As always, the air around us hummed with potential, like the moment before a thunderstorm breaks. Liora stood barely an arm's length away, her presence making the floating garden seem somehow both more vast and more intimate.
"Probability is not random," she began, her voice melodic yet precise. "It is a current, flowing through reality itself. Most people merely drift in it. Some can sense its eddies and flows." Her eyes fixed on mine with uncomfortable intensity. "And then there are anomalies like you, who disrupt the current entirely."
I swallowed hard. "So I'm what, a rock in the stream?"
"More like someone who decided to swim upstream while simultaneously trying to redirect the river," she replied with a hint of amusement. "Your problem is not that you have bad luck, Asher Ardent. Your problem is that you have too many types of luck occurring simultaneously."
She began to pace around me in a slow circle. I forced myself to remain still, though every nerve ending seemed to tingle with awareness of her proximity.
"Close your eyes," she instructed.
I hesitated.
"I won't let anything happen to you," she added, a touch of impatience in her tone. "At least, nothing I don't intend."
That wasn't particularly reassuring, but I closed my eyes anyway.
"Now, feel the currents around you. Probability flows in multiple streams, past, present, future, possibility, certainty. Most people exist in a single stream. You exist in several."
"How am I supposed to feel probability?" I asked, feeling slightly ridiculous standing with my eyes closed in the middle of a floating garden.
I sensed rather than saw her move closer. "The same way you feel the air on your skin," she said, her voice suddenly much nearer. "The same way you feel gravity pulling you down."
Without warning, I felt her fingertips brush lightly against my arm. The contact sent a jolt through me like static electricity, but warmer, more alive.
"Did you feel that?" she asked.
"Y-yes," I managed, my voice embarrassingly unsteady.
"That was me redirecting the probabilistic flow around you. Now you try."
"Try what exactly?"
"Reach out with your senses. Find the currents."
I took a deep breath and tried to focus, though her proximity made that increasingly difficult. At first, I felt nothing but my own nervousness and the cool night air. Then, gradually, I became aware of something else, subtle pressures and movements, like standing in a gentle ocean with waves pushing and pulling from multiple directions.
"I think I feel something," I said uncertainly. "It's like... being in water, but the currents are moving in different directions at once."
"Good," she said, and I could hear approval in her voice. "Those are the probability streams. Now, try to direct one of them."
"How?" I asked, my eyes still closed.
"Intention," she replied simply. "Will is the rudder that steers through possibility."
I frowned in concentration, trying to mentally "push" against one of the currents I sensed. Nothing happened.
"You're trying too hard," Liora said, and I felt her hand on my shoulder, a light touch, but it sent another jolt through my system. "Probability responds to subtle guidance, not force."
I tried again, this time imagining myself gently redirecting the flow rather than fighting against it. To my surprise, I felt something shift, a barely perceptible change in the invisible pressures around me.
"Did you feel that?" she asked, excitement coloring her usually detached tone.
"Yes," I breathed, amazed. "It actually moved!"
"Open your eyes."
I did. The small pebbles that had been scattered across the platform were now arranged in a perfect circle around us.
"I did that?" I asked incredulously.
"You did," she confirmed, and for the first time, I saw genuine interest in her otherworldly eyes. "Now let's try something more challenging."
She stepped back and gestured toward a floating flower bed a few feet away. "Try to bring one of those blossoms to you."
I focused on a luminescent blue flower, trying to recapture the sensation I'd felt moments before. The currents were there, flowing around and through me, but they seemed more resistant now, less willing to be directed.
"You're thinking too much," Liora said, moving to stand beside me. "Probability isn't logical. It's intuitive."
She placed her hand on my arm again, and I felt the currents shift in response to her touch. "Like this," she murmured, guiding my arm in a subtle motion.
The blue flower trembled, then detached from its stem and floated lazily through the air toward us.
"That's incredible," I whispered as the blossom hovered between us.
"Now you try. Without my help."
I focused on another flower, a pale purple one with luminous edges. I tried to recreate the feeling of Liora's guidance, the gentle redirection rather than forceful command. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the flower quivered and slowly began to drift toward us.
"It's working!" I exclaimed, my concentration breaking in my excitement.
The moment my focus slipped, the flower shot toward us like it had been fired from a cannon, missing my head by inches and slamming into a rock behind me, where it exploded in a shower of glowing pollen.
"Sorry!" I gasped, turning around to assess the damage.
"Your control still needs work," Liora observed dryly. "Again."
We continued for what felt like hours but was probably only thirty minutes. Each time, I would almost succeed in controlling a small manipulation of probability, only to have it veer wildly out of control at the last moment. Flowers would explode, pebbles would mysteriously multiply, and in one particularly alarming instance, gravity briefly reversed in our immediate vicinity, sending us floating a few inches off the ground before crashing back down.
Throughout it all, Liora remained remarkably patient, though I could sense her growing frustration. She became more hands-on with her instruction, adjusting my posture with light touches that left my skin tingling, guiding my movements with a hand on my arm or shoulder, even once placing her hands over mine to demonstrate a particular gesture.
Each contact seemed to heighten my awareness of the probabilistic currents, but also made it increasingly difficult to concentrate on anything but her proximity.
"Let's try something different," she finally said after I accidentally caused a nearby fountain to flow downward instead of up. "Perhaps we're approaching this from the wrong angle."
She moved to stand directly in front of me, her ethereal eyes searching mine. "Your problem is that you're trying to control probability like it's external to you. But for you, it's not. It's part of you."
"So what do I do?" I asked, trying not to be distracted by how close she was standing.
"Stop trying to master it, and start trying to harmonize with it," she said. "Like this."
She closed her eyes, and I watched in awe as the air around her began to shimmer with faint, multicolored light. The floating platforms of the Rift Garden seemed to synchronize their movements, orbiting around our position as if Liora had suddenly become the center of gravity.
"Now you," she said, opening her eyes. "Don't force it. Just... be with it."
I closed my eyes again and tried to follow her instruction. Instead of pushing against the probabilistic currents, I imagined myself becoming part of them, letting them flow through me rather than around me.
To my astonishment, I felt something change, a harmonization, just as Liora had described. The chaotic, conflicting pressures I'd been sensing began to align, moving in concert rather than opposition.
"Yes," Liora whispered, her voice tight with excitement. "That's it. Now open your eyes."
I did, and gasped. The platform we stood on was now surrounded by a gentle swirl of glowing particles, pollen, dust, and tiny fragments of stone all orbiting us like miniature planets around a sun.
"I'm doing this?" I asked in wonder.
"We are," she corrected, her eyes bright with an emotion I couldn't identify. "Our energies are aligned."
She took a step closer, and I felt the harmony between us intensify. The swirling particles moved faster, their glow brightening.
"This is remarkable," she murmured, more to herself than to me. "I've never felt probability respond like this before."
She reached out, placing a hand on my chest directly over my heart. The touch sent a shock wave through my system, and the swirling particles flared brilliantly in response.
"Your heart rate affects the flow," she observed clinically, though there was a flush to her cheeks that hadn't been there before. "Try to control your pulse."
"That's... not really something I can control," I managed, particularly not with her hand where it was.
She tilted her head, studying me with that same mysterious emotion in her eyes. "Fascinating. The more agitated you become, the more the currents intensify."
Before I could respond, she took another step closer. We were now barely inches apart, her hand still resting on my chest. I could smell that intoxicating scent of rain and possibility that seemed to surround her.
"We should test the limits of this resonance," she said, her voice lower now, almost husky.
"Is that... safe?" I asked, my own voice embarrassingly strained.
A small smile curved her lips. "Probably not," she admitted. "But isn't that the point of your existence? To challenge probability itself?"
She removed her hand from my chest but didn't step back. Instead, she placed both hands on my shoulders and nudged me slightly to the right.
"Stand here," she instructed. "I want to try something."
I complied, my mind racing with confusion and a dozen other emotions I couldn't begin to sort out. The swirling particles around us had formed a tight vortex now, moving so quickly they created a continuous ring of light.
"Now," she said, "I'm going to release my control of your luck entirely. Just for a moment. I want to see what happens when our energies interact without restriction."
"Wait, is that a good…"
But it was too late. I felt a sudden shift, like a dam breaking, as whatever constraint Liora had been maintaining suddenly dissolved. The probabilistic currents surged around me, wild and untamed.
One of the floating platforms above us jerked violently, tilting to a precarious angle. A shower of pebbles and soil rained down, and I instinctively stepped forward to shield Liora, forgetting that she was a literal embodiment of fortune and hardly needed my protection.
My foot caught on something, a root or stone, and I stumbled. For a suspended moment, time seemed to slow as I fell forward, directly toward Liora. Her eyes widened in surprise, perhaps the first genuine surprise I'd ever seen on her face.
Then I crashed into her, sending us both tumbling to the ground. By some miracle (or curse), our fall aligned perfectly, and as we hit the platform, our lips met in an accidental kiss.
The moment our lips touched, the world exploded.
Not metaphorically. Literally. A shockwave of pure probabilistic energy burst outward from where we lay, rippling through reality itself. The floating platforms of the Rift Garden spun wildly, some colliding with devastating force while others shot off into the distance as if fired from cannons. The carefully cultivated plants either withered instantly or grew explosively, vines thickening to the size of tree trunks in seconds.
Above us, the very fabric of the sky seemed to tear, revealing glimpses of impossible geometries and colors that had no place in our reality.
I pulled away from Liora, horrified. Her expression mirrored my own shock, her perfect composure shattered for the first time.
"What have we done?" I gasped.
Before she could answer, another platform crashed into ours, sending us both rolling in opposite directions. I heard shouts, Finn, Gavril and Elias, I realized with horror. They had been watching from the observation platform, which was now tilting dangerously, threatening to spill them into the void below.
"We have to stop this!" I shouted to Liora over the cacophony of destruction.
She was already on her feet, her hands extended as she visibly struggled to contain the chaos we had unleashed. "I can't!" she called back, genuine fear in her voice. "It's beyond my control now!"
The vortex of energy continued to expand, consuming more of the garden with each passing second. I could see Elias attempting to use some kind of shield spell to protect himself and my friends, but even his considerable power seemed insignificant against the maelstrom we had created.
Just as I was certain we were all about to be torn apart by the very forces of probability itself, everything stopped.
Not gradually, not with a final explosion, everything simply... ceased. The floating platforms froze in mid-collision. The wild growth of plants halted as if time itself had been suspended. Even the tear in the sky above us remained static, a wound in reality that neither healed nor expanded.
A profound silence fell over the Rift Garden.
Then, from the main entrance, a figure appeared. Tall and imposing, dressed in robes of such perfect black that they seemed to absorb the light around them. His face was angular, almost skeletal, with eyes as cold and empty as the space between stars.
He walked, no, glided, toward us, each step precise and measured. The chaos we had unleashed parted before him like water around the bow of a ship, reality reknitting itself in his wake.
"Professor Nihil," Liora whispered, an emotion I'd never heard from her before coloring her voice: fear.
The man didn't acknowledge her words. Instead, he surveyed the frozen destruction around us with an expression of clinical detachment. When he finally spoke, his voice was soft yet carried perfectly, as if he were speaking directly into my mind.
"How predictable," he said, "that chaos would result from the union of disorder and its enabler."
He made a subtle gesture with one pale hand, and I felt the air grow heavy, pressing down on me until I could barely stand. Liora seemed similarly affected, her usual graceful posture compromised as she visibly struggled against the invisible force.
"The headmistress will be most interested in this development," Professor Nihil continued, his tone conversational despite the crushing pressure he was exerting.
With another gesture, the pressure increased until my knees buckled. I fought to remain conscious as darkness crept in at the edges of my vision. The last thing I saw before blackness claimed me was Professor Nihil's cold smile as he looked down at Liora and myself.
"Come," he said, though whether he was speaking to us or commanding reality itself was unclear. "It's time you both understood your place in the greater design."
And then there was nothing but darkness, and the sensation of being moved through space like a piece on a cosmic chessboard.