Power Flows

The candles had burned low.

Their wax ran in precise channels, curved and winding, etched into the basement concrete over weeks of careful preparation. The chalk lines gleamed faintly in the candlelight, inscribed with sigils no human language could decipher. Ancient, powerful, and exact—except for one small, invisible mistake.

Cassandra Wynn didn’t know that yet.

She stood barefoot in the center of the ritual circle, silk robe open to the sternum, arms raised, eyes closed. Her voice had long since grown hoarse from the incantation, but she pressed on. She had timed the spell to the minute: a planetary convergence, a bloodletting beneath the waxing moon, and her own immense stores of harvested arcane energy.

Years of planning. Months of ritual prep. Dozens of petty enchantments drained and recycled, all in the name of this moment.

The moment power was supposed to surge through her veins.

Instead… silence.

Not silence. A flicker.

Something—somewhere—happened.

A gust of wind, unnatural and wrong, cut across the room. Candles snuffed one by one in a spiraling circle, and her skin broke out in goosebumps.

Cassandra’s eyes snapped open.

The ritual space was intact. The blood was fresh. The alignment—still perfect. But the power she'd summoned, that raw, unfiltered energy meant to crown her as the next sovereign of the arcane, had left.

She had felt it. Not go into her—but through.

"No… no no no NO!" she shrieked.

She threw the crystal focus against the wall. It cracked, then exploded in a fizz of violet light.

Panting, hair wild, Cassandra staggered from the circle. She looked at the ruins of her spell—only to realize nothing had truly gone wrong.

The magic had come.

It just didn't stay.

That meant…

Her mouth went dry. "It worked," she whispered, horrified. "I summoned it… but it went somewhere else."

She turned slowly to her chalkboard wall, covered in scrawled notes, charts, diagrams, planetary positions, and hypotheses. Slowly, methodically, she picked up a marker and circled one sentence:

"Power flows to the marked vessel."

She had marked herself.

But someone else had carried a mark. One more powerful.

"Who…?" she hissed. "Who the hell are you?"

She began to pace, robe dragging across the floor.

The circle had been stable. The incantation perfect. Only one variable remained: an outside mind. A presence nearby. A sympathetic soul whose desire overrode hers for just one instant.

A rival practitioner? No… no, she'd have sensed that.

A magical bloodline? Possible. Unlikely.

She clenched her jaw. "A bystander? A random fool who—"

The thought was too insulting to finish. But the truth was already coiling in her mind like a serpent.

It could have been anyone. A spark of yearning, of untapped potential, of longing for greatness at the wrong place, the wrong time. The spell had slipped its leash.

And now they had her power.

Her hands trembled.

She would need time. A week, maybe more, to recover. The circle was ruined. Her stores were drained. She'd have to begin again from scratch. But first—

She needed to find the leak.

Trace the magical fallout.

Follow the trail.

Whoever had stolen the power—whether they meant to or not—had just made the greatest mistake of their life.