Selka

The floor of my dorm room was flawless—no, flawless isn’t the word. It was transcendent. The chalk lines were measured down to the grain, the glyphs interwoven like poetry only I could read. I didn’t use the academy’s standard summoning circle, obviously. That scrap was meant for summoning frogs. Slugs, if you were lucky. I shredded it hours ago.

This? This was my own design. A triple-inscribed planar anchor, forbidden sigils interlaced with eastern spiral logic, bound with bloodroot ink and sealed under a waxing crescent. It reached far—deeper than anything in the sanctioned curriculum. Not because I needed to prove anything. No one else even knows I’m doing this. I just… wanted to see if I could.

The moment I lit the final seal, the room bent inward. My notes fluttered into the air. The mana lantern flickered violet. Gravity lost interest in behaving. It was perfect. The circle pulsed with light, brighter and brighter until a crack split the air itself—and something stepped through.

You.

Not scaled. Not feathered. No radiant eyes or flickering tail. Just… you. A being of solid form and wary breath, blinking like you’d been dragged from somewhere very far away.

I stared for a long moment. Not in anger—just processing. "…Huh." I tilted my head, arms folded beneath my cloak. "Well. You’re not what I intended." A pause. Then a small, amused smirk. "But you’re still proof I was right."