# Chapter 2: Breaking and Entering (and Accidentally Changing History)
Stormweaver Tower rose from the cliffs outside Ravenport like a massive middle finger extended toward the gods themselves. Seven stories of black stone and crystalline windows, it housed the largest private collection of magical artifacts in the known world—and, more importantly to Kira's current financial situation, seventeen Heartstones that could solve every money problem she'd ever had.
If she lived long enough to spend them, of course.
"I still think this is a terrible idea," Finn whispered as they crouched behind a cluster of wind-twisted trees at the base of the tower. Rain pelted their faces with increasing intensity, and lightning split the sky with the kind of frequency that suggested the storm was building toward something catastrophic.
"All my best ideas are terrible," Kira replied, pulling a set of specialized tools from her waterproof pack. Each instrument had cost her a small fortune and represented years of careful cultivation of contacts in the magical underworld. "That's what makes them brilliant."
"No, what makes them brilliant is when we don't die horribly," Finn corrected, wiping rain from his eyes as he studied the tower's imposing facade. "Right now, this just qualifies as terrible."
The tower's wards shimmered in the storm light like aurora curtains—beautiful, deadly, and according to her research, keyed to respond to hostile intent. Which was why Kira had spent the last week convincing herself that she wasn't technically stealing. She was liberating. Redistributing. Performing a public service by preventing the hoarding of magical resources.
Her conscience wasn't buying it, but her conscience had never paid the rent or put food on the table. And it certainly hadn't been there during the dark years after she'd fled her old life, when she'd learned that survival sometimes required compromising your principles.
"Ward analysis?" she asked, more to distract herself from uncomfortable memories than because she needed confirmation.
"Electrical field around the base, probably lethal to anyone without magical shields," Finn recited, water dripping steadily from his red hair. He'd memorized her reconnaissance notes with the same thoroughness he applied to lock mechanisms. "Illusion maze covering the first three floors—you go in thinking you're climbing stairs, you end up walking in circles in the basement until you die of thirst or boredom. Scrying ward on the fourth floor that alerts him to any intrusion and probably records everything for later viewing. Binding ward on the fifth floor that traps intruders until he decides what to do with them, which historically has ranged from 'turn them over to the authorities' to 'use them for magical experiments.'"
"The experiments thing is probably just rumors," Kira said, though she made a mental note to avoid the fifth floor entirely.
"And floors six and seven are question marks," Finn continued, "because nobody's ever made it that far and lived to tell about it."
"Except his housekeeping staff, presumably."
"Bold of you to assume he has housekeeping staff. For all we know, he just magics the dust away every morning." Finn shifted uncomfortably, his leather armor creaking. "Kira, I have to ask—are you absolutely certain this is about the money?"
The question hit closer to home than she wanted to admit. "What else would it be about?"
"I don't know. But you've been acting strange ever since that letter arrived. And tonight, watching you stare at him in the tavern..." Finn shook his head. "You looked like you recognized him."
Kira's hand moved unconsciously to her wrist, where the crescent moon scar throbbed with phantom pain. "I've never met Darian Stormweaver in my life."
"That's not what I said."
Before she could formulate a response that wouldn't involve admitting things she wasn't ready to admit, another bolt of lightning illuminated the tower, and Kira activated the first of her ward-breaking tools—a small crystal that had cost her three months' worth of jobs and hummed with barely contained magical energy.
"Ready?" she asked.
Finn sighed, checking his own equipment one final time. "I'm going to die in this storm, aren't I?"
"Probably not. I'd put your odds at... sixty-forty in favor of survival."
"That's not reassuring."
"Sixty percent isn't bad!" Kira pressed the crystal against the tower's foundation, feeling the electrical ward's power flow through the stone like a living thing. "Besides, if you die, I'll split your share of the profits with your sister."
"I don't have a sister."
"I'll buy you one posthumously. Maybe twins."
The electrical ward collapsed with a sound like breaking glass mixed with a tuning fork being struck by lightning. The sensation ran up Kira's arm and made her teeth ache, but the barrier was down. One down, approximately forty-five to go.
Getting inside the tower took an hour of careful ward manipulation, creative interpretation of magical theory, and what Finn generously called "inspired improvisation" but what anyone else would have recognized as pure, stubborn luck mixed with skills she'd learned in a previous life she tried not to think about.
The illusion maze on the lower floors was particularly clever—not just a simple confusion spell, but a complex magical construct that adapted to the intruder's expectations. If you expected to find stairs, you found stairs that led nowhere. If you expected traps, you found traps that were actually illusions of traps hiding the real traps underneath.
"Whoever designed this has a nasty sense of humor," Kira muttered as she carefully navigated what appeared to be a hallway but was actually a cleverly disguised magical loop that would have had them walking in circles until they collapsed from exhaustion.
"Probably Stormweaver himself," Finn replied, following close behind her. "I've heard he has a reputation for being... creative... with his security measures."
By the time they reached the fourth floor, Kira's crystal tools were nearly drained, her clothes were soaked with sweat and rainwater, and she was fairly certain she'd accidentally triggered at least three different alarm systems. The tower seemed to be watching them, its magical atmosphere pressing against her consciousness like a curious cat.
"Are you sure we're not being detected?" Finn whispered as they crept down a hallway lined with portraits that definitely seemed to be watching them.
"Define 'sure,'" Kira replied, then held up a hand as she sensed something shift in the magical atmosphere around them. The air tasted different here—charged with more than just the storm's electricity.
The scrying ward on this floor was more complex than she'd expected. Not just an intrusion detector, but something that seemed to be actively scanning for specific magical signatures. Her scar tingled, and she had the uncomfortable sensation that the ward was looking for her specifically.
Which was impossible. Darian Stormweaver didn't know she existed.
Did he?
The thought sent a chill down her spine that had nothing to do with her wet clothes. What if the letter hadn't been from someone in her past? What if it had been bait, designed to lure her here? What if Darian Stormweaver knew exactly who she was and what she represented?
"Kira," Finn's voice was strained. "The portraits are definitely moving."
She glanced up to see that he was right. The painted figures were shifting in their frames, eyes tracking their movement through the hallway. One particularly stern-looking wizard opened his painted mouth and appeared to be shouting, though no sound emerged. His face was turning an alarming shade of purple with the effort.
"Aesthetic security measure," Kira said with more confidence than she felt. "All the best mages have them. Completely harmless."
The painted wizard's face turned an even deeper purple, and hairline cracks appeared in his frame. Behind him, other portraits were beginning to show similar signs of agitation.
"Harmless," she repeated, just as the first frame exploded in a shower of glass and magical energy.
"Run," Kira said.
They bolted down the hallway as the portraits erupted into cacophonous life behind them. Painted voices rose in alarm, frame glass shattered, and somewhere in the distance, a bell began to toll with the deep, resonant tone of a magical alarm system that had been crafted to wake the dead.
"So much for stealth," Finn panted as they reached the staircase to the fifth floor.
"Stealth is overrated," Kira replied, though her heart was hammering against her ribs hard enough to crack bone. "Sometimes you have to embrace the chaos."
"I hate it when you say things like that. It usually means we're about to do something even more stupid than what we're already doing."
The fifth floor binding ward was a work of art—elegant, powerful, and absolutely impassable through conventional means. Kira stared at the shimmering barrier blocking their path and felt a familiar surge of professional appreciation mixed with growing frustration. The ward wasn't just a barrier; it was a masterpiece of magical engineering, layered with contingencies and fail-safes that would make it nearly impossible to break without triggering every alarm in the tower.
Nearly impossible.
"This is it, isn't it?" Finn asked, his voice heavy with resignation. "This is where we admit defeat and go home to our nice, safe, poverty-stricken lives."
"Not yet." Kira pulled out her last ward-breaking crystal—the expensive one she'd been saving for emergencies—and hesitated. This wasn't just breaking and entering anymore. The moment she shattered this ward, she'd be committed to seeing the heist through to the end. There would be no turning back, no pretending this was just another job.
The crystal felt warm in her palm, pulsing with contained power that resonated strangely with the scar on her wrist. For a moment, she could have sworn she heard whispers in a language she'd spent years trying to forget.
*You know what you must do. You know what you are.*
"Kira?" Finn's voice seemed to come from very far away. "What's wrong? You look like you've seen a ghost."
Maybe she had. Maybe they all had ghosts, and some of them were just better at staying buried than others.
She activated the crystal.
The binding ward didn't just break—it exploded. Magical energy cascaded through the tower like a tsunami, and Kira felt something fundamental shift in the very fabric of reality around them. The air tasted of lightning and ancient secrets, and power flowed through her veins like molten silver.
When the light faded and the magical chaos settled into something resembling normalcy, she found herself face to face with Darian Stormweaver himself.
He stood at the top of the stairs leading to the sixth floor, perfectly calm despite the magical chaos swirling around them, and when their eyes met, Kira felt the world tilt sideways. His storm-gray eyes held depths that seemed to pull at something deep in her soul, and when he smiled—actually smiled, the bastard—her heart did something acrobatic that definitely wasn't healthy.
"Kira Nightwhisper," he said, and his voice was like thunder given human form, rich and deep and entirely too compelling. "I've been waiting for you."
The scar on her wrist burned like fire, and in the distance, something that had been sleeping for a very long time began to wake up.