The following day, Melinda woke up with the roosters. Yawning, she rubbed her eyes as she sat up, her sight adjusting to her surroundings. At first, she was so drowsy that she didn't know why she'd slept on the floor or why the room was completely different from her own, but then she remembered what happened the day before and began to sob uncontrollably. She didn't want to sob at the moment, but guilt and helplessness weighed on her heart because of how horribly she'd failed. Had she done better, she wouldn't have ended up there. However, there wasn't much time for melancholy, so she stopped crying after a couple of minutes and started getting ready for the day.

As soon as she was done with it, Patrick came in without knocking. She'd been expecting that, but what surprised her was that he was carrying a man tied with ropes, complete with duct tape on his mouth, throwing him on the ground the moment he faced her. On his face was plastered a smug grin, the same as always, and he stared at her unflinchingly for an entire minute, waiting for her response. Seeing that she had none, he began to speak:

"Miss Grey, it's time for your first lesson. I know it may seem a bit quick to you, but time's a limited resource, so we have to use it carefully. You'll learn a spell that I'm sure you've never seen before in your life, as is the standard here, and he'll be your subject. Let us begin-"

"What exactly is going on?" she asked, raising an eyebrow, but he simply raised his hand in the air.

"As I was saying," he continued, trying not to let his impatience show too much, "you'll learn a new spell today. You'll be learning a new spell every day because the dark side of magic is rife with spells, and there's no way for you to refuse to learn. Here, I'll show you."

Since the sun was shining brightly through the thin pink curtains, the man's shadow was easy to spot. It enabled Patrick to capture it with a flick of his hand. He then proceeded to clench his left hand into a fist and draw a triangle with his right one, the immense effort he was putting in expressed clearly on his face. Focusing all his wrath and hatred on the task for an impressive amount of time, he forced the man's body to twist into the possible closest shape to a triangle and spin around the floor in circles in that cruel form, looking completely carefree the instant he was done, leaving the poor victim to writhe in unimaginable pain. Melinda didn't let her pity show too much, but its gleam was still visible in her eyes.

"It's your turn now," he said coldly, staring right at her as she refused to move.

"Come on," he barked a moment later, not at all impressed by her resistance. "Don't play games with me. Remember that you'll suffer terribly if you don't give me what I want. Besides, what trouble is it to you? You're a warrior, therefore it's your job to cause your enemies pain. And you really do cause all your enemies much pain on the regular, almost as if you don't see them as living beings. What's the difference between this room and the battlefield, huh?"

"I do it on my own terms," she responded in a voice bereft of emotion, not knowing what other explanation to give.

"I can't believe it," he said, shaking his head. "Just do it already."

With a solemn nod, she did it. She did exactly as she saw. She captured the man's shadow, clenched her left hand into a fist and drew a triangle with her right, and his body was contorted all the same, spinning around the floor in a vaguely triangular shape. But something was missing. Her wrath and hatred weren't all that present in the process, and her victim hardly seemed to be suffering at all. Patrick observed it all carefully, his anger and impatience increasing with each passing second.

"Do it again!" he yelled out of nowhere, taking a golden whip out of his pocket, and she restarted the spell with a barely noticeable flinch.

She hated him more than she could fathom at the moment. It immediately gave her an idea. She relieved herself of the overwhelming negative emotions associated with his mere presence in her life by painstakingly clenching her left hand into a fist for an entire minute after she drew a new triangle in the air, digging her nails deep into her skin, her face red with the fire of her fury.

It was difficult in the beginning, but it felt so soothing to carve such pain onto the flesh of a helpless victim and deprive oneself of such agony of the mind, and the moment she was done, tranquillity flowed through her veins, her body appearing to be quite thankful for that surge of energy. Momentarily frightened by what floated through her mind, she fell into a brief trance, returned to reality by Patrick's voice.

"Nice job," he remarked. "He truly was in pain this time. Not bad for a beginner."

"Thank you," she said solemnly. "I gave my all."

"I know," he said, turning to leave the room before she asked him a question.

"Why is he here?" she said, her eyes wide open. "He really doesn't seem that remarkable, so I don't know why you've brought him to this place."

He really didn't seem remarkable at all. With average height, plain brown hair and eyes and unassuming facial features and clothes, he could've been any person off the street. Even Melinda, who was sure she'd seen him before, couldn't tell who he was, so she looked closer. He had thin beige lips, a birthmark on the right side of his face, and looked like he hadn't slept in years. Everything about his appearance was familiar to her, except that last part, which made her doubt if it really was him. However, it didn't matter, for Patrick soon explained everything:

"He works with the Parkers, you know, the unlawful family who'd been strongly opposing my own unlawfulness for years because they wanted my book. That was before I got rid of them the night before. Those greedy, short-sighted braggers wanted to get rich off of selling the information in the book - a bunch of false promises they'd deluded themselves with, really - and he's been helping them! Along with the rest of his family! His name's Frank Jones, and he'll stay here with you until he learns his lesson, but I wager that you aren't planning to stay for too long and that he'll be here until his death. And now I remembered that I've got some errands to run. See you later, Melinda."

"See you-" she said before he slammed the door behind him, leaving her to stand like a statue and stare stunned into the distance.

Several minutes later, she untied Frank. He let out a slight cry of pain as he ripped the duct tape from his mouth, but he was alright otherwise, alright as a person condemned to such torture could be, anyway. He'd remain in that decent state so long as he sat in a corner and didn't move for hours, and so that was precisely what she'd left him to do. When she was over, she sat next to him, gently placing her hand on his shoulder with a truly desolate frown.

"Are you well?" she asked, her voice soft as that of a mother.

"Yes, I'm well, especially because it's not your fault," he responded plainly. "It's Hemingway's fault. That cad! He's evil and therefore wants everything in the world for himself, especially that book! No one can separate him from his precious book. The reason why is perfectly clear. If anyone else owned it, they'd do good with it. So much good. Good for their community, but also good for themselves. Think about it. Think about how easy it would be to achieve wealth and success with its assistance. He wouldn't want to see any of us like that in his lifetime."

She choked on thin air upon hearing that. "Are you kidding me right now?!"

"Why would I be?" he stammered, looking completely lost.

"Do you not know?!" she yelled, throwing her hands in the air. "Do you not know the evil this book holds?! He wrote it and put all of himself in it, embuing it with dark magic that corrupts the wielder! Had you researched it more thoroughly, you would know that it takes either your life, your soul, or both! You are damning your entire family forevermore!"

He glared at her with much hatred. "I'm not stupid enough to take a book that corrupts whomever has it, Miss Grey."

"I never implied you were stupid," she said exasperatedly. "You just don't see what I see. The book doesn't corrupt the user immediately, nor does it magically turn people evil. It strengthens the evil that's already inside of a person's heart by overwhelming them with its presence. The problem, therefore, is that every one of us has the capacity to do evil, especially with the help of one of its most potent and irresistible weapons in history. Do you understand me now?"

"You don't know anything. You never saw it, and yet you still believe so arrogantly in the lies spread by the populace. If I listened to you, my whole family'd be in prison already," he sneered, walking away from her in pain.

"You're the one who doesn't know anything," she muttered to herself the moment he was on the other side of the room, wondering how the rest of his family was doing.

After several months of eluding it, Ingrid Jones was back at her parents' house at present. It hurt to be there more than ever before. She knew already that her brother was kidnapped and that the rest of her family knew as well. She turned around at every moment, carefully studying her surroundings. She herself wasn't sure why exactly she was doing it, this paranoid ritual she performed to convince herself that these were the surroundings which were so familiar to her all her life. Her birth, her perfectly innocent childhood, her slightly less innocent adolescence - she'd spent all those peaceful years there.

Among the misty skies and withered black branches of tall trees, there resided a singular little house. Preceded by a curvy, uneven path of rocks, it was built out of grey bricks, had a single floor, a birch door, two rectangle windows with black edges that were both covered with baby blue curtains, and a low roof. It was surrounded by a messy square of unmown grass and white lilies, the flowers already beginning to wither because Autumn was slowly, but surely, arriving. Staring at it felt like a scene from a dream. Her idyll and her turbulence were both strongly and undeniably connected to it. Her trembling heart couldn't handle it very well. To ease her nervousness, she opened the door without hesitation the moment she thought of it, greeted by the stern faces of her fellow free family members.

One wouldn't think much of them if they didn't know them, for they were like an apple tree in an orchard full of those as far as everyone else was concerned, all of them looking similar - and similarly unassuming - to Frank. The ones present at the moment were her immediate family, also known as her mother, father, and her other brother, who was a bit taller than Frank and who'd curled his hair and grown a slight beard recently.

"Hello," she said with an awkward inflection in her voice. "I suppose you all already know what's happened yesterday."

"It's horrible," her mother said, her voice shaking with tears. "My poor dear Frank has been kidnapped! That vile demon will never release him now. What will I do, oh, what will I do?!"

Ingrid laughed darkly. "Oh, he'll release Frank alright. He just has to behave perfectly for however long it takes."

Her mother began to sob painfully. "But that will never happen! It never could, I know it..."

Sobbing painfully as well, Ingrid pulled her into a tight hug, both of them very glad they had someone's shoulder to cry on.

"Well, at least I was able to avoid military service," said the other brother, shrugging limply.

"Finn!" the father growled, slamming his fists on the table. "Would you stop behaving like this? Would you stop being a disappointment to all of us? This is why I hate you! Oh, how I miss Frank!"

Finn threw his hands in the air. "Alright, I'm sorry! I just wanted to lighten the mood. We haven't heard any jokes in a while!"

"Go to hell!" the father screamed in a demonic voice, trying his best not to punch him.

Finn let out a deep sigh. "This is exactly the kind of behaviour I'd expected from you, Father."

As the conversation irreversibly became an argument between her brother and their parents, Ingrid stared at the horrible yet mundane scene like a statue. There'd been traces of such conflicts throughout her entire life, but they didn't use to be too common, and love always bested them despite everyone's flawed personalities because they were family. It didn't seem to be so pretty anymore. Everything had become worse when The Spells From Shadows, that book of evil, came into their lives. It voiced its influence in subtle yet tangible ways, leaving a trace that could never be erased. But this was her life now, so she couldn't leave. She'd help them get out of the quagmire, and they'd help each other too, for there was an obvious way for them to achieve salvation. Unity.