Jeraldine Hogsmutter wanted Galaria to be the greatest magical school the hidden world had ever seen. But tonight, in his tower study, he faced a plain problem. Young casters were waking up in the mortal world, and he had no way to find them. Each one he missed grew up alone, untrained, or worse. He had built a school with ten thousand books and no way to fill its seats. He stood before the dark scrying mirror. Its surface held tiny points of light, like a night sky trapped in glass. On his desk, Wallace, his green tortoise, chewed a lettuce leaf and watched. Jeraldine pressed his palm to the frame and asked it to show him gifted children. The stars drifted. They showed him nothing he could use. A flicker here, a spark there, scattered across a whole world. No names. No places. No order. "A map," he said aloud. "I need a map, not a sky." The mirror could sense magic waking. It could not point to a single door. For that, he needed someone who already lived among mortals. Someone who knew the children by name. He thought of one witch who did. Her family had lived in the mortal town of Marshwood for generations, running a shop above a hidden lair. He touched the mirror and spoke her name. The stars pulled apart. A woman's face filled the glass. Aleia Dalton-Romano stood in a cramped room lined with labeled jars. She was stacking small boxes, each one marked in her own neat hand. She did not look surprised to see a headmaster appear in her mirror at night. "You're the one from Galaria," she said. Short. Flat. She kept stacking. "I am. I need your help." Jeraldine chose his words with care. "Children are coming into their power out here. I can't find them. You can." She set down a box. "I know three on this street. A fourth two towns over. The school boards write them off as odd." She paused. "I keep a list. I don't hand lists to strangers." "Then don't give it to a stranger," he said. "Give it to a partner." Aleia studied him through the glass. Wallace shifted on the desk. For a long moment she said nothing. Then she pulled a thin ledger from a shelf and held it up. "Names, ages, what they can do. I've tracked them for years." She lowered the book. "But there's a cost. Something cracked near here last month. An old gate. A fracture down its middle." Her voice stayed level. "Something mortal is pushing through it, trying to see what's underneath this town. Me. My sons. Your children." Jeraldine felt the stars behind him go cold. "You want my list," Aleia said, "you help me find out what's breaking that gate. Before it finishes." Jeraldine looked at Wallace, then back at the mirror. He had his map. He also had a far worse problem than empty seats. "Agreed," he said.

Jeraldine had a map now, and a debt. Aleia wanted him at the cracked gate, and she would not hand over her list until he proved useful. But he had never studied mortal breaches. He had promised help he did not know how to give. So he went looking for the one founder who might. He found Nolando Javis in the sealed archive, deep under Galaria. The vault held the school's oldest and most dangerous records behind heavy stone and metal bands. Nolando sat at a low table, a worn journal open beside him, writing in a thin hand. He did not look up. His house crest, the weasel of Weaselton, caught the lamplight on his collar. "Headmaster," Nolando said. "You don't come down here. Something's wrong." "I need to learn how mortal breaches work," Jeraldine said. "A gate near Marshwood is cracking. A witch there will trade me names of young casters if I help. I don't know where to start." Nolando set down his pen. "You came to me last. I noticed." Jeraldine did not deny it. "I came to you because you check everything twice. I need that now." Nolando studied him. Then he slid the worn journal across the table. "Aldric's lecture notes. He taught breaches before most of these founders could hold a wand." He opened to a marked page. "Mortal gates don't break from the mortal side. Nothing mortal is strong enough. Something on our side is pulling, and a mortal is being used to push." Jeraldine read the cramped lines. His old mentor's hand. Diagrams of a split gate. Notes on how a fracture widened each time pressure hit from both sides. "The crack won't close on its own," Nolando said. "You seal it, or it keeps opening." He reached into his coat and set a small vial on the journal. Thick sap glowed amber-green inside. "Binding sap. You pour it into the fracture while someone holds the gate steady. It sets like root in stone. It's the only thing Aldric trusted." Jeraldine picked up the vial. "You're giving me this." "I'm lending it. And the notes." Nolando leaned back. "If it works, you'll remember who came through for Galaria." "I will." "Write it down," Nolando said. "People forget. I don't." Jeraldine left the vault with the journal under his arm and the vial in his pocket. He had what he needed to face Aleia. He scried her that night and told her plainly how mortal gates broke, and what the sap could do. She listened. She did not interrupt. When he finished, she pulled her ledger from the shelf and held it up. "Good enough," she said. "The list is yours. Come to Marshwood. We seal it together." She lowered the book. "But if what you said is true, the pull is coming from your side. One of yours is doing this." The stars behind Jeraldine went cold.

Jeraldine stood at the cracked gate near Marshwood with the vial of binding sap in his fist. The fracture ran top to bottom now. He could pour the sap, but the sap needed a steady gate, and this gate shook with every pull from his own side. If it gave out first, mortals would spill through before he sealed it. He needed something strong enough to hold the gate still. He thought of the old Weaselton house back at Galaria. Lufar had lived there once, before the banishment. Jeraldine had avoided it for years. Now he went. The house sagged on its frame. Broken windows gaped. The porch boards bent under his boots. Inside, dust lay thick on everything Lufar left behind. On a warped table sat a weathered bundle of field notes, tied with string. Jeraldine cut the string and read. Lufar had sketched the Marshwood gate years ago. He had measured its pull. In the margin he wrote of iron chains, forged with runes, meant to pin a failing gate in place. Jeraldine found the chains coiled in a rusted chest. Dark links, carved with glowing runes. He could not hold the gate and pour the sap alone. He needed hands he trusted. He scried Galaria. Agatha Timpleton answered first. She had spent a career teaching patience to loud students and calmer animals. When Jeraldine explained, she did not ask why he came to her. "I built this school to protect people," she said. "I'll come." "Mortals live near the gate," Jeraldine said. "If it breaks, they're in the path." "Then send someone to move them." He sent Ronny Echo, the young scout who guided lost first-years and still carried the shame of losing three on his first run. Ronny listened, then said only, "How many houses?" Jeraldine told him. "I'll clear them," Ronny said, and went. At the gate, Agatha gripped the enchanted chains and threw them across the fracture. The runes flared. The chains bit into the shaking stone and held it fast. The gate stopped trembling. "Now," she said. Jeraldine poured the sap into the crack. It spread like root through stone, filling the split, setting hard. The pull from his side still hammered, but the chains held and the sap took. The fracture sealed shut. For a long moment neither moved. Then a scrying flash reached him from Aleia. Ronny had cleared the last house with minutes to spare. No mortal had crossed. Agatha let the chains go slack. She looked at the sealed gate, then at Jeraldine. "It held," she said. "But you read that from Lufar's hand." She nodded at the bundle in his coat. "His pull did this. His notes fixed it. Decide what that means before someone else does." Jeraldine looked at the field notes. The gate was sealed. The pull was gone. But the hand that caused it was one Galaria had already cast out.

The gate near Marshwood was sealed now, shut tight with binding sap. That solved the breach. It did not solve the boy. Aleia's list had named one caster above all: Oliver Lopes, a half-blood foster child whose father, Darren, once studied at Galaria. Oliver sat on the mortal side of a gate Jeraldine had just closed for good. The sealed gate held Galaria's empty seats as far away as ever. Jeraldine found the boy at the old Marshwood Inn. Broken shutters hung loose. Dust covered the floor. Oliver sat on a crooked stair, a thin boy with his father's eyes, waiting because a stranger had asked him to. He did not know he carried magic. He did not know his father's name meant anything. "I can't take you the simple way," Jeraldine said. "That door is closed now. For good reason." The boy only watched him. Reopening the gate would undo everything. It would invite the pull back. Jeraldine would not trade a sealed breach for a filled seat. He scried Galaria. Magnifiso Swindles answered. The founder of the house of Charisma wore maroon and gold, a red cardinal perched on his staff. The two had built this school side by side, yet Jeraldine braced for a hard word. Magnifiso gave hard words slowly, then only once. "You sealed the gate," Magnifiso said. "Now you want a way through a sealed gate." He waited. "There's another road. Older. The founders walked it before the gates. You never liked it." "Teach it to me," Jeraldine said. "A cloak pin. Silences the crossing so no mortal feels it. And a signet ring. The founders' seal. The old road only opens to a founder's hand." Magnifiso paused. "I kept mine. Take the boy slow. Rush it and you lose him in the between." Jeraldine pressed his own signet ring into his palm. The seal read Stay Close. He had worn it since the beginning and forgotten what it asked. He pinned the silencing clasp to Oliver's collar. "Hold my arm," Jeraldine said. "Don't let go, whatever you see." The boy gripped him. Jeraldine turned the ring against the inn's cold wall. Stone softened to gray mist. No gate cracked. No pull answered. The clasp drank every sound. They stepped into the mist together, and the old road closed behind them clean. They came out on Galaria's grounds. Oliver swayed, pale, but whole. He stared at the towers, at a sky that was not his sky. Ronny Echo was already crossing the lawn toward them. The young scout had cleared the mortal houses before the gate failed. Now he did the work he signed himself up for, guiding the lost. He stopped before Oliver and did not crowd him. "First day," Ronny said. "I know. Looks like a lot." The boy nodded, unsure. "Lost three students my first run. One found her own way back." Ronny shrugged. "Won't lose you." He led Oliver toward the First-Year Dorm Tower, an old cobblestone spire marked over the door. Inside, warm light. A bed that was his. A muggleborn girl Ronny already guided waved from a stair. Oliver could shelter here, safe, until he learned what he was. Jeraldine watched the boy climb the steps and did not reach to hurry him. Magnifiso met Jeraldine at the tower door. "One seat filled," he said. "The hard way." "The right way," Jeraldine said. "No gate reopened. No one chased. We walked him through ourselves." He turned the signet ring on his finger. "I built this place to bring casters home. I almost tore a hole in the world to do it faster. Agatha was right to ask what shortcuts cost. So was Aldric." Magnifiso studied him. For once he said nothing hard. Jeraldine looked up at the tower, where a found caster slept under Galaria's roof for the first time. The empty seats had haunted him since the beginning. He had chased them across sealed gates and borrowed knowledge and bad choices. Now one was filled, and the method was clean enough to use again. Aleia's list held more names. Magnifiso knew the old road. Ronny would meet each new child at the door. Galaria would not be the fastest academy to rise in the hidden world. It would be the one that did right and paid for it, seat by seat, until no gifted child was left waiting alone. Jeraldine turned the ring once more, read the two words on the seal, and this time he kept them.