[Act II: Buried Memories]

Three days had passed since Destiny. Blackie hadn't left her rented room. She spent hours curled on a faded armchair, lost in thought, subsisting on reheated freezer meals. What occupied her mind remained a mystery…

Then, as dusk painted the room, sorting through old things, her gaze snagged on the calendar. Tomorrow was new student orientation at the academy.

Silence. Three days since the anomaly at the assessment, and no word had come. No response. Slowly, Blackie rose from the chair. She stood motionless for a moment, then yanked open a drawer and began packing.

She decided she'd be at the train station at dawn – waiting for a chance encounter. When despair is a swamp swallowing you whole, even the faintest glimmer becomes the sun.

[She planned to run headlong into the wall before dawn itself awoke.]

Her fingers brushed a faded bear sticker on the corner of her half-packed suitcase – cut from mission report scraps by her mother years ago. Memory cracked like thin ice, reflecting a winter twilight when she was six. Standing by the door, clutching that tiny bear shape, waiting for the parents who promised to take her home.

Dusk deepened, snow fell, but the promised return never came.

Years later, a crisp-uniformed official stood at the orphanage gate, his cold tone delivering the brutal truth: her parents had vanished on an outpost mission.

That night, she sat alone on the orphanage roof, watching distant lights. No tidal wave of grief crashed over her; just a quiet acceptance. Perhaps childhood memories were too faint, or time had already dulled the ache. It wasn't a heartbreak, just a recurring pang, like ripples, when she witnessed other families' warmth.

She'd searched, of course. Chased whispers and rumors. But dead end after dead end finally snuffed out the last spark of hope. The weight of simply surviving left no room for chasing ghosts. So, she grew up within the orphanage walls.

Sorting her belongings, she found a classroom photo – her only tangible memory of school. Children from broken homes and welfare checks huddled together like strays seeking warmth. Below it, a yellowed timetable: "Survival Skills," "Emotional Growth," "Basic Literacy."

She remembered the blinds in the life skills room, always sitting third row, far right, in the shadows. Inside her pencil case, faded fluorescent tally marks recorded each "Emotional Guidance" session completed.

The glow had long since sickened to a grayish-green, like the scar tissue over her heart.

Sorrow never truly vanishes. It calcifies, settling into the marrow, subtly warping the soul. In the cafeteria line, she always took the bruised apple. In group photos, she stood on the far right, poised to step back into shadow.

Even jogging, she'd shorten her stride before a corridor corner, body perpetually angled, ready to turn defensively.

[To destroy a person, first destroy their childhood. The rest follows naturally.]

The week she turned fourteen, she slung a frayed canvas bag over her shoulder and stepped through the orphanage gates.

A girl with no magic, no marketable skills, could only drift through odd jobs in the old district. Eventually, she landed a night shift at a convenience store and found a room in the crumbling block across the street.

Her roommate was a woman in her early thirties, prone to smudged mascara resembling dark circles. Pointing at the mold creeping up the damp wall while hanging her bra, she'd sigh, "This dump? Even the geckos croak before the rainy season ends."

The older woman often pulled long shifts, but she'd leave meal boxes in the fridge before her late nights.

Sticky notes in bubbly handwriting adorned them: "Growing girls need fuel!" or "Wear light colors in spring. Mint green would suit your eyes."

Reflecting now, Blackie realized she had known kindness… these scattered embers of warmth had seen her through the grey years. Reaching into her pencil case, she pulled out a fountain pen. She unscrewed the cap and wrote on a slightly yellowed sticky note:

"If I turn to stardust, break a willow branch and forget."

The ritual of goodbye felt like clutching sand. The crease in the paper was her final tenderness, a wish for her roommate not to worry. The note's corner curled upwards, like a paper boat ready to sail.

Moonlight measured the angle of memory through the thin curtains. Her gaze settled on an envelope tucked away – a stiff, brown paper thing, its seal frayed and bleached white at the edges.

The back bore a faded pink ink stain. The orphanage teacher had pressed it into her palm at their parting, offering no explanation.

She never knew how to store memories, nor how to settle accounts with the past. Right now, it felt like if she didn't unfold this crease, the little girl with pigtails would stay forever inside the envelope, smiling back at her.

Blackie stopped packing, staring blankly at the darkening sky outside the window.

"But this time… it really might be goodbye…" The whisper hung in the air. Carefully, she peeled open the yellowed envelope.

Inside, nestled between the pages, was a faded graduation photo. On its back, the orphanage director's neat script: "Spring always comes."

Her fingers trembled. So this was what goodbye could look like…

Moonlight spilled over the aged seal, the dried paste glowing with a faint yellow halo that blurred into the tear trembling on her lashes.

[Make peace with time. Let the free winds carry you further.]

Blackie finished packing in the quiet, gazing at the room that had been hers for four years. A pang of reluctance struck her.

"If no academy takes me tomorrow, I might be back here for years yet," she suddenly murmured, a bitter smile twisting her lips, thick with unspoken melancholy.

She reached up and gently touched the cat-paw earring on her right earlobe. The silver pendant glowed blue. A brilliant pentagram unfurled on the floorboards beneath her feet – the earring was, in fact, a portable dimensional storage device.

Like an invisible hand folding it away, the pentagram compressed and vanished into the center of the magic circle.

Moonlight saturated the walls as Blackie fell back onto her metal-framed bed. The rusted skeleton groaned, stirring dust motes huddled in the wall cracks.

Suddenly, she lifted her left hand, fingers slowly curling in the moonlight – as if trying to grasp the flowing sands of the Milky Way: "This time… maybe it'll be different…"

She didn't notice it. As her whispered words faded, high in the mildew-speckled corner of the ceiling, a single green shoot responded to her gesture, silently pushing through a crack.

That emerald hue hung suspended in the peeling plaster, like the lone survivor of a spilled paint palette – the only splash of life.

[Wildflowers are always the first to read the signs of spring.]