Lix counted copper coins by candlelight, nimble fingers rubbing the last smooth edge of her wedding spoon. She'd sold the rest piece by piece—the wedding ring, the silver comb, even Ferris's prized anvil. At dawn, she'd walk to the guild hall. At dusk, she turned back, unable to leave the children in a house where neighbors nailed hex signs to their fence posts.
But the forest provided. Rabbit carcasses appeared on their stoop each morning, necks oddly unbroken. Trout flipped into their rain barrel on market days. The children never spoke of their hunting methods, and Lix stopped asking after finding a fox's corpse in the woodpile, its blood drawn out in perfect ruby threads.
Such strange gifts might have carried them through another year, but Lix knew that time worked against them. The children's blessings, once charming oddities, had started to ripple outward like a thunderstorm on the horizon—too loud, too bright, too dangerous. Her worries grew heavier with each passing day, shadowing even moments of joy.
On their tenth birthday, Lix watched Alan breathe life into a dying ember. The fire roared up the chimney stones, forming fleeting shapes—a racing horse and a dragon with fiery wings. In the yard, Emma stared at a wilting carrot top until sap oozed from its stem-like amber tears. Their cottage seemed to shrink daily around the expanding force of their blessings.
The final straw came when the local boys trapped Emma by the well. "Make the freak dance!" they chanted, pelting her with pebbles. Emma panicked—a boy's legs locked mid-taunt, sending him face-first into a dung pile. By sundown, mothers crowded at their fence demanding the "body-witcher" be leashed.
Alan's reckoning came on a Tuesday market run. A baker's son spat, "Storm Bastard," in his face, and Alan smiled his father's smile. Children yelped as hot gusts plucked them off the ground, tumbling like autumn leaves above the crowd—their newly purchased loaves lost to the breeze.
The wind stilled; the children were lowered safely, but the dinner loaves spoiled in the dirt, igniting a hail of curses. "Devil-spawn!" "Cursed blood!" Lix gripped the sibling's wrists, tasting burnt honey cakes and her choked bile. She fled with them through side streets as judgment brewed behind every shuttered window.
It wasn't a question of if but when. The day would come when their blessings—uncontrolled and untrained—would consume what little safety they had left, like flames creeping toward dry timber. Every fleeting moment of peace felt like a breath held too long, teetering on the edge of collapse. Lix saw it in the uneasy glances from neighbors, in the widening cracks of fragile routines. She knew they lived on borrowed time, each passing day drawing closer to inevitable chaos that would shatter everything she had sacrificed to protect.
Lix knew better than anyone that the siblings' blessing was theirs alone. She understood that magic flowed indiscriminately, like an underground river, free to all. Yet people tolerated mages in silk robes and hunters in silver armor—but not barefoot children making pumpkins hover at harvest. Moreover, how could a peasant stand higher than nobles? This truth made the siblings' untamed abilities as dangerous as lit dynamite in this small town.
Ferris was right; the only way was for them to slowly grow into their magic—or at least make it appear as such.
Fortunately, Alan and Emma were now at the right age to be enrolled in a magic academy. The nearest one was in Nedel—a frontier city clinging to Frostgale's eastern edge. Lix had agonized over this decision for months. She knew it offered the best future for her children, but the looming separation clawed at her insides. Midnight hours were spent staring at the cracked ceiling, fingernails carving crescent moons into her palms as silent tears soaked her pillow. Most terrifying was the yawning silence of a house emptied of their laughter.
Ferris's words echoed in her mind: You'll have to release him eventually. But Alan's presence had become her sustenance since the day he vanished. Three winters ago, the man had melted into the twilight, leaving only his sky-blue eyes and stubborn cowlick living on in their son.
Lix pressed a damp handkerchief to her mouth, choking back sobs that shook her thin frame.
When she finally announced her decision, the siblings' reactions fractured into a wave of emotions. "What if the other students think we're strange?" Emma blurted, kneading the fabric of her skirt.
"You'll write every week?" Alan asked, his too-perceptive gaze tracking Lix's forced smile—his father's eyes on a child's face.
"Of course! And you'll make friends," Lix lied through teeth that wanted to scream, "Stay!" She smoothed their contrasting hair and whispered, "You'll shine brighter than any star in the academy."
Nedel wasn't merely a city—it stood as the kingdom's armored fist against the endless eastern woodland. Its marble walls rose like broken teeth against the eastern horizon, their battlements scarred from centuries of repelling monsters that leached from the woodland. Five days' hard ride through bandit country would separate Lix from her children once that iron gate clanged shut. Years would pass before she could smell Emma's lavender-scented hair or feel Alan's unparalleled fingers brush hers again. The emptiness had already carved a hole beneath her ribs.
Yet one thread of hope remained. An old companion from her guild days still resided within Nedel's walls. Their shared history carried unpaid debts—the kind that bind hunters even decades later.
Her fingers traced the guild pendant hidden beneath her blouse, its edges worn smooth from anxious rubbing. He would watch the siblings. He must!
Even so, a magic academy was no daycare—perhaps for the rich, but not for Lix. Admission required three things: bloodlines, gold, and merits. Lix's purse held only cobwebs and copper bits; her family name meant nothing beyond Nedr's valleys, but her guild ledger...
Moonlight bled through her window as Lix spread timeworn record sheets across the table. For three nights, she calculated, throat tight, as she converted monster hunts and border patrols into admission credits. She waited anxiously after writing to the headmaster.
Weeks later, she found herself clutching two acceptance scrolls, ink still damp from the headmaster's reluctant pen.