Being alone in Dragon Tower wasn't any better upon my return. Not that I was ever truly alone, technically speaking. But how comforting M could be was deeply hampered by my inability to hear him without the headaches from the curse.

There was nothing for it. I would probably try to go to bed early. Who knew what kind of morning I was going to have, and there wasn't anything that required my attention.

I was certain this task of organizing schedules for my Tower was expected to take hours, but well…

I held up my own schedule and hoped everything would be okay.

I was still stuck with taking Practical Spellcraft. The spellcraft classes were the only ones taught over the course of both semesters. The rest were all entirely new to me.

Beginner's Botany was my second period class. I wasn't sure what to expect with it. Couldn't be any worse than the Monsters class though.

Enchanting Basics was one I might end up doing better in than I first thought. Considering the very slight breakthrough I'd had.

General Geography should be painless though. Maps probably wouldn't explode on me. Then again it was me so that was always a slight risk.

And then there was brewing. Advanced Brewing, thanks to Celica. Taught by Professor Julian Carmine. The only adult Dragon at the school. Even if I didn't learn anything about brewing, seeing an adult with red magic could be enlightening.

That was my class schedule this semester, nothing too terrible so I could focus on what was really worrying me. I hadn't really looked at the others schedules, it wasn't any of my business. The safety stuff seemed basic. The only thing that seemed different from what I remembered from my old school was the evacuation protocol. Instead of leaving the school grounds the plan was to go to the Towers and lock all the doors.

I wasn't sure how I felt about any of this, given what I knew. But it seemed that was only for students. Staff had a different plan.

I couldn't be sure how much that was comforting, given how little we knew.

Was it selfish? Keeping what I knew to myself like this?

But then again… who would telling everyone help? All it would do was risk us getting found out. No one would believe me and I didn't have any evidence. If they did believe me they couldn't do anything. I wasn't an expert, but I'd seen enough courtroom dramas to know that the more evidence the better.

So. Secrecy would have to be the plan. At least for now. Until we either found evidence or until we found a way to secure the knife and stash it away.

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I groaned and buried my face in my hands. I couldn't ask that here.

I stood up from where I'd been sitting, leaving my schedule behind. I tried to just focus on my breathing, letting the warm pulse in my veins speed up in anticipation. This wouldn't my first time trying this, but the nerves were still there.

The stairs looked more intimidating than usual. The climb up longer and the falls of my heavy boots were too loud in the emptiness of the tower. The rune in the floor was a sight I often overlooked, but now it was the center of my attention.

I took a deep breath as I knelt down. My right fingers brushed the carving. I focused on the warmth of my magic and felt it travel down through my heart and down my arm. Pink grew out of the carving in jagged chunks. A dim glow with sharp crystalline edges.

Yet, my hands were safe as I gripped the rungs of the ladder. Hoisting myself up into the attic. Thankfully the hatch cooperated with me that day.

The sharp and ice cold punishment of the curse was meaningless to me compared to what I was about to ask of M.

If we were right, Death's Echo must mean a lot to him, to the Hearth Coven. But the risk now was too high. I needed to at least ask.

"I need to ask you something," I announced after a moment of just breathing. "Would you be mad if I asked you to help us hide Death's Echo here?"

I gave him a moment to respond.

The floor shook twice. No, he wasn't mad.

"I think that might be the safest way to solve this problem. Get our hands on Death's Echo and hide it somewhere where it will never see the light of day again."

Another single shake. He agreed, that made this so much easier.

"I'm worried. But there's only so much I can do by myself. So we'll need to do this together."

A low rumble of agreement around me was just enough to make me feel a bit better.

"We're Dragons, we can do this right?" I tried to cling to some kind of positivity.

Another single shake followed by a purr-like rumble.

"I think we're going to have to. We're the only ones with a complete picture of what's going on besides the thief. I think that makes this our responsibility to solve. The only question is how."

But maybe the others could help me. They were in this mess too.

We were a Tower. That was close enough to a team, right?

(*********)

It was surprisingly easy to fall asleep that night. Maybe all the worrying had made me more tired than I'd thought. Or maybe my mind was just too tired from racing all day.

I was in a cave. Not a specific cave, a conglomerate of rock and multicolored crystals. It was like a blend of sci-fi shows and documentaries I'd seen.

White stalactites that looked like salt with little bits of something reflective falling from them like rain drops. Out of the darkness below the deep grey boulder I was sitting on, stalagmites of a luminescent blue color looked particularly sharp. The walls were made of small clusters of sparkling crystals in green, purple, blue and orange.

But for some reason I wasn't alone. A colony of milk chocolate brown bats flew around me in a circle. Orbiting me like the rings on Saturn.

I reached out towards them.

They turned to dust, crumbling into sand that fell in slow motion around me. A thick liquid in a very dark shade of green started covering the stalagmites, flooding the cave but not blocking out their light.

Somehow, that was shining ever brighter despite the darkness. Or maybe because of it?

I woke to the sight of a dim sunrise drifting in from the window. Tucked in my bed in Dragon Tower and ready to face this day and the others. It was time this school semester started properly.

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