"Class dismissed," áine announced. "Practice your thread-seeing before tomorrow. Finn, please remain behind." As the others filed out, Sophie squeezed his shoulder. "That was brilliant," she whispered. "A little scary, but brilliant!"

  When the chamber had emptied, áine regarded Finn silently for a long moment. "I'm sorry, Miss Aine," he mumbled, still confused. "I somehow...once it started, I couldn't stop it."

  áine's expression was unreadable. "You channeled far more Aether than a first-lesson Weaver should be able to access". She circled him slowly, her eyes boring into him. "The Aether is neither good nor evil, Finn. It simply is. Much like water, it can quench thirst, or it can drown the unwary. Your connection is powerful, but it is raw. You must learn control, or you risk becoming a conduit for forces that will control you."

  Finn swallowed. "Thank you. I mean... I'll do my best. I promise this won't happen again."

  The Mistress was silent for a long moment. "Control of the Aether opens doors most people never imagine," she said finally. "But mastery requires consistency. Steady, daily practice. The students who excel aren't always the ones with the most natural talent. They're the ones who show up, who practice the basics until they become instinct." She moved to the chamber's door, gesturing for him to follow. "You have potential. Now you need to develop the discipline to match it. Focus on your studies. Learn control. The rest will reveal itself in time."

  When he left the classroom, he almost bumped into Sophie and Kai, who were waiting outside. They immediately fell into step beside him. "What did she say?" Sophie asked. "Are you in trouble? That was the craziest Weaving debut I've ever seen!"

  "Not in trouble," Finn replied, still processing áine's words. "She just said I need to work on control."

  "Understatement of the century," Kai murmured, spinning thin Aether threads around his fingertips. "You nearly brought down the whole chamber." They walked in silence for a moment, following the corridor back toward the central courtyard. "Did either of you know your parents were Weavers?" Finn asked suddenly. "I mean, before you came here?"

  Sophie shook her head with a rueful smile. "Well, yes and no. Both my parents are Weavers, but I didn't realize it until I was about seven or eight. They were very careful to hide it from me and the neighbors." She twisted one of her beads around her finger. "I just thought we were incredibly lucky gardeners."

  "Gardeners?" Kai asked, dissolving the threads around his fingers.

  "Our vegetables were always massive," Sophie explained. "Carrots the size of your arm, potatoes like footballs, tomatoes the size of grapefruits. And they grew year-round, even in the dead of Kerry winter. Mam would always make excuses to the neighbors about 'special soil' and 'family gardening secrets passed down for generations'." Sophie laughed. "I believed every word of it."

  "When did you figure it out?" Finn asked.

  "Gradually. Little things that didn't quite add up. Like how our dog Pooh - yes, I named him after Winnie-the-Pooh when I was five, don't judge - was the most obedient creature you'd ever seen. But only with Mam and Da. Other people's dogs would run wild, chase sheep, dig up gardens, but Pooh would sit, stay, come, and heel perfectly for my parents. For me? He'd just cock his head, like, 'Sorry, love, you're not speaking the right language.'" She grinned at the memory. "One day, when I was about eight, Pooh got into Mrs. Murray's prized rose garden next door. Proper disaster - petals everywhere, stems broken, the woman was livid. She came storming over and demanded compensation for her ruined flowers. Da just went outside, knelt down to Pooh, and said something I couldn't hear from the window."

  "What happened?" Finn asked, trying to imagine what a dog called Pooh might look like.

  "Pooh trotted back to her garden, gathered every single broken stem, and arranged them in neat little piles by color. Then he sat in the middle of the mess and whined—the saddest, most apologetic sound you've ever heard. Mrs. Murray was so charmed, she gave him a biscuit." Sophie shook her head. "That's when I knew Da could talk to animals in a way other people couldn't."

  "Then there was Da's fiftieth birthday party. We'd invited the whole extended family. Must have been thirty people crammed into our back garden. Just as we're about to cut the cake, the heavens opened. Proper Kerry downpour, the kind that soaks you to the bone in seconds. Everyone scrambled to bring food inside, panicking about the decorations. Complete chaos."

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  She paused. "I could see the rain hammering down in the Murrays' garden on one side and the Murphys' on the other. I could hear it drumming on their roofs. But our garden? Completely dry. Not a drop fell on us, like there was an invisible dome over the whole party."

  "Your parents?" Finn guessed.

  "Standing together by the back door, holding hands, both with their eyes closed and these little secret smiles on their faces. The rain poured everywhere else for another hour, but we stayed dry until the very last guest left. The moment the front door closed behind Cousin Seamus, the rain came down on us too." She smiled fondly. "About a year later, I noticed flowers would bloom brighter when I was happy, or wilt when I was angry. By the time I made those roses bloom in winter, they knew it was time to contact the Academy." She looked at her friends. "I'm actually grateful they waited. It let me have a normal childhood for a while, even if it was built on magic."

  "What about you, Kai?" Finn asked, still picturing Pooh the dog cleaning up his own mess.

  "My mother suspected," Kai said. "She's not a Weaver herself, but her mother and grandmother were. She recognized the signs when I started talking to the garden spirits." He fidgeted with his cloak. "Obaa-chan, that's what I called my grandmother, lived with us until I was ten. She and my great-grandmother came from a long line of Miko, shrine maidens who could speak with nature spirits." Kai stared off. "One evening, my mother and her sat me down and explained that some people in our family could hear the voices of kami, the spirits that inhabit all natural things. Grandmother taught me proper rituals for greeting the garden spirits, how to leave offerings, and most importantly, how to listen respectfully."

  "When I got older, my abilities developed. I could sense the health of plants from across our garden and communicate with the tanuki that lived in our neighborhood just by speaking to their spirits." A small smile crossed his face. "My mother realized this was beyond what she could handle alone. When it came time for middle school, she gave me two choices. I could follow the traditional path and train to become a kannushi, a Shinto priest who serves at shrines and acts as an intermediary between humans and kami. There's a shrine in Akita where my great-grandmother's family had served for centuries. They would have welcomed me."

  "But you chose differently," Finn guessed.

  Kai nodded. "The other option was to attend Kaminomori, the Forest of Gods. It's a school similar to the Academy but located in the mountains near Mount Fuji. It's where Japanese Weavers learn to combine traditional spirit-speaking with more modern Aether techniques." He adjusted his glasses. "I was curious about how different magical traditions complement each other, so I chose Kaminomori."

  "I had no idea!" Sophie's voice had taken on a high pitch and she beamed with excitement. " Is it different from here?"

  "Very different, but fascinating," Kai replied. "Much more formal. Everything was structured around concepts of harmony, balance, and respect for natural order. We spent hours in meditation, learning to sense the flow of ki - what we call Aether here - through ourselves and the world around us." He looked slightly embarrassed. "I wasn't too bad at it, actually, thanks to Baa-chan's early training."

  "So why are you here then?" Finn tried to remember what he knew about Japan, except for anime and manga. He'd never tried the food - not that he'd ever had a chance - but he'd heard people there liked to eat fish that could kill you with its poison if you ate it wrong.

  "My father," Kai said. "He's been working at the University of Edinburgh for several years now. He's a professor of comparative literature, specializing in Celtic and Japanese mythology. I spent a few years with him and my mother in Edinburgh previously but my mother and I moved back to Japan when I was six. She suggested moving back here for a few years to not lose my English and spend more time with him.

  "Do you still practice the rituals your Grandma taught you?" Finn asked.

  "Every morning," Kai confirmed. "I have a small shrine in our room. Morrigan gave me permission after I explained its importance. I'll show you later!"