Namu was exhausted. Spirit Magick Three and Symbols One that morning had taken a toll on his brain, even though both classes covered basics. It was going to be a challenging year. It didn’t help that he was still drained from his time with Mr. Vero the day before, which hadn’t fixed his problem.

Now he had an hour break before meeting Mr. Vero again for another round of what he was sure would be the same as what had happened the day before.

Shoulders pounded into him as too many students tried to go up the stairs from the basement, heading outside, to their rooms, or wherever else for their breaks. Namu didn’t understand why they didn’t stagger schedules. It wasn’t as if the school was too full of students, but it was still annoying when the halls were brimming with them, which was why he was excited to get to his room to relax for a moment before heading back down to the basement to meet with Mr. Vero again.

The giant TV placed over the top of the wall that was scribbled in white cursive flickered as Namu arrived at the top of the stairs with a number of other students. The scribbles were the names of deceased witches meant to honor them. He hadn’t known any of them personally, but he knew Lily’s dad’s name would be there one day.

The TV had been recently placed there, another effort to blend technology into the old school, which wasn’t working out for the best. The screen flickered a few more times as he walked by it, which meant something was going to happen that he didn’t want to deal with. A display of how blending old and new sometimes didn’t work.

Namu couldn’t cut across the room in time.

From the corner of his eye, he saw one of the white names light up as if a flashlight were behind it. The TV flickered again, becoming static before a ghost emerged and floated to the floor; the ghost of the person whose name had been lit up with projection spirit magick. This magick was mainly used during balls, speeches, or even some history classes to illustrate some aspect of the deceased person. But adding projection magick to technology obviously came with some glitches: sometimes making it turn on itself and chose a random name carved on the wall—names that had been put there with memory magick.

The projection magick and memory magick combined with techno magick to create projection spirits who sometimes had minds of their own, especially a particular few. They would eventually flicker in and out, but how long they lasted always varied.

Namu wasn’t a fan.

One of these spirits was now roaming among the students and harassing them.

Mister Quivver (Mister spelled out with each distinct letter, according to his badgering) was a spirit the same height as most of the younger students with a glare that could burn a soul. He kept trying to jab at the foreheads and shoulders of the students who passed him as he shouted about how techno magick would be the end of them all, although he was thankful that it had allowed him to come alive again and spout his nonsense.

A few students laughed.

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Namu scurried away to the stairwell that led to his hall. He didn’t entirely disagree with the spirit projection. He hated how people were so distracted and worried about pixel magick and apps when there were bigger things to be worried about, like the door in his room. Because of that distraction, and because apparently, according to Lily, people were idiotic enough to give up bits of their soul to use magickal apps in the non-magickal and magickal community, he was sure something bad would happen. It annoyed him how often he heard students talk about all the different kinds of apps, along with some created by a student named Koz. Namu was sure this Koz guy could find a better use of his time, but at least, Koz’s apps didn’t ask for the absurd price of pixels from a soul for payment. Why would anyone do that when they didn’t know how much a pixel of a soul really was?

But maybe he was being too harsh, once again irritated by his own difficulties, so he was taking it out on everyone else. Would he be like them if he weren’t already missing pieces of his soul?

Something made him stop. It wasn’t the fact that he was alone on the stairs. He was expecting that. It wasn’t common for students to go to their rooms during breaks since they spent most of their time in their rooms at night doing their online non-magickal classes. It was that something smelled weird. Something smelled too nice. Too alluring.

When he turned the corner to Raido hall, he saw an odd, familiar mist that he recognized as an astral mist. A transformation type of magick that one could only perform using a drink that turned their bodies into a soul-like mist. It scooted right past him, then he heard a clang from behind.

A small black cauldron, small enough to fit in his hand, had fallen from somewhere. Someone must have made a concoction to turn themselves into an astral mist. Maybe a student was practicing what they learned from their Transformation Drinks and Remedies class?

He shook his head. Another thing that wasn’t his concern. He just needed to get to his room so he could relax and clear his mind before he had to join the swarm of students again.

He left the cauldron and headed to his room, number 114. It wasn’t that far because the doors on his hall counted off by threes, making his room precisely in the middle.

He pulled out his golden key to unlock it. The click of the lock and the turn of the knob sent a calm wave through him the moment he entered his room. That feeling grew when he saw how clean and neat the room was. He had most of his things glued down with glue magick so the spirit sprites wouldn’t steal or mess anything up.

He plopped down on his bed, arms spread wide, and stared at the ceiling, wishing it was the sunny sky. He could almost hear the construction workers and machinery in his mind, dissolving his thoughts. He was tempted to take out his phone and listen to the videos he had of past summers working with his dad again.

Then beeping from across the room called for his attention.

He threw his head back, extending his neck further to exhale all the air from his lungs. He knew who it was—his brother, who knew when his breaks were and loved to call him up to bother him.

Namu kicked his legs up and strutted across the room to grab his tablet off his desk. When it wouldn’t budge, he cursed, undid the glue spell, and hit the talk button.

The face of his eight-year-old brother Minis popped up on the screen. His skin was darker than Namu’s, his eyes a dark, mischievous green, and his smile beaming.

“What do you want?”

“Just wanted to see you! And Lily. H… how is Lily?” His brother was trying to look over his shoulder through the screen for their friend. Minis always teased Namu about Lily and called them hot all the time, which they were. But Namu had expressed more than a hundred times that they were only friends.

“Lily is Lily. They’re fine. What’s up?”

Now his brother looked bored. “Nothing. Just wanted to bother you.”

Namu went back over to the bed and fell onto his back. “Of course. Wouldn’t have expected anything else. How’s Dad?”