Chapter 7 - Alena Morran
Alena Morran never had much interest in being known.
A half-elf born in the quiet riverside town of Vareth’s Ford, just east of Korth, she grew up between languages, lives, and expectations. Too elven to be ordinary, too human to be revered. It suited her just fine. The town was old and uneventful, best known for its modest arcane archives and gently humming trade route. It was the kind of place where things passed through, but nothing ever truly lingered.
At seventeen, Alena encountered something that would never pass through.
One night beneath an unusually star-filled sky, whether by fate or accident, her mind brushed against a presence far beyond comprehension. A quiet weight in the back of her thoughts, a hum behind her heartbeat. Not cruel. Not kind. Just vast. A star that wasn’t a star. A name that wasn’t spoken but remembered: Acamar.
She never told anyone what happened that night. Not fully, at least. And she never needed to.
The magic followed soon after. Visions. Instincts. Space that bent, ever so slightly, when she concentrated too hard. She learned to live around it, like a breeze that never stopped brushing the back of her neck.
In Vareth’s Ford, she spent most of her early twenties working as an apprentice translator and scribe at the town’s modest magical library, quietly building a reputation for understanding things no one else could read. Runes with missing pieces. Languages dead to modern scholars. She claimed it was intuition. No one questioned it too closely.
But as time passed, the work began to pull on her more deeply than she liked. Too many heavy stories. Too many tragic threads she couldn’t untangle. Her magic, no matter how strange or old, couldn’t change the past. Her magic only translates it. Eventually, the weight of knowing became too much.
At twenty-seven, she moved to Korth.
She took a courier job — practical, simple, unburdened. No tangled fates. No collapsing lives. Just scrolls, letters, spellbooks. Places to go. Deliveries to make. Quiet structure. She still takes on occasional translation work, but only when approached directly, and even then, only when the texts feel quiet enough to hold. There are some voices in parchment she chooses not to hear anymore.
Now thirty, Alena lives alone in a cottage owned by the founder of Arkwright Dispatch. She walks the same routes each day with a calm that unnerves some and soothes others. Her magic remains mostly unseen. Warping shadow, folding space, making silence sharper than it should be.
It wasn’t raining that morning in Korth, but the clouds had decided to sit low and heavy — the kind that made buildings seem taller and people speak softer. Somewhere in the Outer Wards, tucked between repurposed towers and murmuring streets, a courier passed through with little more than a satchel and a sense of direction that never failed her.
She didn’t walk with urgency, but she never moved slowly either. She walked like someone who had never once gotten lost and never would.
Alena stopped outside the café with the painted wyvern sign and paused. Inkwyrm & Co. A repurposed old watchtower with ivy creeping up the stone like it belonged there. Warm light spilled through the misted windows. The smell of cardamom and old paper floated out as someone opened the door.
She stepped inside.The warmth hit her first, and then the quiet hum. The magic here was subtle, but… present. Lingering in the beams and bookshelves. It didn’t pull at her like some places did. It didn’t echo. That was rare.
She approached the counter and removed a carefully wrapped parcel from her satchel, sealed with a runic thread and pressed with a sigil she’d long since learned not to question.
“For Devon Ashborn,” she said, setting the parcel down.
A moment later, someone stepped out from behind a shelf of floating books. Loose shirt, rolled sleeves, ink-smudged fingers, and steam still curling around his head like a familiar. He looked up, caught her eye, and smiled like he did this kind of thing often — like owning a tea shop in a magic tower was just a Tuesday.
“I’m Devon,” he said easily. “Looks like that one’s mine.”
She gave a small nod. “Delivery from Arkwright Dispatch. Signature required.”
He picked up a stylus from behind the counter but hesitated before signing.
“Out of curiosity…” he said, looking up again. “Did you get lost finding the place?”
She blinked. “No.”
“Really?” He raised a brow, mildly impressed. “Most first-timers circle twice or give up entirely.”She shrugged. “It’s a tower. Towers don’t move.”
Devon let out a short laugh. “I like you already.”
“I’m not staying,” she replied flatly, adjusting her satchel.
“You could.” He gestured toward the café. “Tea’s good. And if you’re not into crowds, now’s the time.”
Alena glanced around. The light was soft. The corner table by the window sat empty, like it had been waiting for her.
“…Just tea,” she said.
“Sweet?”
“No.”
He smiled wider, unsurprised. “Didn’t think so.”
She never said she’d come back, but she did. Always just after her shift ended. Always to the same table, tucked beneath the window where the light filtered down in soft angles.
She never stayed long. A cup of tea, sometimes a book, always a silence that felt purposeful rather than awkward. She never lingered past twilight, always gone before the café grew busy with evening noise.
She didn’t chat. She didn’t request readings. She simply… was.
And Devon, despite everything else on his plate — customers, deliveries, the occasional noble trying too hard to flirt — always noticed when she arrived.
He never asked her why she came. He didn’t need to.
Some people came for comfort. Others for clarity. And some, like Alena Morran, just needed a place to sit where the world didn’t tug too hard.
He didn’t mind that they didn’t talk. He was just glad she came back.
And if the kettle just happened to start steaming a few minutes before she walked through the door, well… that was just ‘good timing.’