Chapter 34: The Unwritten Spell
Vaelira’s eyes twitched.
Her mouth opened, then closed, then opened again, like her brain was buffering in the wake of what she had just witnessed.
The parchment crane sat innocently in her hand, as still and light as any ordinary scrap of folded paper.
But it had flown.
It had moved.
It had danced through the air like it had a soul of its own.
And Lucien… Lucien was sitting there blinking dumbly at it, like he hadn’t just violated every known convention of mana manipulation and magical theory.
“WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!”
She lunged.
Lucien barely had time to raise an eyebrow before Vaelira grabbed a fistful of his collar, yanked him upright in his chair, and began shaking him back and forth like a maraca in the hands of a very caffeinated goblin.
“You-!”
Shake.
“Said-!”
Violent Shake.
“You didn’t-know-any-magic!”
More Violent Shake.
“Ghk-wha-wai-Vael-!”
Lucien wheezed, head snapping with each jolt.
She ignored him, eyes practically sparking.
“You lied to me, you absolute fermented cabbage! What do you mean you don’t know magic?! That thing flew! You turned parchment into a mana-sensitive automaton! Out of thin air! Without a spell circle! Without a chant! Without a single goddamn rune!”
Lucien’s neck flopped like a rag doll’s.
He flailed weakly, one hand slapping against the armrest as he tried to tap out like a wrestler in over his head.
“I-ghrk-don’t-know-”
Vaelira blinked.
Her rage seemed to catch up with her body, and she suddenly realized she had been violently throttling him for the past fifteen seconds.
She released his collar.
Lucien immediately crumpled back into the chair like a sack of exhausted bones, his head hanging loosely against the backrest as he gasped for breath, hair tousled and wild, shirt wrinkled from where she'd bunched it.
Vaelira took two steps back, dragging her hand down her face with a groan.
Then she began pacing.
Back and forth.
Back and forth.
Boots thudding softly on the library's worn rug.
“This is insane,” she muttered.
“Insane. That’s not beginner-tier, that’s not intermediate-tier-it might not even be registered in any known arcane framework! What the hell kind of spell folds itself into an origami familiar and flies around the room with no components or incantations?! What sort of lunatic casts involuntary summoning origami!?”
She spun on her heel and pointed wildly at Lucien.
“You! You’re the lunatic!”
Lucien raised a slow hand like he was half-trying to defend himself.
“I swear I don’t know what I-”
Vaelira ignored him, still pacing.
“No structure. No anchor glyphs. No mana bracing. No freaking stabilization incantation. And yet it moves like it’s sapient!”
Her hands clutched her hair.
“You should be in a magic academy. No, an arcane research lab. A spellcraft institute. Not swinging sticks around in the courtyard with glorified knights and picking apples like a farmer!”
She whirled around again, practically bouncing as she marched back to his chair.
Lucien sat up just in time for her to jab an accusatory finger into the air mere inches from his nose.
“What else are you hiding, huh?!”
She demanded.
“Secret mana heritage? A hidden contract with a familiar? Forbidden texts buried under your mattress? Spontaneous reincarnation from some other world with unknown metaphysical rules? Talk!”
Lucien blinked.
Once.
Twice.
Still winded.
Still stunned.
He wasn’t sure what was more surreal: the flying paper crane, or the wild-haired, fire-eyed noblewoman interrogating him like he’d just casually solved magical cold fusion over tea.
He coughed lightly and managed a hoarse, bewildered
“…What?”
Vaelira narrowed her eyes.
And the crane, still resting in her hand, flapped its wings once, softly.
Almost mockingly.
Vaelira stood still for a moment, her finger still pointed accusingly at Lucien like a blade of judgment, before she let out a long, drawn-out exhale and dropped her hand.
“Alright,” she muttered, more to herself than him.
“Alright. You look like you’re one more outburst away from dying of confusion.”
Lucien gave a weak thumbs-up from the chair, still slumped, still visibly stunned.
Vaelira pinched the bridge of her nose, closing her eyes.
She took another deep breath, reined herself in, then stepped closer and offered her hand.
“Come on. Up. I’m walking you to your room before you collapse and the staff finds you sprawled across the floor like a drunk poet.”
Lucien stared at her hand for a moment like it was an alien object, then took it.
She pulled him up gently, this time with no shaking, no yelling, and wrapped an arm beneath his to steady his lurching frame.
They walked through the quiet halls of the manor, the occasional creak of floorboards underfoot the only sound between them.
Candle sconces lit their path with warm golden light, flickering shadows trailing behind.
Lucien was half-leaning on her by the time they reached his room.
She helped him sit at the edge of the bed.
“Get some rest,” she said, standing at the door.
“Tomorrow… we’re going to talk about this. Extensively.”
Lucien managed a small nod, eyes already drooping.
Vaelira lingered a moment longer, watching him settle in.
Then, quietly, she turned and left.
***
Her room was dim and cool when she entered, the soft scent of lavender in the air from the oil diffuser on the corner stand.
She closed the door behind her with a gentle click, her boots thudding dully against the rug as she walked toward her desk.
The paper crane was still in her palm.
Its magic had long since faded, whatever strange force had animated it had spent itself, but the folds were crisp and elegant.
It looked hand-made, yes, but not in the clumsy way most people folded paper.
There was something intentional in its creases.
Something precise.
Something alive.
She placed it gently on the center of her desk, between her inkwell and an open book she hadn’t touched in hours.
Then she stood there for a long moment, simply staring at it.
The candlelight made the shadows under its wings stretch outward like the memory of flight.
“I shouldn’t have yelled,” she murmured to herself, lips pressing into a thin line.
She should’ve kept her composure.
Maintained her image.
Her training.
Her discipline.
But how could she?
She ran both hands through her hair, then let them fall to her sides with a helpless sigh.
That wasn’t just magic, that was ‘magic’, in the purest, most uncanny sense.
No chants, no circles, no gestures.
No preparation.
And it hadn't just moved, it had performed.
Like it had understood the awe it was creating.
Even now, her heart beat just a bit faster thinking about it.
And Lucien… gods, the look on his face.
She had no doubt he hadn’t expected it.
The confusion in his eyes had been real.
The tears before it had even begun, those hadn’t been magical dramatics.
That had been something deep.
Something old.
‘An old wounded memory, perhaps?’
She knew that kind of look.
She’d worn it herself, once or twice, in the privacy of her failures.
Vaelira slowly unbuckled her sword belt and set it on the stand beside her wardrobe.
The weight off her hip left her feeling oddly light.
Vulnerable, even.
She changed into her nightshirt, slipping the uniform off piece by piece, movements quiet and methodical.
But her mind was anything but quiet.
‘Was this what pure natural talent looked like?’
She’d trained for years.
Studied swordsmanship since she could walk, magic theory since she could read.
Hours upon hours honing her shadow affinity, sweating through rituals and spars and sleepless nights trying to understand how to be stronger, faster, smarter.
And then he comes along.
A boy who barely understood mana flow.
Who claimed to be a sword trainee.
Who still mispronounced half the magical terms in her books.
And he had, quite literally, folded reality without meaning to.
She climbed into bed, laying on her back, eyes wide open and fixed on the ceiling.
She wasn’t jealous.
Not exactly.
But she was… unnerved.
In a way she couldn’t define.
There was something about Lucien that didn’t make sense, and that was what scared her.
The world followed rules.
Magic followed rules.
Even the shadows she bent to her will demanded focus and obedience.
But whatever Lucien did… had done… it had bypassed those rules.
Or ignored them entirely.
She turned her head to glance at the crane again, still sitting there on the desk.
Still just paper now.
‘What are you, Lucien?’
***
The moon hung high above the manor, casting pale light through the tall windows of Lucien’s room.
It was silent now, the kind of silence that came not with peace, but with the slow, aching tension of a heart too full to hold anything else.
Lucien lay curled on his side atop the bed, his back to the door, one hand clenched into the blanket like a lifeline.
His other hand hovered just above his chest, fingers trembling ever so slightly.
The tear that had fallen earlier had dried, but fresh ones now carved a trail down his cheeks, unbidden, unstoppable.
The room was warm.
Safe.
Familiar.
But his chest… his chest felt hollow.
Not from the strain of magic.
Not from the chaos of the paper crane or Vaelira’s outburst or even the strangeness of the day.
It was memory.
Memory that had crawled out from whatever corner of his soul it had been buried in, now clawing and biting its way to the surface.
Images.
Sounds.
His old room.
The scent of ink from graded papers.
The weight of his parents’ disappointment pressing on his small shoulders.
"A 91? What happened to the other nine points?"
"Why can't you be more like–?"
Even now, those words stabbed sharper than blades.
And in that chasm of failure and abandonment, the one bright light had always been her, his sister, standing with crumpled origami in her tiny hands, grinning like she’d solved all the world’s problems by folding a piece of paper into a crooked bird.
And now she was gone.
He gritted his teeth.
‘No’, he reminded himself, ‘not gone.’
Taken.
Ripped away by that thing, by Leonardo.
He squeezed his eyes shut, but the images burned on the inside of his eyelids anyway.
The stalker’s warped smile.
The twisted intensity in his gaze.
The sound of his sister’s voice calling his name for the last time.
Lucien buried his face into his pillow, sobs escaping his throat like knives.
He hated him.
He hated Leonardo with a depth that frightened even him.
No amount of calming thoughts or noble intentions could smother it anymore.
The rage was molten and ancient and hungry.
It wasn't the rage of a young man in a new world, it was the rage of a brother who had failed.
He wanted to kill him.
He wanted to see that perfect, smug, protagonist mask crack and shatter.
But for now… he was still weak.
Too weak to protect himself.
Too weak to save anyone else.
Too weak to challenge a man protected by the narrative itself.
So he wiped his face with the sleeve of his shirt and lay still, clinging to the only thing that kept him moving forward, resolve.
The same burning determination that had made him chase that bastard into the light beyond death now pushed him into dreams with fists clenched.
“I’ll learn,” he whispered, voice hoarse and raw.
“I’ll learn everything I can. I’ll burn this whole script if I have to. You’re not winning this time.”
Sleep came eventually, slow and heavy, like he was being pulled into a deeper layer of the world.
His breath steadied.
His fists loosened.
But even in slumber, his brow remained furrowed.
***
Far beyond the mortal realm, in a place that had no ground, no sky, no real form save for thought and laughter, it stirred again.
The entity had not stopped laughing.
Its form shifted erratically, warping between silhouettes and shapes that would have shattered the minds of those who tried to comprehend them.
It laughed with its chest.
With its eyes.
With the echo of things not yet said.
“Ohhhhhh, Lucien,” it cackled, a thousand voices overlapping.
“What a precious little time bomb you are!”
The entity wiped a nonexistent tear from one of its many eyes and then grinned.
A horrible, mouthless grin that stretched across conceptual space.
“That rage… delicious. Like aged wine with just a pinch of soul rot.”
It spun lazily in the void, lounging atop a throne made of broken narrative threads.
“Vaelira doesn’t even know what’s sitting across from her. And you, sweet little boy, don’t even know what you’ve started. But you will. Oh, you will.”
The laughter continued, but slower now.
More deliberate.
And underneath it, something colder hummed.
A watchful silence.
A presence.
The thing that watched him, it, was not just amused. It was waiting.
Waiting for the moment Lucien crossed the line between memory and metamorphosis.
Between being someone trying to survive the story...and becoming someone who could rewrite it.
“Oh, I can't wait to see what you fold next,” it whispered.
And then the void blinked, like an eye slowly closing, its last word echoing softly into the night:
“Goodnight… hero.”
***
