Randall looked down at me, his expression untidy in the way his thoughts often were, and said, “So, you were a pyromancer in your last life. And… I don’t understand how you taught Meka how to summon a familiar.”

  He frowned slightly, clearly working through it. “I went through academy training. Guild training too. The fact that you taught someone outside your school of magic how to summon a familiar means…” He trailed off, then shook his head. “I’ve never heard of anyone doing that before. Not outside the ancient legends.”

  My spine straightened instantly.

  He continued, unaware. “The stories of the God of Magic Reborn say he could do anything with magic. No restrictions. No schools. Just… magic.”

  He was talking about my past life.

  He didn’t know it. And yet he was speaking about it as if it were something impossibly distant. Something mythic. Something no longer attainable.

  Something stolen.

  I felt it hit somewhere deep and quiet, a tightening I refused to let reach my face. This was the first time anyone had spoken of that story in front of me. As legend. And I could not correct him. I could not say that those stories were about me. That the god they worshipped had taken my name, my work, my life, and rewritten it until even the truth sounded like heresy.

  Worse still was how wrong the story was.

  Yes, I had learned every school. Yes, I had taught anyone who came to me willing to learn. But I had not been unique in that. I had not been alone. Others had done the same. Others had built, shared, taught, and pushed magic forward alongside me. To hear it reduced to a single divine figure, to a false god wearing my legend like a borrowed cloak, made something cold twist in my chest.

  I forced myself to breathe.

  None of it showed on the surface. I couldn’t let it.

  But the realization settled heavily all the same, reshaping things I had not yet dared to name.

  How has magic regressed this far?

  The thought rose sharp and incredulous. Teaching someone to gain a familiar outside their school should have been basic. The only difference was the medium. The framework was the same.

  Randall blinked. “Then explain something to me,” he said. “How do you have a familiar?”

  He laughed immediately afterward. “You don’t. Of course you don’t. The Church of Magic doesn’t allow that unless you’re high-level.” He waved a hand vaguely. “Supplicants, adepts, something like that.”

  His expression hardened. “And I warn you, the girl having one is dangerous. Even if it’s just a bush. If anyone notices and understands what it is, there will be consequences.”

  It might already be too late for that. If anyone in the city truly understood what she carried, the priests of magic were probably already informed.

  The Church of Magic was restricting knowledge.

  The realization hit me harder than I expected.

  “That would cause an uproar,” I said. “The ancient wizards would never allow it.”

  Randall scoffed. “Ancient wizards?” He shook his head.

  “They don’t help anyone anymore,” Randall said, cutting in. “As far as I understand, they never did. The Church tells us not to go to them. Says they’re wild. Unstable. That living so long corrupts the mind, twists it.”

  Most of them had never lived in cities anyway. They ruled sanctuaries. Small kingdoms. Places people sought out when they wanted knowledge instead of permission.

  I had sought many of them out myself.

  “It may seem strange to you,” I said, keeping my voice level, “but they’ve always been like that. The unstable part not bit about not helping. They’ve always been willing to teach if you showed the right talent, or even just brought the right offerings.”

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  I looked at him steadily. “If you ever get the chance, go see Master Prykus, the Pyromaster, in the Shiverman Peaks.”

  I hesitated, the weight of years pressing in. He might not even still be there. Prykus had been old when I last knew of him. He might have moved on, changed names, abandoned the Peaks entirely, or died somewhere no one bothered to record.

  “An old bastard obsessed with fire magic to an absurd degree,” I continued aloud. “But even he never confined himself to a single school.”

  I let that sit for a moment before continuing. “And I can show you that you don’t have to either. I can help you. But I want a promise.”

  “I don’t need your charity,” Randall said flatly.

  “This isn’t charity,” I replied. “It’s a bargain. If the Church is restricting what you’re allowed to learn, I can teach you what they won’t.” I hedged my words deliberately. “Within reason.”

  Randall stared at me. “Why would I go against the Church of Magic? They know what’s best.”

  He leaned back. “They’ve already announced the God of Magic has been reborn in Telithar. Some noblewoman, right signs, all that.” He shook his head. “I won’t fight the Church or a god, and I don’t think you should keep talking about heresy.”

  He sighed. “I’ll forgive this once. Don’t bring it up again.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Then let me apologize for the paperwork.”

  He raised a brow.

  “I didn’t mean to interrupt your meeting with your sister,” I said. “I just think you’re an asshole.”

  He stared at me. Then laughed.

  “Everyone calls me that,” he said. “And I have been one.” His smile faded slightly. “I didn’t want to be here. The pay helps. It also keeps me close to Oliver and the count. My sister’s treatment isn’t cheap.”

  He frowned. “Why am I telling you this? You’re a child. Even if you’re a reincarnator, you’re not my peer.”

  I felt the wall go back up.

  “Forget it, then,” I said. “You asshole.”

  “Stop calling me that,” he warned. “Or I’ll have to teach you a lesson.”

  “You? Teaching me?” I snorted. “That’s rich. You don’t even understand that you don’t understand a fraction of what is actually possible with magic, and yet you presume to be able to teach me.”

  “Big words from a small boy with no magic,” Randall said coldly.

  “You endanger children,” I snapped. “You hate this job, but you stay for the money. You’re a great chef, Randall. But you’re a pyromancer.”

  He stiffened. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “You’re not a wizard,” I said. “You’ve never moved past your fear. If you had, you wouldn’t hesitate every time you try to say Meka’s name.”

  “That’s not how magic works,” he said sharply.

  “That’s exactly how it works,” I replied. “I’m telling you this as a wizard who learned far more in his first decade than you will in your lifetime at this rate.”

  I paused, the words pressing at the back of my throat.

  “I was a pyromancer,” I said carefully. “And later, I became one of the ancients.”

  It wasn’t the full truth.

  But it was as close as the divine order would allow me to say.

  “If it’s so easy,” Randall said, his tone edged with challenge, “then show me.”

  “All right I shall right now,” I replied.

  That caught him off guard more than I expected. I saw it in the way his shoulders stilled, in the half-beat pause before his expression rearranged itself. He had been ready for resistance, for excuses, for me to retreat behind theory or mysticism. He had not been ready for agreement.

  For a moment, his irritation had nowhere to go. It folded inward and compressed, and in that pressure something else surfaced. Curiosity. The curiosity that surfaced was sharp and probing, the kind that demanded answers whether it liked them or not. It pressed against the anger rather than replacing it, like two flames drawing from the same air.

  We pyromancers were always like that.

  Quick to anger, yes, but anger was never the end state. It was a catalyst. A pressure building behind the ribs. When it had no outlet, it scorched the inside and left nothing but resentment and fear. When it was given direction, purpose, structure, it transformed. Fire did not want to destroy blindly. It wanted to move.

  And when I said we, I meant it in the most personal sense possible.

  I had been no different in my first life. Outbursts had come easily to me then. Passion too. Fire responded to both without judgment. Rage, devotion, curiosity, obsession, they all burned just the same if you knew how to listen to it. That was the lesson most pyromancers never learned. They treated fire as something to be unleashed, not understood.

  Meka’s shyness followed a related pattern, but its source was different. Botanomancy carried instincts that pressed inward rather than outward. Plants endured by waiting, by yielding, by growing quietly until the moment was right. That inclination toward reserve was not fear, it was a shaping pressure imposed by her magic itself. The drive did not come from her; it came from what she wielded. Like any imposed instinct, it could be recognized, named, and eventually overcome once she understood it for what it was.

  Randall’s case was similar in structure, if not in expression. Fire did not only produce anger. It produced passion. It created fixation, intensity, and the need to act. His passion for cooking and his volatility came from the same source. Two expressions of one influence, neither separate from the magic that shaped him. The problem was not that he felt these things, but that he had never been taught how to understand them, let alone master them.

  Left unexamined, that pressure folded into itself. It hardened into certainty. It disguised itself as authority. And in doing so, it stopped being a tool and became a constraint.

  And maybe some of that old fire still lived in me, buried deep beneath this smaller frame and quieter breath. Or maybe I was only telling myself that because this man infuriated me so completely that I wanted, just once, to silence him with proof instead of words.

  Not to humiliate him. Not even to defeat him.

  Just enough to make him listen.

  Enough to show him that the wall he had built around his fear was not protection, it was a cage.

  Enough, perhaps, to fix something he had never been taught how to face.

  And if it helped him in the process, then so be it.