Harper fell on a Tuesday afternoon.

Nothing about breakfast suggested the day would become important.

Porridge.

Toast.

Soren spilling juice on a library book and nearly crying until Ava helped dry it.

Foundations involved holding two beads at once. Harper managed eleven seconds and declared herself a genius.

By lunch, Jasper had forgotten to write home on Sunday and was trying to fix this before his mother noticed.

The sky was pale blue.

The wind was light.

Ocean Studies should have been boring.

Professor Elowen led the first-years to a higher observation ledge north of their usual terrace. The platform was broad and protected by a stone barrier, with a painted safety line several metres back from the outer wall.

Staff checked the surface before the lesson began.

Students stayed inside the line.

Their task was coastline mapping.

Harper hated it.

"It keeps being rock."

Ava did not look up from her page. "That is generally what cliffs are."

"Could change."

"Please don't ask it to."

Jasper smiled and tried to draw the curve of a narrow inlet.

He had become better at not staring at the sea every few seconds.

That afternoon, he barely looked down.

The first warning was a small crunch.

Grit beneath a shoe.

Jasper looked up.

Harper stood a short distance away, still inside the safety line, leaning sideways to compare her drawing with the cliff.

Her right foot slipped.

It should have been nothing.

There was plenty of stone behind the barrier.

Harper threw one arm out.

Her other shoe landed on loose gravel.

That slipped too.

Her body went backward.

Several children shouted.

Professor Elowen moved.

Jasper moved.

Everybody moved too late.

Harper hit the ground hard enough to lose her breath.

Momentum carried her across the sloping stone.

She reached for the surface.

Missed.

Near the outer barrier, winter runoff had washed grit into a shallow channel beneath the lower gap between two old posts.

Harper slid into it.

Then through it.

She disappeared over the outer side.

For one second, Jasper's mind refused to understand what his eyes had seen.

Then he reached the wall.

Open air.

A narrow rock shelf sat several metres below.

Harper struck it on one side.

Rolled.

Slid again.

Then there was nothing beneath her.

The pressure behind Jasper's ribs arrived so hard it stole everything else.

Not pain.

Presence.

Huge.

Aware.

Jasper had no time to think a request.

No time to form a spell.

No time to do anything.

The ocean moved.

A swell rose directly beneath the cliff where no ordinary swell should have formed.

It did not look gentle.

It looked powerful enough to break stone.

But it rose at exactly the right moment.

Harper hit the water before she reached the normal sea surface.

White foam swallowed her.

The surge took the speed out of the fall and carried her sideways toward a lower staff platform built into the cliff.

Harper landed hard on wet stone and rolled onto her side.

She did not move.

Jasper stopped breathing.

Professor Elowen was already running toward the emergency stair.

Another teacher blew the continuous alarm.

"Behind the line! Everybody back!"

Jasper gripped the stone wall.

Then Harper coughed.

She moved one arm.

Tried to sit up.

Elowen reached her with two staff members and immediately made her lie back down.

Even from above, Jasper could tell Harper was arguing.

That helped.

Ava stood beside him.

Her face had gone white.

"It moved," Jasper said.

Ava looked at the water.

The strange swell was gone.

The sea had returned to ordinary waves.

"I know."

Teachers moved the first-years into an indoor classroom while Harper was brought up by the protected lower route.

Jasper did not want to leave the ledge.

A staff member put one hand on his shoulder.

"She is awake. Let the adults work."

Jasper obeyed.

Inside, nobody spoke normally.

Mia sat beside him.

"She'll be okay."

Jasper nodded.

He could still feel the presence below Tidefall.

Not as strong.

Still there.

Ava's hands were shaking.

Jasper had never seen that before.

He stared at his own hands.

He had not cast anything.

He had not asked.

Whatever had moved the sea had chosen to act on its own.

Harper was alive because of that choice.

Jasper should have felt relieved.

He did.

He also felt terrified.

A mystery was one thing.

A thing that could choose was something else.