The group settled in.

For now, they were told to wait—and in Mythic terms, that meant: roam, barter, don’t touch the glowing things unless you want dreams full of bees.

They spread out through the market corridor—a winding indoor alley of salvaged stalls and enchanted wares. Mana lanterns hung from ribcage-like beams, and every inch hummed with life, laughter, and the smell of ozone and cinnamon.

Mezzo haggled for a can of fireproof paint and a pouch of “probably stable” memory crystals.
Lumina found pastel fruit charms that danced in her palm like soap bubbles, giggling as they changed color.
Ray bought a spiked energy drink and pretended she didn’t love the glitter on the label.
Skye traded a doodle of a gear-dragon for a satchel of clean cloth and enchanted thread.
And Bartleby—ever the gentleman scholar—paid way too much for a cup of tea, insisted the price was “quite reasonable,” and was immediately adopted by a retired thunderbird who began fixing his posture and fluffing his collar unprompted.

Celeste browsed quietly—her eyes catching on trinkets shaped like stars, on necklaces pulsing faintly with life. She was beginning to relax when a familiar voice, aged and gentle, drifted across the market.

“Ah… the Twainvian from the mana well. Welcome, young one.”

She turned, startled.

An old figure stood beneath the shade of a flickering tent, cloaked in layered velvet and tattered forrest-colored cloth. His cane—twisted, crystalline, and faintly humming—was carved from a single piece of willowrath root.

“Elder Arlo,” Celeste breathed.

His fur was the color of old parchment, his eyes soft but agelessly bright. She had saved him not long ago—during the siege at the powerplant, where fudge, flame, and fury had nearly consumed them both.

Now, the old mystic bowed low, the chime of the beads in his mane filling the hush between them.
“Might I speak with you… privately?”

Celeste hesitated, glancing back toward the others—but Bonbon tugged at her hand. “It’s okay, Mama Light,” the little panda whispered.

Celeste sighed softly, then nodded. “Alright.”

They followed Elder Arlo inside.

The tent’s interior was warm, thick with the scent of melted peppermint and honeyed parchment. Light from suspended mana orbs cast soft hues of green and gold across the woven mats. In the corner, scrolls fluttered gently in an unseen breeze, whispering faint runes into the air.

Elder Arlo motioned for her to sit. She lowered herself cross-legged onto a cushion, Bonbon still curled in her lap, clutching Celeste’s tail like a lifeline.

“You saved me from a sweetened death, Celeste Astallan,” Arlo began, voice like old parchment crinkling. “And I have tried to repay you in quiet ways—through small prayers, through whispers to the winds.”

He leaned forward slightly, his eyes glowing faintly with mana.
“But something has begun to stir… something tied not just to your aura, but to you.”

Celeste blinked, her ears flicking. “You mean—my rune?”

Arlo’s gaze softened. “No, child. I mean you.”

The air shifted. He reached for a thick, leather-bound book on the low table and opened it to a page covered in spiraling script and half-faded glyphs. As he did, three other elders entered the tent, each robed in woven glass-thread and carrying staffs tipped with humming crystals.

Bonbon pressed closer to Celeste’s side, whispering, “They smell like rain.”

“Don’t be afraid,” Arlo murmured. “They are Seers. They will not harm you.”

Celeste nodded uncertainly, sitting still as they began to work. The air shimmered as each elder raised their staff and traced symbols in the air. Light spread over Celeste like ripples on water, mapping the lines of her mana—her pulse, her breath, her very soul.

The murmuring began almost immediately.

“She carries more than one mana signature,” one Seer whispered.

“No… not more than one core,” said another, leaning closer. “One vessel. One core. But the echoes are wrong.”

“There is a second signature wound through the first.”

“No,” the eldest Seer breathed, her staff trembling faintly. “Not second. Something else. Another mana signature is holding the rest in check.”

Celeste’s ears twitched. “W-what are you saying?”

One of the younger Seers frowned, circling her slowly. “Could it be the Nullborn rune?”

At that, Bonbon clutched Celeste’s sleeve tighter. “Mae gen i ofn,” she whispered.

Celeste lowered one paw to her gently. “I know, sweetheart.”

Another Seer shook her head at once. “No. The Nullborn rune leaves absence. Hunger. A place where mana refuses to sing.”

She lifted her crystal lens, peering through it at the glow rippling over Celeste’s chest.

“This is different. There is deep mana behind it. Very deep. I have not felt anything like it.”

The younger Seer swallowed. “Then what did the Nullborn do to her?”

The elder lowered her staff. “I do not think this was the Nullborn.”

Silence fell.

Even the mana orbs seemed to dim.

The eldest Seer stepped closer, eyes narrowing with troubled awe. “This is a living matrix.”

Celeste felt the words pass through her like cold water.

“A what?” she whispered.

“A command pattern,” the Seer said softly. “Not written onto the body. Grown inside it. Her mana, her blood, her nerves, her bones—they are not merely altered. They are being instructed.”

Another Seer’s voice trembled. “Her biology is ripping itself apart.”

Celeste went very still.

Bonbon made a tiny frightened sound. “Na…”

The Seer’s gaze softened, but her words did not. “And something is commanding it back together.”

Elder Arlo’s brow furrowed deeply. “Brassmane was correct… your core is unique. We have not seen a Twainvian with a living core before—let alone one that resonates like this.”

One of the Seers stepped closer, their staff trembling faintly. “It is almost… harmonic. Two pulses, one vessel.”

Celeste’s breath hitched. “I don’t understand.”

Arlo leaned over the open book, one old claw tracing a faded line of script without quite touching it.

“That would still not answer the Well being opened,” he murmured.

The Seers looked to him.

Arlo’s eyes were distant now, fixed on something none of them could see.

“Mana flows as rivers flow,” he said quietly. “Down from mountain to valley, from spring to sea, from wound to healing, from birth to grave. That is the way of it.”

His fingers tightened around his sugar-root cane.

“But this…” His voice lowered. “This is no river. This is water unmade into mist, named droplet by droplet, taught to remember a path no river should know.”

Celeste swallowed hard.

Arlo looked at her then, and his gaze was kind, but afraid.

“It climbs uphill, child.”

The tent fell utterly silent.

Arlo closed the book with a soft thump. “Mana deconstructed. Ordered. Programmed to move against its own nature.”

One of the Seers stepped back, face pale beneath her hood. “That’s impossible.”

“So are most terrible things,” Arlo said, “until someone clever decides impossibility is merely poor engineering.”

Celeste’s stomach twisted.

The youngest Seer took a cautious step back, staring at the light still moving beneath Celeste’s fur. “It is stabilising her.”

“No,” said the elder Seer. “It is forcing stability. There is a difference.”

Another Seer nodded slowly. “The dragon strains one way. The alicorn another. The hybrid body tries to choose a shape, then another, then another. But the matrix commands unity.”

Bonbon pressed closer, her little paws curled tight in Celeste’s cloak. “Paid â thorri,” she whispered. “Please don’t break.”

Celeste’s fingers curled gently around her.

“I don’t understand,” Celeste whispered again.

Arlo’s gaze softened. “Nor should you. Not yet. But there are those who may. The Y Famdderwyddon—the Druids of the Old Dawn. They hold the oldest knowledge of living cores and older things still. I will need to consult with them before your trial begins.”

Celeste stared at the glow fading from her paws. “And if they don’t understand it?”

Arlo’s eyes, though kind, were grave.

“Then we shall have learned that the dark beneath this age is deeper than we feared.”

He stood slowly, leaning heavily on his sugar-root cane. “Until then, be cautious, Celeste Astallan. Your light grows brighter each day… and that means the shadows watching it grow bolder too.”

Celeste swallowed hard, fingers curling in Bonbon’s fur. “Are you saying… something’s coming for me?”

Elder Arlo’s gaze did not leave hers.

“No, my dear,” he said softly. “I’m saying it already has.”

Outside, the soft hum of the market carried on—music, laughter, and the faint buzz of the mana chimes.

But within the tent, Celeste could feel it too now.

Not two cores.

Not two lives.

Something worse.

Two pulses within one vessel.

And beneath them both, something quiet and deliberate, holding her together with invisible hands.

Somewhere inside that impossible pattern, a river flowed uphill.

For a while, no one spoke.

Celeste sat there waiting while Elder Arlo sent one of the Seers to fetch the women he had named. Bonbon stayed curled against her side, tiny paws gripping her cloak as though she could hold Celeste together by sheer determination.

“Dw i yma,” Bonbon whispered.

Celeste looked down. “You’re here?”

Bonbon nodded solemnly. “Bob amser.”

Celeste’s throat tightened. “Always,” she repeated softly. “Thank you.”

Then the tent flap rustled open.

In swept a coven of women, young and old, some with gentle bellies carrying life, others guiding small apprentices clutching baskets of herbs. All were Mythics, and all wore the same ceremonial garb.

Celeste blinked, then gave a small, awkward wave. “Hello, um… sorry if I’m in the way.”

The women smiled.

“Never in the way, cariad,” one said.

They curtsied respectfully in return before setting down their bundles and unpacking strange tools—crystal sickles, carved bowls, feathers bound with silver thread, and vials that shimmered like dawn. Celeste watched, fascinated, as they moved with quiet purpose.

The air inside the ritual tent grew heavy—thick as syrup, humming with ancient power.

Celeste stood at the centre of a circle woven from moss and silver thread. Around her, the Y Famdderwyddon—the wise women of the old Welsh hills—moved with practised grace.

They were unlike any mystics Celeste had ever seen. Tall, proud women draped in woollen shawls, bedgowns, and towering black hats that shimmered faintly with mana dust. They smelled of peat smoke and rain, and when they began to chant, their voices rose and fell like the tide—half-song, half-spell.

“Y nefoedd a’r ddaear, mana a gwaed—unwaith eto’n cydgloi,” one murmured.

The heavens and earth, mana and blood—once more entwined.

Others echoed, weaving old magic through flickering devices older than any Celeste had ever seen. Polished copper coils, wooden frames etched with runes, and crystal lenses hummed with a fusion of nature and machine.

Blue-green light washed over her, soft at first… then bright enough to make her fur prickle.

Bonbon watched wide-eyed from the edge of the circle, tiny paws clutching her plush tail.

“Maen nhw’n canu fel sêr,” she whispered. “Mae’n teimlo’n hapus.”

Celeste smiled faintly, though fear still sat beneath her ribs like a stone. “It’s old magic, sweetheart. Older than any of us.”

As the chant rose, Celeste’s mana responded—unbidden.

Her core shimmered beneath her ribs, golden and alive, the air rippling with warmth and pressure.

And under that warmth, something deeper answered.

Quiet.

Iridescent.

Waiting.