Hey Diary,

  Well, I did it.

  My charm magic level is over a thousand now. Permanently. I don't need the stone, cuz when I activated it, it burned the runes into my skin.

  I… have a ring of rune tattoos on my tail now. They aren't visible, cuz my tail fur is kinda long, but if I part the fur it looks like scars.

  After activating it, I got to meet the Goddess. She was pretty upset at me, but then she summoned Luke’s dad and told him to fix everything.

  …

  When we were twelve, we got kidnapped. Mr. Calvin saved us. We were little, so I didn't know what magic could do yet. He showed up with glowing gold magic, and I thought it was just, like, super-tier lightning magic or something. Books say changelings can switch magic types, so I thought he was secretly a changeling.

  Nope. It was divine magic. I don't know how, but he knows the Goddess. Like, knows knows her.

  And Goddess Bonnie… knows my mom. Somehow. She asked what I thought Mom was like when she was my age, and honestly I just thought she spent her whole life cooking. I guess she did something… something enough that Mr. Calvin and the Goddess had to fix it.

  It was weird, though. Like they were mad at and annoyed by whatever Mom did, but at the same time they said it was good. And because they trust Mom, they can trust me.

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  So they just told me to not do anything evil, and let me keep the magic levels.

  Luke was summoned, too, and got in trouble cuz I copied the runes from his book. He might be mad at me for that, which I deserve.

  But yeah. I just went from being kinda weak magically to having the highest level on the planet.

  The charm magic is no longer just… there. It's not a tool any more. I’m not a person with access to charm magic.

  It feels alive. Like there’s another person in my head, telling me everything I can do. I know instinctively that there are 37 creatures in my vicinity that I could control completely if I wanted to. I know Echo is in the room next to mine, and she can resist anything up to level 68 charm magic. I can see her mind through the wall, and I have a voice telling me all the things I could do to it.

  It’s terrifying.

  And I promised the Goddess I could be trusted.

  I have to figure out how to control this. I have to… turn it off somehow. Or at least turn off parts of it.

  Magic types always get a bonus or new spell when we level up. I just need to spend a while going through the list of a thousand spells and bonuses and turn off or limit most of them.

  It’ll take all day. So I won't bother starting until tomorrow morning.

  I tried going to sleep as soon as I got back from meeting the Goddess, but I couldn't. I just had a thousand levels’ worth of knowledge and power crammed into my brain, and it’s watching over my shoulder.

  So I had to write all this out. One word after another, getting the jumbled knot of thoughts in my mind into a straight line.

  And my mind is clearer now. I think I can try to sleep again.

  Tomorrow I’ll wake up, have breakfast, and come back to my room to sort through everything. And it’ll all be ok.

  By tomorrow night, I won't be afraid of my own magic any more.

  Signing off,