Elsha didn't immediately respond. She looked at Alex like he'd just offered her a lab made of stardust and let her pick the fuel source.
There was no swooning, no starry-eyed lean. Just a curious tilt of the head and a twitch of amusement at the corner of her mouth.
"So," she said after a moment, folding her arms, "you're collecting misfits with independent ideas and big questions. Sounds messy."
"Messy," Alex echoed, "is where all the useful discoveries happen."
Riven snorted softly behind him, clearly approving.
Alex's gaze swept the group—not just Elsha, but the other alchemist apprentices still hovering nearby, all of whom were now paying varying degrees of suspicious attention.
"Look, I know this was supposed to be a casual café chat," Alex said, holding up both hands, "and somehow I've turned it into... this."
He gestured vaguely to the circle of students, who had gone from excitedly discussing department tracks to watching a royal oddity casually insert himself into their peer circle like he belonged there.
"But since you're all clearly brilliant, and clearly not ready to settle for the same-old tower politics, I'm extending an invitation. To all of you. Tomorrow evening—dinner. No obligations, no hidden scrolls. Just good food, actual conversation, and the kind of questions you don't usually get to ask in lab reports."
There was a long pause. One of the students blinked. Another looked at Elsha, then back at Alex like they were trying to figure out what timeline this belonged to.
"You're serious?" one asked.
"Painfully," Alex said.
Riven arched a brow, clearly amused. Davor, for his part, gave Alex a sideways look and leaned in. "You planned a dinner?"
"Nope," Alex whispered back. "But I'm definitely going to now."
"Cool. I love surprise logistics."
Elsha didn't say yes. But she didn't say no either. She glanced toward her group—some curious, some skeptical, one actively writing something down like this was a historical event.
"I'll think about it," she said.
"That's all I ask," Alex replied with a nod, then smiled. "Although if you do show up, I promise we'll try not to serve anything sentient."
Riven added, deadpan, "No guarantees."
—✦—
They watched the group leave the café, a few of them still glancing over their shoulders as if waiting for a follow-up punchline. Alex, Riven, and Davor lingered near the door a moment longer, letting the air settle.
"So," Riven said, stretching his arms behind his head, "what tactic was that? Casual charisma? Targeted improvisation? Weaponized optimism?"
"Honestly?" Alex said, already moving. "Mostly improv. I read the table and went for it."
"They looked confused. Like they'd just been recruited into a cult."
"Then we're doing great," Davor muttered.
The three of them crossed out of the Alchemy Tower district and into its quieter neighbor—The Sigillum Quarter, home of the Array Tower. Unlike the alchemical bustle they left behind, Sigillum was calm, almost eerie in its order. Everything was symmetrical, paved in clean, rune-etched stone. Even the street lamps seemed aligned by some ancient scriptural geometry.
"So," Riven said again, voice casual, "who's the next vegetable we're picking?"
Alex didn't hesitate. "Vinya Relan."
Riven squinted. "Wait, hold on—who even is she, exactly? I've heard the name, but she's not exactly in the social circuit."
Davor stepped in. "Vinya Relan. Apprentice to Array Theory Master Renlan—one of the quiet ones, borderline reclusive. Vinya's got an affinity for sequence theory and spatial calibration that's borderline freakish. Her theoretical notes on anchorless pattern stabilization have already been passed around some of the upper tier discussions."
Riven blinked. "The introvert array girl?"
"That's the one."
"Yes. And she also once rebuilt a ten-layer defensive sequence using only base patterns, in under two hours. While panicking."
Riven whistled. "So she's brilliant and terrified of people. That's fun."
"More like... wired differently," Alex said. "Everyone keeps trying to pull her into structured teams or polished circles. But she doesn't trust easy, and she definitely doesn't respond to pressure."
Riven raised an eyebrow. "So she's a genius. And allergic to attention."
"Exactly," Davor nodded. "She's barely seen at events, always turns down group exercises unless cornered, and has declined three offers to join official tower circles. But thankfully, Kael pointed us to her."
"Kael gave us directions straight to where she usually eats and studies. Should be simple."
It was not simple.
What followed was the most unintentional tour of the Sigillum Quarter any of them had experienced. Every corridor seemed to echo, every courtyard felt identical, and every rune-marked door looked like it had been enchanted specifically to mess with them.
They passed the same three identical-looking initiates twice.
"Didn't we just come through here?" Riven asked, looking mildly offended at the geometry.
"Yes," Alex muttered, squinting at the grid-like path etched underfoot. "And if we go in another circle, I'm filing a complaint with the Arcane Cartography Society."
"This place has a Cartography Society?"
"Of course it does. They wrote the rulebook for invisible stairwells."
They finally reached a narrow stairwell at the back of a quiet stone archway, half-hidden behind a slowly rotating sequence sculpture. According to Kael's intel, this was where Vinya liked to work.
Alex looked up at the shadowed stair. "Let's try not to spook her."
Riven shrugged. "We've already scared ourselves. Seems fair."
Before they could climb the stairwell, a soft shimmer of light passed across the archway—an activation rune.
A thin construct, no taller than a small child, materialized in front of them with a sound like snapping thread. Its form was simple: runic plates hovering in perfect orbit, eyes glowing with pulsed blue.
"Access verification required," it said in a neutral tone.
Alex stepped forward, already fishing in his inner coat pocket. He pulled out a sealed crystal token, humming faintly with embedded authority markers.
The construct paused, scanned the token, and blinked. "Authorized. Guest protocols extended. Destination: Upper tier workspace. You may proceed."
"Is that from the royal vault?" Riven asked.
"It's from my uncle's paranoid drawer," Alex replied.
They stepped past the construct, the shimmer behind them fading. The stairwell wound tightly upward in a narrow, silent spiral. When they reached the landing, Alex held up a hand.
"I'll go in alone. Too many strangers might spike her ward protocols."
Riven nodded. "We'll just loiter awkwardly outside like socially acceptable creeps."
Alex stepped forward and knocked gently on the old runic door.
Nothing.
He waited. Knocked again.
This time, the ward reacted.
A crackling burst of blue light flared from the frame and latched toward him—an aggressive pulse ward with static arcs curling like angry snakes.
Alex's fingers barely twitched before the embedded shielding in his jacket flared to life. The pulse dispersed harmlessly a breath from his skin, but it still singed the edge of his sleeve and left his hair standing at full dramatic volume.
"Huh," he muttered, brushing soot off his cuff. "Good to know she's still got trust issues."
With a quick touch to the reset rune beside the doorframe—because of course he'd read Kael's notes thoroughly—Alex bypassed the rest of the trap and slipped inside.
The room was a deliberate mess. Runes floated in low orbit around half-complete diagrams, books lay open on three surfaces at once, and a spherical map of overlapping arrays spun slowly above a cracked mug.
Vinya sat on the floor, surrounded by nested chalk circles, one hand holding a stylus, the other a cup of cold tea.
She didn't look up.
Alex leaned on the doorframe and grinned. "You know, if that ward had been half a degree angrier, I'd be charcoal in royal boots."
She sipped her tea. "Should've calibrated it better, then."
Alex chuckled and stepped further inside, deliberately slow, hands loosely at his sides. "So... this is the part where you ask if I'm here to kidnap you, right?"
Vinya finally glanced up at him. Her expression didn't change, but there was a flicker of scrutiny in her eyes.
"Not ruling it out yet," she said flatly. "But if this is a kidnapping attempt, you're either the least threatening criminal in existence... or your plan is aggressively unconventional."
"Oh, for sure unconventional," Alex said. "Step one was getting mildly electrocuted by a door. Step two was hoping I wouldn't trip over your chalk circle and cause a theoretical explosion."
She set her cup down. "And step three?"
"Step three is to convince you I'm not a lunatic without accidentally offending you with too much eye contact."
Vinya squinted at him. "You're wearing warded boots, have anti-shock charms, and just walked into a room booby-trapped against 97% of sentient life. Either you're here for recruitment, or you lost a bet."
Alex grinned. "What if it's both?"
She stared for a second, then shook her head. "You're exhausting."
"And you're hiding in a room with a rune map that actively judges people. Let's call it even."
Despite herself, a small breath of amusement escaped her nose.