Rocher sighed.

  It'd been a little over a week now since he'd begun training with Ferric. For all his frivolity, the Warlock was an absolute stickler for time.

  Rocher had made the mistake once of sleeping past daybreak, and woke to the sound of Cire's startled yelp, and the sight of Ferric standing over him, smirk pstered on his face.

  Fortunately, he didn't mind getting up so early. It afforded him a moment of quiet before the day demanded him—and a chance to look at Cire, snuggled closely at his side.

  In sleep, she was all softness, shes resting against her freckled cheeks, hair mussed into something endearingly chaotic. The sharp wit and stubborn resolve were smoothed away, leaving only warmth and the faint crease between her brows when she dreamed. The trust of it hit him every time, the way she slept so easily against him, like the world could not reach her here.

  Cire murmured unintelligibly when he tried to move, arms tightening around him in protest.

  He smiled despite himself, pressing a quiet kiss to her hair, and tucked her in before slipping away.

  The air in the training gde shimmered with mana.

  Rocher braced himself against the magic, muscles bunching. The surge of strength that followed felt foreign, too sudden, like trying to swing a sword when someone else was pulling your arm.

  He slipped on the churned dirt.

  Ferric caught him by the colr before he fell face-first.

  "Better," he said. "Still awful. But better."

  Rocher clenched his jaw. "Again."

  He unched upward.

  Mana caught only halfway through the leap. Not enough. Not in time.

  His foot caught on a branch, and he crashed back into the moss with a grunt.

  Ferric strolled over. "You're fighting the mana again."

  Rocher pushed himself upright, annoyed. "I'm trying."

  "Stop trying." Ferric flicked his forehead. "Move first. Think ter."

  Rocher swatted his hand away, jaw tight.

  The training was working—he could feel it—but it was slow. Painfully slow. And exhausting in ways he didn't want to admit.

  Not because of Ferric. Though his nagging didn't help.

  But because he hadn't slept much.

  Or rather... Cire always slept wonderfully. By contrast, Rocher y awake long after she drifted off, staring at the ceiling, listening to her breathing, wanting—

  He shut that down before it could form fully.

  They were intimate—every night since the first. And every night ended with him wound tighter than he let her see.

  He couldn't understand why it wasn't enough for him.

  Ferric hopped onto a low branch and stretched. "So. How's the priestling?"

  Rocher immediately stiffened.

  Ferric's grin sharpened. "Ah. That good, hm?"

  Rocher looked firmly away. "I am not discussing Cire."

  "Of course not," Ferric said breezily. "Wouldn't want to embarrass her. Or yourself."

  Rocher exhaled through his nose, trying to gather what dignity he had left. "We're... doing fine."

  "Mmm." Ferric's eyes glinted with wicked intelligence. "Sleeping well, are you?"

  Rocher stumbled.

  Ferric caught it instantly.

  "Oho. Not sleeping well." He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "Interesting."

  "It isn't—" Rocher's jaw clenched. "It's not relevant."

  Ferric shrugged. "It is relevant if it affects your training. People who are content respond well to the magic. People who are restless... don't."

  Rocher felt something crack low in his chest.

  Restless.

  The word hit harder than it should have.

  Because Goddess help him, he was restless.

  Not because he didn't want her. Because he wanted her too much.

  There were moments—small, staggering moments—when her hips rolled against his or her fingers curled in his shirt and something primal snapped awake in him. A need to have her, to lose himself completely in her.

  But the second he felt that pull, he stopped. Every time.

  He didn't mind. She deserved gentleness.

  But the pressure building inside him scared him more than he wanted to admit.

  Ferric yawned theatrically. "It's probably nothing. Maybe you two just don't match rhythm."

  Rocher froze.

  Ferric meant it as a tease—a harmless jab. But the phrase smmed into Rocher's gut like a fist.

  Not matching rhythm.

  He hated how the words fit. How they echoed the frustration he'd been swallowing every night, right when her breath hitched and he forced himself to stop.

  It terrified him how much he wanted to match her. How badly he wanted to be right for her.

  The truth rose in him with quiet certainty, steady as breath.

  He loved her.

  It sat in his chest like something inevitable—warm, impossible, immovable.

  But he would not say it. Not yet.

  Not until she was ready to hear a word that heavy, not until she could take it as a gift instead of another burden.

  She understood desire, and even met his with her own—but he had seen enough of her past to know that love, for her, was never just comfort.

  He dragged a hand over his face, struck by the irony that the words which had once come so easily now refused him when he actually meant them.

  He could wait. Forever if she needed him to. But the boundary she kept—the st distance she wouldn't let him cross—curled into a fear he couldn't quite reason away: she might never want him the same way he wanted her.

  It was completely irrational. He knew that. But all the same—the smallest, ugliest flicker of insecurity rippled through him.

  Ferric hopped down from the branch, oblivious to the damage done. "Anyway. She's clever. She knows how to get what she wants. That's a rare trait."

  Rocher frowned. "What's that supposed to mean?"

  Ferric waved him off. "Rex. I'm only saying she's good at talking people around. Made even Ysel bend. That's an impressive feat."

  Rocher's heart thudded a little too loudly.

  Impressive.Talking people around.Getting what she wanted.

  A sense of unease coiled in his stomach.

  He didn't know why. He didn't like that he didn't know why.

  Because it felt familiar.

  Too familiar.

  A flicker of the riverbank.

  Her eyes, asking him to understand something he couldn't see.

  Ferric spped his shoulder. "She's a clever thing," he said. "Clever enough to make even a righteous Hero bend in directions he never meant to."

  Rocher stiffened. "Meaning?"

  Ferric spread his hands. "You're helping monsters. Did she tell you that? That's what we are: monsters."

  The ground seemed to shift under Rocher's feet—not enough to fall, just enough to remind him he could.

  His chest went tight.

  "Ferric, what—"

  Ferric tilted his head, studying him. "Did she tell you why we live so long? How we stay young?"

  Rocher's skin turned cold.

  Ferric clicked his tongue. "Ah. She didn't."

  Rocher tried to swallow. Tried to keep his voice steady. "What are you saying?"

  "Nothing you wouldn't have learned in a few days." Ferric shrugged. "You should ask your woman. Since she knows everything."

  He let the words settle.

  Rocher's breath hitched. Not because he doubted her. But because he recognized the wound opening inside him.

  The same pattern, the same ache as before.The fear of being left behind.The fear that she still didn't trust him with the world she walked through.The fear that no matter how fast he ran, he would always arrive a step too te.

  Something twisted deep inside him—guilt, confusion, betrayal, love, all knotted together.

  Ferric turned away, calling over his shoulder:

  "Ready to try again, Hero? Or shall we talk more about the woman you trust so blindly with your life?"

  Rocher didn't move. Didn't breathe.

  The hollow ache inside him was no longer hollow at all.

  It hurt.

  "Damnit!"

  Elsewhere in the Forest, a bird startled into flight—thrown from its roost by the verbal frustrations of one red-haired elf girl.

  I found Seraphine exactly where Ysel said she'd be: in the clearing behind the Great Tree, sleeves rolled, jaw tight, and looking two seconds away from bsting a crater into the moss.

  A pale-blue spell circle flickered over her palm. Wavered.

  Then—fwump—colpsed on itself like a dying firefly.

  Seraphine hissed between her teeth and shook out her stinging hand.

  "Still fighting you?" I asked gently.

  She startled, then slumped. "Everything is fighting me. The air, the mana, my own pulse..." She tossed her hair back sharply. "I overloaded four spells. I underloaded ten. I cannot for the life of me find the midpoint."

  "That's normal," I said. "Chantless magic pulls from instinct. And instinct is messy."

  Seraphine gred at her hands like they had personally betrayed her. "I almost miss the structure. At least the Tower's chants kept everything... contained."

  "And tightly controlled," I finished softly.

  She didn't deny it.

  Her frustration was visible—the tight shoulders, the restless fingers, the twitch in her jaw.

  And frustration, ironically, was exactly what destabilized chantless casting.

  A vicious feedback loop if left alone.

  I stepped closer. "Seraphine. You're trying to force structure onto something that isn't meant to have one. Structure will always implode in the face of instinct."

  "So what am I supposed to do?" she snapped, then caught herself, guilt instantly in her eyes. "Cire, I'm sorry, I didn't—"

  "It's fine," I said. "Really. And I think I can help."

  Her brows lifted. "How?"

  "I... used to have a trick," I admitted. "When I first tried to learn it—in the game, I mean—the timing was hard for me too. Every other spell fizzled or overfired."

  Seraphine waited, curiosity and patience mingling for once.

  I hummed. Softly at first—barely a thread of sound.

  Then fuller. Warmer.

  A steady, lilting rhythm.

  Not quite a lulby, not quite a marching beat.

  Just enough cadence to anchor breath to movement and movement to energy.

  Seraphine's eyes widened. Not at the trick.

  At me.

  "I didn't know you could sing," she breathed.

  I looked away, embarrassed. "Not well."

  Among the nuns at the convent, I was middling in skill. Lumiere had always led the hymnals.

  "Cire," she said, "that was beautiful."

  My heart squeezed. Too many memories pressed at the edges, so vividly it almost startled me—Sunday service, the sound of the church organ, Jae's voice harmonizing with mine as I studied.

  I swallowed it all down.

  Chantless magic in the game was a series of timed button presses. What was annoying was that the inputs sometimes ate each other—hold one button too long, and the next wouldn't register.

  Music helped—acting as a metronome that set the right cadence.

  "Try it," I said quickly. "Don't match me perfectly—just take the rhythm."

  Seraphine, for once, didn't argue.

  She drew a slow breath and hummed—tentative, shaky, but close enough.

  Mana stirred instantly.

  A spell circle glowed over her palm.

  Bright. Stable.

  Banced.

  Her eyes flew open.

  "Again," she whispered.

  She hummed once more. The spell expanded into a shimmering arc of raw mana—smooth, controlled, alive.

  She flicked her wrist.

  The spell shot outward in a clean, perfect line, carving a harmless groove in the moss.

  Then a second. A third. A fourth, weaving seamlessly after the st.

  Her breath hitched.

  "I'm... chaining them," she said, stunned. "Cire, I'm actually chaining them!"

  "It's almost like you're singing the magic to life..." I said, awed.

  She ughed—a breathless, disbelieving sound—and wiped at her eyes before the tears could fall. She looked lighter. Brighter. As if the world had suddenly stopped resisting her.

  And for one small moment, I let myself feel proud.

  Seraphine hummed again, and the air shimmered with her magic, gentle and obedient.

  I prayed Rocher was finding his rhythm too.