In the hidden magical town of Heartwood, nestled beyond the veil between worlds, Heartwood Academy stands as a beacon for young mages seeking to master the ancient arts of spellcraft and potion-making. For centuries, it has trained generations of magic users—until students began vanishing without a trace.
Ember Shadewood, a shy and observant 15-year-old with an unexpected gift for Nature Magic, arrives for her first year unaware that her arrival coincides with the third disappearance of the sem
The Secret of Heartwood Academy - Sparks and Equilibrium — The Intruder in the Laboratory
The fragments of the staff had been nagging at the back of her mind ever since.
Even after attending three classes, eating dinner, and returning to the dormitory, Ember's consciousness remained somewhere distant. The words in her notebook wouldn't sink in. She gazed out the window at the Silverwood's silver-barked trees dissolving into the twilight, and kept turning over and over the sensation she and Finn had confirmed yesterday—that the fragment wasn't merely debris, that there were traces of magical power being "extracted."
(I need to analyze it. But where...)
Finn's words from lunch in the hallway echoed back to her.
"The third experimental room sometimes isn't locked after classes. There's a teacher who teaches curse-weaving and has a habit of forgetting to lock up. I'll check in five minutes whether today is that teacher's shift."
Five minutes later, Finn returned with a thumbs up.
***
The hallway of the experimental building after school had a different air than during the day.
The root-vein lamps in the ceiling—lighting installed throughout the city that glowed with the earth's magical power—were dimmed, and the passage was barely illuminated by a thin band of greenish-gold light. When someone's footsteps faded in the distance, complete silence remained.
"You said it would be easy," Ember said quietly.
"It's easy. Definitely easy," Finn murmured confidently, crouching in front of the third room's door. He placed his hand over the lock and began chanting a spell in a low voice. Auxiliary magic—the kind that reads a lock's structure through hand sensation and unlocks it with magical power. Ember stood behind him, alternating her gaze between both ends of the corridor.
Finn's fingertips glowed faintly gold.
Then—a click sounded.
It wasn't the sound of unlocking. It was the sound of locking.
"...Finn."
"I know, I know."
"Did you just lock it?"
"I got the accent wrong by one syllable in the chant. It reversed. Yeah."
Finn scratched his head. Ember said nothing for two seconds.
"...Try again."
"Leave it to me."
Finn placed his hand over the lock again. This time more carefully, checking each syllable as if confirming them one by one. Ember kept her nerves sharp for any sounds in the corridor while watching the back of Finn's head. His two-toned hair of red and black looked slightly orange in the root-vein lamp's light.
Another click.
It unlocked.
"Got it."
"Second try though."
"Don't sweat the small stuff."
Finn pulled the door open.
—In that instant, the hinges made a tremendous noise. A metallic screech—*gaaa*—that echoed down the entire corridor. Ember's whole body froze. Finn froze too. They exchanged glances and pressed themselves against the wall.
Footsteps from deeper in the corridor.
Slowly approaching.
Ember's lips moved silently. (This is bad. This is bad, bad, bad.)
Finn was also mouthing something. Probably the same words.
The footsteps stopped right in front of the third room's door.
Ember held her breath completely.
Ten seconds. Twenty seconds.
The footsteps faded in a different direction.
After waiting a while, both of them exhaled simultaneously.
"...Let's go," Ember said, and Finn nodded silently.
In the end, the lock was meaningless from the start because of the hinges that were falling apart. When Ember concentrated slightly on the spell-mark on her left wrist—the faintly glowing pattern indicating aptitude for natural magic—a vine from outside the window slipped in and quietly shifted the window latch. Mundane, but silent.
They slipped through the window. Three seconds later, Finn's foot caught on a trash can, and the sound of the metal container rolling across the floor echoed through the entire experimental room.
"..."
Ember looked at Finn.
Finn stopped the trash can with his foot and mouthed, "Easy."
***
The third experimental room was left as it had been after the daytime classes.
Six rows of stone experimental tables, each topped with used flasks and test tubes. The twilight filtering through the windows was faint, and the small palm-sized lantern Ember had brought—a weaker version of the root-vein lamp that glowed when a little magical power was poured into it—illuminated only their hands.
Finn took out the fragment.
The piece of staff they'd found near the outer edge of Silverwood in the third episode. About the length of the second joint of a thumb, made of some darkened special wood. When trying to sense the flow of magical power, there was a hollow feeling like something had been "pulled out."
"Where should I start reading from?" Finn asked.
"Place it in your palm and direct your consciousness toward the root-vein."
"What do you see?"
"...Nothing."
Ember held the fragment in both hands. She could feel her left wrist's spell-mark respond faintly. But the flow of magical power was tangled in complex ways, making it impossible to read. It was different from her usual natural magic sensation. This wasn't the flow of the earth's root-vein, but something more—artificial, intentional traces of magical power.
(My technique isn't good enough. I don't have...)
Frustration seeped through.
"Let me try."
Finn took the fragment. Finn's system wasn't natural magic. He'd learned the basics of sensory magic, but reading residual magical power still required specialized technique. Finn's brow furrowed. After concentrating for several dozen seconds, he quietly shook his head.
"I can't do it. With our skill level, analyzing this is..."
"You're too late."
A voice came.
Both of them spun around simultaneously.
In the darkness at the back of the experimental room—beyond the experimental table at the far end—there was a person.
Long silver hair weakly reflected the root-vein lamp's light. The loosely tied hair had a single streak of translucent pale blue highlight. A small frame. A silver ring on the middle finger of her right hand glinted.
Her eyes were looking at them. Eyes of different colors—one a brilliant azure with a star-like sparkle, the other a deep purple. Heterochromia. To Ember, those eyes didn't seem surprised. Rather, they looked slightly bored.
"...Could it be..."
Ember said quietly.
"Aurora Lighthollow," Finn confirmed, calling out the name.
"That's right."
The girl—Aurora—answered briefly. Her voice was calm, sounding far more mature than her fourteen years.
"I was waiting. I thought you'd come."
"...How did you know?" Ember asked. Her voice pitched slightly higher.
"How many people at the Academy know the third room's lock is open only today? Of those, how many have a staff fragment?"
Aurora said quietly while standing up.
Something was on the experimental table.
A staff fragment—the same shape as the one Finn and Ember had, but slightly larger. And a thin test tube.
"I had this too. For the past two weeks."
Aurora pointed to the fragment.
"Where did you find it?"
Finn's voice was low.
"The outer edge of Silverwood. I went to test whether the forest would let me through, and it was rolling at my feet."
"...The forest would let you through?"
Aurora looked at Ember.
"You've broken through the outer edge before, right? There was talk that the root-keeper was surprised. There hasn't been a first-year student doing something like that in ten years."
Ember said nothing. More accurately, she couldn't find the words.
"That's amazing," Aurora said. Not simple praise, not sarcasm, just a statement of fact.
***
"I'll show you," Aurora said, placing both fragments on her open palms.
Finn moved to stand beside Ember. Both of them watched Aurora from a slight distance.
Aurora closed her eyes.
The silver ring on her right hand glowed first. Then her fingertips. Then Aurora's entire hand began to be enveloped in a membrane of pale light—a cocoon-like glow mixing white and light purple.
(This isn't... within the scope of alchemy. This is...)
Ember watched, forgetting to breathe.
Something was being drawn out from the fragment.
What should have been invisible was being made visible by Aurora's magic—mist-like, thread-like, fine particles of light seeping from the fragment's surface, gathering in Aurora's palm. She was converting residual magical power into a "readable form" while keeping it fixed in place.
"Residual magical power extraction," Finn said quietly. His jaw had dropped slightly.
"It's in the advanced magical theory textbook. But there are only a handful of people who can actually do it, even among experienced curse-weavers."
And a fourteen-year-old was doing it.
Ember kept watching Aurora's hands. The light cocoon expanded, and for a moment, the experimental room's air was wrapped in quiet radiance.
At that moment.
Ember saw it.
Aurora's fingertips in the light—trembled for just an instant.
Quick, small. Gone the next moment. Finn hadn't seen it. Aurora's expression hadn't changed. Only her fingertips had, for a very brief time, slipped outside her control.
(Ah.)
Something moved quietly inside Ember.
(This person is afraid. Of this.)
Ember's observant eye alone had seen through what a person called a genius feared in a place no one else could see.
Aurora opened her eyes. A thin membrane of light remained on her palm.
"Look," Aurora said quietly.
"This magical power trace. It's not normal staff damage. Magical power was intentionally extracted from outside. And not—"
A pause.
"From the staff, but from the person holding it."
Finn went rigid. Ember went rigid too.
"The missing student's magical power was drained?" Ember asked slowly, choosing her words carefully.
"It won't be evidence. But the traces say so."
Aurora extinguished the light in her palm. The calm voice from before became slightly—just slightly—lower.
"One of the three missing students. A name: Ciel Morngrave."
"...Do you know them?" Ember asked quietly.
Aurora didn't answer for a while. Her silver hair swayed in the root-vein lamp's light.
"My only friend."
The tremor in her voice was unmistakable now.
***
The three of them stood facing each other around the experimental table.
Ember didn't know what to say. She had no words of comfort. No words of sympathy felt right. She just met Aurora's eyes. Whether something passed through her gaze—whether it said "I understand"—she didn't know. But that's what she meant it to say.
Finn crossed his arms.
"Then we move together. That okay?" he asked.
"That was the plan from the start," Aurora answered. Her voice had returned somewhat to normal.
"I can't access the restricted archives alone. The Deep-root Library—the document vault sealed underground in the Grand Library, which requires staff and council permission—should have records from before the sealing decree. The record of this magical power type might be there."
"Magical power type?" Finn's voice changed slightly.
"Individual quirks in magical power, like fingerprints. Everyone's is different. In this trace—"
Aurora pointed to the remnant in her palm.
"There's a type mixed in. Different from the staff holder's. The type of whoever was directly involved in the power extraction."
Finn was silent for a second.
That second felt long to Ember.
Finn's golden eyes were looking at the light remnant. The lightness from before had completely vanished. The mole at the corner of his mouth was frozen in his stiffened expression.
"...It seems familiar," Finn said quietly.
Ember watched.
"Like my father's magical power type."
The experimental room went silent.
Finn said nothing more. Aurora was also silent.
Something sharp pierced Ember's chest. Not worry, exactly—but the sensation of having touched something Finn was carrying alone, in a place no one could reach. The edge of something he wrapped in jokes, something no one could reach.
(I don't know about Finn's father.)
Even though he was supposed to be her childhood friend, there was so much she didn't know.
***
"Let's pull back for today," Aurora said first.
The three of them worked together to erase any signs o
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