The house was quiet.
From the back courtyard, Kael's voice trailed sharply in the air, sharp and instructive full swing in the middle of her training session with Michael and Arion. Sparks snapped along with the sound of feet shuffling and staves clicking.
Anna felt her heart beating faster as she stood in her kitchen, running her fingers along the rim of a small ceramic jar.
Tea.
She didn't want tea at this point. She'd already brewed some. But she opened the cabinet anyway rearranged three jars stopped, put one back, then turned another to face outward. She did it without thinking, without haste. Like the ritual bisected the thoughts unfurling inside her.
"Threads are tearing across the Realms," Orien had said.
"And your name keeps popping up in places you haven't been."
She propped herself against the counter.
Anna didn't scared easily. Not because she was unafraid, but because fear was a time-waster. And time had always been scarce, even in lifetimes that stretched long.
But this?
This had the sense of something she'd almost seen coming.
Sigils in impossible places repeating.
Spirit wells that are collapsing without pressure.
Names murmured in cities that no longer remembered them.
She closed her eyes.
Eidara.
She hadn't heard that name in years. And she didn't remember everything but she remembered what remained after her.
Not ruin.
Just emptiness. As if the world never mattered at all.
A soft hissing of overheating water pulled her back.
She took a breath, grabbed a spoon, and then stopped she had held up the same one for almost three minutes without picking it up. She stirred anyway. Slowly. With grace.
Michael's changing.
That idea didn't scare her. But it stirred something. Not only strength, somehow: His Thread had begun pulsing with presence. Direction. And presence like that? It attracted things. Old things. Things that remembered.
So did hers.
She smiled faintly, more to herself.
Then muttered aloud:
"You've saved souls, crossed fire bridges, and done hand work stitching dying Threads shut, Anna. We can handle a teenage boy with a memory crisis and a fox-eyed summoner with trauma."
Pause.
"Probably."
She picked up the tea tray and set it down on the side table with the practiced care of someone accustomed to serving tea, and walked to the door.
Her steps remained steady, but her mind raced faster now. She wasn't brooding.
Just preparing.
Because if the Realms were whispering again… someone had to be listening.
And Anna?
She always listened.
...
The air in the courtyard rippled with heat.
Kael paced the training floor in slow, careful steps with stave in hand, barking calls for adjustments in the tone of someone who simply was not going to be repeating herself.
"Wider stance, Michael. Arion stop throwing the shoulder. It's not a battering ram."
Michael wiped the sweat off his brow, flame flickers curling gently at his fingertips. Across from him, Arion widened his stance and twisted quicker, the light threading from his palm coiling like a fine silver thread.
They were improving.
Slowly.
But there was something within Michael that wasn't settling it was bubbling up. His companion fire spirit, Blue, stayed close today. Closer than normal. Its movements were more compact, more wary. Like it knew something was coming.
Arion feinted, and Michael blocked hard. A flick of flame leaped from his stave , igniting on the floor. The air trembled. Heat surged.
The line of flame snapped upward from the ground, too powerful to be just a simple drill. For one second, it burned white pure, briefly, wild.
Kael responded immediately, sweeping her stave in a circle, casting the inferno into a glyph on the ground that had been inscribed there in the moments before. Arion fell back, panting heavily.
Michael stood frozen.
Kael blinked, lowered her weapon, and exhaled.
"Well," she mumbled, "that's something new."
Later That Evening
Michael stood by the garden walkway, attempting to cool off physically and mentally. He hadn't intended to tug on so much Thread-energy. It just… happened.
He wasn't even sure how.
He heard light footsteps and when he turned, there was Anna.
She had been re-tied loose now, some of her hair woven back into a braid that hadn't been there before. She'd had a robe change, too — nothing formal, but softer, lighter, still elegant.
Michael looked once.
Then looked again.
And the blush came faster than he could prevent it.
Anna noticed. She didn't tease. She paused beside him, resting her hands lightly behind her back.
"You did a good job today," she said.
Michael cleared his throat. "Almost burned the floor down."
"But you still hit Arion first," she answered. "That counts."
He laughed once nervous, soft.
Anna looked up at the sky where flame clouds rolled gently like waves.
"I saw the surge," she said. "Your Thread's shifting. Power doesn't always ask for permission."
Michael averted his gaze, slightly reddening. "I didn't mean to…"
"I know."
Silence again—but a calm one.
Anna didn't press. Didn't step closer. She just stood near him.
And somehow, that was all of it.