They limped back from Hollowglass Fen bruised, burned, and with a layer of swamp gunk Rose insisted was sentient. Basil carried an unconscious cultist slung over his shoulder like a sack of particularly cursed potatoes.
Nimbus, still humming from the adrenaline, spiraled overhead like a drunk firefly. "That was glorious! Did you see me drop those mushrooms? Ten out of ten chaos. Would menace again."
Rose, thoroughly soaked and reeking of bog water, grunted. "We'll make you a medal. A very loud one."
Basil laid the cultist down in the Academy's interrogation wing—an eerie room made entirely of silvered glass. Nothing whispered secrets better than their own reflections. Professors arrived within minutes, wands drawn and questions sharper than blades.
But the real issue wasn't the cultist.
It was the mark.
That night, while Rose tried to scrub off what the Fen had tattooed into her pores, she caught it—a flicker in the mirror. A faint red thread-like glyph glowing just below her collarbone.
She pulled her shirt down, eyes narrowing. "That's new."
Nimbus floated nearby, eyes wide. "It wasn't there before the Fen. Maybe it's like a magical leech?"
"It's a mark," Rose said. "A tether. They didn't fail at the ritual—they just tagged me."
She showed Basil. He didn't flinch. Instead, he traced the air near the glyph with a careful hand, reading its threads.
"It's not active yet," he murmured. "But it will be. They're waiting. Watching through it."
Rose sat heavily on the edge of her bed. "So what do we do?"
Basil looked at her, steady and calm. "We fight it. Together. If it's a thread, we can cut it. Or—"
"Or follow it back," Rose said, eyes lighting up.
Nimbus landed between them. "No offense, but you two are getting very good at terrifying ideas."
Later that night, Belladoma examined the mark, her face unreadable.
"They've imbued it with a ritual only the original caster can sever," she explained. "Which means Mortain himself."
Rose groaned. "Of course. It can't be simple."
Belladoma placed a hand on Rose's shoulder. "He's escalating. What happened in the Fen wasn't just a test. It was a message. He knows you're bonded. Knows you can disrupt his rituals."
Basil's jaw tightened. "So he'll keep coming."
Belladoma nodded. "Unless you go first."
They were silent for a moment, the three of them watching the glyph glow and dim like a second heartbeat.
"We'll need help," Rose said.
"I know someone," Belladoma replied. "A mapmaker who works in impossible spaces. She used to be one of us—before she vanished."
"Let me guess," Rose muttered. "Haunted, weird, probably charmingly cryptic?"
Belladoma's lips curled. "You'll like her."
As they prepared to leave, Rose caught Basil staring at her again—longer this time, something unsaid hanging between them like mist.
"You alright?" she asked.
He gave a small smile. "Just thinking how impossible this all is."
"And?"
"And how I'd rather face it with you than survive it without you."
Rose blinked. "That's... alarmingly sweet."
Nimbus gagged dramatically in the corner.