The woman before her—this odd, wild-haired creature who screamed out of this world—was leaking mana like a cracked moon-vessel. Veins of raw light pulsed beneath her skin in sharp, geometric bursts, as though the world had stamped her arrival in haste and carelessly filed it away.

  Rowan kept her expression pleasantly blank. Stoic. Utterly unimpressed.

  She had trained for this in the palace: show nothing, see everything. Her aura sat folded neatly behind her ribs. So tightly bound, one might think it belonged to someone else entirely.

  And yet… something in her refused to ignore the prickle of wonder.

  The stranger stood in the centre of the Crossroads, where fire and life leylines braided like bickering spouses. The place was normally empty, avoided with the reverent caution one uses around a sleeping bear.

  Rowan had not seen her arrive.

  No—she had seen the world notice her.

  The leylines, usually steady as harp-strings tuned for centuries, suddenly thrummed. A violent reverberation cracked through the air. Raw mana spiraled into geometric halos before collapsing back into uneasy calm.

  That kind of reaction was reserved for catastrophes, ascensions, and poorly timed divine arguments.

  And the woman at the centre of it all had crash-landed naked.

  Rowan took this personally.

  She circled the stranger with slow, deliberate steps. Rangers moved with silence; princesses learned young to hide their brilliance. Rowan could do both in her sleep.

  “You’re… stable enough,” she said at last, though her brow twitched when the stranger’s mana leakage spiked by precisely 0.82 units. “Relatively.”

  The woman muttered something about statistical oscillations, as if critiquing humidity rather than threatening to explode.

  Rowan crossed her arms, feigning indifference at the commentary.

  Of course she was impressed. She simply refused to advertise it.

  “You’re not local,” Rowan said.

  “Not Sylvanwild. Not Embergarde. You don’t walk like someone born to mana. You… compensate. Like someone fighting the laws of the world.”

  The stranger shot her a glare sharp enough to register as a minor weapon.

  Rowan almost admired it.

  She had been ten minutes late—maybe more. But she had witnessed something impossible.

  The leylines had convulsed, shimmered, and snapped into formation as though saluting a superior officer. Only extremely dangerous things made leylines behave like that.

  Which left exactly one conclusion.

  Then Rowan felt it—a thrumming, a resonance. A pull.

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  Something recognized the stranger. A thread of memory, half-forgotten, tugging at the edges of perception.

  Rowan’s fingers twitched toward her bow by reflex. Not fear. Not aggression. Preparation. Curiosity. Wariness. She concealed it with a bored sigh.

  She stepped closer, hands folding behind her back in the neutral, polite posture palace tutors had drilled into her until it bled into bone.

  A princess learns to mask power with etiquette.

  A ranger learns to hide it with silence.

  Rowan excelled at both in ways that made people uneasy.

  “A confirmation, then,” she murmured, still circling.

  “You are not local.”

  The stranger’s expression hardened.

  “Obviously.”

  “And your magic—” Rowan gestured at the scorch crater without breaking eye contact.

  “—is either uncontrolled, experimental, or the result of very poor life choices.”

  The woman’s expression suggested all three.

  Rowan hid her smirk behind a bland exhale.

  “I saw the leylines react when you arrived,” she said quietly.

  “They don’t do that just for anyone.”

  The stranger’s smile froze. Her grass-dress rustled sharply. A spark snapped.

  Rowan continued, tone flat—an interrogation wrapped in courtesy:

  “…Where did you come from?”

  A pause followed. Small, but profound.

  Like the breath before an equation collapses, or a truth detonates.

  The stranger blinked once, twice, and Rowan watched the shift—unmistakable intellect snapping into place. Not panic. Not confusion. Analysis.

  A dangerous kind of mind.

  “Well,” she said, voice deceptively pleasant,

  “I suppose the polite answer is: ‘somewhere very far from here.’ The impolite answer is: ‘I woke up in your metaphysical horror foyer and have been winging it ever since.’”

  “That tells me nothing,” Rowan replied.

  “That was nothing,” the stranger agreed.

  “Precision delivered.”

  Rowan kept her expression flat—her court-mask. The one shaped by a decade of diplomacy, audits, and assassination attempts. The one that hid every spike of instinct screaming inside her.

  “You wield magic,” Rowan said, tone even,

  “with no catalyst. No glyphwork. No lattice structure I recognize.”

  The woman opened her mouth.

  Rowan raised a hand. Controlled. Final.

  “And your mana leaks.”

  Her eyes dropped to the soft blue coil drifting from the stranger’s sleeve—a quiet, traitorous reveal of emotional flux.

  “Constantly,” Rowan added.

  “Unintentionally. Like an emotional barometer built by a pyromaniac.”

  The stranger scowled.

  “It’s not leaking. It’s… venting. Elegantly.”

  “It is not elegant.”

  “It’s trying,” she muttered.

  “You have no idea how much self-control I’m exerting to not flambé the ecosystem by accident.”

  Rowan inhaled through her nose—slow, controlled—because the ridiculous part was: she believed her.

  “Where,” Rowan said carefully,

  “did you learn magic?”

  “I didn’t.”

  Rowan stared.

  The stranger shrugged.

  “I just… do it.”

  “That,” Rowan said, voice flat as a blade’s spine,

  “is not an answer.”

  “It’s the only one I’ve got,” she replied, tone softening.

  “I don’t know your runes, your catalysts. I don’t shape magic with whatever academic sadism you people call spell structure.”

  Rowan almost reeled.

  “So your magic is instinctive?” she asked.

  “Instinctive,” the stranger confirmed.

  “Chaotic. Self-destructive. Emotionally volatile. Much like me, really.”

  Rowan’s heart gave a single, traitorous jolt. She ignored it so violently she nearly sprained her composure.

  “Most beings who attempt instinctive casting without training,” she said,

  “last three seconds before liquefying their bone marrow.”

  She blinked.

  “Well, that’s comforting.”

  “I was not comforting you.”

  “Oh, trust me, I noticed.”

  Rowan folded her arms—a gesture she rarely allowed herself. Too revealing. Too human.

  “You are breaking every magical law I know.”

  The woman winced.

  “In my defense, I didn’t know you had laws.”

  “That,” Rowan said, “is somehow worse.”

  The stranger considered it. Shrugged again. Raw honesty stitched with exhausted humour.

  “I didn’t mean to break them. How could I? I didn’t know your world existed. I’m operating on a different rulebook.”

  Rowan felt her pulse shift.

  “And what rulebook is that?” she asked quietly.

  The woman met her gaze. Eyes so blue, like living mana.

  “…The one I had to write myself.”

  The clearing held its breath.

  For a heartbeat, Rowan saw it—not the anomaly, not the danger, but the loneliness braided into every word.

  The woman’s sleeve caught fire.

  Both women stared at it.

  “Is this a bad time to mention I think I panic-ignite?” she asked.

  Rowan closed her eyes.

  “Of course you do.”