Szylla's faint, delighted laughter drifted over from where she stood, her pen back at its furious work.

  "Do you see, my dear KiAera? Even an instinctually fastidious creature like the Wailfiend cannot help but be drawn to another Unique variant. You resonate, now. On a level that defies mere biology."

  The Wailfiend's slit pupils cut briefly toward Szylla. Her claws kneaded the earth. But the apparent flush of violet veins rippled under her cheek's. Then, quite deliberately, she lowered her head so that her slender muzzle rested almost at my back.

  "Do not mistake this for craven submission. I am merely conserving energy."

  I almost smiled. "You're tired."

  "Exquisitely so. Your metamorphosis was excessively loud. All that thrashing about. You nearly tore several neighboring planar folds wide open. And it left splinters in the ley-lines. Do you have any inkling how vexing that will be to mend?"

  Her feelers, which could've been considered the downcast of brows furrowing, matched the mood of her disdainful gaze.

  "You," she added, almost as if it pained her to articulate, "are also the first I have seen her look upon with such vivid interest in… many cycles. She neglects to watch me with that same hunger now."

  I studied her quietly. The words were almost hidden under her careful enunciation, but the wistfulness was not. Even her whiskers drooped minutely, brushing lines into the charred dirt.

  She would not look at me after that. Her long tail gave a soft, indignant lash that failed to carry much real threat.

  Szylla let out a pleased sigh. "Isn't she darling? My Wailfiend always was so exacting in her distinctions. And yet even now, when sore and humbled, she cannot quite stop preening."

  The Wailfiend's head whipped toward her mistress with a scandalized gasp. "Dr. Szylla! That is hardly—"

  "Oh hush, love," Szylla drawled, waving her quill. "Your vanity is practically an ecosystem of its own. It would be cruel of me not to cultivate it."

  Their exchange was so oddly domestic that it almost made me laugh. But I bit it back, settling instead for reaching out to scratch lightly under the Wailfiend's chin. She jolted, eyes snapping wide, and then with a strangled sigh collapsed her narrow jaw into my hands.

  "Do you intend to mock me in every way today?" she muttered. Her long lashes fluttered closed. "I should bite you for such liberties."

  "Then bite," I invited. "If it will make you feel less flustered."

  Her frilled-feelers flexed, scraping shallow furrows into the earth. But she did not bite. She only let out a plaintive little noise that sounded suspiciously close to a whimper. I felt her breath ghost hot across my robes of living fur.

  Szylla's eyes glittered behind her monocle. "My, my. Two such precious aberrations together. How marvelously instructive."

  The Wailfiend's frills flushed a deeper amethyst. "She is hardly precious. She is untamed and chaotic. Her aura still echoes of unfinished scars."

  "Which makes you fret over her all the more," Szylla teased. Her tentacles undulated in a slow, pleased fan behind her back. "Don't try to deny it, little lament."

  The Wailfiend gave a wounded growl and tucked her chin even harder into my hands. For all her complaints, she did not retreat.

  This was not how I'd imagined an apex terror or a Sovereign's servant would behave. But it made sense in its own way. Power did not always roar; sometimes it curled itself delicately around old wounds, or whispered secrets into hollow places that might otherwise echo with loneliness.

  "So you serve Szylla after all these cycles?"

  Her pupils narrowed into faint slits of sapphire. "I exist because she wished it so. And she has never found me wanting… until perhaps today. With you."

  Szylla's grin curved sharp and knowing. "Now, now. There is no displacement of favor here, my dear lament. KiAera is something new to marvel at, certainly, but you will always be my first chosen. Each of you threads your own strand into my long tapestry."

  The Wailfiend seemed to settle slightly, though her whiskers still twitched with obvious pique. I scratched once more under her jaw. This time she leaned into it without complaint, eyes half-lidded and dangerously close to content.

  "I suppose," she muttered with a tiny sniff, "if you are to be another of her curiosities, it is better to be civil. For now."

  "I'll take civil. For now."

  I followed the Wailfiend at a careful distance as we picked our way up a winding, moss-slick path toward Szylla's hovering cottage. My lighter form drifted just above the ground, soft ribbons trailing behind me in lazy curls.

  The Wailfiend slunk ahead through the air, her long serpentine body curling around boulders and split tree trunks, delicate frills occasionally fluffing out with a nervous tremor.

  Every so often she'd glance back, narrow pupils darting to catch my eyes. Her muzzle lifted a touch too high, an elegant little huff leaving her throat as if to declare she was perfectly unfazed by my presence. Yet her tail swished with shy agitation.

  Szylla's umbrella bobbed beside me, and she let out a pleased hum. "I do hope you two continue to cooperate. My darling Wailfiend has been quite lonely in these woods. I suspect she rather likes having someone new to… compare herself against."

  The Wailfiend made a soft, offended croak. Her ears—or rather the intricate webbed fans behind her jaw—twitched furiously. With delicate precision, she tucked her chin and began grooming the edge of her own frill after her mouth split into serrated edges. Her tongue flicking in rapid, embarrassed sweeps.

  The effort was so careful, so almost coquettish, that it seemed painfully important to her that I notice how graceful she could be.

  I slowed, watching with faint amusement. "Are you preening because Szylla said that?"

  The Wailfiend froze. Her eyes slid toward me in affronted silence, and she gave a sniff that might have been dignified if it hadn't been accompanied by a slight tremor in her long whiskers. With exaggerated poise, she lifted one elegant claw and began cleaning it with meticulous licks, clearly determined to pretend I hadn't spoken at all.

  Szylla let out a soft, conspiratorial laugh. "Do be gentle. She is rather sensitive about her status. Being my number one has rather… spoiled her. Now she feels threatened by your sudden ascension."

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  The Wailfiend puffed up. Her tail lashed once, narrowly avoiding a swirl of mushrooms that glowed sleepily where it struck the earth. Then she turned abruptly and slithered ahead with a regal air that bordered on petulant.

  "Truly precious," Szylla said, eyes sparkling behind her monocle. “Unique variants are terribly territorial about acknowledgment. You should be flattered. It means you're worth envying."

  I wasn't sure I wanted that kind of compliment. But as I hovered up beside the Wailfiend, I noticed how she carefully angled her neck so that the patterns along her throat caught the faint azure glow of the forest veins. It was a shy show. A performance meant to reclaim some small piece of dignity.

  Without thinking, I reached out and smoothed my fingers along one of her sleek shoulder ridges. She stiffened immediately, scales tightening, breath stalling in her chest. Then she relaxed with a low, embarrassed rumble, head lowering just enough that I could stroke the soft skin beneath her jaw.

  "You're still worthy, you know," I whispered.

  Her pupils flared wide, swallowing nearly all the gleaming crimson. A small puff of miasma leaked from her nostrils. Startled, maybe even flustered. She swatted my hand lightly with her tail. Not hard enough to hurt, just enough to reclaim a fragment of her aloof superiority.

  "Ridiculous creature," she said, before hurrying up the slope with her frills twitching wildly.

  Szylla sighed in delight, lifting her skirts slightly to step over a thick knot of roots. "It's rather like watching a pair of adolescent nobles at a garden party, each trying not to admit their fascination with the other's attire."

  "That's… not comforting," I mumbled. My ears drooped, ribbons curling around my shoulders like worried hands.

  "Be that as it may, she is quite taken with you already. She simply resents that you achieved in a single forced evolution what she has refined over time under my careful guidance."

  The statement lingered. Soon, at the top of the slope, the path leveled into a gentle rise of grass aglow with clovers. We were about to head up to Szylla's cabin where floating stone built itself into a staircase.

  ??? ??? // ??? ???

  The mirror inside Szylla's cabin was no ordinary pane of glass. Its tall frame was a tangle of black branches frozen mid-writhe, each tipped in little silver thorns that winked with unsettling cheer whenever I moved. The surface of the mirror itself rippled softly, as if waiting to drink me down.

  I floated toward it, my ribbons brushing the carved frame, and felt the tug of that old, familiar shimmer: the border of somewhere else.

  Szylla stood by the door with her umbrella hooked over one arm, humming a lilt that felt suspiciously like a lullaby. Her tentacles combed idly through the pale hair pinned at her nape. Beside her, the Wailfiend floated, half-hidden by the dim glow of oil lamps that dangled from rootlike cords overhead.

  The Sovereign gestured lightly with her hand. "Whenever you're ready, my dears. The manor awaits."

  I drew a breath, steeled myself, and stepped through.

  It felt like passing through a warm breath.

  The world squeezed tight around my ribs, then fell away in a dizzying shudder. When I blinked again, I stood at the end of a long hall paneled in polished midnight wood. Pale chandeliers hung overhead, cradling clusters of blue flame that hissed and popped. The lights cast silhouettes that suggested figures just beyond sight; shapes whispering to each other, always vanishing when I tried to look.

  I turned slowly in place. Velvet carpets sprawled underfoot, patterned in subtle labyrinthine fractals. Paintings crowded the walls: grim hunts, spectral ships adrift in night seas, moons that dripped tears like dew. The air carried the faint, unsettling scent of lilacs left too long in a sealed coffin.

  The mirror closed behind me with a hush.

  Then came a musical sigh. A familiar one.

  I turned just in time to watch the Wailfiend slip through a neighboring mirror like dark perfume poured from a vial. She settled on the floor without touching it, hovering a handspan above, her body unfurling into her banshee form—tall, willowy, and unnaturally graceful. But her body was different this time.

  She had chosen to wear her human form. Or what very closely resembled one.

  Gone was the battered dragon-eel from the crater. Here she was spectral again, clothed in a flowing gown of trailing shadow, locks of pitch-dark hair cascading downward. Pearlescent tears clung to her lashes.

  Her eyes, with a faint swirl of ghostlight deep inside, found me instantly. Despite her face being half-veiled by dark filigree; when her eyes found mine, they sparkled with unreadable delight.

  She hovered downward from above the stairs like a ballet dancer about to bow.

  "Welcome to the inner hall. I am Wicktoria Wailfiend. Our Sovereign instructed me to show you around. She's quite taken with you, you know."

  I floated a few inches off the floor still, though my ribbons hung low now in a more grounded posture. I shifted easily into my human form, wanting some sense of balance before this strange tour. My limbs extended, my fur receded, and with a breath, my feet found the glass.

  I stood taller now, my original body returning with a quiet weight. Lithe, strong, every scar in its place, my Merecritt features buried beneath the skin.

  Wailfiend's eyes flared.

  "Oh," she almost murmured as a whimper. Her gaze slid down my form in a slow drag, lingering at my shoulders, my stance, the natural, casual way I took up space.

  I arched a brow. "Something wrong?"

  She floated nearer, curling one long wisp of hair behind her ear in a dainty motion that felt practiced, but deliberate. Her lips curved in what might've passed as a smile if it didn't seem so… brittle.

  "You're taller than me."

  That was all. But her tone was lacquered in so many shades; surprise, envy, the faintest tremble of resentment.

  Taken aback a bit, I blinked. "I suppose."

  "And so… solid," she continued. "Your shape is mature." Her head tilted, lips pressing together. "Mine always flutters. Even when I pretend to be a girl again. The illusion frays at the fingertips, you see."

  "You chose your form," I said carefully, stepping forward.

  "I did." Her voice turned a little sharper. "To make you more comfortable. Szylla says you're still tethered to your old shape, that it might anchor you." Her gaze flicked to my hair, my eyes, my hands. "She says some creatures cling to themselves longer than others."

  She drifted close enough that I could see the slight tremble at her knuckles, even though she tried to hide it by folding her hands behind her back. Her expression shifted like ripples over still water.

  "I wonder," she said airily, "how long you'll last."

  The temperature dropped slightly. I felt the hum of banshee essence coil through the air—a psychic moan barely leashed, a half-formed shriek slithering beneath the wallpaper of reality.

  Her eyes glowed faintly. "Would you like to hear your name in the voice of the dead?"

  I stared at her, unmoving.

  She waited.

  But when I said nothing, when I didn't even flinch, something cracked behind her eyes. Just a little. The banshee energy withdrew like a sulky tide.

  "No reaction?"

  I shrugged. "You tried to kill me twice and I still apologized to you. I think we're past the scary-ghost phase."

  Her jaw twitched. She turned sharply, letting her hair sweep like a curtain. She floated toward one of the long, impossibly tall mirrors lining the hall.

  "You didn't even ask what I looked like… Before."

  "I was waiting for you to offer."

  She said nothing at first.

  The silence that followed felt like a string pulled too tight, threatening to snap.

  Then, softly, she said, "I don't remember. Not clearly."

  I came closer, walking slowly, giving her space to retreat if she needed it. She didn't move. She stared into the mirror, not at her face, but at the hazy mist that never quite reflected the world correctly. In the mirror, her shape rippled: ghost, girl, serpent, shadow. Repeat.

  "I remember falling ill," she said. "The plague—Szylla called it 'Whisperrot.' It stole names. Faces. Left only feelings behind. I think I screamed a lot. I think I was someone's sister. Maybe a singer. I remember my mouth hurting from screaming songs that never ended."

  Her fingers touched her throat, eyes distant.

  "Szylla saved me. She sewed me back together from memory and shadow. She gave me voice again. A name. A purpose. She made me beautiful."

  "She probably made you forget."

  That earned me a look: a sharp, accusing glance, like I had torn a scab too early.

  "She saved me," Wailfiend said again. "If I had stayed as I was, I would have unraveled. I was… nothing. She gave me meaning."

  "And you think I'm here to take that away from you."

  Wailfiend looked back at the mirror.

  "I don't know what I think. You look like a person. You still look like someone who could go home, if you found the right road. I haven't looked like someone in a long time."

  I stepped beside her, our reflections blurry in the mirror's shifting surface.

  "You're still someone."

  She didn't speak. But her hand hovered near mine for a long, trembling moment, then drifted away again like smoke too shy to land.

  "Come," she said finally. "The Sovereign said to show you the third corridor. It's where the old assistants sleep. Don't touch the bells. Don't speak to the paintings. And if anything calls your name from the vents…ignore it."

  We were about to move out when I noticed something. In the mirror's shimmer, I thought I saw my own face mouth my name, though I hadn't spoken.

  Thank you for being part of our first year. See you all again on Thursday!