The fall ended where it had begun.

  I'd barely hit the floor before I knew it.

  The cold stone. The incense. The mps buzzing with that faint blue flicker.

  She was there again. Exactly where she was before—knees tucked up, hair a tangled red curtain, book clutched like a shield.

  The nightmare had rewound the memory to its beginning.

  My heart lurched. I spun around, half-expecting I might see some crack in the dream, some sign that I'd already been here, already tried once.

  Nothing.

  Just the corridor. The book in her p. The eerie quiet.

  I swallowed and walked toward her.

  She flinched when my shadow fell across her pages, peeking up with the same tiny, wary hope as before.

  "Who... who are you?" she whispered.

  I stared at her.

  I had already answered this question. Already knelt. Already watched the boy come running around the corner like a little sun.

  The memory repyed exactly how it did before.

  She showed him the spell.

  The air warmed. Her smile blossomed like it had the first time.

  And then everything went cold, as if someone had pulled a curtain over the scene.

  His voice changed. His words sharpened. He condemned the magic. Promised to report her. Walked away with righteous footsteps while her world colpsed.

  The chamber. The screaming I couldn't see.

  I lunged for her, trying to wrench the dream off its tracks—

  The floor split open. The nightmare swallowed us whole.

  I hit the corridor again.

  Same chill. Same mps. Same breathless little girl at the far end of the hall.

  A loop.

  ...Right then.

  I let out a slow breath, nausea and fury tangling under my ribs, and clenched my little fists.

  So that's how it was going to be.

  In the game, the Hero's answer had been simple. He'd gone in as himself, befriended her alongside the boy, and held fast—refusing to abandon her in her time of peril. He'd fought the Tower's padins head-on and overturned the world's logic.

  With brute strength and heroic stubbornness.

  I didn't have either of those qualities.

  All I had was this poor excuse for magic, and just enough meta-knowledge to know that if I tried to py the Hero here, I'd get crushed along with her.

  Fine.

  If I couldn't be the sword that cut through the nightmare... then I'd have to be something else.

  I walked down the corridor, heart pounding, and sat on the floor across from Seraphine like I'd always been there.

  This time, when she asked who I was, I didn't give her my whole truth.

  "I'm Cire," I said, keeping my voice as steady as I could. "I'm an apprentice. Just like you."

  Her eyes narrowed, suspicious. "You're not from my dormitory."

  "I'm new. They moved me from another wing." I mimed tugging at my too-big sleeves. "I'm still getting lost."

  She hesitated.

  Then she softened, just a fraction. "The south stairwell skips a floor," she murmured. "If you take it by accident, you'll get scolded for trespassing. Avoid that one."

  Advice. An offering of sorts.

  I smiled. "Thanks."

  Our conversation carried like we'd known each other forever. And in a way, we had.

  Footsteps echoed around the bend.

  "Seraphine!"

  The same bright shout, the same boy barreling into view, gold hair bouncing, training whites a size too big. He skidded to a stop when he saw me.

  "Oh," he said, blinking. "I didn't know you had... company."

  Seraphine straightened, flustered. "This is Cire. She's an apprentice from another wing."

  I dipped my head. "Nice to meet you. You're…?"

  "Cael," he said, puffing his chest out a little. "Padin initiate. Top of my css."

  Of course you are, I thought.

  Aloud, I said, "Seraphine told me about you. She said you're brilliant."

  Seraphine went still. Cael's ears turned pink. "Did she?"

  Good. Embarrassed and fttered was a much gentler direction to push him than righteous and offended.

  He coughed, trying to look solemn again. "I came to help her study," he expined.

  "Right." I patted the floor. "Then sit. Let's all study together."

  They both looked at me like I'd suggested we break into the head instructor's private chambers.

  But after a moment, Seraphine scooted over, making space.

  Cael hesitated, then sat too.

  The corridor warmed.

  Just a little.

  This first loop, I watched.

  I ughed when they ughed. I shared my notes, helped Seraphine with her homework, endured Cael making fun of my shoddy magic until his brows unknotted and his shoulders rexed. I listened when they talked about the future—their dreams, their fears, the way Seraphine wanted to create magic no one had ever seen before, the way Cael wanted to protect people who couldn't protect themselves.

  He meant it. That was the worst part.

  Every night, when the mps dimmed and tower-bells marked curfew, the dream jumped forward in time. A trick of the nightmare's logic—days compressed into blinks, weeks shaved away into single scenes. One moment we were children; the next, our robes were longer, our voices lower, our handwriting cleaner.

  But some things stayed constant.

  Seraphine kept drawing up her own sigils, filling margins with spirals and ttices, bridges of magic that curved where Tower spells demanded they snap.

  Cael kept sneaking time to see her, even when his schedule grew tighter. He came breathless from drills, sweat-damp and grinning, colpsing beside us in whatever quiet corner we had stolen.

  And I kept getting up after lights-out.

  The Tower library, even in a dream, was an imposing thing—stories stacked as high as the vaulted ceiling, dders that could crush you if they slipped, security wards humming low like bees in the pster.

  The first time I stepped through those doors, my heart pounded so hard I could hear it in my teeth.

  But Seraphine's memories were mine to borrow now. Her knowledge of the stacks pulled me along, her favorite shelves, the alcoves where the light didn't quite reach. The Tower primers were familiar—elemental theory, channeling exercises, safe little lessons drawn along rigid lines.

  The good stuff lived deeper.

  I slipped past the rope that marked the Restricted Section and felt the wards bristle like offended cats.

  Easy there, I thought. I'm not stealing anything that isn't already in her head.

  I ran my fingers along spines, letting half-remembered titles tug at me. I picked out tomes on dream theory, on emotional resonance and spell-stability, on the way beliefs turned into bindings.

  Most of them weren't about magic I could actually cast.

  They were about what dangerous forms magic could take, when one's resolve wavered. When one's morality fell by the wayside.

  Those I devoured.

  Night after night, I sat cross-legged beneath a reading mp, lips moving as I traced lines I only half-understood. Symbols seeped into me, a slow osmosis of logic and pattern. None of it would make me more powerful when I woke—but power wasn't what I needed.

  I needed understanding.

  And somewhere between the days spent with Seraphine and Cael, and nights spent on binding contracts and recursive illusions, a pattern emerged.

  The nightmare wasn't just repying her betrayal.

  It was protecting it.

  Loop after loop, we moved forward. The three of us, side by side.

  The corridor shifted to cssrooms, then to training yards, then to cramped dormitories where three sets of belongings brushed elbows. Seraphine and Cael bickered more as they aged—friendly at first, then sharper, the old warmth buried under obligation and exhaustion.

  Every loop, I tried something new.

  Each run was a test. Hypothesis, attempt, result, adjust.

  I talked to Cael about hypocrisy. About mercy. About choosing people instead of rules.

  He'd frown, discomfort flickering across his face. "We don't get to choose," he'd say. "We swore an oath."

  I talked to Seraphine about safety. About hiding her spellcraft. About waiting until she was strong enough to defend it.

  She'd stare at her hands, eyes shadowed. "If I hide them long enough," she whispered, "I'll forget the feeling—forget how they were mine."

  The Tower tightened its grip. Instructors hovered. Surprise inspections multiplied.

  I helped her hide. After so many loops, I'd memorized when they would happen.

  Cael watched us more closely.

  At first, it was protective. He'd step between Seraphine and a scolding instructor. He'd offer to carry our books, to walk us back from te lectures, to wait outside the library doors when we studied.

  But as the loops went on, something in his gaze changed.

  When I joked with Seraphine, he'd stare at us a little too long. When I put a hand on her shoulder, his jaw would flex. When the two of us bent over a notebook, our two heads almost touching, I could feel his attention like a physical weight.

  Once, when Seraphine excused herself to fetch more ink, he cleared his throat.

  "You and Seraphine," he said stiffly. "You're very close."

  "We're friends," I said. "We're all friends. That's the point, isn't it?"

  He didn't answer.

  He didn't drift away at a single moment. That would have been easier. Instead, he was worn down in increments—by praise when he parroted doctrine, by sharp rebukes when he questioned it, by the slow, suffocating reward of obedience. Each loop, by the time our bodies were older, he was a little more Tower's creature and a little less our friend.

  And every time Seraphine showed him her magic—every time she trusted him enough to keep her secret—the trigger pulled exactly the same.

  "You shouldn't do that, Seraphine."

  His eyes hardened. His voice went ft. And he walked away, breaking her.

  Duty overrode everything else.

  She never stopped hoping he'd choose her.

  He never did.