Priya was a seed dropped in a dark cellar.

  She wasn't a girl anymore; she was just a sprout of consciousness trying to find a crack in the floorboards. Everything around her was cold, heavy soil—a presence that felt like it had been frozen for centuries.

  'Hello?' Priya thought. Her mind felt like a thin, pale stem, easily crushed.

  The silence was a thick layer of mulch, suffocating and damp.

  'They can't even let me die in peace,' she sighed, the thought drifting like a fallen leaf. 'First the Accountant, now this. I’m just a weed in someone else’s garden.'

  She pushed against the frost. 'Hey. Cold-and-calculating. I’m... uh, I’m in your head. Like a parasite, I guess. Sorry about that.'

  A flicker of surprise shivered through the dark, sharp as a winter thorn. Then suspicion. Then—nothing.

  She waited, feeling like a wilted flower in a room with no sun.

  Finally: 'You can hear me?'

  'Apparently. You're Shruti? The ice princess from Rudra's game?'

  Silence. Then: 'I should kill you.'

  'Can't. Already dead. Pothole. It was a very clumsy way to go.'

  'I don't laugh.'

  'Yeah, I’m getting that. You’re more of a permafrost type.'

  The walls didn't fall. But they cracked, like a frozen branch snapping under too much snow. Priya felt a hollow space behind the ice.

  'She's lonely,' Priya realized. It was a fragile realization, easily broken. 'She’s just a plant that’s never seen the light.'

  'Well. Same.'

  ****

  Kael's room. Morning. Again.

  I woke to the sun. It felt like a spotlight on a stage I wasn't supposed to be on. I stared at the ceiling, feeling like a sapling trying to grow through concrete.

  'This is becoming a pattern.'

  My body ached. I’d spent half the night trying to find Kael's mana channels, but I felt like I was digging in dry dirt with my fingernails.

  'Got nowhere.'

  I looked at my hands. They felt like borrowed gloves. I remembered a structure, though. A pattern buried deep in my memory like an old, forgotten bulb.

  Then I saw the mirror.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  'I'm really pretty, huh.'

  Kael's face was a perfect garden—well-tended, beautiful, and completely fake. It was a face designed for a hero, but I felt like the gardener’s clumsy apprentice hiding behind the hedge.

  'Very fantasy-novel-cover energy.'

  I coughed, the sound dry in the quiet room. I splashed water on my face, trying to wash away the feeling of being an imposter.

  'I watched anime my whole life. Read subtitles for years. Why did I panic about English?'

  'Brains are weird.'

  'Mine is a briar patch.'

  I sat cross-legged. I tried to find Kael's channels again, even though I knew I’d probably just find more dirt.

  Nothing. Nothing. Then—

  Something shifted.

  Awareness bloomed, but it was a thorny, painful thing. I could feel the structures inside me.

  'Whoa.'

  Kael's channels weren't the straight, healthy vines the books talked about. They were a mess of choked roots. Tangled. Knotted. Every junction was a boulder, and the mana was just a trickle of stagnant water trying to get through.

  'No wonder he failed.'

  But underneath the rot—I saw a logic. A math that didn't care about beauty.

  'What if I don't untangle them? What if I let the thorns be the point?'

  The thought felt like a poisonous fruit. Dangerous. Bitter. Every teacher said channels must be clear, or you’d wither away.

  'Maybe the problem isn't the knots. Maybe the problem is trying to be a rose when you're a bramble.'

  I grabbed paper. My pen skipped and scratched.

  Nodes. Pathways. Numbers.

  'Prime numbers,' I thought. 'If each node is a prime, the mana can't get lost in the cycles. It’s a garden where every path leads somewhere specific.'

  'That would give me edge. Control. A way to grow.'

  The sketches were a thicket of chaos. They looked like madness. I felt like I was building a cage instead of a ladder.

  But underneath—a pattern hummed. Faint. Like a heartbeat in the soil.

  'I think I found something.'

  The room spun. I grabbed the desk as my vision turned to dead leaves.

  Then darkness.

  ****

  Elena Voss sat by the common room window.

  She watched Kael's door. He was a mystery she didn't want to solve, a weed she couldn't pull.

  'He doesn't speak,' she thought. 'Doesn't try. Just exists.'

  The old Kael was a nervous vine, always reaching for support. Pathetic. Desperate.

  This one was a stone. Cold. Unmoving.

  'Is he hiding so he won't be stepped on?'

  'How funny, Kael. Even stones get crushed.'

  She turned a page. The words were just black ants crawling across the paper.

  'He was sharp before the accident. At least he tried to grow.'

  'I would have withered a thousand times already.'

  She closed the book. The thought felt too much like a confession.

  ****

  Dorran shuddered. He’d felt like a bug under a heavy boot in that office.

  'No more professors.'

  Then the name bloomed in his mind like a nightshade.

  'Olivier Farmer. Kael's maid. The only thing he waters.'

  'If something happened to her...'

  He smiled, a jagged, ugly thing.

  'Olivier it is.'

  ****

  The border. Lord Cassian Valemont, Sword of Destruction, pruned another life.

  Casual. Bored. His blade moved once, and the man fell like mown grass.

  Fire erupted behind him—a harvest of ash.

  "MY LORD!" A messenger rode hard, his horse lathered in sweat. He fell to one knee.

  "Your son, my lord. He's awake. He's left for the Academy."

  Cassian didn't look back. He just watched the blood drip off his steel like rain.

  "Alive?"

  "Yes. They say he's... different."

  Cassian’s expression was a frozen lake. Unmoving. Deep.

  "Different how?"

  "The message was unclear."

  Cassian nodded. He turned back to the battle, a winter that would never end.

  "Tell my wife."

  ****

  The fire resumed its hungry growth.

  Kael woke on the floor. His papers were a drift of white across the room.

  'The channels. The primes.'

  He looked at his sketches. Chaos and numbers. A garden of thorns.

  But underneath—the pattern was waiting. Persistent.

  'I found something.'

  'Now I just need not to die before the first bloom.'

  He laughed, a weak, rustling sound.

  'Priorities.'

  Shruti sat in darkness. Counting the seconds like falling seeds.

  'The voice is still there,' she thought. 'She’s a tangle of nerves. But she tried.'

  'No one tries.'

  She touched the hidden diary. Sapta-Diary VII. It felt like the only solid thing in a world of mist.

  'If this voice can help...'

  'I'll let it stay.'

  'For now.'

  'The Beggar's Audit requires many accounts.'

  'And I have many debts to collect. A whole harvest of them.'

  END OF CHAPTER SEVEN