Chapter 10: Echoes of the Sky.
The Chronicler called for a Display of the Gift, and the square answered with restraint.
Magic revealed itself politely, as if aware it was being watched by cautious eyes. A torn festival banner lifted from its pole and stitched itself whole beneath careful threads of gold. A flower that had wilted in the heat straightened, its petals flushing deeper, richer, as though remembering what it was meant to be.
There were murmurs—measured approval, nods of satisfaction. This was magic as reassurance. Magic that fixed. Magic that did not frighten.
Useful. Understood.
When the formal procession dissolved, the square loosened. Music bled back in. Children slipped their parents’ hands and darted between legs. Vendors laughed again. The air exhaled.
I didn’t move.
Something in me clung to this moment—not joy exactly, but the shape of it. The permission to exist without consequence.
Beside me, the Fairy King remained. He did not ask. His stillness was an answer already given.
The square transformed into a living tapestry. Near the fountain, water-dancers coaxed spirals from the basin, liquid threading itself into looping helices that caught the lantern light. Flame-weavers passed a single, obedient fire between them, shaping it briefly into a dove before letting it unravel into sparks. The happiest sounds were the shrieks of children lifted just a few careful feet into the air by laughing parents—high enough to feel like flying, low enough to be safe.
Then the crowd shifted.
Not suddenly. Not with fear.
With anticipation.
The man who stepped forward wore no robes. No sigils. His hands were scarred and thick-knuckled, marked by a life of work and old battles. He stood like someone unused to being looked at, shoulders squared as if bracing for judgment.
He raised his palms.
His magic began with a whisper.
A single ember bloomed above his hand—steady, golden, warm. It pulsed once, like a heartbeat.
Then it split.
And split again.
Sparks rose upward in a slow, graceful cascade, flowing against gravity like an inverted waterfall. Colors unfolded—violet so deep it seemed to bruise the air, emerald sharp as sunlight cutting through leaves, silver so pure it felt almost painful to look at.
The sparks gathered. They turned, aligning themselves with careful intent, forming a five-pointed star that rotated once—brilliant, precise—before dissolving.
From its heart bloomed a lily.
Perfect. Impossible.
Its petals curled outward in luminous arcs, holding the square in a collective breath. Then, without warning, the flower burst apart into a dozen tiny crystalline birds. They swept overhead in a silent arc, wings scattering prismatic light, before dissolving into a gentle rain of silver motes.
The square erupted.
Not applause.
Joy.
Children leapt, trying to catch the falling lights as they vanished against their skin. Adults laughed—real laughter, unguarded, the kind that reshapes faces. Someone cried openly, hands pressed to their mouth.
For me, the world narrowed.
The crack-pop of dispersing magic. The faint, acrid-sweet scent of ozone.
A door inside me opened.
The memory was absolute:
Hands pulling me from the Cintiq’s glow. “Sayaka Sensei, you’ll die if you don’t breathe!” My assistants’ laughter, strained with concern. The Tokyo summer night, thick and humid. A crowded rooftop. When the first fireworks tore the sky—great blooming chrysanthemums of sound—the crowd erupted in “oohs.” I stood with arms tightly folded, a cold bottle sweating in my grip. If I leave now, I can catch the last train, be back by eleven, finish the inking by three. Another firework bloomed. Blue and white. Perfect symmetry. Thunder rolled over the rooftops.
It was beautiful.
It was useless.
I felt nothing.
The grand finale came, a deafening crescendo, layered explosions tearing the sky apart. The crowd screamed with delight.
I stepped back, already calculating pages, deadlines, the quiet glow of my tablet waiting.
I remember thinking: What a waste.
I staggered back into myself.
The Fairy King was a pillar of stillness beside me, his eyes not on the vanished birds, but on the transformed faces of the crowd. Observing their joy as one might study a rare weather pattern.
And I understood.
This man’s magic—useless, glorious, transient—was the same thread. The harvest bonfire. The shared story. The collective breath held and released. It was not about utility, but connection. A tiny, defiant act of saying look up, just look up, together.
I had drawn it as background in countless festival panels, never comprehending its core. I had scorned it in a life where I’d mistaken productivity for purpose.
The understanding was a two-edged sword. Grief, sharp and specific, cut through me: for the joy I had armored myself against in a world that offered it freely, and for the simple, untarnished wonder that was now, in this world, a dangerous luxury. I could command water and heal flesh, but this—this pure, shared exhalation of delight—felt more distant than any magic.
His silent companionship was a mirror. This was my new condition: witnessing the feast from a step away, separated by a pane of glass forged from secrets and power.
The last silver mote dissolved. The weathered mage bowed, his smile erasing years of hardship. The crowd cheered, their joy a warm, living wave.
I swallowed against the tightness in my throat.
I had come here to see magic. I had ended up seeing, for the first time, the heart I had been missing all along.
The celebration wound down like a slowed heart. Lanterns guttered and dimmed, painting the square in long, sentimental shadows. Families, linked arm-in-arm, wandered toward home, their soft, trailing songs hanging in the cool air. The scent of spent magic and trampled grass settled over the cobblestones.
I lingered, watching the last few motes of silver light wink out against the dark, like final stars before dawn. The emptiness of the square felt profound, a vessel now drained of its temporary joy. The Fairy King stood as he had for the last hour—a patient silhouette against the night.
When I could find no more sparks to follow, I finally turned away, the weight of the evening a quiet ache in my chest.
His voice, when it came, was not a comfort. It was a statement, clear and final as a stone placed on a grave.
“Joy is not the opposite of sorrow.” He did not look at me. His gaze remained on the empty space where the light had been. “It is the courage to feel both.”
Then he turned, and the audience was over. The words hung in the silence he left behind, not as an answer, but as a key to a lock I had only just found.
The celebration’s final echoes died behind us as we turned down a narrower street, away from the grand squares and toward the city’s quieter edge. The Fairy King led without hesitation to a worn oak door beneath a sign creaking in the night breeze: a chipped painting of a stooping willow tree.
“You require rest and food,” he stated, as if reading a necessary step from a manual. He pushed the door open.
The tavern within was the opposite of the festival’s brilliance. Warmth, thick and tangible, washed over us, carrying the deep, earthy scent of wood smoke, stale ale, and slow-cooked meat. The hearth was a giant of crackling logs. A few locals glanced up, their eyes lingering not on my companion’s impossible grace, but with a dull curiosity that quickly faded back into the comfort of their mugs. This was a place for those who wanted to be unseen.
We approached the counter. The keeper, a broad man with an apron stained by years of service, looked up from polishing a tankard. His gaze swept over my simple clothes, then settled on the Fairy King. He didn’t flinch, but a deep wariness settled into his features.
Without a word, the King produced a single coin. It was gold, but unlike any I’d seen, unmarked by any monarch’s face, its surface seeming to drink in the firelight rather than reflect it. It looked impossibly heavy. He placed it on the worn wood with a soft, definitive thud that seemed too loud for its size.
The keeper’s eyes locked on it. His wariness melted, replaced by a look of profound, almost sorrowful understanding. He met the King’s gaze, gave one slow, deep nod, and swept the coin away. Not a word of price, not a question.
Minutes later, a trencher of dense, dark bread, a bowl of rich stew still bubbling, and a clay mug of mulled cider steaming with the scent of apples and cloves were placed before me. Nothing was set before the King.
“You don’t eat?” I asked, the warmth of the mug seeping into my cold fingers.
“I do not require food as mortals do,” he replied, his voice blending with the hearth’s crackle. “The essence of this place—its silence, its endured time—is enough.”
I ate slowly. The stew was hearty, a peasant’s dish, and its warmth was a ghost of my mother’s kitchen. It anchored me, even as my mind floated back to the exploding lights, the lifted faces, the old soldier’s smile. The contrast was too violent. The silence of the tavern became a bowl holding the echoes of the festival’s joy, and I felt both, keenly.
After we finished, the keeper gestured silently to a narrow stair. Our room was small, just a bed, a washstand, and a single chair by a latched window. The King took the chair, becoming a part of the room’s shadow.
The question that had been coiling in my gut since the first cheer in the square finally broke free. I sat on the edge of the bed, facing him.
“Something’s been bothering me.” My voice was small in the quiet. “Back in my village… we heard rumors. Whispers. That the Demon Lord’s forces are attacking. That roads are blocked. That… that he’ll come here and….” I looked down at my hands, still smelling faintly of cider and smoke. “So why? Why the festival? The music, the magic… Aren’t they afraid?”
For a long moment, the only sound was the distant pop of the hearth below. When he spoke, his words were measured, clear as ice.
“The rumors... they’re true?”
“The Demon Lord stirs, yes. But his armies were broken once, by Grigory. That bought time. Time you must seize.”
This keeps the intimacy. He leaned forward slightly, the fire from below glinting in his eyes. “That time is what they seized tonight. Not denial, but a space. And that time, Elsbeth, is what you must use. You cannot face what comes as you are. You will train in the Fairy Realm. You will learn the grammar of your gift. Then, you will walk the mortal world not as a girl from a smithy, but as an adventurer who has earned her scars and her strength.”
The weight of his words, of the future they mapped, settled onto my shoulders. The warmth of the food turned to a leaden fatigue. The adrenaline of the day drained away, leaving a hollowed-out vessel. My eyelids grew heavy, my thoughts slurring into one another.
I meant to ask more—about training, about the Fairy Realm, about how a realm of stories could teach me to fight. But the words never came. I folded my arms on the rough wooden table, resting my head upon them. The world narrowed to the scent of pine soap and the solid, comforting pressure of Wilhelm’s dagger, still sheathed at my side. My brother’s face flickered behind my closed eyes.
The last thing I heard was the soft, eternal crackle of the fire, and the profound, listening silence of the King who needed no sleep, watching over the time we had just bought.
Dawn was a pale, silent guest in the tavern yard. We left as we had come—without ceremony, without goodbyes. The keeper watched from his doorway, a shadow against the candlelight, and gave that same slow nod. Then he closed the door, and the mortal world began to recede.
The road out of town was just a dirt track, worn by cart wheels and hooves. It narrowed quickly, the familiar pine and oak of the border forests giving way to something else. The trees grew taller, their trunks straighter, the bark smooth and faintly luminescent, like the memory of moonlight sealed in ash. The leaves were a darker green, and they whispered. Not the dry rattle of autumn, but a soft, conversational sigh that continued even when the mist lay still and heavy in the hollows.
The change didn’t announce itself. It accumulated.
The air, cool and damp at first, began to thicken with light. Not the glare of the sun, but a diffuse, pearlescent glow that seemed to emanate from the moss, from the dewdrops on spiderwebs, from the very air molecules themselves. It was like walking into a dawn that would never quite become day.
Sounds grew distinct, then musical. A bird’s call didn’t just end; it resolved into a tiny, falling arpeggio. The crunch of gravel underfoot began to echo with a faint, harmonic ring, as if the stones were subtly in tune. My own breathing seemed louder, clearer, each inhale a note.
Then I felt it in my body. A lightness. Not that I was floating, but that the constant, silent pull of the earth beneath me had lessened its grip by a fraction. My steps became easier, as if I were remembering how to walk after a long illness. The weariness from the night began to slough away, not replaced by energy, but by a kind of alert calm.
I stopped, looking at a cluster of bell-shaped flowers by the path. Their blue was a color I had no name for—the blue of a deep, perfect thought. They hummed softly.
“The world is waking up around us,” I said, my voice hushed.
The Fairy King, a few paces ahead, did not turn. “It is not waking,” he corrected gently, his words blending with the leaf-whisper. “It is becoming aware that it is being perceived. You are the new element here, Elsbeth. And the realm… adjusts.”
We walked on. The path was now just a suggestion between the great, glowing trees. The light grew richer. The air tasted of cold water and wild thyme. Every sense felt polished, amplified. This was no violent portal, no magical whirlwind. It was an unhurried, meticulous unfolding, like a flower turning inside my soul. I was not crossing a border.
I was being absorbed into a breath.
The path ended in a clearing. It was smaller than I expected, carpeted in moss so deep and green it seemed to swallow sound. At its center stood a tree.
It was… ordinary. Gnarled, ancient, draped in veils of greyish moss. An old sentinel, nothing more. I felt a flicker of disappointment. After the luminous woods, this felt like a return to the mundane.
I took a step closer.
A warmth bloomed against my chest, then a pull. Before I could react, it materialized in the air before me—my G-Pen. But not as I had known it. It shone with a pure, white-gold light, solid and real, humming with a frequency that vibrated in my teeth. It was almost painful to look at.
I gasped. The pen didn’t just float; it trembled, its tip pointing toward the tree as if pulled by a tide.
The Fairy King moved past me. He placed a single, pale hand flat against the gnarled bark. He did not speak a spell. He simply… acknowledged it.
And reality shifted.
It wasn’t a quake or a flash. It was a settling. A focusing. Like a lens clicking into perfect clarity.
The tree did not transform. My perception shattered.
The gnarled bark became continental plates, cracked and weathered by eons. The moss was not moss, but the soft, living fur of a slumbering leviathan. Its roots did not dig into earth—they cradled it, sinking into the dark with a tenderness that held whole worlds in the curl of their grasp. And its branches… they did not reach for the sky. They were the framework upon which the sky was hung, holding not leaves, but the cold, steady fire of stars caught in a silent, spreading net.
This was Ubaederchedr. The tree of life.
Between two roots wider than castle gates, a seam opened. A vertical line of pure, condensed starlight, soft as mist yet profound as creation. It did not blaze; it invited.
The Fairy King turned from the living cosmos of the trunk. His eyes held the same timeless depth.
“Beyond this threshold,” he said, his voice the sound of roots moving through deep stone, “there is no return to the child you were.” He looked at the pen, still trembling in the air between us, then back to me. “But there is room for the woman you will become.”
My heart was a wild drum. I touched the worn leather of Wilhelm’s dagger hilt at my side—the anchor of a love I was leaving. My other hand found the smooth river-stone pendant at my throat—the first gift from a world that had tried to name me colorless.
I took one last, deep breath. I tasted pine, and loam, and the faint, iron scent of distant rain. The scent of home.
Then, I reached out. My fingers closed not around the pen, but through its light, and it flowed back into me, a sunburst beneath my ribs.
I stepped through the seam.
There was no sound. No tear. Only the gentle, irrevocable sensation of a page, once heavy with the ink of a familiar story, being turned.
Having witnessed the display of magic from the people of Oiklumen, Elsbeth has finally arrived at the Fairy Realm. What will her destined training be like? Find out in the next chapter. Let's meet again next week, same time, same place.
