Aria sat in her chambers, watching the setting sun paint her white walls in shades of gold and crimson.
The colors reminded her of that moment in the garden - of Melisa's spell wreathing that lizard (Sir Scales, was it?) in red light before...
[Stop it,] she commanded herself, but the image played in her mind again anyway. The way the lizard's eyes had glazed over, how its tiny body had gone still. Just like that - from alive to dead in the span of a heartbeat.
She'd been watching that scene on repeat in her mind all afternoon, like a particularly morbid theater performance she couldn't look away from. But there had to be a solution. There had to be. Melisa's magic had already done the impossible once, bringing her father back from death's doorstep. Surely she could do it again?
[And if not her, then someone else. We have the greatest minds in magical theory right here, in Syux.]
A knock at her door interrupted her spiraling thoughts.
