Gravesfield High was many things, gray, obviously, drab, but it had one redeeming feature, A main character of the story. That made it perfect for me.
Over the next twenty-four hours, I did what I did best, appearing likable. While the teachers droned about colonial America and algebraic expressions, I kept Luz talking.
Not too much. Just enough for her to want more.
She always had something to say. About the latest Azura fanfic, or the movie her mom banned because it had "too many bats," or the way her sneakers made her feel like a superhero. She wasn't like the others here. She wasn't bored of life more she was aching to escape it. Craving something more.
Which made her useful.
By the second lunch period, I was sitting across from her at our usual table beneath the leaky ceiling vent. She waved me over with a napkin she'd folded into a tiny bat.
"I call him Wingston!" she grinned. "He's your emotional support bat. Everyone needs one."
I nodded solemnly. "He seems well trained."
"Oh, he's vicious. Paper cuts like razors."
She laughed at her own joke, and I gave the faintest curl of a smile. That was all it took. Luz beamed like she'd won something.
The more we talked, the more I reinforced the illusion: I was safe. Quiet. Maybe even a little lost like her. It always fascinated me how sociological concepts worked until I did them myself, mirroring the others emotions, sharing just enough to seem authentic, feigning bigger reaction.
I didn't resist when she dragged me into a heated debate about whether Azura's familiar was secretly a double agent. I didn't even mind when she "accidentally" dropped her entire sketchbook in front of me and pretended it wasn't staged.
I flipped through her pages as she pretended not to look. They were surprisingly good—colorful, energetic, alive. A sharp contrast to the washed-out beige of the school around us.
"Why aren't you in art club?" I asked.
She wrinkled her nose. "They only paint fruit bowls. My art has monsters. And fire. And sometimes, like, really intense wizard eyes. I got kicked out."
"Sounds like you're the only one there who remembered art is supposed to say something."
Her eyes flicked to mine. Soft like an infant discovering something new.
That afternoon in Biology, I passed her a sticky note with a crude cartoon I drew of Azura and Wingston fighting off zombie frogs. She almost cried laughing. The teacher didn't even notice.
We were getting closer. She was opening up. Exactly as planned.
The next evening arrived, and I stood outside her house under a sky bruised with twilight. It was modest, with a peeling mailbox and a lawn gnome missing its nose. The kind of place that said single parent doing her best.
Luz swung the door open, smiling wide. "You came!"
"I said I would."
She wore galaxy-print pajama pants and a mismatched hoodie that said "Witchin' Ain't Easy." The phrase made me cringe, but she wore it like armor.
"Come on! My room's upstairs. Just, uh, ignore the glitter trap on the second step.
"...Noted."
Her room was a whirlwind of posters, books, and fairy lights. A small altar to Azura occupied the far wall, complete with fan-made candles and doodles of magical battles. Her bed was more plush toys than mattress.
I stepped inside, hands in my hoodie pockets. "You collect chaos in physical form."
She laughed. "Yeah, well, I like having stuff that makes me feel… not alone."
There it was again. That vulnerability. That need.
I sat on the floor as she plopped down across from me with a board game I didn't recognize.
We played. She won, of course. I let her. And the whole time, I listened. Her words. Her tone. Her rhythm. Cataloguing it all.
Halfway through our second game, she went quiet.
"You know… I don't think I've ever had a friend who liked Azura before."
"Guess I'm full of surprises."
She smiled, then bit her lip like she wanted to ask something. But she didn't. Not yet.
Later that night, back in my room, I dropped the mask.
Everything was working. Luz was opening doors without realizing it. The portal would appear in three days. I'd be there with her. And once I set foot in that other world, the real world, everything would change.
The Boiling Isles were a crucible of power. I had seen enough through fragments and show clips to understand: glyphs weren't just spells. They were code. A language written into the bones of reality. And I spoke fluent logic.
But even before I got my hands on the glyph system, I'd need to navigate that world carefully.
Belos's coven system was the biggest obstacle.
A brilliant tactic, honestly. Nine major covens to divide magic into neat little boxes. A monopoly on each branch of power. Everyone forced to conform. Anyone who didn't was labeled a wild witch and hunted down.
But I wasn't planning to join any of them.
I'd already studied their core abilities.
The Abomination Coven? They were essentially magical biotech engineers—useful for creating sentient constructs, sure, but ultimately obedient to the emperor. Too clunky, too reliant on goo and brute force. No flexibility.
The Illusion Coven had potential. They dealt in perception, projection, misdirection. If I were a weaker mind, I'd have been tempted. But illusions break under scrutiny. I needed power that could not be questioned.
Healing was narrow in application. Great for keeping assets alive, but the moment you relied on it in combat, you'd already lost.
The Construction Coven intrigued me. Not for the bricks and mortar, but the implication—reshaping physical space through magic. If I could isolate their methods and replicate them with glyph combinations, I could build whatever I needed on demand: labs, vaults, fortresses.
The Plant Coven? Too slow. And frankly, I had no interest in turning into a nature-obsessed druid.
Oracle magic was dangerous. Divination. Prophecy. Mind reading. Not because it was unreliable—but because Belos probably kept a tight leash on those with future-sight. Too unpredictable.
I'd need countermeasures against them first.
Bard magic… charming in theory, with its sonic attacks and mood-altering effects. But music didn't interest me unless it could be weaponized on a mass scale.
Beast Keeping was the same. Cute. But I wasn't building a zoo—I was building an empire.
And Potions? Too reliant on ingredients and rituals. Chemistry masquerading as magic. I could do better with a lab and the right tools.
No. I wouldn't restrict myself like they did.
Belos built the covens to keep power fractured and manageable. I wouldn't give him the satisfaction of fitting into one of his little molds.
Instead, I'd study them all. Dissect their methods. Reconstruct their spells into efficient glyph sequences and multi-type hybrids. Imagine an abomination cloaked in illusions, enhanced with bardic force, attacking through dimensional rifts. Spell fusion, optimized.
That was the future. My future.
And Luz?
She'd take me there.
She would see me as a friend. A partner. Someone who believed in her dreams. All I had to do was hold her trust long enough to step through that portal. Once I was on the other side…
Let the Isles tremble.
Outside, through the curtains, I saw movement.
Luz's mother stood on the porch, coffee cup in hand. She watched her daughter and me laughing in the yard earlier, Luz had dragged me outside to "teach" me how to swordfight with cardboard tubes.
I'd humored her. Even let her "defeat" me with a flourish.
Camila Noceda held a flyer in her free hand—something from the school, probably. Parent-teacher night, or summer camp ads. She glanced between the flyer and us.
Then she smiled. Soft. Relieved.
She thought I was good for her daughter.
I turned from the window.
Let her think so.
Let everyone think I was safe.
The Boiling Isles were within reach.
And I would not waste the opportunity Luz so desperately wanted to hand me.