“Normal is safe,” Grachi replied, brushing her dark hair back. She looked out the window at the palm trees of Miami. The sun was warm. The world was peaceful.

Grachi, Daniel, and Eliás stood on the roof of the Escolarium, watching the sunrise paint the Miami sky in shades of orange and pink.

“We were always a team,” she said. “We just didn’t know it yet.”

He wasn’t looking for trouble. He was looking for a spring, a specific copper coil for a machine that measured magical resonance. But what he found was a mirror. It wasn’t a normal mirror. When he looked into it, his reflection didn’t copy him. Instead, it stepped closer, pressed a hand against the glass from the other side, and whispered one word: Grachi .

“Normal is boring,” said Mati, her little sister, now twelve and even snarkier, as she levitated a spoonful of cereal into her mouth.

Her amulet, which had been dead stone, cracked open. A beam of pure, silver-pink light shot from her chest, not attacking the Silencer, but reminding her. The Silencer gasped. For a flash, she saw herself as a child, before the void, holding a single spark of magic she had been forced to extinguish. A tear rolled down her stone-gray cheek.

“It’s not just the mirrors,” he said, showing her his phone. The screen was cracked, but the image was clear: a photo from a security camera in the Escolarium’s basement. A dark figure, cloaked in shadows, standing in front of the old mirror.