The guys kept working on removing the meat from the drake’s bones, its hide now miraculously reduced to almost nothing after I’d painted a few holes along its side. It seemed my intention truly shaped the magic: the openings held exactly where I wanted them, letting the boys reach past the armor of scales into the warm, collapsing interior. While they worked, I wandered through the nearby concrete jungle, examining smaller patches of flora and the odd bits of fauna that lived here, as my second brain drifted into conversation with Anansi.

  [You are at 45%. You need 55% more essence of Authority to initiate growth.]

  “What!?” The word slipped out loud before I could stop it. Twenty percent from one drake?

  [It was a formidable opponent with a vast reservoir of Authority of its own. And as Nick observed, you likely could have never killed it by conventional means.]

  Still, that felt almost like cheating. I need to find more drakes, I thought. More Authority-rich things to kill.

  [You would also need a safer method of baiting. This one nearly roasted Peter and threw Nick from a lethal height.]

  He would have survived that, I countered weakly. Peter too, probably. It was a half-joke, but she was right. Risking their lives, healable or not, wasn’t exactly a kind friend move. I wouldn’t do that again.

  I hated that feeling of being a failure, the light-sucking depression still lurking in me like a dark tide I kept pushed barely out of sight. If I got them hurt, if anything happened to them, the thing inside me would swallow me whole. Malik was already enough weight for a lifetime.

  He would’ve lived to see us bring down this drake, I thought bitterly, if I hadn’t dragged him into my stupid mess.

  [He might have died earlier, during the confrontation with his brother, when his grandmother was taken.]

  I’m not so sure. Now that I understood more about their family, I suspected the whole drama had been a way to lure Malik out to talk, to warn him, to teach him a lesson. Nothing truly murderous. Rhythm killed him in rage, not intention.

  [Nothing you did was intended to harm him either. Quite the opposite. You tried to keep him whole, even as you let him know you could not love him back.]

  Anansi’s words followed me as I brushed aside a patch of grey foliage. Beneath it, a cluster of insectoid things scattered. Creatures that looked as if someone had stitched climbing lines of computer code into the shape of beetles. They fled instantly from the light, vanishing into cracks between the concrete roots.

  And under one of the graffiti-painted leaves, once the bugs had scattered, I found a wallet. Black, dirty, worn wallet. A peeling Superman sticker on the front, Spider-Man’s face stretched across the back.

  I opened it with numb fingers.

  A few loose bills.

  And one NYC ID card.

  His face stared up at me. Malik, full of himself, calm, stupidly happy in the way people look when they believe the world might actually go their way.

  My grip loosened. The wallet hit the ground.

  A second later, so did I.

  My knees met the soft concrete with a dull thud, and the tears were already spilling, as I clamped a hand over my mouth to stop whatever sound threatened to escape. But I couldn’t stop looking at his picture. Couldn’t look away from the reminder of the boy who should still be alive.

  I remembered then a throwaway comment I hadn’t even properly processed earlier, when we were running through this place. “I think I lost my wallet somewhere in the commotion.” He said something like that. And of course, out of everyone who could’ve found it, it had to be me.

  Of course it did.

  “Fuck you,” I whispered to whatever god or fate, or cosmic joke, had arranged this scene just for me. My voice shook with the effort of holding myself together. “Get bloody fucked.”

  A broken laugh escaped me, bitter and cracking. “If we ever meet,” I told the empty air, “I’ll get my revenge for that cruelty.”

  “Where did I go wrong?” I whispered to Anansi after what felt like forever. After the tears had dried into sharp salt along my cheeks, after I’d just sat staring at Malik’s picture until the edges blurred. “It doesn’t even feel like I lost something real between us… more like I never let anything real happen at all. And yet… it still hurts, just the same.”

  [You live in a cruel world. Not everyone has to face deathly consequences for their mistakes. And I’m not saying you made any big ones.]

  But I did. Every single one. Slowly, I climbed, pressing my hands against the rough bark of tree branches, lifting myself just two feet off the ground, letting the motion steady me.

  [It’s hard to explain. You keep people at a distance and I know exactly why. It’s understandable, given what you’ve been through. But it’s also why things have been like this.]

  How do you decide who’s trustworthy? Most people, I barely know long enough to judge—sometimes not even months. Life moves too fast, and choices demand split-second decisions. I can’t afford to get burned.

  [Have you ever been?] Anansi’s question landed like a stone in my chest. I couldn’t think of a single time. But maybe that was exactly it. I was so careful, so guarded, I never let myself be vulnerable.

  [Or maybe… they just don’t betray easily.]

  I wanted to believe that, but when power’s on the line, everyone has a price and short relationships are usually at a discount.

  [How many times have you been hurt because you didn’t trust someone? Don’t bother counting. That number is higher than the times your trust was actually betrayed.]

  I understand your point of view, which feels a little weird, honestly, since you’re still a part of me, but changing that part of myself isn’t simple. Shaking off guilt never is. I still feel it every time Jason crosses my mind. I know he’s out there because of me and the mistakes I made, no matter what people keep insisting. And every time I think about Malik now, I see myself dragging him down to Shiroi’s basement, brushing off his stance on releasing that scumbag. Even when I look at Peter, I picture him eyeless and maimed by Penrose on my behalf, even if it was only for a heartbeat in time.

  [But you push through.]

  I do. I smile and joke and keep moving, because it’s easier than sitting still and facing everything I’ve done. But the truth is, it’s getting harder by the minute. Having another mind riding shotgun doesn’t help, since it keeps reminding me how long the list of my mistakes has gotten.

  I thought about her voice echoing in my head as I stepped over a fallen tree trunk that had somehow become part of the concrete floor. That’s when I spotted a tiny blue bird perched on a cracked bit of rebar. It chirped these little broken sentences into the air, almost like it was arguing with itself. Strange x-shaped markings ran across its belly, and for a moment it just stared at me. Then it fluttered off in a rush, as if it had somewhere important to be.

  I wandered for a while, skirting the edge of the clearing where the boys were, close enough to be withing aura range, but far enough that they wouldn’t catch me crying. I watched through the eyes I’d left with them, and even with Nick’s sour mood, he seemed to forget, if only for a moment, about Malik’s death, laughing at something Peter had said. Liora bounced around with them too, hopping over the carcass of his older cousin, snatching up smaller prey whenever it strayed too close.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  There was a food chain in this world as well, and today, I had cheated it, like early humans cheating nature with tools to take down mammoths and beasts far larger than themselves. Even with my powers, in a straight one-on-one fight, I’d be toast. Rhythm? Joan? Countless mages I hadn’t even met yet? They’d shred me without blinking. Hell, Adrian might have torn me apart if he hadn’t come to fear me.

  I needed to flip the script. And thanks to my Connection soulmark, I was in a unique position to exploit the learning curve. I didn’t have to wait for Ideworld openings to hunt monsters. I didn’t have to waste a third of my day sleeping. I didn’t even need to trudge around like everyone else. I could bring my own team wherever I wanted, whenever I wanted. It all came down to one thing: finding the right place and the right targets.

  Anansi, do you think they’ve advanced as much as I have when it comes to the essence? How is it even gathered? Does it all go to the killer?

  [All of you got the same amount. It disperses through the soul’s realm and settles into each of your souls as your opponents die. If you’re close enough, it’s shared evenly.]

  So if I’d taken the drake down alone, I would’ve gotten three times what I have now?

  [Yes, but I don’t think you would’ve come out of that alive.]

  Oh, Anansi. It’s always about preparation. I’ll have to think through the details.

  [Just remember that I’m stuck with you.]

  “Are you afraid to die?” I asked, the question slipping out sharper than I meant.

  [I… think so.]

  I’m sorry, friend. My selfishness still kicks in whenever I think about gaining something or pushing myself. I need to think about you and the others first. I paused, letting the guilt settle. But tell me this please. You aren’t really stuck with me in the bigger picture, right? You’re part of my soul core, a remnant of the other me. Her intelligence guiding my magic.

  [Yes.]

  Right. And now that I’m actually connecting the dots—obvious ones, honestly—it makes sense why you want me to trust people more. I shook my head. Anyway, what I meant to ask was… if I ever let others connect to my Domain, if they became legacy mages, would you be able to talk to them too?

  [I think so.]

  Then you’d live on. Even if I didn’t.

  [Alexa, please don’t be a fatalist. Being stuck with you isn’t the worst fate imaginable.]

  Woah. Nicest thing you’ve ever said to me. Thanks, spidey.

  **********

  At some point, I stopped wandering and pulled a loose page from my bag, sketching the scene in front of me. It didn’t need to go in my Spellbook. There was already an anchor here, and I wanted to keep clutter to a minimum. Sooner or later, I’d run out of space to paint, and juggling two or three books would be a headache. Postponing that problem felt like the smarter choice.

  The page captured Nick, his hands and arms twisted to mimic the very limbs of the monster he was ripping apart. Peter was there too, surrounded by a maelstrom of water, blood, and concrete, slicing through muscles and organs as if the world itself bent around him. The carcass lay partly atop an artificial mound of gleaming gold in the middle of the otherwise gray jungle, colors drained from everything except the occasional steel rebar or twisted metal, shifting with the wind.

  Near the top, where the landscape ended and gave way to the cavern’s black void, dim purple and green light filtered down from above. I painted Lio there, circling in the air, chasing his own tail like a tiny, spinning star of color.

  I hadn’t bothered to paint much meat, just a few scraps. The rest had already been sent to Lebens’ training hall, labeled as drake meat, in case Dam or Ariana stumbled upon it.

  “Can we talk about this resonance check?” I asked Nick as I stood, slipping the painting and my watercolor pens back into my bag.

  “Yeah. I’ll show you. I could use a break,” he said. He took a slow breath, eyes flicking toward the half-open drake corpse before he walked over. Peter kept working in silence, peeling meat from bone without looking up.

  When Nick reached me, he wrapped his massive hands around my arms and turned me to face him. He lowered his gaze, locking eyes with mine. “Keep the eye contact,” he said right as I instinctively broke it. I forced myself to meet his eyes again, doing everything in my power not to blush or do something even more embarrassing.

  For a second, all I saw were his green eyes. Then the world seemed to blink, and suddenly we weren’t standing in the cavern anymore. We were somewhere else, far apart, yet close enough that every tiny detail of him was still sharp and clear. It felt like we were suspended in a silent void, a space with no stars, no planets, nothing familiar.

  Behind him rose a massive column of swirling shadowlight, and he was tethered to it by a single shimmering line. The moment that tether touched him, it split like a prism and stretched upward, turning into a thinner column of the same shifting light that drifted up and away from his silhouette. This smaller column wasn’t nearly as large as the one towering behind him, but in the distant, hazy stretch of the void, I could see other thin columns. Just like Nick’s, but also taller than the one he carried.

  “Are those columns the resonance levels of your Domain and every mage connected to it?” I asked. “And… where even are we?”

  He looked stunned for a moment, like his voice had slipped out of reach.

  “Alexa, we’re caught in a moment, that’s the best way I can describe it. We’ll leave this place soon, and only a second will have passed out there.”

  “Okay,” I answered quietly.

  “Yes, they’re resonance levels. I’m a legacy mage, and everyone in my Domain only gets to access a fraction of its power, so my column is smaller.” He lifted his hand and pointed above me. “Look at yours. Look at yourself and your Domain.”

  “How?” I turned and tilted my head back. I could see the light pouring up from me, but from below, it felt like trying to read a map sideways.

  “You’re not tethered to your body in here. Picture yourself from the side looking at both of us.”

  So I did. And it was strangely easy. Maybe because I was already used to seeing through extra eyes, or maybe this place simply worked that way for mages.

  Either way, the moment I saw us from the outside, my jaw—well, the phantom version of it—dropped to a floor that didn’t exist.

  The column above me stood as tall as my entire Domain. That part didn’t shock me; I was the originator, the sourceress, the source. My Domain grew with me.

  But Nick’s own column—only one-tenth the height of his Domain’s main pillar—looked tiny compared to mine. My two columns rose almost three times higher than his and reached roughly a third of the height of the entire power his Domain had gathered over the centuries.

  “Why am I that much stronger than you?” I asked. Then I blinked, and we were standing back in the real world, staring into each other’s eyes again.

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?” he said. “You reached a third of the power my Domain collected over more than two hundred years, and you did it in a sliver of time. How?”

  “She did what?” Peter asked, finally stopping his butchering. The water-saws drifted back from the meat, circling him in a slow, lazy orbit.

  “Her resonance level—the thing that decides her overall magic output and how much she can actually affect the world, is impossibly high for someone who became a mage just four months ago,” Nick said. “I get that your Domain’s packed with artwork that could count as valuable artifacts and boost your resonance, but seriously, Alexa… do you have the Mona Lisa stashed in there?”

  “How does it grow, exactly?” I asked.

  Nick nodded, as if he’d been waiting for that question. “Think of your Domain as your own universe. You fill it with memories as you experience things tied to your subject. Those memories resonate with its core concept. For me, that’s culinary excellence. Every time we make a dish we consider truly excellent—which isn’t often, mind you—that memory holds a certain weight. When we share it with the Domain, it adds to the resonance.”

  Peter and I listened like kids getting fed the secrets of the cosmos.

  “Over time,” Nick continued, “each memory hums along with the Domain’s core principles until it reaches its max resonance. Like squeezing every bit of flavor out of it. Once it can’t give more, it’s done. All those experiences stack up, raising the Domain’s overall resonance. That’s the column you saw.”

  He gestured toward me. “In your case, the column is the same height as your Domain because you grow with it. The difference between you and your Domain will always be tiny. But for me or Peter, our souls get used to the resonance, to the melody our Domains play. And over the years, we and everyone that shares the Domain eventually reach its max level, once our melodies finally match in a perfect harmony.”

  “So you’re saying that you, Dam, and Ariana could all have columns as tall as the main one in your Domain? You’d all be able to tap into its full strength?”

  “Yes, but only if we fully understand every concept our Domain is built on.”

  “I get it,” Peter said. I nodded too, letting Nick see that I was following.

  “Alright,” Nick went on, “that’s the basic way a Domain’s resonance grows. You build it through experience and through your own breakthroughs. And those breakthroughs don’t have to be tiny. Sometimes a single moment of really grasping your Domain’s essence can push its power up a lot.” He gave me a pointed look. “Did you have any of those personal breakthroughs?”

  “I probably did,” I said, shrugging a little, “but honestly I have no clue if they boosted anything.”

  “Fair enough.” He sighed. “Then there’s the other method. You can place items or creatures of power inside your Domain. If their nature fits the theme of your Domain, its resonance will rise over time to meet whatever that thing brings. Same deal as experiences. Sometimes the increase is tiny, sometimes it’s huge. Depends on what you put in there.”

  “Well, I don’t think I’ve got any priceless art hidden in there. At least… I think not. So maybe I really did have that many breakthroughs?”

  “I’m honestly baffled,” Nick said, scratching at his beard and smoothing it down as if that would help him think straighter. “I thought I understood my Domain pretty well…”

  “And that gaze you used to check it, how exactly do you do that?” Peter asked.

  “Oh, that’s simple,” Nick said. “You just hold eye contact with another mage for a few seconds. You’ll feel your soul’s intent swell up. You let it release and voilà. It’s called a Resonant Gaze.”

  “Can I try it with you, Alexa?” Peter asked.

  “Sure,” I said, meeting his deep blue eyes without hesitation.