The Spell That Knows My Name
I closed the third vault door behind me with a soft click, sealing Raven and me inside Gate 4.
Of all the vaults in this library-within-a-library, this one hit me the second hardest, maybe even harder than Gate 9. The air was always thicker here. Charged. Possibly from the rituals sometimes needed to verify a new addition to our inventory was authentic. There were plenty of fake grimoires in the world, and even the ones that weren’t fake weren’t always a good fit for our secret stacks. Some were evil and needed to be buried in Gate 9, and others were far too basic, even for Gate 1.
But Gate 4 was where we tested spells on a wide dais made of slate quarried from a Black Forest ley line. Here, every sound felt like it echoed twice. Unlike the more modern floors, tall bookshelves, and bulletproof glass wall of Gate 1 or the high-tech briefing rooms of Gate 7, this vault was all stone and wood, hand-carved shelves that reached toward a vaulted ceiling. The space was large and silent, dimly lit by flickering electric sconces that lined the stone walls, casting golden light over leather sofas and oversized oak worktables. Floor lamps with brighter globes hung ready if a visitor preferred to sit and read. The faint outlines of chalked protective circles were still visible on the floor where the holy-water-and-vervain cleanser had washed away the energy of prior spells but not the markings. Everything felt intentional. Watchful.
“It never gets easier,” I murmured, feeling the familiar pressure build behind my eyes. As an empath, spaces like this were overwhelming—too many emotions, too many echoes of past readers, past spells. It was like walking through a crowded room where everyone was shouting, but the voices were feelings instead of sound.
Raven’s eyes met mine briefly, understanding without needing explanation. “Focus on one thing,” he said quietly, the way he always did when my empathic senses overloaded. Not demanding, just reminding. “Pick a center.”
Raven moved ahead of me, hugging the deep blue book he’d brought in. The Wards of Braided Light. Even its title gave off a kind of thrum. We placed it on the largest oak table—one of the few surfaces in Gate 4 that didn’t hum with passive wards. Dru had explained once that this table had been chosen specifically because it was cut from a single tree that had grown in a Druidic ritual space that the region’s conquerors had renamed “Devil’s Wood” to scare away potential converts, just as they had replaced Druid with Devil in all their naming conventions. The table absorbed energy rather than reflecting it. Still, as the grimoire’s spine hit the wood, I felt the vibration pass into my hands.
Shelves towered around us, lined with volumes dedicated to magical practice. Rituals. Elemental channeling. Spiritual anchoring. Books that most humans couldn’t even look at for too long without developing nosebleeds or ringing ears. Most were inert. Some… watched.
“This room gives me the creeps,” I said, rubbing my arms where prickles had already formed despite the warmth.
“That’s why I like it,” Raven said, smiling faintly. “It doesn’t lie.”
He was right, even if I’d never thought of it that way before. The room didn’t exactly compel the truth from its guests, but since both Raven and Dru had authenticated so many books here, the heavy air tasted of revelation.
His fingertips trailed over the book’s spine with the care of someone who understood exactly what they were handling. The same was usually true of Dru, but she approached any authentication exactly as you’d imagine a Medieval Literature professor would. Raven’s approach was every bit as serious, but still different. More like worship than academic appreciation. I’d seen him inspect dangerous texts before—always careful, always respectful. The priesthood trained its members well. Raven had been initiated at the age of twenty, under duress. Aoife had extracted promises from him in exchange for healing his dying body. He never talked about it, but I knew from a few mumbled words over the last year that he’d almost chosen death over joining the Order of Daegan. Books, he had said, convinced him to follow this path.
I watched his hands on the book—gentle, reverent, but strong. Those same hands had pulled me from danger more than once. Had steadied me when the world tilted. I’d come to trust them. Trust him.
We touched the book cover together, and the air shifted immediately.
Or maybe it wasn’t the air, but the energy of being so close to him and alone. I’d grown comfortable in Raven’s presence—too comfortable, maybe—but I kept that boundary clear in my mind: colleagues, partners, friends. Nothing more. Not that I was worried: Raven was single-minded in his mission and had little time for anything more than friendship. Then again, maybe he was still hurting over all the people he’d lost in his life.
But who am I to criticize anyone for closing themselves off from more grief?
On the front cover was a labyrinth design, a single unbroken braid of silver threading through the leather. I hadn’t noticed it when we were in the brighter lights of Gate 1, but here, the dimmer lamps over the table brought out the subtle pattern. As I touched the cover, I swore I saw it move—just slightly. The silver seemed to brighten under my fingertips, catching the light from angles that shouldn’t have been possible.
“Did you see that?” I asked.
Raven shook his head. “See what?”
I hesitated, then carefully flipped to the first page. The paper was thick, almost like vellum, but smoother. The text was handwritten in a precise, angular script—like calligraphy but with sharp edges where curves should be. Language I recognized as English, formal, and sounding more like an Elizabethan book of hours than a book of spells.
“This is earlier than we thought,” Raven murmured, leaning closer. His shoulder brushed mine as he adjusted position, a casual touch that felt anything but. “Mid-1700s maybe, but the script is older—traditional. Probably these wards were collected from earlier works or oral tradition. There’s a familiarity to them.”
I nodded, scanning the first few lines of each page. Most of the spells were protective against external threats, but a few were protection against conditions with odd names that I recognized as anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and intrusive thoughts.
Automatically, I chuckled.
Raven raised one eyebrow. “Did I miss something?”
Embarrassed, I tried not to smile. “Mmmm, no. Just thinking I might want to try a few of these spells for myself. Um, later. Not now.”
Not with you watching is what I meant.
The book had a pattern, a rhythm, to it. Layered enchantments. Wards. There were notes in the margins, old ink with phrases in Daeganean runic shorthand that suggested modifications or improvements. On page thirteen, I paused.
It was a diagram of concentric runes, finely inked in gold. The central glyph was a spiraling pattern I’d never seen before—intricate, almost fractal in its complexity.
Raven leaned in to decipher it. “Lilah, look at this—”
The moment he spoke, the page pulsed.
The runes glowed softly—gold on gold—and then settled. Like they’d heard something familiar. The spiral pattern seemed to turn slightly, adjusting itself like the aperture of a camera lens.
“Did you see that?” I whispered again, my pulse quickening.
This time, he pressed his index finger to his lips and nodded once. That single firm nod—it was so completely Raven. No wasted movement, no unnecessary words. Pulling his finger away from his lips, he whispered, “Lilah.”
It pulsed again. Like a bar graph on a sound mixer’s level meter, with lights that jump with sound.
“Lilah,” he said, louder.
The glowing lights brightened with each syllable. Fully in sync now.
“Lilah!”
The pulse was blinding. Shielding my eyes, I turned away, but Raven’s voice still echoed in the vault.
The oak table hummed beneath my touch as I flattened my hands against it. The air around us buzzed like a low violin string. The book wasn’t just responding to us—it was attuning. I’d seen books react to proximity before—grimoires that warmed to body heat or texts that revealed hidden passages under certain lighting—but this was different. This felt personal.
Raven ran his fingers along the edge of the page, careful not to touch the glyphs themselves. “I think this book knows you.”
“Why would it know me? You’re the one talking to it.”
“True, but it knows your name.”
“I’ve never seen the book before in my life—”
“I’m not accusing you of anything.” He snickered. His eyes crinkled at the corners—that rare, genuine amusement he showed only when we were alone. “There’s nothing to defend. I just meant that it’s recognizing something. Maybe your empathic field. Maybe my priesthood connection. In any case, it wants our attention.”
Just as we turned to the next page, a thud echoed through the vault. We both jumped.
A book had fallen from a nearby shelf, landing spine-up on the floor. Not just any shelf—one at least fifteen feet away, far too distant for either of us to have bumped.
My hands trembled slightly as I crossed the room and picked it up. The spine read: Wards of the Inward Path. The binding was older, worn leather patched in places with newer material. I opened it—and nearly dropped it.
The same protection glyph was etched into the page. Handwritten. The script was a century earlier, maybe more. But the layout was identical—the same concentric circles, the same spiraling center pattern.
“The same spell,” I said, my voice tight.
Raven took the book from me, comparing it to the page in the grimoire. He squinted at the handwriting. “Same patterns. Syntax. Spirit, even.”
“Same author?”
“Same soul,” he murmured. “Different hands. But I think Mythryx wrote both.”
I froze. “The Mythryx?”
Mythryx was a legend even within the priesthood—one of the most powerful High Priests, time and again with each reincarnation, but he’d disappeared in the 1970s as a young man barely out of high school. According to rumor, Mythryx was still alive and an old man named Spencer von Windlach, though no one had admitted seeing him in years. He was one of the few living priests who had accepted the Gift of Knowing upon initiation and could remember the future, which was how we knew the closeness of the pole shift that would destroy life as we knew it.
“Same soul name. Look.” Raven pointed to the older book’s title page where an inscription in faded brown ink read: From the hand of Mythryx, Year of Salt. Plain as day.
“Year of Salt? What does that mean?”
Raven shrugged. “Pre-Gregorian calendar system. The priesthood had their own dating method before they aligned with Western timekeeping. Years were named for significant events or celestial alignments. Some of the older priests still use it.”
We returned to the grimoire, placing the fallen book beside it. The pages seemed to whisper against each other—not with sound, but with energy. Like magnets of similar poles repelling slightly before settling.
One of the next pages in the newer book, the one after the text that had pulsed to my name, had a chalkable glyph in the center and a circle around it. The instructions in the margin were simple: Draw upon stone. Stand within. Speak thy name.
Raven took a piece of chalk from the tray at the corner of the table and knelt on the slate dais. He brushed aside the faint remnants of previous workings with his rolled-up sleeve.
“Let’s test it.”
“Shouldn’t we wait for Dru?” My voice sounded small even to me. I was an empath. I had… sensitivities. I didn’t, like Raven, wield supernatural talents derived from Archangels.
He paused in his chalk work, looking up at me. Not dismissive, not impatient—just attentive. It was one of the things I’d come to value most about him: the way he took my concerns seriously, even when they contradicted his instincts.
He looked up at me with his usual calm and the patience I was used to from him. His eyes reflected the golden light from the sconces. “Do you sense there’s something to be afraid of?”
I splayed my fingers above both books. Mythryx’s energy, in both prior incarnations, was warm. Erudite. Curious. Steadfast. Pleasant. Loving. In that order.
“No danger.” I met Raven’s gaze and drew my fists to my chest until the tingle faded.
“This is why we’re here, Lilah. To authenticate. To understand what we’re dealing with and where this book belongs in this library.”
He had a point. This was our job, or part of it—to evaluate books before they were fully cataloged, to determine danger levels and security classifications.
“So you think it probably belongs here in Gate 4? With its sibling?” I motioned at the older book that had literally flung itself off the shelf to get our attention.
“Maybe. That’s what we’re here to find out. We’re a good team. Your skills as an empath help both of us to know these two books are safe.”
“Um, happy to be of service, I guess?”
“You know I value what you bring to this,” he said, his tone so matter-of-fact that I knew he meant it. Raven didn’t waste breath on empty compliments.
Still, my pulse raced as he drew the circle on the floor with clean precision, copying the diagram from the book exactly, down to the small notches in the outer ring. Raven had never been anything but a gentleman around me, but I’d had a brief fling with another Daeganean priest, and when he’d drawn designs on the floor, he’d intended me as his human sacrifice.
I definitely need this book’s help with anxiety!
When Raven finished his chalk work, he motioned to me. “Ladies first.”
I hesitated. “Why me?”
“Because it likes you,” he teased.
“It likes my name. And the way you say it.”
His expression softened just slightly. “You’re the empath, Lilah. You’ll sense what it’s doing better than I can. And you’ve already confirmed it’s safe.” He paused. “But if you’d rather I go first, I will.”
The logic was sound, but my legs still felt like lead as I approached the circle. I took a deep breath and stepped in.
The circle flared with golden light the moment my foot crossed the edge. It lit up from the floor beneath me, sending a glow up my legs like firelight. The lines brightened and sharpened, the chalk somehow becoming more vibrant, more present. The air inside the circle felt different—thinner, as if I were breathing at a higher elevation.
“Okay,” I whispered, my breathing shallow. “That wasn’t nothing.”
Raven just smiled, like he’d suspected it all along. “Speak thy name.”
“What?”
“I drew on stone. You stepped within. Now, say your name.”
“Lilah Burns.”
The circle pulsed again, brighter this time. The light climbed higher, wrapping around my waist, then my shoulders. For a moment, I panicked—trapped in golden threads—but there was no heat, no pain. Just a gentle pressure, like being held.
And then it faded, sinking back into the floor until only the chalk remained, now looking impossibly ordinary.
“What did it feel like?” Raven asked, his voice quiet. He stood at the edge of the circle, watching me intently, ready to intervene if needed. His vigilance wasn’t smothering; it was reassuring.
I stepped out of the circle, legs shaky. “Like… recognition. Like it was measuring me.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know. Safety, maybe?”
He nodded slowly. “Simple authentication ward. Makes sense for something called The Wards of Braided Light.” Book in hand, he stepped in the circle with me and announced himself. The light show repeated itself.
Together, we turned the page again. This time, the spell was short—just lines of incantation in angular Daeganean script, and then a long blank space below it. The words twisted slightly as I looked at them, arranging themselves into something I could understand despite not knowing the language.
Without really thinking about it, I read the lines aloud.
“Let thine circle be drawn with solemn intent, not with unseemly dispatch,
For three days hence shall it abide unshattered.
Let there be ward against enchantments wrought by foreign hands,
Be they familiar or concealed, ally or adversary.
All who standeth within receiveth sanctuary,
Held steadfast beneath this sigil until the appointed hour.
Only words born of the heart’s true chamber shall complete the circle.”
The words vanished.
They didn’t fade—they evaporated. Literally lifted off the page in tiny motes of golden light that dispersed in the air around us. The space shimmered for a moment, like heat rising off asphalt. And then nothing.
A wave passed through us. Silent, invisible, but undeniable. I trembled as it moved through my body, leaving a strange tingling in its wake.
“What was that?” Raven asked, his eyes wide.
“I don’t know.” I looked at the page. Still blank where the words had been.
But my body felt lighter. My thoughts, clearer. The oppressive weight of the vault’s energy—the one that always gave me headaches during longer sessions—had lifted. The air didn’t buzz anymore. It flowed.
“Maybe it was a shield,” I said slowly. “Maybe we’re immune to other spells now.”
“For how long?”
I shrugged. “Three days?”
He arched a brow. “Why three?”
“Three is always the right number. Three days, three tests, three wishes. It’s practically a law of magic. Besides, the spell actually said three days.”
“You’ve been reading too many fairy tales,” he teased, but there was warmth in his voice. The kind reserved for our quiet moments between missions, when we weren’t dodging curses or hunting stolen artifacts. His eyes kept darting around the room, as if seeing it differently now.
I felt it too. The books on the shelves seemed less menacing. The whispers I always half-heard in spaces like this had quieted. Whatever that spell had done, it had changed something fundamental about how we were interfacing with this place.
We kept flipping through the grimoire, caught in the web of glyphs and luminous spellwork. Each page revealed something new: protection circles, binding symbols, deflection patterns. Some had notes of successful applications—Used against the black tide, Marseille, 1766—while others bore warnings—Unstable in presence of iron. Use silver chalk only.
Raven’s shoulder pressed briefly against mine as we both leaned in to study a particularly intricate diagram. Neither of us moved away immediately. These small, unspoken comforts had become part of our rhythm over the past year—like finding safe harbors in each other during storms.
As we read, the pressure in my temples eased further. The constant low-grade anxiety I felt in magical spaces like this had diminished to almost nothing. Whatever shield we’d activated, it was working. I felt almost… euphoric. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt this light of spirit.
Finally, Raven stretched tall, running a hand over his face. “We didn’t complete the spell. What were the last words again?” He flipped back to the page where the spell’s words had evaporated as soon as I spoke them. “If we want this to last, we should lock it in.”
I looked at him. “With what?”
“Something solid. Symbolic. There’s something we have to do to complete it.” He gestured to the blank space on the page where the words had been. “The spell needs an anchor. Something to tether it to us specifically.”
“What, like a blood oath? Secret handshake? Pinky promise?” I wiggled my little finger at him. “Or would you prefer something more dramatic—a lock of hair, perhaps? A heartfelt sonnet in iambic pentameter?”
I thought for a moment, then reached out and touched his arm. Grinning, I teased, “You are my anchor.”
As soon as I said it, the blank space on the page rippled. The words You are my anchor appeared in my handwriting. Not similar—identical. Every curve and loop exactly as I would have written it.
We both stared.
Then one of his hairs fell from his topknot and curled to the tip of his nose.
He wrinkled it and went cross-eyed, trying to see the offending strand.
Laughing, I leaned in and plucked it from his cheek. For a brief moment, we were close enough that I could see the flecks of starlight in his eyes. I dropped the strand into the center fold of the book, right over the new words. It settled into the crease, dark against the creamy paper.
“Now it’s a bookmark, too,” I said. “To mark the right spot to come back to.”
He laughed softly. “Well, that’s one way to seal a working. I’m more used to blood or sacred oils.” Crossing to the table, he closed the grimoire gently and placed one hand on top as if stilling the powers inside.
“So is it authenticated?” I placed my hand over the cover, too, barely touching his hand as I did. “Is one spell enough to know?”
“Oh, yeah. Yeah, definitely. I think we’re good here.”
As we made our way back through the security doors of Gates 3 and 2, I could still feel the effects of the shield spell. The usual disorientation I felt moving between magical spaces had eased. My thoughts remained clear. My senses sharper.
“Do you feel different?” I asked Raven as we approached the final door back to Gate 1.
He nodded. “Lighter. More focused.” He flexed his hands. “Like there’s less resistance between intention and action.”
I stepped through the final door into the reception area of the Special Collections Library and waited for Raven to step into Gate 1 beside me. He was still smiling, still talking, as the security door clicked shut. He looked lighter than I’d seen him in months.
Until we crossed the threshold.
Until we saw Samantha.
She was seated exactly where she’d been when we left.
But her face was ghost-pale.
Thick eyeliner. Black lipstick. The full Goth armor was back on—the same look she’d worn for months before her sudden transformation into a Manifest Optimum JOy devotee. The dark clothing, the heavy silver jewelry, the eyes rimmed with kohl so thick it looked like bruising.
The book in her hands wasn’t Manifesting Your Ideal Timeline. It wasn’t even the agricultural guide Dru had shown her. It was older. The cover was scorched. The title whispered to itself in my peripheral vision. Something about inversion magic. Something that should never have been in Gate 1.
She looked up and met our eyes.
And glared.
My smile vanished.
The lights over her flickered once. The air between us smelled faintly of burnt lavender.
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