The sun had already begun its lazy descent when Ilyari and Tazien finally left the shop, arms full of rolled canvas, pillow stuffing, and reclaimed bolts of cloth. Vaylen had insisted they carry everything themselves—“You want noble muscles, work like noble peasants, knowing the work that your subordinates will do for you will understand what they do for you and appreciate them.”

  By the time they reached Willowgrove House, the warmth of the day had settled into that perfect spring lull—just cool enough to remind them of the season, just warm enough to soothe sore shoulders.

  Tazien kicked the gate open with one boot. “That was the longest morning of my life.”

  “I don’t know,” Ilyari said as she shifted her bundle. “You did survive getting punched in the nose and thrown in jail for three days.”

  “You know, I try to just blank that out of my mind. We don’t need to remember that time in our lives.”

  Inside, they dropped everything in the front hall and stretched.

  “Mattresses first,” Ilyari decided. “Or we’ll collapse on bare wood again and die.”

  “Dramatic,” Tazien muttered, already unrolling canvas.

  But it wasn’t hard work. Vaylen had been right—it was just oversized sewing. Within an hour, they had two canvas mattress shells stuffed with fluffed fiber and stitched shut with doubled thread. They threw sheets over them, fluffed their pillows, and stared.

  Tazien fell face-first into his. “If I die here, bury me in this exact position.”

  Ilyari rolled her eyes but sat beside him. “And you called me dramatic. We still have work to do.”

  He groaned. “Like what?”

  She stood, brushing off her skirt. “Exploring.”

  Tazien’s head popped up.

  Ten minutes later, they slipped out the back door, past the overgrown hedges and wild grass—pushing through the tangle of vines that guarded the garden like a living wall.

  What they saw beyond made them both stop.

  The garden of Willowgrove House wasn’t dead.

  It was sleeping.

  Twilight spilled across a courtyard lost to time—where moss-choked stones still formed broken rings and wandering paths. Wild grasses glowed faintly blue at the tips, swaying even when there was no breeze. In the center stood a cracked marble fountain, long dry, but cradling a bloom of luminous water-lilies that pulsed with soft, golden light.

  Strange plants arched skyward—broad, fan-like leaves with silver veins; climbing vines that shimmered like spun glass; blossoms that closed at their approach with the whisper of silk. A hedge shaped like a lion had half-collapsed, overrun with moonthistle—tiny star-shaped flowers that opened only after sunset, dusting the air with a faintly sweet, drowsy perfume.

  Along the inner walls, faded murals of winged figures and robed mages peeled between roots and stone. A broken sundial lay half-buried in a bed of heartfern, its hands pointing nowhere.

  And nestled among it all—half-hidden by overgrowth—were statues.

  Dozens of them.

  Some moss-covered, others clean. Children at play. A knight cradling a sapling. A woman with her hand pressed to the earth, listening. Each statue wore a serene, thoughtful expression… but none faced the same direction. As if they had once turned to watch something that no longer stood.

  “I think this place used to be enchanted,” Ilyari whispered, not daring to disturb the hush.

  “Used to be?” Tazien muttered. “It still feels like it’s breathing.”

  They stood in silence for a long time, the garden watching them just as closely as they watched it.

  And somewhere deep beneath the roots, something ancient seemed to stir… not with menace, but memory.

  Massive ferns curled against walls. Tall stalks of glowgrass shimmered faintly with bioluminescence under the trees. The path was almost invisible beneath layers of tangled ivy and waist-high brush.

  “Whoa,” Tazien whispered.

  “This used to be formal,” Ilyari said, stepping around a collapsed trellis. “It had symmetry. Layout. Look at the stone edging.”

  “Look at the trees,” Tazien said, pointing. “Those glow willows are ancient.”

  The pond was too thick with algae to see clearly, but it shimmered in the light with a faint purple sheen. A willow’s roots curled down into the water like claws.

  “There’s magic in this place,” Ilyari whispered. “Or at least... memory.”

  Ilyari took a slow step forward, her fingers brushing a vine that shimmered faintly beneath her touch.

  Then she closed her eyes.

  And blinked.

  Not in the visible world—but in the one beneath it.

  The Code.

  Usually, it came in hues of blue and silver—cool, ordered, geometric, like the inner workings of an elegant machine. It whispered in formulas and flowed like water through glass. That was how it had always looked.

  But not here.

  Her breath caught.

  The Code of the garden wasn’t orderly. It wasn’t logical.

  It sang.

  Pulses of rose-gold, violet, and emerald ribboned through the roots and stones, weaving and unweaving like a heartbeat with no rhythm. Swirls of soft coral curved into spirals, breaking apart only to reform into radiant, living glyphs she didn’t recognize. They looped through the air, criss-crossing the branches and vines like lace spun from starlight and song.

  Some of the glyphs… moved.

  They twitched, flickered, almost dancing.

  “Ilyari?” Tazien asked, sensing the shift in her breathing.

  “Look,” she whispered. “Look beneath.”

  He did.

  And his gasp made a flock of invisible birds startle into flight.

  “It’s alive,” he murmured. “It’s not like the rest. It’s…”

  “Wild,” she finished. “Unbound.”

  They turned slowly, watching the entire garden pulse with living color. It wasn’t broken code. It was forgotten code—or maybe code that had never been tamed. Code that existed outside the rigid language of Kaisulane’s glyphic order.

  “It doesn’t follow the rules,” Tazien said, squinting as a line of luminous green spiraled through the old sundial and vanished into the roots.

  “No,” Ilyari said, her voice low. “It rewrites them.”

  They stood there for a long moment, the garden breathing around them in slow, color-swirled silence.

  “Do you think… this was part of the old Code?” Tazien asked.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  “I think this is the old Code,” she whispered. “Before they locked it up in scrolls and spells. We are definitely going to look into who owned this house before and why it has been abandoned for so long.”

  They crept through the path until they reached the rear wall of the estate—and there, half-covered in ivy, stood a squat stone building with a slanted copper roof.

  “The workshop,” Tazien breathed.

  He ran forward and shoved open the door with both hands. The hinges groaned, but the door swung wide.

  Inside: darkness, dust, and the musty scent of long-forgotten tools.

  But also… potential.

  Gear racks lined one wall, tangled with rusted sprockets and broken automaton arms. A cracked leather apron hung from a hook. Drawers overflowed with bolts, straps, and odd mechanical parts. In the center, a table—covered in a sheet—hid a long-limbed shape beneath it.

  Tazien pulled the sheet back—and grinned. A golem, very large with clockworks coming out of the middle, some parts missing and others still there. It was both cloth and copper. Some of it a beautiful patina other sections still shone like it was new.

  “I like whoever was here more and more every time we discover something new,” he whispered, crouching. “Looks like our golem is going to have a friend! And now that I think about it, since we don’t have any servants, they might be our first two!”

  He turned to Ilyari, eyes shining. “I can rebuild it.”

  She looked around slowly, the light catching in her silver hair. “Then this will be your sanctuary.”

  He nodded, wiping dust from the golem’s metal fingers. “Ours.”

  She smiled, leaning in the doorway. “We should come back tomorrow. We’ll bring light. And oil. Brooms and lots and lots of water. And hope.”

  Tazien looked up at her and grinned. “Tomorrow,” he said.

  The sun dipped behind the distant towers of the Academy as the two siblings made their way back inside, their fingers stained with earth and machine grease, their clothes dusty from garden leaves and old tools. The air had cooled, but the stone walls of Willowgrove felt a little warmer now—less empty, less foreign.

  They dragged their tired feet up the stairs, pausing once in the hall to glance back down the corridor, the faint scent of lavender still lingering from the sheets they’d washed earlier.

  Ilyari went into her room first. The mattress they’d stitched rested neatly on the wooden frame, her pillow fluffed and tucked beneath a worn but clean quilt.

  She didn’t hesitate.

  Kicking off her shoes, she collapsed backward with a satisfied sigh. The bed gave a soft squeak—but held. She stretched once, arms wide, then curled under the covers.

  Next door, Tazien flopped face-first onto his mattress and gave a triumphant groan.

  “It’s soft,” he muttered into the pillow.

  “You’re welcome,” Ilyari called faintly through the wall.

  “I take it all back. Sewing is sorcery, it should be illegal to feel this comfortable on something so basic.” He called back. Ilyari laughed softly, too tired to tease him further.

  For the first time in what felt like years, they weren’t lying side by side on a floor, or tucked in a corner of someone else’s home, or listening for the rustle of danger outside a door.

  They were in their own rooms. In their own beds, in a house that—while dusty and broken and battered—belonged to them. And for a brief, perfect moment, they were content. The wind rattled gently against the shutters and sleep came easy.

  And Willowgrove, once silent, exhaled its first breath of peace in decades.

  ???????????????

  BANG! BANG! BANG!

  Tazien jolted upright in bed, hair sticking out in every direction, one arm flailing toward an imaginary sword.

  “Ilyari! The roof’s collapsing!”

  “It’s not the roof, genius,” she groaned from her own room. “It’s breakfast.”

  Another round of pounding echoed through the house like a war drum. Ilyari grumbled as she swung her legs out of bed, clutching the sheet around her like a shawl. “Do they have to knock like we owe them gold?”

  “You mean we don’t?” Tazien called through the wall, shuffling out of his room.

  Ilyari caught sight of him as they reached the stairwell—his hair a white storm cloud, one sock halfway off. She barked a laugh. “You look like you got dragged through the hedge.”

  “You look like the hedge,” he muttered. She smirked and pinched his ear on the way down the stairs.

  They opened the door to a gruff Academy delivery clerk, who all but tossed the day’s rations at them. “Standard supplies. Inventory listed. Don’t lose it. Sign here.” He didn’t wait for thanks—just turned and stomped back toward the main road.

  Ilyari closed the door and locked it behind her, balancing a wooden crate in her arms. “Morning hospitality really lives in this city.”

  They plopped the rations on the table, brushing off a few stray leaves that had blown in through the cracked door. Tazien fished through the box, finding dried fruit, oat bread, a small hunk of cheese, and a flask of mint water.

  As they ate—cross-legged on their newly-sewn cushions—Ilyari stared out the window.

  You could not see through the window for the vines that crisscrossed and wrapped in front of it.

  Weeds knotted up against and over the front path like thorny siege walls waiting to trip anyone coming to the door. The wild glow willows arched toward the porch, fronds so overgrown they brushed past the railings and toward the steps. A patch of moss had overtaken the corner steps entirely.

  “Okay,” she said, chewing thoughtfully. “We can’t keep walking out of this house like we’re lost in a fairy tale forest.”

  Tazien groaned. “But I like the fairy tale part.”

  “Great. You can rescue the overgrown shrubs before they kidnap another paving stone.”

  They exchanged a glance—and then a grin.

  Breakfast finished, they pulled on their work clothes: sleeves rolled, gloves patched, and Ilyari’s hair tied into a practical bun. Tazien grabbed the rusted shears they’d found in the back shed and slung a coil of rope over one shoulder.

  “Where do we even start?” he asked, stepping outside.

  Ilyari cracked her knuckles. “At the gate. Let’s make Willowgrove look like someone actually lives here.”

  The front gate moaned like a dying beast when Tazien pushed it open, scraping against stones half-swallowed by roots. The sun was just high enough to burn away the last of the morning mist, casting golden light over a mess of thistles, vines, and glowing pink fronds. The gate was partially hard to open because of rust and the other because climbing roses claimed most of the gate and had connected them toward the top. So only one person at a time could get through the gap. “This place is feral,” Tazien muttered.

  “That’s okay,” Ilyari said, squinting at the climbing rose vine, attempting to find where the main trunk was. “We’ll tame it.”

  They started at the gate, yanking weeds with gloved hands and cutting back overgrown tufts of magicgrass that sparked with tiny blue flecks when disturbed. Tazien climbed up and the gates swung open with a WHOOOSH CREEEEEEEEAAAAAAKKKKKKK like it was on rusty springs.The shears flew out of Tazien’s hands as he held on to the gate for stability. Ilyari laughed as he had to climb down ast a vine creeping up the fence, tried to take it. When he wrestled with it, he stumbled back as the vine hissed and retracted slightly.

  “Okay—alive. Good to know.”

  “Cut it at the base,” Ilyari called from where she knelt by the gate, fingers buried in a snarl of ivy. “Don’t hack at it like you’re dueling an old woman’s wig. The vines just grow back, and it seems they split into multiples every time you do. I mean, if you can get that close.”

  As they worked, Ilyari occasionally paused, brushing a hand over the stone path as if dusting it. But beneath her touch, code shimmered faintly—just for her. The glyph strings that made up the old enchantments flickered in silver threads. She adjusted them slowly, carefully—just enough to repair the cracks and restore the beauty of the cobblestone.

  To anyone watching, she was just smoothing dirt.

  “Don’t overdo it,” she whispered to herself, frowning. “Make it believable.”

  Tazien didn’t notice at first. He was too busy still wrestling the vine that had eaten a section of the fence. But when he glanced back an hour later, the difference in the walkway was impossible to ignore.

  “Uh… Ilyari?”

  “Yes?”

  “Did you clean the cobbles into alignment?”

  “Maybe.”

  “By hand?”

  She didn’t answer.

  He narrowed his eyes. “You’re doing the thing again.”

  “Which thing?”

  “The ‘I’m totally innocent while the laws of nature rearrange themselves around me’ thing.”

  She gave him a tight smile. “Then maybe don’t say that out loud while we’re surrounded by suspicious noble eyes.”

  He groaned and went back to trimming. “Fine. But if this hedge starts bowing to you, I’m moving out.”

  By mid-morning, they had cleared and fixed the front path, fully released the gate, and pruned several glow willows into graceful, arching shapes, and even managed to coax the stone steps back into proper formation—without attracting too much attention.

  Ilyari stepped back, wiping sweat from her brow. The front of the house looked much better. They still had to use the sickle they found in the roses to even the grass, but when they were done, this entrance would be the talk of the neighborhood. “Well hello there Willowgrove.” Ilyari mused, “Now we can see you.”

  Tazien leaned on the shears that the creeping vine was inching back over to take. “You know what? I’d call that a win.”

  “I’d call it act one,” she replied, already eyeing the west garden entrance.

  But before they could regroup, a shout echoed from the gate.

  “Delivery for the Aierenbanes!”

  Two large crates were being hoisted off a cart by grunting workers. One was stamped with the Academy crest. The other was marked Uniform Distribution – Year One Inductees.

  “Guess they’re really committing,” Tazien said, opening the uniform box.

  He pulled out a folded robe—and held it up.

  It was massive.

  “Did they think we were both seven feet tall?”

  Ilyari blinked, holding up her own. The sleeves dangled well past her hands, and the hem pooled at her feet. “It’s like they sized us for the Emperor’s hunting guards.”

  “Are all the clothing like this? The shirts? Pants?” Ilyari started, sounding annoyed.

  “We could both wear one and still have room for a guest.”

  Tazien sighed. “Back to Vaylen?”

  “Back to Vaylen.”

  What do you think happened at Willowgrove?

  Who lived here before them?