Two days of dice-rolling had yielded nothing but sore wrists and mounting frustration.

  Following Morgana's instructions, I'd faithfully recorded each cast in a small ledger: three and six, five and two, double fours. The numbers meant nothing to me, but the blue patterns beneath my skin had stabilized, so I kept to the ritual like a man clutching a rope above an abyss.

  The precognitive flashes were another matter entirely.

  They arrived without warning—brief moments where the world split and showed me glimpses of what might come. I'd reach for a quill only to see it roll off the desk seconds before it actually happened. I'd hear fragments of conversations from rooms I hadn't entered.

  Once, I saw my own reflection with eyes that glowed the same unearthly blue as the patterns on my chest.

  Willem thought I was losing my mind.

  He didn't say it, but I caught him watching me when he thought I wasn't looking, concern etched deep in the lines of his weathered face.

  "She said two days," I reminded him as the second evening approached. "If punctuality isn't among Sister Circe's virtues, we may need to consider alternatives."

  He grunted, stoking the fire in my chamber. "What alternatives? The Royal Corps? They'd sooner study your corpse than heal you."

  Hard to argue with that assessment. My mother had avoided any further discussion of my treatment, maintaining a pointed silence whenever the subject arose. Whether from disapproval or acceptance, I couldn't tell.

  "Perhaps we should send word," I suggested. "The Covenant must have messengers."

  Willem shook his head. "No need to go looking for those who can find you."

  His cryptic answer irritated me. "Very profound. I'll remember that when I'm sprouting blue crystals from my ears."

  After Willem left, I prepared for another night of futile dice-rolling. The patterns on my chest itched constantly now, a sensation like insects crawling beneath my skin. I'd taken to sleeping without a shirt, as the touch of fabric had become nearly unbearable.

  I cast the dice one final time before bed: two and one. I dutifully recorded the numbers, then extinguished the candle and lay back, staring into darkness.

  Sleep came in fits and starts, broken by dreams of silver threads and gambling halls where the stakes were measured in years rather than coin. I dreamed of a woman with ever-changing eyes who sang to potions as they brewed, her voice somehow visible as colored smoke.

  I woke at the precise moment the clock in the hall struck midnight, my body rigid, senses prickling with awareness that I was no longer alone.

  "Oh good, you're awake!" said a voice like honey poured over broken glass. "The moon's at perfect alignment—couldn't have timed it better if I'd planned it, which I didn't, but sometimes the universe just hands you these little gifts, you know?"

  I sat up, fumbling for the tinderbox beside my bed to light a candle. Before I could strike a spark, a soft glow illuminated the room—not from any lamp or taper, but from a small glass vial held in slender fingers.

  By its pale blue light, I saw my midnight visitor.

  Sister Circe Nightshade was nothing like I'd expected.

  Where Morgana had been all sharp edges and clinical precision, Circe seemed almost ethereal, with short blonde hair and delicate features that might have been sculpted from moonlight. Her eyes were what drew me—constantly shifting color like oil on water, now violet, now amber, now a green that matched my own.

  Her habit, like Morgana's, was heavily modified, but where Morgana's had been tailored for practical movement, Circe's was a patchwork of pockets, pouches, and hidden compartments. Stains of various colors marked the fabric like an artist's palette, and the scent of herbs and chemicals surrounded her in an invisible cloud.

  "You're staring," she observed, a playful smile dancing across her lips. "Everyone does at first. The eyes are a bit much, aren't they? Side effect of too much experimentation. Worth it though!"

  I found my voice. "How did you get in? The door was locked."

  She laughed, a sound like wind chimes in a graveyard. "Doors! Such funny things—more suggestions than barriers really. I just followed the song in your blood. Listen!" She held up the vial where the blue liquid pulsed in rhythm with the patterns on my chest. "It's calling to mine. Can you hear it? Probably not yet, but you will!"

  That didn't sound reassuring. "You took my blood?"

  "No, no—Morgana did. Always following protocols, that one." She moved around my chamber with casual familiarity, examining objects on shelves with childlike curiosity, picking things up and setting them down in slightly different positions. "The dice are clever though—like little messengers tapping out code. Bit indirect for my taste, but Morgana loves her systems."

  I swung my legs over the side of the bed, suddenly conscious of my state of undress. Circe didn't seem to notice or care, her attention already shifting to unpacking various containers from her seemingly bottomless pockets.

  "I understood you'd be beginning the second phase of my treatment," I said, reaching for a robe.

  "Yes, yes! Phase two—the fun part!" She set vials and pouches on my desk, arranging them in patterns that made no sense to my eye but seemed to follow some internal logic. "Morgana's redirected all those tangled probability threads, but the substance itself is still dancing around inside you. My job is to choreograph the dance—turn chaos into beautiful patterns instead of, you know, horrible mutations."

  "Into what, exactly?"

  She glanced up, those shifting eyes momentarily settling on a deep, piercing blue. "Into something that won't kill you, obviously! Though 'kill' might be the wrong word—more like 'transform into something that wouldn't technically be you anymore.'"

  "Your confidence is overwhelming."

  "Confidence has nothing to do with alchemy. Either the reactions harmonize or they explode!" She unstoppered a vial and sniffed it, then took a small sip, closing her eyes as though savoring fine wine. "Mmm. Perfect resonance today."

  I watched in disbelief as she repeated this process with three more concoctions, each producing a subtly different reaction—a flush of color to her cheeks, a slight tremor in her hands, pupils dilating then contracting.

  "Are you... sampling your own medicines?" I asked.

  "How else would I know they're right?" She sounded genuinely puzzled by the question. "You can't understand transformation without experiencing it. That's like trying to describe colors to someone who only sees in black and white. Pointless!"

  Before I could formulate a response to this dubious methodology, she stepped toward me, hand outstretched.

  "I need to taste your blood. Fresh, not that old sample Morgana took. The current harmonics are what matter."

  I took an involuntary step backward. "That seems unnecessarily vampiric."

  She sighed dramatically, rolling her ever-changing eyes. "It's not like I'm asking for a pint! Just a drop to calibrate the mixture. I could take it without asking—did that once and Thorne lectured me for hours about 'informed consent protocols.' So boring."

  How considerate.

  With reluctance born of necessity rather than courage, I extended my arm. "Try not to enjoy it too much."

  Circe produced a small silver needle from one of her many pockets and pricked my finger with practiced ease. Instead of collecting the blood in a vial, she simply took my hand and placed the bleeding digit directly into her mouth.

  The sensation was... intimate in a way that made me profoundly uncomfortable. Her eyes fluttered closed, and when they opened again, they had changed to match the precise shade of the blue patterns on my skin.

  "Oh! Oh wow," she murmured, releasing my hand. "Your blood is singing harmonies I haven't heard in decades! Old patterns, very old—like finding a melody from a childhood song you'd forgotten. The serum recognized something in you that's been sleeping for generations."

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  As she spoke, botanical patterns appeared across her hands and forearms, delicate traceries of leaves and flowers that seemed to grow and shift with her movements. Each plant appeared to represent different properties—some I recognized as healing herbs, others entirely foreign to me.

  "What exactly do you mean by 'old blood'?" I asked, watching the patterns spread up her arms.

  Instead of answering directly, she began mixing ingredients from her various containers, hands moving with hypnotic grace. "Your family tree has some very interesting branches, Lord Greywers. Did you know? Not entirely human ones. Your blood remembers pathways most people have forgotten existed. Never wondered about those emerald eyes of yours? They're practically glowing with potential!"

  I'd grown up with family legends about a distant fae ancestor, but had always assumed they were the usual noble house mythology—invented to claim some special lineage beyond mere humanity.

  "You're suggesting the stories are true?"

  "Stories become stories precisely because nobody believes the truth anymore," she replied, suddenly focused on a mixture that was changing from crimson to violet. "Now take off your robe and lie down. This'll be much more fun than Morgana's probability juggling—though you might see some very strange things. Don't worry about it!"

  Given what I'd already experienced, "strange" seemed a remarkably high bar to clear.

  I complied, lying back on my bed as Circe approached with a bowl containing a liquid that shifted colors like her eyes—blues and greens swirling together with occasional flashes of silver.

  "What is that?"

  "A little of this, a touch of that—mostly a catalyst to help your body make friends with the serum instead of fighting it," she said, nodding at her concoction. "The blue substance was looking for people like you—old bloodlines with dormant talents. I'm just helping it settle in without, you know, completely rewriting your entire being."

  "Transformation into what?" I repeated, increasingly uneasy.

  Her smile was dreamy, slightly unfocused. "Into yourself, but more so! The you that might have been if your great-great-whatever-grandparent hadn't diluted the bloodline by marrying so boringly human." She dipped her fingers into the mixture. "Close your eyes and breathe deep. Don't fight the pretty pictures—they're there to help your mind make sense of what's happening to your body."

  As her fingers touched the central node of the blue pattern on my chest, the world dissolved into multicolored vapor.

  I was floating in an endless sea of color, formless yet somehow still aware of my existence. Circe's voice reached me as though from across a vast distance.

  "Your blood carries pathways most people have forgotten existed. Did you know? Not the boring commercial mana channels everyone uses now, but something deeper. Something woven into blood and bone and starlight."

  Images flashed through my mind—ancestors I'd never known following invisible roads that somehow connected distant points across the land. A woman with my green eyes standing at a crossroads where glowing currents met beneath the earth. A man directing strange energies through a staff carved with symbols that matched the patterns on my skin.

  "The serum was designed to find people with dormant potential," Circe's voice continued, echoing strangely in this hallucinatory space. "A magical fishing net to catch bloodlines thought lost or watered down. The real question is: who was fishing for you, and why now?"

  The colors around me began to coalesce into more concrete visions. I saw myself standing before a great tree whose branches stretched into a star-filled sky. At its base, three women in familiar habits tended to its roots with different methods—one weaving silver threads through its bark, one applying glowing mixtures to its leaves, one absorbing its pain into herself.

  "Your ancestors knew that power wasn't something to be bottled and sold," Circe whispered, her voice now seeming to come from inside my own mind. "It was a conversation, a dance between giving and receiving. The Sisters are the last ones who remember the steps to that particular dance."

  The vision shifted again. I saw grand healing houses with marble columns crumbling into dust, while smaller, humbler structures remained standing. I saw people with blue patterns like mine leading others away from the ruins toward these smaller sanctuaries.

  "The old blood is waking up," Circe said, her voice suddenly clearer. "Not just in you, but others too! Like flowers blooming after a long winter. Something's changing in the world's dream."

  With startling abruptness, I was back in my bed chamber, gasping as though I'd been underwater. Circe stood over me, her eyes now a brilliant silver that seemed to reflect light that wasn't present in the room.

  "Tell me everything you saw!" she demanded, suddenly focused with an intensity that belied her earlier dreaminess. "Every detail—the colors, the sounds, the feelings. It's all important!"

  I described the visions as best I could. With each detail I provided, the botanical patterns on her arms shifted and changed, as though responding to my words.

  "Wonderful! Your mind didn't scramble the imagery at all," she said when I'd finished, bouncing slightly on her toes. "Most people just see kaleidoscope nonsense or run screaming from imaginary monsters. You've got a knack for this!"

  I sat up slowly, expecting pain or dizziness, but instead found myself feeling strangely energized. My surroundings seemed more vivid—not just colors and sounds, but something else I couldn't quite name. Like a subtle vibration beneath everyday reality. I could sense currents and flows in the air that I'd never noticed before, strange patterns in seemingly empty spaces.

  "What have you done to me?" I asked, my voice sounding oddly resonant to my own ears.

  "Enhanced your perception, mostly," Circe explained, already packing away her supplies with less care than seemed advisable for potentially explosive substances. "Your body is remembering how to see things it should have seen all along. The heightened awareness will settle down in a day or two—like getting new spectacles, your mind needs to adjust."

  She handed me a small wooden box containing three tiny vials of amber liquid. "Emergency medicine, just in case. One drop under your tongue if the blue patterns start acting up again. No more than one vial per day though, or things get... interesting."

  "Define interesting," I said, recalling how Morgana had defined "uncomfortable."

  Circe's expression turned serious for the first time. "Best case? You might taste colors or hear smells for a few hours. Worst case? Your transformation accelerates without proper guidance and you end up half-way between human and something else."

  "Into what?" I asked for the third time.

  "Something between what your ancestors were and what the serum's creators intended," she shrugged, suddenly distracted by something only she could see in the corner of the room. "Hard to say exactly! Transformation is more art than science—like cooking without a recipe."

  That was far from reassuring. "And the origins of this serum? Morgana mentioned Adavarian research."

  "Oh, it has Adavarian fingerprints all over it," Circe said, turning back to me. "But the essence is much older—like finding ancient poetry rewritten in modern language. Someone rediscovered old magic and dressed it up in fancy new bottles."

  "For what purpose?"

  "To find people like you, obviously!" She tilted her head, studying me with those unnerving color-shifting eyes. "The real mystery is what they planned to do with you once they found you. Probably nothing pleasant—people who make serums like that aren't usually interested in friendship bracelets."

  The implications sent a chill down my spine. "You think the raiders were deliberately targeting me?"

  "No, no—wrong place, right time for them, wrong time for you." She tapped her fingers against the desk, leaving faint blue prints that slowly faded. "But now that you're awake, others will come sniffing around. The Phoenix folks already have, haven't they?"

  "Others? Who?"

  She waved a dismissive hand. "Collectors. Researchers. Power-hungry types who think old blood can solve their problems. Your fancy healing companies would love to cut you open and see what makes you tick! Phoenix is the worst—they've been hunting compatible subjects for years, getting desperate now that their wells are running dry."

  I remembered Administrator Thorne's comment about my "unique characteristics" with new understanding. "The Twilight Covenant knew what I was before I arrived, didn't they?"

  Circe's smile returned, enigmatic and slightly unfocused. "Magistra Vale has been tracking bloodline remnants forever—well, not literally forever, though sometimes it seems that way! Your family name was in her books, but nobody expected such a strong reaction to the serum. You're full of surprises!"

  She stood abruptly, swaying slightly as she gathered the last of her supplies. I noticed how she kept sipping from her vials between sentences, each one producing subtle changes in her demeanor and speech patterns.

  "Sister Hekate will finish what we started," she said, her voice now taking on a sing-song quality that hadn't been present before. "I've stabilized all the physical patterns, but the deeper trauma needs her special touch. Blue serum leaves marks beneath the skin that my potions can't reach."

  "When should I expect her?"

  "When the moon and your pain have a conversation," Circe smiled at my confusion. "Don't worry—she always knows when she's needed. Pain calls to her like bells ringing."

  With that cryptic statement, she moved toward the window rather than the door, the botanical patterns on her arms beginning to fade.

  "Wait," I called. "There's more you're not telling me."

  She paused, half-turned, her profile etched in moonlight. "There's always more! That's the beauty of it all—every answer births a dozen new questions. Wouldn't be any fun otherwise."

  "Will I..." I hesitated, uncertain how to phrase the question. "Am I still human?"

  Something like compassion flickered across her features. "Humanity was never as simple as most believe. You're what you've always been—just more aware of the music playing beneath the world's surface."

  Before I could ask anything else, she stepped through the window and was gone—not climbing down or jumping, but simply vanishing into the night air like mist.

  I rushed to the window, expecting to see her in the courtyard below, but there was nothing—just moonlight on empty stones.

  Returning to my bed, I examined my chest in the mirror. The blue patterns had changed again—no longer just organized geometric shapes, but now incorporating subtle curves and networks that resembled a map of some unknown territory, complete with nodes at what seemed like significant junctions.

  More disturbingly, when I looked at my eyes, I saw that the green irises now contained flecks of blue that pulsed with the same rhythm as the patterns on my skin.

  Sleep was impossible after that. I sat at my desk until dawn, recording the night's events while my newly enhanced senses registered every creak of the keep, every shift of air currents, and strange fluctuations in areas I'd never paid attention to before—corners where two walls met, the stone beneath the castle foundations, the direction of the sunrise.

  Circe's treatment had indeed proven "considerably stranger" than Morgana's, but the most unsettling part wasn't the procedure itself—it was the suggestion that I'd been inadvertently drawn into something much larger than my own healing.

  Ancient pathways awakening.

  Forgotten connections returning.

  Hidden conflicts between conventional practitioners and those following older methods.

  I'd sought treatment for a wound and found myself entangled in what increasingly appeared to be the opening moves of a war—one that had perhaps been simmering beneath the surface of our society for generations.

  And somewhere out there, Sister Hekate was preparing to find me, bringing with her the third and final phase of a transformation I no longer fully understood or could control.