Sonder took a small step closer.
"I need your help," she said. "To find something."
Grimalkin's eyes narrowed. "What is this something?"
Sonder reached into her robe and drew out the shard.
The moment it caught the light, the air seemed to shift,
a thin, almost imperceptible hush settling over the room.
The shard's darkness gleamed in its strange way, as if it swallowed the brightness around it.
Grimalkin's breath hitched. Her eyes locked onto the fragment. Her hand twitched, fingers lifting as if they might reach for it without permission.
"Can you help me?" Sonder asked, her voice steady but firm.
The woman blinked hard, drew back her hand, and let out a short, sharp breath.
"That," she said, "is not an ordinary thing."
"No," Sonder replied quietly. "I need to find the rest of it, if there are any. I don't know how many. I don't even know where to start looking."
Grimalkin studied her for a long moment.
"You've come to the wrong person if you're hoping for miracles. I'm no grand archmage. But I'll give it my best. That's all."
Sonder frowned, trying to stay hopeful.
She set the shard on the table. Grimalkin moved with deliberate care, as if touching it too quickly might give it reason to bite.
She lowered herself into a seat.
Without a word, Grimalkin began to work.
She fetched a shallow brass bowl from a low shelf, set it on the table, and filled it with a fine gray powder that wasn't quite sand. Then she took a feather, dipped it in water, and began tracing lines into the powder's surface.
Sonder watched in silence. The feather moved with ceremonial precision, spiraling inward, then outward again, and finally snapping in neat diagonals.
But it all seemed meaningless.
The air didn't stir. No pressure built. No power rose.
It was… nothing.
Grimalkin then lit a thin stick of incense and passed it once, twice, three times over the bowl. The smoke curled upward lazily, then dissolved into the rafters.
Was this all for show? Or was her magic weaker than Sonder had imagined?
But then Grimalkin's entire demeanor shifted. Her hand returned to the powder, and the lines she drew now were tighter, sharper, exact.
Her lips moved carefully around three words:
"Sag Ere Sha."
The shard answered immediately.
A thread of blue bled from its center, unfurling like ink in clear water.
This was nothing like the soft, hollow rituals from before.
This was real.
Sonder didn't need an explanation. She'd seen something like this once before. Dico spells weren't exactly subtle.
She had heard Sag once, it must have been tied to finding things, but since she hadn't been given the word yet, she couldn't fully understand it.
Then came the second spell. Grimalkin spoke no Dico words this time. She simply closed her eyes, tilted her head slightly, and let the shadow-thread pull her mind along.
It must have been a scrying spell, one for distant sight.
Sonder stayed still.
She didn't know what Grimalkin saw or where her mind had gone, but the woman's eyes were fixed on something far away.
Whatever she was seeing, it was out there.
Another shard.
Or several.
Somewhere in the world.