Chapter 208: Chapter 208

The Aetherfawn was not getting better.

Liene Lugano had known it ten minutes ago. She had hoped that the resistance she felt was just fatigue, and that the weave would settle if she breathed slower and lowered her output. But the truth had been there the whole time: the crack was still there.

There was a technique that could fix this, or at least keep it from unraveling further. Resonant Rebinding, a method for forced reconciliation between fractured aether flows. It was a high-tier stabilization method that used either crystal-aspected flow or, in advanced application, light.

Liene rubbed her forehead. She remembered the lecture, one that had Instructant Mosvani pacing in front of the amphitheater dais in frustration in front of a very distracted audience. You do not memorize this to use it, Mosvani had said. You memorize it so you know when not to improvise it.

She could remember the warnings perfectly. The diagrams, though, were fuzzy. She’d told herself she could look them up later if she ever needed it. Maybe she should’ve listened to Lorvan and at least paid attention to the healing lectures, after all.

However, there was a worse problem. Nearly a bell had passed, and Fabrisse Kestovar was nowhere to be seen.

Where did he go? Liene thought to herself.

Fabrisse was the type to wander. He always had been. His mind would always drill on some type of miniscule detail, and once it did, time stopped existing in any useful sense.

She remembered the first time he’d bailed on her.

They’d planned to meet outside the east conservatory for tea and some biscuits. He’d promised her to bring her the biscuits his sister had baked, which was just trivial enough to feel safe and personal enough to make her nervous. She’d waited an hour. When she finally found him, he was crouched by a broken ward-stone two corridors away, raising his fingers in the air as though looking at something invisible. To this day, she still hadn’t figured out what he was looking at. He wouldn’t say.

“I lost track,” he’d said, genuinely startled that she was upset. “It was . . . doing something wrong.”

He’d looked wounded when she told him she’d waited.

It hadn’t been the last time.

There were sessions he never showed up to because he’d found a new veined quartz near the riverbank. Once, he’d forgotten an entire afternoon because he’d been watching light refract through cracked quartz, muttering about interference patterns.

By the time he missed an appointment because of another girl he’d just met, she understood: she’d never really been that important to him.

That wasn’t the whole truth, no matter how neatly it tried to settle.

Fabrisse wandered, yes, but he didn’t wander away from emergencies. She’d seen the way his eyes focused when she’d mentioned Viviano, the way his posture had changed the moment the cracks became visible. She knew he cared.

Suddenly, the Aetherfawn raised his head. His ears twitched, not toward her, but toward the path behind her.

Then a familiar voice rang out, clear and grounding. “Liene. You’re safe. Good.”

She turned and saw Stanislav Kovrin standing at the edge of the clearing. For a moment, relief surged, before she took a better look at Kovrin. He was usually all easy smiles and lopsided humor, and had the sort of presence that filled a space without ever imposing himself on it. She would’ve fallen for his charm had she not had someone else in mind, but in all honesty, the question had always been whether he would ever consider her. Kovrin was way out of her league. He had cerulean hair that bobbed like a sunlit tide and eyes the color of deep ocean glass.

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Women fawned over him. Those things had never mattered much to Liene, but still, that didn’t mean she was immune.

Today, though, his voice carried a firmness that didn’t quite belong to him, like words rehearsed ahead of time.

“Stan?” she said, pushing herself to her feet.

He nodded. “I heard there was a disturbance in the southern runoff. Arin Rao told me you’d be here. He’s coming, too; don’t worry.”

Only then did she really take him in.

He was dressed in full battlemage regalia, deep cobalt layered with charcoal underpanels, threaded through with dense silver runes set in disciplined, repeating geometries that followed the lines of his body rather than ornamenting them. The patterns were overlapping ward-lines meant to deflect impact and stabilize output under stress. It was the kind of robe you wore when you expected trouble, not when you were out for a walk.

And in his right hand, grounded against the earth, was a staff nearly as tall as he was. It was massive, made of polished darkwood reinforced with metal banding, with a faceted aether crystal set at its head, nearly the size of her fist.

“What happened?” She asked.

Kovrin shifted his grip on the staff and gave a small, almost careless shrug. “Not much. “Minor spatial anomaly. It’s just protocol stuff, and the garment is a part of the deal. You know how the Synod is when it comes to tradition.”

“Protocol?” Liene echoed.

“Yes,” he said. “You know, the sort where people get told to stop poking around and go back to their rooms.”

Hurried footsteps tore through the grass behind him.

Arin Rao broke into the clearing looking nothing like the composed healer she knew. His robe was unfastened, one sleeve rolled up as though he’d forgotten it entirely, and his dark hair loose and damp at the temples. He took in the scene in one sweeping glance and then fixed his eyes on Kovrin. “Did you tell her that we need to get out of here?”

Kovrin winced fractionally.

She turned on Kovrin as she heaved in a huge lungful of air. “Well? Are you going to tell me the truth?”

Kovrin sighed. “The short version,” he said. “A few people were caught when a dungeon mouth opened near the lower channels. It sealed before retrieval could finish.”

“We’re still detecting its aetheric trace,” he continued, more carefully now. “It’s not gone. It’s dormant; diffused in the air. That means it can reopen at any time. We’re trying to close it permanently before it escalates into something worse.”

Liene stared at him. “That’s not possible. The Synod was built here specifically because there are no dungeons within fifty miles. The wards—”

“—were bypassed,” Rao said quietly. He was already kneeling by the Aetherfawn and hovered his arm near its fractured flank. “We’re still working out how.”

Kovrin stepped closer. “All the more reason to get you out of here first, Liene.”

“No.” She shook her head immediately, pointing at the creature. “Not without him. He won’t survive another relocation untreated.”

Kovrin hesitated, then looked to Rao.

Rao closed his eyes for a beat, then sighed. “Fine,” he said. “I can stabilize it quickly.” Thɪs chapter is updatᴇd by novel⸺fire.net

He placed both hands near the Aetherfawn’s cracked resonance and began to weave. Light settled into the fractures, drawing them inward instead of sealing them shut.

“Resonant Rebinding,” she whispered.

Rao nodded without looking up. “Your read was correct.”

“I should’ve learned it,” she spoke, more quiet now. As the creature’s trembling eased, she asked, “Does the dungeon opening have anything to do with this? The cracks?”

“Possibly,” Rao said. “This kind of injury is consistent with prolonged exposure to unstable aether. If a creature or a person is kept inside a fluctuating field for too long, the resonance starts to tear them from the inside.”

Her hands curled into fists. “So the people inside the dungeon—”

“Are at risk,” he finished. “Yes. The longer they remain, the worse it gets.”

“But they won’t be in there long,” Kovrin cut in. His tone was reassuring by design. “High Exemplars were deployed immediately. Exemplar Zhuang from Light Thaumaturgy is already on-site, and Exemplar Grischin from the Applied Combat Division. Even Archmagus Rolen himself responded. This is being handled.”

Liene let out a shaky breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Then she remembered something rather inconvenient. She looked at Rao. “Where’s Fabrisse Kestovar? I sent him to you.”

“You know? The one about your height, with wavy hair and freckles across his nose? The one with bright, curious eyes?”

Rao still stayed silent.

She continued, “The . . . Chosen One?”

Her gaze slid to Kovrin. He offered her a small, wry smile. Her hands shook.

“Is he caught in the dungeon?” she asked. Her voice broke on the last word.

For a long moment, no one spoke.

Then Kovrin said quietly, “We’re getting them out.”