Chương 23: 23, loop 1, part 3

The room was dark when I woke up. There was no gray afternoon glow through the windows, just unbroken black. My windows were enchanted to turn dark after around 5: 30 p. m., long before the sun finally crested over the horizon. The only light came from the crack under the door, a thin line of amber that caught the edges of the desk and chair. I sat up and cast [Illuminate] on the lamp next to me.

"How long was I out?" I decided not to investigate. I had been asleep for what felt like a whole geological era, and my body had lots of opinions about being woken from it. Every single one of them negative and loud. My neck cracked, and then my back. My shoulder popped. Our room was split almost down the middle. Finn's side was organized with books on the shelves arranged as if by Grimm. Textbooks in their specific categories, supplies in their proper receptacles. Chair pushed in neatly.

The wooden desk, polished once a week with the proper charms. Bed pristine and white, with hospital corners. His side of the room looked like a recruitment poster for responsible adulthood. My side, in comparison, looked every part the toddler's playpen: books in disarray, the corner of the bed linen bunched up where I hadn't bothered tucking it around the corner. Two or three weeks of laundry curled up around the bed like a halo. But my desk had a sandwich on it. That was new.

It was cold, wrapped in a linen cloth, the fold tucked under so it didn't unravel. He always wrapped them that way. He had been here and checked on me, found me asleep, and actually left me alone. That was nice. I picked the sandwich up and turned it over. He'd been doing this since I went through a stretch where I accidentally didn't eat enough. I never asked him to, but he always said he wouldn't let me starve myself again. He'd have made it this afternoon.

Likely after his match, which I assumed he'd still won, even without me in attendance. But who knew how the brackets changed? But I was content for the first time since he'd woken me at breakfast… yesterday? Today? The point was that I'd overslept. The room was dark. The sandwich was cold, and I was alone. Three out of four conditions for a perfect evening. The fourth was not having anywhere to be, which, unfortunately, I did. It was almost seven. I was supposed to be meeting my uncle in ten minutes.

It wasn't an optional meeting. It had never been optional. In two years, I had missed it exactly once, and the resulting conversation had been worse than the dinner itself—his vegetables included.

"I should go," I said with a sigh. But really I was excited to see my uncle. Even late, showing up was better than not showing. I grabbed my wand off the nightstand. The blue crystal flashed with a pulse of mana as I picked it up. My HUD tried to activate at the brush of my hand, but I waved it off. And that was when I realized I had collapsed into bed in my day clothes like an uncivilized person. A normal human being would stand up, walk to the bathroom, undress, wash, and put on fresh clothes.

But that was five steps too many for me. I pointed my wand at myself and cast [Undress]. [Undress - Enchantment] Cost: 4 mana. Removes the caster's clothing and deposits it on the nearest available surface. A shirt peeled away off my chest and floated up over my head, drifting toward the desk chair. Trousers followed, sliding down my legs and pooling on the mattress. My socks rolled off my feet and dropped to the floor. The whole production took about four seconds and didn't require me to leave the bed. Heaven.

The next problem: I smelled like I had slept in my clothes, which I had, after spending the morning on a bench. Normally, this was Finn's department. The man cast [Cleanse] on me almost every time he saw me. Reflexively, without asking, without looking at me while he did it. Finn wasn't here, and the bathroom was all the way across the room. [Cleanse]. [Cleanse - Enchantment] Cost: 5 mana. Removes dirt, grime, and odor from the caster's body and hair. The grime and sweat vanished in an instant.

My skin felt minty and alert. Not quite enough for anybody else to justify avoiding a shower.. But for me, it was a great spell. I pointed my wand at the desk chair where my last set of fresh clothes were draped. A black shirt and gray pants. And cast [Dress]. [Dress - Enchantment] Cost: 4 mana. Animates a targeted set of clothing onto the caster. Instantaneous. If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

The shirt floated off the chair and settled over my head, and the trousers and socks followed without any help from me. Three spells, zero standing. One of my favorite parts of the day. I grabbed the sandwich and ate it on my way out. Egg and cheese. It was all Finn ever got for me, because he knew I would eat it without complaint. The hallway was empty. The dormitory was quiet enough that I could hear the enchantments in the walls doing their various maintenance checks.

The other students were either at dinner, or studying, or doing whatever it was we did when we had our free time. I cast my other favorite spells on the walk. [Wideview]. [Subtitle]. Both fired in a single pulse through [Dual Weaving], and the world opened up. The walk to the spire was short, which was its only redeeming quality. The cold had gotten into everything. The stone, the air, even me. The campus was already past autumn and heading somewhere worse, just like... yesterday? Today?

I could spend the effort figuring out how to refer to the last time I had done this, but I wasn't sure it was worth it quite yet. I'd let tomorrow's me figure that out. The paths outside were mostly empty, a strange parallel to this morning. There were a few students crossing the Green in pairs, but that was it. Through [Wideview], the spire rose against the sky. Twelve stories of white stone, with a faint glow at the top that meant my uncle's office was occupied. The express lift took me to the eleventh floor.

The password was still "perseverance." Thankfully. When I exited, the room was empty. But not empty as in my uncle hadn't arrived yet. Empty as in nobody had been here at all. The round table was bare. Fuck. Last time, the food was already plated when I walked in. Roast chicken, root vegetables, warm bread. He had poured water without asking, because he knew I'd drink whatever required the least decision-making. My uncle knew me well. He'd be sitting, waiting, shadows under his eyes deeper than the night before.

I stood in the doorway, on the last bite of the cold sandwich Finn had made me. The carafe sat on the sideboard, full, the way it always was. Water for a dinner nobody had ordered. I crossed to it and poured myself a glass, because the alternative was leaving immediately. And that would mean admitting the empty room had unsettled me. It hadn't. Really. He could've been anywhere. He was the headmaster. Headmasters had reasons to be where they needed to be. Today had changed a few things.

There was no tournament for me because there was no punishment for me. Which meant he likely wouldn't watch the first round. And because there had been no battle against shadow wolves, the start of Corwen's day had been completely different. I set the glass down, and then the gold thread pulled. It wasn't the faint background hum I'd been ignoring since breakfast. This was a legitimate tug. Single and deliberate, like a fishing line, twitching, with someone bent over the other end.

And while I hadn't experienced it since before my dad died, it was a feeling you didn't forget. The thread trailed from behind my sternum. I was pulled in a direction that didn't line up with the office above me, or anything else I could see. It pointed through the wall, past the enchanted windows, past the sunset, toward something south and low and far away. I put a hand flat against my chest. [Soul Sense] was always running. And right now, it was telling me the [Soul Tether] was taut.

Like something on the other end was pulling back. A tug came again, fainter this time, but I wasn't imagining it. It was like something wanted me to follow it to the other end. But I didn't. I stood with my hand on my chest like an idiot and waited for it to stop. After a few seconds, it did, or maybe I just stopped feeling it. I filed it away with all the other changes I didn't understand yet. The list was starting to get long. The smart move was to follow the thread. Find whatever was pulling.

Confirm whether I had broken something important by stopping the fight this morning. But the lazy move was to leave and assume everything would work out for the best. I was very good at the lazy move. I had been practicing it my entire life. Never once regretted it. Except for all the times I had, which I didn't want to think about. I left the spire and didn't look back. The thread didn't pull again. And I told myself that meant it had nothing left to say. I wasn't sure what to do with myself.

No dinner with my uncle, and I didn't really need to research [Soul Tether] or mana exhaustion anymore. I'd kind of solved that whole thing, hadn't I? But still, I found myself walking toward the library, ignoring the fact that the gold thread was leading me in the same direction. The Archives were warm and quiet and smelled like old paper when I entered. The reading lamps threw light across the stone floor. A handful of students were scattered across the nooks, bent over textbooks like always.

Nobody looked up when I entered. I'd come here for two reasons. First, with the timeline shifted, I needed to chart what I actually knew. Then I needed to sort through everything my brain had assumed was fact about the next 24 hours. I couldn't let that dragon happen again. It wasn't worth the risk to my uncle, or Finn. The second reason was simpler. I had nowhere else to be. The library was better than my empty dorm room, where if I slept more, I'd get woken up by a nice, caring friend. I headed for the stacks.

My usual nook by the wall was available, like it had been the day prior. That kinda fit. But I walked past it. Two sections deeper, I heard the main entrance open. I was sure that within the next hour or two, I'd hear a horde of first-years discovering a cheese wheel in the middle of the road. I found a quieter alcove near the west wall, tucked between two shelves of something called Elemental Resonance and Post-Therumian Architecture. That sounded like a punishment for crimes I hadn't committed.

The reading lamp was dim and the chair was uncomfortable, but it was silent. Perfect. I now had an odd block of free time that hadn't existed the last time I experienced this day. I sat there with nothing to read and no active task in front of me. It felt right. I deserved this after the hell I had been through. Now what did I actually want to do with this time? I opened a book to a random page and stared at it. And then [Wideview] caught movement, and I forgot what I had been thinking about.