Cassie Davis's Arc

Chapter 3 of 4

The flood spat them out against a ridge of mud. Cassie coughed water and clutched the wizard's notes, soaked but whole. Mia held her wrist until she sat up. The river was already pulling back, hissing through the trees, leaving the forest floor stripped raw. "Look," Mia said. She pointed past a fallen tree, its roots torn up like a hand. Half-buried in the slope, tilted and webbed in moss, stood a stone tower the flood had uncovered. Vines hung wet from its walls. A door slumped open at its base. Cassie slid down to it. She wiped mud from the stones around the door and froze. A symbol was cut deep into the arch — three lines crossing a circle, the same mark she'd circled twice in the wizard's notes that morning. Her hands shook as she flipped the wet pages and held them up. "It matches," she said. "This is his. This was his tower." Inside, on a slanted table, lay a torn book. Half its cover was gone. The remaining page showed a diagram ringed with the same runes — and beneath them, in letters Cassie could read, the words: How to open your portal. She pressed her hand flat against it. Her breath caught. "It's only half," Mia said quietly behind her. Cassie turned the fragment over. The tear ran clean down the middle. The instructions stopped mid-sentence. Somewhere out there, in the mud the flood had churned, the other half was waiting — or gone.