Thud... clatter...
"Did you find it?" I asked, turning back from between the cardboard boxes. I brushed the dust cloud off my clothes and body, coughing slightly from the particles floating in the air.
"No, not on this side," Lydia answered from across the room.
The light above us blinked and flickered weakly.
Mana stones, if kept inactive for a long time, wouldn't work properly when you tried to use them. Just like in this case. The pale, unstable glow barely illuminated the cramped storage space.
I'd been searching through the place where Seraphina kept the belongings of the children of this orphanage.
Seraphina and her predecessor had a system. They would only give the kids their belongings back under two conditions: if they decided to enroll in an academy far away from Larkshade, or if they were moving out of town by getting adopted.
There hadn't been a single adoption in this orphanage since it started thirty years ago.
