SERAPHINA’S POV
By the time the sun climbed high enough to burn the last of the morning haze away, I had added ‘study date’ to the increasingly growing list of my favorite things about my new relationship with Kieran.
He and I sat shoulder to shoulder at the long table in his office, the curtains drawn, the doors locked.
The only light came from the desk lamp and the laptop's muted glow between us.
The New Moon Institute’s offline database, which Alois had gifted me, was open, its folders branching into increasingly obscure classifications the deeper we went.
Psychic theory.
Cognitive fractures.
Soul-adjacent phenomena.
And then...
Rituals.
Not the modern kind. Not meditation techniques or grounding exercises disguised as mysticism. These entries were old. Fragmentary. Written in language that felt…cautious, as if the authors had known that even recording the information was dangerous.
“Soul mending,” I murmured, my fingers slowing over the keyboard.
