Boa would emerge from her hiding place beneath his bedding, coiling around his arm as he sat in meditation pose. Her presence was comforting in a way he hadn't expected.
"What did you see today?" he would whisper to her, and though she couldn't answer in words, her responses—a tightening of her coils, a flick of her tongue, a subtle shift in position—often provided insights he might have missed.
He discovered patterns quickly. Certain areas of the monastery were protected by static wards—predictable, designed to keep students out. These were the standard protections around dangerous equipment, unstable magical experiments, or valuable but non-critical resources. They followed textbook patterns, efficient but unremarkable.
