"A problem?" I repeated, my voice sounding embarrassingly strained. Behind me, I could sense Finn and Gavril frozen in place, probably debating whether to intervene or run for help. "I've been at this Academy for barely two weeks. How could I possibly be a problem for you?"
Liora's eyes narrowed while books on nearby shelves trembled slightly.
"You exist," she stated simply. "Your very presence disrupts the natural flow of probability within the Academy." She lifted one slender hand, gesturing at the space between us. "Even now, the threads of fortune are tangling around you in ways they shouldn't."
I tried to process her words, but my brain seemed to be short-circuiting. "Threads of fortune?"
"You can't see them," she said, not as a question but as a fact. Then, with a slight tilt of her head, "Or can you?"
Before I could answer, she stepped closer, and I instinctively retreated until my back pressed against a bookshelf. She raised her hand toward my face, not quite touching me but close enough that I could feel a strange tingling sensation across my skin.
"Interesting," she murmured. "You have no control, yet you're pulling on them constantly."
Finn finally found his voice. "We didn't come here looking for trouble," he said, sounding far more confident than I felt. "We were just researching."
Liora didn't even glance in his direction. "You," she said, still focused entirely on me, "are causing disruptions across the entire Academy. My domain is being stretched thin trying to contain the anomalies your presence creates."
"I'm sorry?" I offered weakly. "I don't exactly do it on purpose."
Something flickered across her face, irritation, perhaps, or curiosity. "No, you don't. That's the problem." She finally took a step back, allowing me to breathe again. "If it were deliberate, I could simply counter it. But your chaos is... authentic. Genuine. Unfiltered."
"That's... good?" I ventured.
"It's unprecedented," she corrected. "And exhausting. Do you have any idea how much of my power I've had to expend just to prevent your random luck fluctuations from causing serious damage?"
I blinked at her. "You've been... containing my luck?"
She scoffed, a sound that somehow managed to be both melodious and deeply disdainful. "Someone had to. Otherwise, your little accident in the dining hall might have transformed half the students permanently, or your duel with Valentina could have torn a hole in reality."
Memories of both incidents flashed through my mind, the bizarre transformations, the unexplained interactions of magic. I had assumed it was just my usual terrible luck, but if Liora was saying she'd been actively preventing worse outcomes...
"Oh," I said, feeling suddenly very small. "Thank you?"
"Don't thank me," she snapped. "I didn't do it for you. I did it to preserve the integrity of my domain. Fortune and probability are delicate systems. They're not toys to be played with by someone who doesn't understand the consequences."
"I never asked for this," I found myself saying, a flicker of anger pushing through my confusion. "I've spent my entire life being jerked around by 'luck' that I can't control. If you know so much about it, why don't you just... fix it?"
The air around us grew still, charged with a tension that made the hairs on my arms stand on end. The globe of light illuminating the area flickered, casting shadows across Liora's face.
"Fix it?" she repeated, her voice dangerously soft. "You think I haven't tried? From the moment you entered the Academy, I've been attempting to isolate your anomaly, to understand why your connection to my domain is so fundamentally... broken."
"Broken?" I echoed, my heart sinking. "There's something wrong with me?"
"There's something different about you," she corrected, her expression softening by a fraction. "Your connection to probability doesn't follow the normal rules. It's as if you exist in multiple states of fortune simultaneously, both impossibly lucky and catastrophically unlucky in the same moment."
Gavril cleared his throat. "That sounds like a quantum state," he suggested cautiously. "Schrödinger's luck, if you will."
Liora's gaze flickered to him momentarily, assessing. "An apt metaphor, secondary Moridian," she acknowledged. "His probability collapses only upon observation, but the state itself is fundamentally unstable."
I was struggling to keep up with the conversation. "So you're saying I'm... quantum?"
"I'm saying you're impossible," she replied. "And yet, here you are."
"Here I am," I agreed, a strange calm settling over me despite the absurdity of the situation. "So what happens now? Are you going to report me to Lady Althea? Get me expelled?"
Liora stared at me for a long moment, those impossible eyes seeming to see through me. "No," she finally said. "I'm going to teach you."
Whatever response I'd been expecting, that wasn't it. "Teach me what?"
"Control," she stated simply. "If I can't fix your connection to my domain, perhaps I can teach you to manage it. To stop pulling on threads you don't even see."
Finn stepped forward cautiously. "Lady Althea said you two can't interact directly. Something about unpredictable consequences."
"Lady Althea," Liora said with a hint of derision, "is overly cautious. Besides, we're already interacting, and the library hasn't collapsed yet." She glanced around as if to confirm this fact, then looked back at me. "Tomorrow. After your quarantine ends. Meet me at the Rift Garden at night."
"The Rift Garden?" I repeated. "Isn't that where the gravity is unstable?"
"Precisely," she said. "If your luck does cause problems, the damage will be contained within an area already designed to handle chaos."
Before I could respond, she turned to walk away, her movements so graceful they seemed impossible.
"Wait," I called after her. "Why are you helping me?"
She paused, glancing back over her shoulder. "I told you. Your existence is disrupting my domain. This isn't kindness; it's self-preservation." But there was something in her eyes, something almost like curiosity, that suggested there might be more to it than that.
And then she was gone, disappearing between the towering bookshelves with unerring grace.
The three of us stood in stunned silence for several moments.
"Well," Finn finally said, "that was not how I expected this excursion to end."
"Personifications don't typically offer private lessons," Gavril added, sounding both impressed and concerned. "This is... unusual."
I leaned back against the bookshelf, trying to process what had just happened. "She said I'm impossible," I murmured, more to myself than to them. "That my luck is broken somehow."
"Broken or special," Finn pointed out. "Either way, she seemed more interested than angry."
"She called me a problem," I reminded him.
"A problem she's choosing to solve personally," Gavril said, his expression thoughtful. "Rather than delegating to another faculty member or reporting you being here to the Headmistress."
I wasn't sure if that was supposed to make me feel better. Liora might be the personification of luck, but she didn't exactly seem thrilled about my existence. Teaching me control sounded more like a containment strategy than a gesture of goodwill.
"We should go," I said, suddenly feeling exhausted. "Before Lady Althea realizes I've left my room."
Finn nodded. "Definitely. The last thing we need is another meeting with a literal force of nature."
We made our way back through the Infinite Library, past shelves that seemed to lean in closer as we passed, as if curious about our conversation. Just before we reached the entrance, I noticed a small book that hadn't been there before, hovering slightly above a nearby table.
Its cover was a shifting pattern of greens and golds, and it seemed to pulse with a gentle light. Without thinking, I reached out and took it.
"What's that?" Gavril asked, peering over my shoulder.
I opened the book to find blank pages that slowly began to fill with words as I watched:
A Beginner's Guide to Probability Manipulation
"I think," I said slowly, "it's homework."
****
Back in my dormitory room, I sat cross-legged on my bed, staring at the book that had quite literally presented itself to me. The pages were no longer blank; they were filled with dense text and diagrams that shifted and changed whenever I tried to focus on them too hard.
It was giving me a headache, but I couldn't stop reading.
According to the book, luck wasn't just a concept or a feeling, it was a real force that flowed through the world like a river, influencing events in subtle ways. Most people drifted along its currents without noticing, experiencing good or bad fortune as if by chance.
But some people—people like me, apparently—had a more direct connection to that flow. We didn't just experience luck; we interacted with it, sometimes pulling it off course or creating eddies that affected others around us.
The book described techniques for visualizing these currents, for feeling them without seeing them directly. It outlined exercises for gently nudging probability rather than yanking it violently off course.
Luck responds to intention, one passage read. Even unconscious intention carries weight. The first step to control is awareness.
I wasn't sure what that meant, exactly, but I couldn't shake the feeling that this book—this impossibly convenient book that had appeared just when I needed it—was meant to prepare me for tomorrow's meeting with Liora.
A knock at my door startled me out of my reading. "Come in."
Gavril stepped inside, his expression troubled. "I've been thinking about your situation," he said without preamble.
"Please, no more thinking," I groaned, falling backward onto my bed.
"This is serious, Asher," he insisted, sitting on the edge of my desk. "Personifications don't usually take direct interest in students. They teach classes, yes, but private lessons? It's unheard of."
I sat up again. "I'm getting the sense that a lot of things about me are unheard of."
"That's my point exactly," Gavril said, leaning forward. "The Moridian family archives contain records of Academy students going back centuries. I've never read about anyone with your... particular relationship with luck."
"Is this supposed to make me feel better?" I asked.
"No," he admitted. "It's supposed to make you cautious. Liora might be the personification of luck, but that doesn't mean she has your best interests at heart."
I thought about her words in the library, This isn't kindness, it's self-preservation. "I know that," I said quietly. "But what choice do I have? If she's right, if my luck really is 'broken' or whatever she called it, then I need to learn how to control it before I hurt someone."
Gavril didn't look reassured. "Just promise me you'll be careful tomorrow. Don't go alone."
"She specifically asked for me," I pointed out.
"Then Finn and I will wait nearby," he insisted. "Just in case."
I was touched by his concern, even if I thought it unnecessary. What could Liora possibly want from me, beyond preventing my chaotic luck from causing more disruptions? I was nobody special; just a kid with a weird magical problem that happened to intersect with her domain.
"Fine," I agreed, if only to ease his mind. "You can wait at a safe distance. But don't interfere unless something actually goes wrong."
Gavril nodded, seemingly satisfied. "Get some rest," he said, standing to leave. "Something tells me you'll need all your strength tomorrow."
After he left, I continued reading until my eyes grew heavy. I must have fallen asleep at some point, because I dreamed of green eyes and shifting patterns, of invisible threads that I could almost see if I just looked at them the right way.
When I woke, the first light of dawn was filtering through my window. The book was closed on my chest, and my mind felt oddly clear, as if I'd absorbed information even while sleeping.
Today, I would meet with Liora again, not as a passing curiosity or a problem to be solved, but as her student.
I just hoped my luck wouldn't choose that exact moment to demonstrate why Lady Althea had been so concerned about us interacting in the first place.