The cottage felt smaller after Agragore.
Not confined, exactly. Just gentler. The ceilings seemed lower, the walls closer, the quiet less layered. Genevieve noticed it most in the evenings, when the day's work was finished and she found herself listening for sounds that never came—no distant bells, no subtle shifts in stone, no sense of something vast and aware holding its breath.
Sylvester noticed too.
"You keep pausing," he said, perched on the back of her chair as she set aside the last of her folded clothes.
"I'm adjusting," Genevieve replied.
"To what?"
She smiled faintly. "To being somewhere that doesn't expect anything from me."
Magic rested quietly beneath her skin now. It no longer surged without warning. It listened when she listened. It waited when she waited.
On the fourth evening home, as twilight softened the edges of the world and cicadas began their steady chorus, Genevieve cleared her desk. She stacked old parchment neatly to one side, replaced the inkwell, and smoothed three clean sheets of paper before her. The ritual mattered.
Sylvester hopped down beside the ink, watching with keen interest. "Three letters," he observed.
"Yes."
She picked up her quill and let the silence settle before writing the first words.
Dearest Devyn,
She wrote of the cottage near the main path, of travelers who still stopped to ask for directions as though nothing in her life had changed at all. She described how the air felt different without Agragore's presence pressing against it, how strange it was to sleep without listening stone around her.
Agragore taught me how to listen, she wrote. Being home is teaching me how to trust what I hear.
After a pause, she added, I think confidence follows us once we learn it. Even when no one is watching.
She sealed the letter carefully, pressing the wax with deliberate calm.
Devyn's reply arrived sooner than she expected.
His handwriting was steady and measured, as though each word had been considered before being set down.
Dearest Genevieve,I grew up along the eastern riverlands, where magic is spoken of but rarely shown. My family trades in goods, not knowledge. I was never meant for an academy—only sent because someone once noticed I listened more than I spoke.Being home again feels strange. I keep waiting for the world to correct me. It doesn't.You were right. Confidence doesn't disappear. It waits.
Genevieve folded the letter slowly, warmth settling in her chest. Devyn had never spoken much of himself at Agragore. Somehow, it felt right that he shared it this way.
The second letter took longer.
She rewrote the opening twice before committing ink to page.
Dearest Tomas,
She asked about his summer, about whether his magic still resisted him when he pushed too hard. She reminded him gently of something she had learned watching him struggle and persist.
You are not behind, she wrote. You are simply learning from a different angle.
Tomas's response arrived days later, the parchment creased as though folded and unfolded many times.
Dearest Rose,I'm from the western border towns, where magic is practical and rarely praised. We use it to mend fences, redirect streams, keep storms from swallowing crops.At Agragore, I thought I was doing everything wrong. Everyone else seemed to speak a language I'd never learned.Here, it's quieter. My magic listens again. Thank you for reminding me that frustration isn't failure.
Genevieve smiled as she set the letter aside. Tomas had learned magic as necessity, not expression. No wonder Agragore had unsettled him.
The third sheet waited longest.
Genevieve stared at the blank parchment for several minutes before lifting her quill.
Dearest Lorian,
She wrote carefully, thanking her for speaking when others hesitated, for naming truths without sharpening them into weapons.
I think Agragore teaches us more by what it withholds than what it gives, she wrote.
Lorian's reply arrived last, written in precise, elegant strokes.
Dearest Genevieve,I was raised in the southern districts, where lineage matters more than ability. My family valued control above understanding. Confidence, to them, was certainty—never doubt.Agragore unsettles me because it does not reward certainty. It waits. That waiting has taught me restraint I was never permitted to practice before.You remind people that stillness is not weakness. Thank you for that.
Genevieve let out a slow breath she hadn't realized she was holding.
Three people. Three paths. All different. All learning the same lesson.
She folded the letters and placed them in a small wooden box beneath her desk, her fingers lingering on the lid before closing it.
Summer deepened.
Genevieve returned to familiar rhythms—helping neighbors, guiding travelers along the main path, assisting Winston in the library. He noticed the change in her before she spoke of it.
"You're steadier," he remarked one afternoon, glancing up from a stack of books.
"I stopped forcing things," she replied.
Winston smiled knowingly. "That's a lesson most scholars never learn."
That evening, as the sun dipped low beyond the trees, Genevieve stepped outside and let her magic rise just enough to feel it respond. Leaves shifted. The air warmed.
She lowered her hands, breath even.
Confidence, she realized, was not loud.
It did not demand space or proof.
It simply stood, quiet and certain.
And when autumn came—when Agragore called them back—she knew she would return not seeking permission, but ready to move forward.