Chapter 23: The Incantation of Worth

They worked in quiet concentration for what felt like hours. Sol scanned the trapezoidal book’s pages at mechanical speed. Felipe sorted through more scrolls, adding them to a growing stack of “relevant” materials. Thimble cross-referenced her selected volumes and made notes in her tiny leather book. Allison stayed on the floor beside the coffee table, legs folded beneath her, switching between her family’s tome and a smaller, glowing book that kept drawing her attention.

Then, suddenly, Sol’s eyes flashed—a brief, bright pulse that caught everyone’s attention.

Allison looked up from her book. “Sol? What is it? Did you find something?”

“I believe I have.” Sol’s voice carried restrained excitement, balanced against the weight of a significant conclusion. Sol’s gaze stayed fixed on a pair of pages in the oddly shaped volume, now open to a different spread.

Allison stood and moved to Sol’s side. Felipe and Thimble abandoned their materials and came over as well, their small bodies climbing onto the table for a better view.

The left-hand page was covered in text—the same compressed, angular symbols as the book’s cover—completely illegible to Allison. The right-hand page was mostly empty, stained, and worn. At its center, though, was a faint, swirling scroll design in fading brown ink, and around it, a patch of paper noticeably lighter than the rest, as if something had rested there for a long time, protecting it from age and dust. The patch matched the proportions of the oracle cards she had found.

Sol’s eyes focused briefly, a soft mechanical hum accompanying the movement as they studied the page more closely. “The ink is iron gall,” Sol said. “Oak galls and iron sulfate, prepared traditionally. People have used it throughout history in the Overworld for sacred or permanent documents. This book was written with ink meant to last.”

“Wait,” Allison said, her voice rising. “That pattern, that scroll design. That’s the same as the border on the ruined card. Hold the phone…”

She crossed the few feet back to the coffee table, picked up the damaged card, and brought it over.

When Allison came within range of the trapezoidal book, the card changed. Its dull, smeared edges began to glow—faintly at first, then brighter. The chill Allison had felt when she first picked it up was gone. Now it pulsed in the same rhythm as the Sparkkeeper card. A magnetic pull tugged at her fingers, growing stronger as she brought the card closer.

Felipe and Thimble came over too, drawn by the change in the card’s energy, their own focus abandoned as they understood what was about to happen.

The four of them huddled around the trapezoidal book.

Allison held the card above the lighter, card-shaped spot, waiting for it to land on the paper. The card vibrated in her hand like it never had before, almost like a living creature.

“I think I’m supposed to…” The card slipped from her fingers, and before she could finish the sentence, it glided onto the lighter patch of paper with the soft satisfaction of the last puzzle piece settling into place.

The fit was perfect. As if the card had been made for that space, or the space had been waiting for that card.

The smeared, fading ink on the card pulsed once, then stopped. Then it glowed with a steady, warm light. The filigree on the edge began to shift, damaged sections repairing themselves as the border’s swirls knitted back together and the fading vines brightened to their original rich brown. The central image was still unclear—still smeared and broken—but it shifted almost imperceptibly, as if it had begun to remember what it was supposed to be.

On the facing page, the illegible text began to change. One word shimmered and reshaped itself into English. Then another. Then a phrase. The longer the four of them stared, the more the text transformed, like watching ice melt into water in reverse—slow, steady, undeniable.

After a minute, legible words formed three stanzas. The poetry appeared in soft, glowing golden letters, hovering just above the paper like fireflies caught mid-flight.

Allison leaned closer and read.

Within me glows a sacred spark.

Embers dancing in the dark.

I am worthy, bright, and whole,

The constellation of my soul.

The light is mine and cannot dim.

No doubt shall ever live within.

I shine with purpose, real and free.

The world has never seen the authentic me.

Like fireflies that know their way,

I trust myself, come night or day.

My confidence grows like a sunflower reaching for the sun.

I am my own magnificent light.

Allison read it twice. Then a third time. Her throat tightened.

“It’s...” she started. Couldn’t finish.

Thimble rested a paw gently on Allison’s arm. “It’s an incantation. A spell. Old, old magic—the kind that was written long before either you or I was born. Words with power woven into their shapes. Meant to be spoken.”

“To heal the card?”

“To destroy the ooze, to heal the card, and most importantly, to heal you.” Thimble's whiskers twitched. “The book is giving us the first real weapon we’ve had. But Allison...”

Her tone shifted, gentle, weighted. Allison looked at her.

“This isn’t something you can just read. Reading it won’t do anything. Words like these—real magic incantations—only work when you speak them with conviction. With belief. With the whole self behind them. You have to mean them, Allison. Every line. You have to say them and believe they’re true.”

Allison looked back at the glowing words on the page. At the first line.

Within me glows a sacred spark.

The sacred spark—she could almost believe that. Her grandfather had said so. Her father had said so. The Dreamspace itself had confirmed it with a faint rumble beneath their feet.

But the third line.

I am worthy, bright, and whole.

Worthy. Whole.

Her chest tightened around the words before she could even speak them. Forty-five years of evidence to the contrary rose in her body like a tide. Not worthy. Never whole. Too much, too little, not enough. The old script was so worn with use that the grooves seemed deep enough to swallow her.

“I don’t know if I can say this,” she whispered, “and mean it.”

Thimble's eyes were bright and understanding.

“I know,” she said. “That’s why we’re going to practice. And that’s why you’re not going to do it alone.”

She turned and caught Felipe’s eye, then Sol’s. They both nodded because they had come to the same conclusion: with a group of friends, quickly becoming as familiar as kin, gathered around her like a shield, she could say words she didn’t believe, so that someday, maybe soon, she could.