Chapter 87: Dream of the Bound Moon
{ZEPHYROS}
These pearls contained condensed arcane essence.
The primary ingredient for the potion.
I had never truly understood why Sirene refused to leave this place. She once mentioned—casually, as if it were nothing—that she was guarding something here, though she had never elaborated.
At the time, I had not cared enough to press her.
I let the thought drift away and began gathering the pearls.
This was the only opportunity I would ever have. Had she been awake—or worse, unsealed—I would not have survived long enough to regret the attempt.
I cast one last glance at her.
Even bound, even punished, Sirene was breathtaking. Ethereal in beauty, terrible in presence. The kind of existence that reminded lesser beings why monsters were once worshipped as gods.
The water itself adored her, curling around her form with quiet devotion, like a hound awaiting its master’s call.
I worked quickly.
Restraints or not, this was her domain. If she woke, explanations would be pointless. Sirene had never been fond of them.
I had just secured the final pearl when something unsettled the stillness.
A ripple.
Not in the water.
Along the cavern wall.
Against my better judgment—an instinct I regretted possessing—I drifted closer.
My brow furrowed.
The stone was carved with countless pentagrams, layered and interlocked in dizzying complexity. Seals upon seals, renewed, reinforced, maintained with obsessive care.
A prison.
So that was it.
Was this what she had been guarding all along?
For so many years... and only now did I notice?
In my defense, I had never taken much interest in Sirene or the other creatures bound to these walls. My responsibilities had always been painfully clear—guard the library, maintain the wards, and ensure the Covens of Midnight did not implode due to academic curiosity or divine stupidity.
Anything beyond that had felt... optional.
"What is this...?" I laid my hand against the surface.
The wall answered.
A pulse throbbed beneath my palm—slow, alive—like the heartbeat of something that should not still be breathing.
I grimaced.
I truly despised being curious.
"You."
Her voice cut through the water like shattered glass.
"What are you doing here?"
Sirene’s shrill cry snapped me back to reality.
I turned.
She was awake.
"...Not good," I muttered.
I vanished.
"Zephyros!" Her fury shook the cavern. "How dare you sneak in here and steal my pearls!"
The lake roared.
"COME BACK HERE!"
Water surged after me, the depths siphoning violently as if the lake itself had taken personal offense.
I burst through the surface just as it exploded behind me, towering columns of water ripping skyward in a spiraling fury.
"That woman is crazy," I thought grimly.
Even sealed, she could still command the lake like a wrathful god.
Had I been even slightly slower, I would have been reduced to arcane residue.
I exhaled—an entirely theatrical gesture, given my lack of lungs—and fled, reappearing near the alchemy wing before she could break her restraints entirely and pursue me out of spite.
Still.
I opened my hand and examined the pearls resting in my palm.
Mission accomplished.
And yet, the image of those seals—those suffocating pentagrams etched into stone—refused to loosen its grip on my thoughts.
Something was imprisoned beneath that lake.
And Sirene was not merely guarding it.
She was sacrificing herself to keep it there.
I sighed and forcibly shoved the image out of my mind.
It was none of my concern.
As long as the library remained intact and the academy avoided annihilation, whatever ancient horror lay sealed beneath the water could continue rotting in peace.
I was far too tired to adopt another problem.
I drifted toward the dean’s office, exhaustion clinging to me like damp fog.
"I hope you appreciate this," I muttered, glancing down at the pearls. "All this effort, just to make up for frightening you half to death in our first meeting."
The thought of the next two days—spent brewing a delicate, temperamental potion—settled over me like a curse.
My shoulders slumped.
Just thinking about it drained what little motivation I possessed.
So burdensome.
So needlessly involved.
I truly despised caring.
I shook my head.
No.
This was for Iris.
I took a long, unnecessary breath and drifted into the dean’s office before my lethargy could fully claim victory and I decided eternal apathy was the wiser course.
====
{IRIS}
I did not remember when sleep took me.
One moment I was standing beneath the weak glow of the lantern, water still clinging to my skin from the bath, my thoughts heavy and tangled; the next, I was sinking into the mattress as though it had opened its arms to swallow me whole.
My body yielded without resistance. Weariness claimed me so suddenly that I had no chance to argue with it, and perhaps that was a mercy.
At least in sleep, I would not have to speak with Caroline.
That thought, faint and unkind as it was, followed me into the dark.
Yet as consciousness loosened its grip, something inside me shifted. It was not the usual descent into dreams—there was no tumbling, no drifting haze.
Instead, a strange stillness wrapped around me, thick and warm, like being submerged in deep water that neither crushed nor chilled.
My limbs felt distant, as though they belonged to another body altogether, and my chest hummed with a quiet, unfamiliar resonance.
I opened my eyes.
Light greeted me—not the pale gold of candles or the silver wash of moonlight, but something vast and blinding, a brilliance that filled the world before me without source or shadow.
It stretched endlessly, a white expanse that seemed to breathe.
From within that light emerged chains.
Dozens of them—silver, gleaming, impossibly fine—snaked through the air like living things. They did not clatter or scrape; instead, they hummed softly, vibrating with restrained power. Each chain extended toward a single point, converging as though drawn by an unseen will.
And there, bound at the center of them all, was a colossal white wolf.
"Are you . . . my wolf?"
