cascading fall of heavy, clay pots. Laima, crushed beneath them, her laughter silenced, her life extinguished. An innocent, random death, orchestrated by the spell to balance the scales. Zita gasped, clutching her head, the vision fading to leave behind a throbbing agony. She had saved a life, only for another to be taken. The price for cheating fate, even in the smallest way, was horrifyingly clear. A life for a life. Her stomach churned. This wasn't a game. Every victory would come with a cost. Every averted disaster would spawn another. Fidget, who had been momentarily silenced by the Requiem’s onslaught, began to buzz frantically again, tugging hard on a strand of Zita’s hair. His tiny, translucent face pressed against her forehead, his eyes wide with frantic terror. He pointed a trembling, spectral finger towards the window, towards the distant hum of the Institute’s upper levels. Another chronal disturbance. *** Zita staggered, pushing away from the cold stone of the Silent Stacks. Her temples throbbed, a relentless drumbeat against her skull. The sight of Laima’s crushed body, even as a phantom image, etched itself into her memory. This was the cost. Fidget's sharp tugging on her hair stung. The sprite's translucent body pulsed with an agitated sapphire glow, its tiny hands gesturing with increasing urgency towards the pinnacle of the Veidota Institute, where Chancellor Valerija’s lofty chambers resided. “What is it, Fidget?” Zita whispered, her voice rough. Her eyes, still swimming with phantom pain, narrowed on the distant spire. A deep sense of dread settled in her gut. That hum wasn’t just ambient resonance; it was a specific vibration, an unraveling knot only Fidget could truly discern. And it emanated from Valerija’s sanctum. Before she could process the implications, a crisp, disembodied voice echoed through the ancient halls, amplified by a subtle enchantment. “Student Zita Vaitkus. Report to Chancellor Valerija on the Spire of Ašis. Immediately.” The air around Zita crackled, not with magical energy, but with the sudden, chilling demand of authority. Fidget whimpered, burying his face in her hair. An audience with the serpent, indeed. The journey to the Spire of Ašis was a winding ascent through the academy's rigid hierarchy, each tier rising in perceived rank. The corridors grew quieter, the marble gleamed brighter, the very air seemed thinner, colder. When Zita finally stood before the massive, obsidian doors of Valerija’s solar, her uniform felt suddenly scratchy, her palms damp. She pushed open the doors to a room that was less a study and more a gilded cage. Sunlight, filtered through panes of stained glass depicting the ancient founders of Kėdainiai, cast kaleidoscopic patterns across a floor of polished obsidian. Bookshelves of exotic woods held grimoires bound in what looked suspiciously like human skin. At the center, behind a vast desk carved from a single slab of luminous quartz, sat Chancellor Valerija. She was a woman who radiated an almost unsettling serenity, her silver hair pulled back in a severe, intricate braid, her robes a rich, deep violet that shimmered with interwoven glimmer-threads. A faint, sweet scent—like crushed iris and ozone—pervaded the air. “Ah, Zita. Please, come in.” Valerija’s voice was as smooth and warm as aged honey, yet with an underlying coolness that made Zita’s skin prickle. A smile, full of practiced benevolence, stretched across her lips, revealing teeth that were just a touch too white, too sharp. “No need to stand on ceremony. I’ve heard quite a bit about your… recent accomplishments.” Zita stepped forward, carefully composing her expression. Inside, Fidget buzzed a sharp warning against her ear, its tiny body vibrating with an almost painful intensity. The disturbance was strongest here, a deep hum beneath Valerija’s cultured voice, like a hidden engine running in overdrive. “Chancellor,” Zita replied, her voice deliberately flat, bordering on bored. She made sure to slouch slightly, radiating an air of mild inconvenience rather than awe. “I hope my… experiments haven’t caused too much trouble. Sometimes the arcane containment fields just… give out, you know? A stroke of luck, really, that I was there.” Valerija’s smile remained fixed. Her eyes, the color of glacial ice, held Zita’s for a moment longer than was comfortable, probing beneath the surface of Zita’s feigned nonchalance. “Luck, indeed. A very specific kind of luck, it seems. Not many first-years are quite so… attuned to the nuances of causality. Nor are they quite so quick to avert a senator’s untimely demise.” Zita’s breath caught. She had been so careful. So anonymous. She forced a light, dismissive laugh. “Oh, that? Senator Kairys? Pure coincidence, Chancellor. I was just trying to find a quiet corner for a nap. Heard a scuffle, saw some shadows, shouted a bit. Didn’t even know who it was until later. Quite the fright, really. My chest was practically doing a Flux Shuffle.” Valerija’s gaze sharpened, a flicker of something unreadable passing through her eyes. “A nap, you say? In the archives, near a known Coterie target? How… industrious of you.” She paused, her smile never wavering, though Zita felt a distinct chill. “And your siblings, Kazys and Rūta? They speak highly of your newfound ambition. A sudden interest in the Veridian faction, I hear?” Hearing Kazys and Rūta named sharpened Zita's pulse. Valerija was fishing, drawing connections, testing the waters. She needed to be more convincing in her feigned idiocy. “Oh, them? They’re always off doing something political. Sounds dreadfully boring, if you ask me. I just told them to avoid anyone with shifty eyes. That’s always good advice, right? I mostly just want to graduate without having to actually *study* too much.” She exaggerated a yawn, stretching languidly. Valerija watched her, unblinking. Her hand, long and slender, rested on a stack of papers on her desk. Zita’s gaze drifted to a large, ornate ring on Valerija’s index finger. It was fashioned from dark, polished Viridian stone, cold and unyielding. And etched into its surface, barely visible unless one knew to look, was a small, intricate sigil: three overlapping triangles forming a stylized hourglass, with a single, sharp thorn piercing its base. The exact same symbol she had seen on the assassins’ daggers in her vision. The mark of the Silent Coterie. The truth solidified: Valerija was not merely allied with the conspirators, she commanded them. The serpent sat directly before her. Zita kept her face an unbothered mask of indolence. This was her chance. A fleeting opportunity to strike a tiny blow, to gather intelligence. Her eyes darted from the sigil to the papers beneath Valerija’s hand. There was a thick, parchment-bound dossier at the top, covered in precise, elegant script. It radiated a faint, familiar resonance, a whisper of layered enchantments. Vital. And next to it, a stack of mundane course schedules for the upcoming semester. A perfect target. “Honestly, Chancellor, all this talk of politics and anomalies is exhausting,” Zita drawled, forcing another yawn. “I think I’d much rather be napping by the sun-dials. Is there… anything else?” She met Valerija’s gaze, her own eyes wide and guileless. Valerija’s smile tightened almost imperceptibly. “Only this, Zita. Keep up the… unexpected work. The academy values its prodigies, even the… reluctant ones.” Her hand, with its tell-tale ring, gestured towards the door. The dismissal was clear. As Zita turned to leave, her mind raced. Fidget, sensing her intent, quivered with a surge of energy. This was it. A flicker of motion, barely perceptible. A micro-temporal adjustment. Zita, without breaking her lazy stride, imagined the shift, the simple displacement. Fidget, a blur of sapphire, zipped forward, its tiny hands brushing the two stacks of parchment. A faint shimmer, a whisper of displaced air, was the only indication of the impossible having occurred. [Temporal Anomaly Detected: Minor Causality Shift. Repercussions: Localized, Contained. Current Timeline Integrity: Moderate.] Valerija’s warm tone followed her. “Do enjoy your nap, Zita. The sun-dials are particularly lovely this time of year.” Zita offered a half-hearted wave over her shoulder, poised on an edge of terror and triumph. She walked out, the heavy obsidian doors swinging shut behind her with a soft *thump*. The instant the doors clicked into place, the benevolent mask dropped from Valerija’s face. Her features hardened, her eyes narrowing to twin slits of glacial fury. The sweet scent of iris in the air seemed to sour. She turned back to her desk, her long fingers reaching for the thick parchment dossier. But her fingers closed instead around the thin, flimsy paper of a first-year Advanced Temporal Theory course schedule. Her gaze dropped to the parchment, then to the script beneath it, replaced by mundane exercises. The true dossier, the one she needed for the evening’s meeting, was gone. Her knuckles whitened as she crumpled the schedule, her gaze sweeping the empty room, a silent, terrifying predator discovering its prey had dared to bite back.

An Audience with the Serpent