Lysara’s private lab was smaller than the Academy workrooms, but quieter in a way that mattered.

  No traffic. Just a single worktable, shelves she had organized herself, and the faint, steady residue of mana she trusted because she had measured it personally.

  Tessa stood near the far wall, papers spread across the table in an uneven fan.

  “Like I told you the night before, I think I found something,” she said again, more slowly this time. “Or I think I did.”

  Lysara moved closer, eyes tracking the diagrams without touching them. Circle schematics. Binding arrays. Marginal notes written in a precise, slanted hand she recognized immediately.

  “Professor Meris?” she asked. “From Ethics?”

  “Yes.” Tessa nodded. “She also teaches Magical Theory. Summer course. Small group. Mostly post-grads and people who are a little obsessed with magic.”

  Kayden leaned against the doorframe, arms folded loosely. He didn’t interrupt.

  “She’s been working on localized containment for years,” Tessa continued. “Not suppression. Not dispersal. Trapping mana flow in place and starving it out instead of forcing it to move.”

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  Lysara’s focus sharpened.

  “Circle binding.”

  “Advanced,” Tessa said. “Multi-layered. The kind you don’t teach in open lecture halls because people try to use it where it doesn’t belong.”

  “And you think it could hold corruption,” Lysara said. Not a question.

  “In theory.” Tessa exhaled. “Only if it’s done early. Before saturation. Before the mana stops behaving like a conduit.”

  Lysara reached for one of the pages, hesitated, then took it. Her thumb traced a single line of notation.

  Silence stretched — not empty, just dense with possibility.

  “So these are your notes,” Lysara said at last.

  “Yes,” Tessa admitted. “But they’re not as good as Meris’s originals. She keeps those in her classroom archive. Top shelf. Locked cabinet. She let us reference them during the course, but—”

  “But you’re not enrolled anymore,” Lysara said.

  “And I don’t have a reason to be there now,” Tessa finished. “Which is why I brought what I could remember. And what I wrote down.”

  Kayden shifted his weight slightly.

  “I need to drop off some forms there,” he said carefully. “Can you tell me what I’m looking for?”

  “I can’t,” Tessa said. “I’d have to come with you.”

  Lysara looked between them.

  “I should be the one going,” she said. “Not the two of you.”

  “No,” Kayden replied. “It has to be me. I’m the only one with a legitimate reason to be there.”

  “And I’m the only one who knows what the folio looks like,” Tessa added.

  Kayden nodded once. “So I’ll take Tessa.”

  Lysara gathered the papers into a single stack and set them beside her worktable. Her problem — but they were the ones taking the risk.

  “I really can’t ask this of either of you,” she said quietly.

  “You’re not,” Tessa replied just as softly.

  Kayden watched the exchange without comment.

  “Tessa,” he said at last. “We’ll meet at seven.”