ShadowBound: The Need For Power

It had been a long time since Ariana and Liam had shared a space alone like this.

Ariana realized it with a strange, almost aching clarity as she sat across from him. The last time had been nearly a year ago, weeks before the Gaia War had changed the shape of everything around them.

Back then, things had been different. Liam had still been distant, of course. He had always been distant. But the academy had felt less heavy then. Their lives had not yet been dragged through war, Nalim, political tension, and everything else that now seemed to gather around him like a shadow that refused to detach.

Since then, they were almost always with others. Dylan talking too much. Charlotte teasing. Maxwell laughing. Sheila carrying her quiet responsibilities. Asher turning every shared silence into an unspoken competition. There was nearly always someone nearby, some noise, some interruption, some reason Ariana could not simply sit with him without feeling watched or teased.

Now it was just them.

And it felt good.

Ariana knew that was a dangerous thing to think, not because anything was actually happening, but because her heart had a habit of treating small moments with Liam as if they mattered more than they probably did to him.

Still, she allowed herself to enjoy it. There was no Charlotte nearby to notice the way she looked at him. No Dylan to make some unbearable comment. No Maxwell to grin knowingly. Liam was focused on his work, and she was supposed to be focused on hers, and for a little while, that was enough.

She wanted to talk to him more.

Several times, the urge rose to ask about his assignment, about his classes, about whether Tactical Espionage was as awful as everyone said, about whether he had been resting enough, about whether the cold bothered him as much as Charlotte claimed it did.

Each time, she stopped herself. She did not want to ruin the quiet by pushing too hard. Liam did not like unnecessary conversation, and this moment felt too rare to risk breaking with awkwardness.

So Ariana returned to her notes and stole glances when she thought he would not notice.

For some time, they worked in silence.

The library breathed around them. Pages turned. Pens scratched. A student somewhere deeper in the stacks whispered a curse after dropping something heavy. Outside the high windows, pale noon light softened against the glass, making the dust in the air visible whenever it drifted through the lamplight.

Liam read through a section in his Core Myst text, then slowed.

His eyes remained fixed on one paragraph.

The explanation was not wrong, but something about it felt incomplete. The topic itself seemed simple at first glance, one of those foundational principles students were expected to understand before moving into more advanced control exercises.

But the more Liam examined it, the more the wording became irritatingly vague. He could understand the conclusion, but the path toward it felt poorly explained, as though the book expected students to accept the idea rather than truly grasp why it worked.

He stared at the diagram beside the text for another moment.

Then he looked at Ariana.

She was writing again, fully absorbed now, her brows drawn together in gentle concentration. Liam waited a second, partly because interrupting someone mid-thought was inefficient, then spoke.

"Ariana."

Her pen jerked again.

She looked up quickly. "Yes?"

The response came too fast, and she seemed to realize it, because she straightened slightly and adjusted her glasses. "I mean, yes. What is it?"

"Can you explain something to me?"

Ariana froze.

Liam Hunter was asking her to explain something to him.

For a second, panic moved through her mind so quickly that it became almost ridiculous. What if she explained badly? What if she misunderstood the question? What if it was something obvious and she somehow made it more complicated? What if Liam only asked because he thought she knew and then realized she did not know as much as he expected?

’Calm down,’ she thought, forcing her fingers to loosen around her pen. ’It’s just a question. He asked because he thinks you can answer. Just answer.’

She nodded, doing her best to sound normal. "Sure. I can help."

Liam slid his Core Myst book closer to her, turning it slightly so she could see the marked section. "This part. It says that during core regulation, Myst compression becomes unstable when the inner current moves faster than the outer channel can distribute, but it also says controlled compression improves spell efficiency by reducing waste. What I don’t understand is where the threshold actually begins. Is instability caused by the amount of Myst being compressed, or by the difference in pace between the core current and the channels?"

Ariana looked down at the passage.

At first, the question sounded simple. It was about core regulation, compression, channel distribution, and spell efficiency. Standard Core Myst material. But after a moment, she realized Liam was not asking for the textbook definition. He was asking about the functional point where beneficial compression turned into harmful pressure, and whether the cause came from Myst quantity or circulation imbalance.

That was not the kind of question someone asked after merely failing to memorize a paragraph.

She leaned closer to the book, reading the lines carefully.

"Oh," she said softly. "I see why that part is confusing."

Liam watched her.

Ariana’s initial nervousness eased a little as the subject itself took hold. Myst theory was familiar ground. More than familiar, really. It was one of the few places where her thoughts seemed to arrange themselves naturally, where fear had less room to interfere because the structure of the topic gave her something steady to follow.

"I actually had trouble understanding this properly too," she admitted. "The book explains it as if compression and instability are two separate things, but they’re really part of the same process. Lady Mystica helped me with it when I asked her about it before. I can try to explain it the way she explained it to me."

"Go ahead."

Ariana reached for her own notebook, then hesitated. "Can I write in your book? Not over the text. Just near the diagram."

Liam pushed the book a little closer. "That’s fine."

She nodded and carefully turned the book toward herself. Taking her pen, she drew a small circle beside the printed diagram, then another ring around it. Her lines were neat, light, and controlled.

"Think of the core as the center reservoir," she began, tapping the inner circle gently with the end of her pen. "Not just where Myst is stored, but where it first gathers into a usable rhythm. The channels are the distribution paths." She tapped the outer ring. "When you cast normally, Myst moves from the core into the channels, and then into the spell structure. If the movement is too loose, some Myst disperses before it becomes useful. That’s waste."

Liam nodded once. "That part makes sense."

"Compression reduces that waste because it tightens the Myst before release," Ariana continued, drawing several small arrows inside the inner circle. "It makes the energy denser, so the spell can use less Myst while producing a cleaner effect. Fire spells become hotter with less spread. Water spells hold shape better. Light spells become more focused. That’s why compression improves efficiency."

"But that doesn’t explain instability."

"Right." Ariana drew the arrows again, this time making them crowd too tightly inside the circle. "The problem starts when the core current accelerates or compresses faster than the channels can accept. It is not only about the amount of Myst. Amount matters, but pace difference matters more. If the core is compressing Myst at a rate the channels can distribute evenly, then the pressure is controlled. But if the core is tightening the Myst faster than the channels can move it outward, pressure builds here."

She shaded the space between the inner circle and the outer ring.

Liam leaned slightly closer, eyes following the motion of her pen.

Ariana’s voice grew steadier. "Lady Mystica compared it to heating water in a sealed vessel. The water itself is not the issue. The heat is not even the issue by itself. The issue is pressure without proper release. In Myst terms, instability begins when the density of compressed Myst exceeds the channel’s ability to distribute it without friction."

"Friction," Liam repeated.

"Not physical friction exactly," Ariana said quickly, then paused as she considered the best way to phrase it. "More like resistance. Myst channels have flow capacity. Some people have wider or more stable channels. Some have more flexible channels. Some have very strong cores but poor distribution, which means they can gather large amounts of Myst but suffer backlash when they try to release too much at once."

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