Page 96 of Foresyth Conservatory
Rage, at least, gave me direction. The rest only threatened to consume me.
Reading my father’s letter left me with a hollow, twisting ache, as though he’d carved something vital out of me. My father had tried to stop the Meister. I had blamed myself for his death, for his coldness and distance from me. I had thought that somehow, I had failed him as a daughter—that he withdrew because I wasn’t enough, wasn’t worthy of his affection. But now I know the truth. He didn’t send me to Sawyer Academy—not because I wasn’t good enough—but because he feared institutions and their indoctrination.
I hadn’t failed him.
Hewas the one who had failed me, captivated by a sea so cruel he was never able to emerge.
My whole life, I had spent hours in the bookshop with customers asking me to divine their paths, to tell them how their lives might unfold. And now, in the presence of my own truth, my own lineage, I felt utterly unmoored, adrift in a sea I couldn’t navigate. The binding of blood magick ran through my veins, an invisible shackle tying me to a history I had never chosen. I wanted to deny it. I wanted to scream. But that wouldn’t change what I had read. I swallowed it down as I turned my attention to the next letter, penned by my brother.
Dearest sister Dahlia (if I may call you that),
Are you ready for the double death letter? No? Oh, well, I shall proceed, nonetheless.
Congratulations! You’ve discovered the dreadful powers of blood magick, imprisoning Gods, and cursed cards. You’ve made it all this way and now get to enjoy all these letters of death and madness. What a treat!
Sorry, is this too trivializing? You’ll have to forgive a dying man for making a joke or two.
But it’s only necessary for you to know the facts of our circumstances if you stand a chance of survival (two out of three are not great odds for the Blackburnes, as it stands). These precautions were necessary to guard what I’m about to share with you.
Our father was quite the man.
I received his letter a day after he died and was mortified to learn that I had a part in it (though I must admit, I had no affection for the man, having never known him). When the Meister assigned me an additional research project, I thought he was only doing it to torment me for speaking out against him to the Council.
But no, it was part of his plan. You see, the vault in which your father leftThe Book of Skornwas guarded by his blood magick.
The Meister sent me to that shop of yours on Wicker Street, and I glamoured him in his office and stole the Book. I even got to see a glimpse of you, sitting behind the bookshop counter, nose so deep in a book, I could barely see it. I thought you were so beautiful, but now I must admit I find the thought a little uncomfortable.
Oh my Gods, sister. I had no idea what I was doing. What would happen because of my actions.
There was a passage in the Book, the real version, that states that five blood types ought to be offered—Water, fire, earth, and air. But there was another element that was elusive. That, if it wasn’t present, would make the magick unstable, and hunger for more.
Our father, just as we do, had the Bonder element in his blood but didn’t know it. Truth-bound, he mistakenly thought he was the air elemental—how arrogant! If only he had been there for that first ceremony with my mother all those years ago, it would have stabilized the magick, and there wouldn’t have been so many deaths to follow.
A dark twist of irony.
I’m not sure how things transpired, but at some point the practice passed hands from my mother to the current Meister you are so lovingly familiar with—Renate. My mother gave up the practices, stricken with the guilt of the havoc she’d caused, and determined to raise me in the opposite of her image.
But Renate found her research at the same time he became the face of Foresyth. The school was crumbling, but he was responsible for its ascension, or its demise. He was furious at her, and they started a feud on the Council, breaking it into factions. But despite my mother’s power, he had the longer lineage and was practicing Skorn magick.
In an attempt to restore the school, he continued the elemental ceremony but to no avail. He didn’t know about the fifth element in our blood, but he suspected the answer was in the Book. And he knew I’d be the only one who could retrieve it. That day in your bookshop, when I held thatBook in my hands, I knew that it was far more powerful than the Meister could even dream of.
I heard its calling—the demiurge’s bloodlust. Its desire to rid the world of its material forms in opposition to Sophia. Naturally, I became suspicious and started to investigate the Meister. I have an affliction for puzzles, as you know, but no patience for not knowing the answer to one.
I started to investigate. I hunted the Meister’s study and found his personal research journals and bloodwork analysis. He had discovered, with the help of the Book and samples of my blood, that there was a trace mineral unique to my blood that formed the Bonder.
Our father finding the Book wasn’t a pure coincidence. The Book calls to those with the Bonder’s blood. It’s the only way to stabilize its magick, to satisfy the demiurge, and theoretically, tap into Sophia’s power. It’s a precarious art.
The Book was also what led me to the Tramping Grounds—like calls to like. I believe the Book itself was forged with the same earth as what lies there. I used it to my advantage to conceal my messages to you, entrusting that you’d be the only one to find the Tramping Ground, as it would call to you, just as it did to me.
I realized the night of the ceremony that delivering the Book to the Meister had been delivering my own death sentence. What he pieced together from the original Book, meant that I, along with the others, were the five sacrifices he needed to access the Shattered Mother’s powers. I was the Bonder to bring all the other elements together.
I knew we were going to die, though the other students didn’t suspect. They hadn’t known what I did—they stillthought that the ceremony killed off the weakest, just as your father had assumed. But it didn’t—it wasn’t going to.
It was going to kill me, along with the others.
Could I just leave, and never enter these haunting walls of Foresyth again? Certainly. But that meant the other’s lives would be at risk. And I was a bit love-sick, if I must admit. Say hello to Aspen and Sequoia for me, would you? They were my dearest friends, despite our disagreements. And I knew that the Meister wouldn’t stop. He’d find me, or worse yet, get to you before I had a chance to act.
That’s when I made the decision to end it before he did. I didn’t want to give the Meister that kind of power, or even the other students, after finding out what it did to our father. And besides, this gave me the opportunity to create the puzzle of my lifetime, my magnum opus. My final act.
