantic shorthand for symbols meant to be perfect. This was no careful panel from Healer’s Heart; this was a vandal’s graffiti. But the light came anyway—a wild, sympathetic glow that leapt from my rough lines to cradle him. I watched as an artist critical of her own work as his flesh reknit and his chest rose in a clean, steady line.

  Then the G-Pen vanished. Only the smell of smoke remained.

  The silence that followed was a physical presence, thick and heavy with the smell of wet ash and scorched stone. It was louder than the fire had ever been. Wilhelm lay on the ground, his chest rising and falling in a steady, impossible rhythm. His skin was whole, unmarred save for the soot staining it.

  Mother was the first to move. She crawled to him, her hands fluttering over his body like startled birds, not daring to touch. Her magic, the very air of her being, had failed. My scribbles had not. Her eyes, when they finally rose to meet mine, were wide with a terror I had never seen, not of the fire, but of me.

  "Elsbeth." “My name” was a breathless question on her lips. "What did you do?"

  Before I could form an answer, Father was there. He didn't look at Wilhelm, not once. His gaze was a brand, searing into me. The soot on his face was streaked with clean lines where sweat had run. His fear was a different creature than Mother's—not bewildered, but stark and chillingly clear. It was the fear of a man who had just seen a precipice open at his daughter's feet.

  "What did you do?" he whispered, the words scraped raw from his throat.

  I looked down at my own hands, small and clean and utterly ordinary. The memory of the G-Pen was already fading, a dream upon waking. "It was a circle," I mumbled, the explanation feeling foolish and inadequate. "And... waves. It felt... right."

  "Heinrich," Mother cut in, her voice regaining a sliver of its strength, though it still trembled. "The water... the healing... they are different affinities. Opposed. To conjure both from nothing... It's not difficult. It's not rare. It is not possible."

  "I know it's not possible!" Father's voice was a low, urgent crack, like ice breaking underfoot. "That is the problem." He closed the distance between us and knelt, his large, calloused hands gripping my shoulders. His eyes were pleading. "Listen to me. All of you. No one. No one can hear of this. Do you understand me?"

  "But she saved…" Wilhelm began, his voice a rasp.

  Father's head snapped toward him. "SILENCE!" The roar echoed in the hollow forge. He mastered himself with a visible effort, his voice dropping to a frantic whisper. "They call you ‘colorless,’ and we live with that shame. They whisper. They pity us. But this?" He looked back at me, and I saw the future he feared written in his eyes. "If they hear that the colorless girl summoned water from stone and healed fatal burns with a wave of her hand, they will not call you cursed. They will not whisper. They will scream ‘witch’ and ‘demon.’ 'Fear makes people cruel, Elsbeth. They will not rest until you are driven out… or burned."

  His grip was too tight, but I didn't pull away. "It must be our secret. It dies in this room." He looked at Wilhelm, his expression begging for understanding. "Wilhelm. You must promise me. Not a word. Not to your friend, not to the priests. You saw nothing."

  Pale and shaken, Wilhelm could only nod. "I promise."

  Father finally looked at Mother, his expression begging for alliance. “Frieda. Their safety depends on this lie.”

  Mother’s face was pale as ash. She gave one stiff, shocked nod.

  I drew my knees to my chest. The scent of ozone and creation was gone, replaced by the acrid truth of smoke. I had finally done something amazing, and my father’s fear had built a cage around it, not from malice, but from a love that knew the world had no room for such miracles.

  That night, I sat on the edge of my bed, staring at my hands in the moonlight. Small. Clean. Powerless. No trace of the artist’s tool that had burned the world and saved it.

  I closed my eyes. Come on. G-Pen. Please…

  Nothing. Only silence. Only me.

  When exhaustion dragged me under, I didn’t fight it.

  Later, the mattress dipped beside me. I pretended to sleep. Wilhelm’s whisper brushed the dark.

  “I don’t know how you did it,” he said softly. “But thank you, Elsbeth.”

  He kissed my forehead, a seal of love and guilt, and left. The warmth of it lingered. Not comfort, not magic. Just truth.

  ***

  The rumors were a poison, seeping under the door and through the cracks in the window frames. I heard them in the market, hissing between the stalls. Cursed. Unnatural. The fire followed her. The villagers' gazes, once pitying, were now sharp with suspicion and fear.

  That night, long after supper, the door creaked open. Father stood there, outlined by a sliver of moonlight. He was a ruin, his tunic torn at the shoulder, a dark bruise blooming around his eye, and knuckles split and raw. The sharp, sour smell of ale clung to him like smoke.

  My heart didn’t sink; it cracked. “Father!” I cried, scrambling from the chair.

  He didn’t shush me. His legs gave out, collapsing him to his knees, bringing him to my height. His bleeding hands cupped my face with a terrifying tenderness.

  His breath hitched. “They... they said things about you, my star,” he slurred, voice thick with drink and something heavier. “Old Man Hemlock called you a blight. Said we’d be better off if you’d…” He couldn’t finish. A tear cut through the grime. Then another.

  He pulled me close, shaking with the force of his sobs. “I told him to take it back. I made him.” His whisper tangled in my hair. “You are not a curse. You are my girl. My Elsbeth. I just wanted to protect you.”

  And I finally understood. The distance, the clenched jaw, and the warnings, it wasn’t rejection. It was love in armor, flailing at the world sharpening its knives for me.

  He wasn’t cold. He was broken.

  ***

  The next morning, Father was silent and heavy-eyed, the shame of his breakdown warring with the throb of his hangover. Mother shooed me out with her to the market, a quiet understanding passing between them that he needed the silence of the empty house.

  At the market, I lingered by a stall of polished river stones, their smooth surfaces a silent, simple magic. The normalcy was a lie, but a comforting one. The sun was warm on my back.

  The light dimmed.

  An old man stood beside me, thin as a shadow. His face was all lines, like a map to places no one visits anymore. But his eyes, clear, grey, and too awake, found me and didn’t let go.

  When he spoke, his voice sounded like paper crumbling.

  “Sayaka.”

  It wasn't a question. It was a statement. A key turning in a lock I thought was lost forever.

  My blood turned to ice in my veins. My breath froze. How? The question screamed in my mind, but my voice was gone. I was paralyzed, trapped in that piercing grey gaze.

  "Who are you?" I finally managed to whisper, my voice trembling.

  "Elsbeth! Come, darling, we're done here!" Mother's voice, bright and normal, cut through the strange stillness.

  The spell broke. I instinctively turned toward her call for just a second, a single, human heartbeat.

  When I spun back, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs, he was gone. Vanished into the shifting crowd as if he were nothing more than a trick of the light. But the name hung in the air, a secret that was no longer mine alone. The world around me, the market, the noise, the light—it all seemed to sharpen and tilt on its axis. Nothing was what it seemed. And for the first time since the fire, the feeling wasn't entirely one of fear. A tiny, treacherous spark of hope flickered to life.