The Warden's warning stayed with me.

Not three nights. Not three weeks. Longer than that. Much longer.

The months blurred together after that meeting. Wednesdays pushing the library cart with Gibbins scrolling his phone behind me. Books on the upper bunk every night, reading philosophy and asking questions that made my brain hurt. Werner's frustrated glances across the yard. Axel's calculating stares. Rey's patient hostility simmering just below the surface.

The practice became routine. Not easy—magic's never easy, costs too much for that—but familiar. Wednesday mornings I'd take requests. Evenings I'd deliver. Love spells for the lonely. Protection sigils for the scared. Curses for those who'd been wronged, or thought they had. The line between the two got blurry sometimes.

Books helped with that. Helped me think through the ethics, the consequences, the weight of each working. "You're not just a practitioner," he'd say. "You're responsible for what you unleash." Took me a while to really understand that. Took watching a curse I'd thrown rebound on someone who didn't deserve it. Took seeing a love spell twist into obsession because I wasn't careful enough with the parameters.

I got better. Had to.

The magic grew with the practice. Astral projection became second nature—within the prison, anyway. I could slip out of my body, scout the tiers, gather intelligence, be back before Books finished his current chapter. The temporal displacement problem stayed, though. Outside CNCC's walls, I'd still drift through time like a leaf in a stream. Landed in the past more often than the present. Never the future, for some reason. Maybe you can't project to what doesn't exist yet.

The library became my sanctuary. Books and I would spend hours there on our off days, pulling dusty volumes on everything from Crowley to quantum mechanics. He was convinced magic was just physics we didn't understand yet. I thought it was weirder than that. We'd argue about it, friendly-like, while the other inmates gave us space. Nobody fucked with the witch and his philosopher.

Brotherhood kept me protected. Werner still tried to recruit me fully—wanted me to commit to the ideology, not just the alliance. I kept dancing around it. Respectful but non-committal. Axel understood the game better. He'd nod when we passed in the yard. Didn't ask for more than I could give. Just expected me to keep being useful. Which I was.

The Latin Kings stayed hostile. Not actively—Rey was too smart for that—but there was always tension. Always the sense that one wrong move would tip things over. I walked carefully around them. Avoided 2-Beta when I could. Kept my magic neutral, refused any job that smelled like faction warfare.

First year in, Old Man Petersen died. Heart attack, they said. Happened in his sleep. I didn't cast that working, but I'd done enough spells for him over the months that part of me wondered if I'd contributed somehow. Books talked me down from that spiral. "You can't control everything. Sometimes people just die."

Eighteen months in, Chains's cancer came back worse. The working I'd done had bought him time—over a year of being mostly pain-free—but pancreatic cancer doesn't forgive. He died in the infirmary with the Brotherhood around him. Axel asked if I could do anything. I told him no. Some things magic can't fix. He accepted that. Didn't push.

Books became the closest thing to family I had inside. Flaco's goodbye still ached sometimes—thought about him on the outside, hoped he was making it—but Books filled that space differently. Teacher, friend, conscience. We'd sit in Cell 47 after lights out, talking about everything. Philosophy. Magic. What happened after prison. Whether I'd ever really be free, or if these walls lived in you forever.

"You'll get out eventually," Books would say. "Question is: who will you be when you do?"

I didn't have an answer to that. Still don't, really. But I was working on it.

The magic kept growing. I'd add layers to Cell 47's wards every few months, stacking protections like armor plating. The cell hummed with power now. Anyone with the Sight could probably see it glowing. But nobody in CNCC had the Sight except me. Far as I knew.

That thought bothered me sometimes. Was I really the only one? In a facility with fourteen hundred inmates, was I the only practitioner? Seemed unlikely. But if there were others, they kept quiet. Or maybe they were like I'd been at the start—unconscious, untrained, not even knowing what they had.

I kept Kraus's six principles written in the back of that Kierkegaard book. Checked them sometimes, made sure I wasn't drifting. Never enslave another's will. Don't harm innocents. Don't work gang violence. Charge fair prices. Refuse jobs that cross lines. Use power to protect, not dominate.

Books had helped me write those. "You need rules," he'd said. "Without them, power makes its own rules. And you won't like what it decides."

He was right. He usually was.

Connor called every month, same as always. Saturdays, fifteen minutes. His daughter was now six. Smart kid asked questions about everything. "When's Uncle Thor coming home?" she'd asked during our last call. Connor didn't have a good answer. Neither did I.

Eight more years, I'd tell myself. Almost a quarter through. Keep your head down, keep practicing, keep surviving.

But lately, I'd started wondering about Kraus's old cell.

Eventually, I went looking for ghosts.

Books was asleep—or pretending to be, which was basically the same thing in a six-by-ten cell. I lay on my bunk, relaxed into the familiar feeling of separation. Body here, consciousness elsewhere. The ethereal tether formed, that golden dust trail connecting me to my meat. I'd done this enough times now that it felt natural. Easy, even.

I thought about Cell 23. Kraus's old space, twenty-four cells down on 3-Alpha. Being renovated, which meant empty. Which meant I could look without some fish freaking out about a ghost in his cell.

The world collapsed. Snap. There.

Cell 23 smelled like fresh paint even in astral form—weird how some sensory shit crossed over. The bunks were gone, mattresses stacked in the hallway. Concrete walls bare, ready for new occupants who'd never know a Nazi occultist died here.

But I could see what they couldn't.

Protection wards covered the walls. Not carved—painted, drawn, etched in substances I didn't want to think about too hard. Invisible to regular sight, but in astral they glowed faint blue. Three layers, overlapping. The outermost was simple deflection work, the kind that made violence bounce off. Middle layer was confusion—guards would avoid this cell without knowing why, find reasons to walk past it. The innermost was personal, tied to Kraus specifically. Fading now that he was dead, but still there. Still humming with residual power.

Old man had been serious about his privacy.

I drifted to the bunk frame still bolted to the wall. Someone had half-assed removing it—one side hung loose, the other still anchored. Underneath, carved into the metal support beam where no casual inspection would ever see it, were diagrams. Instructions. A whole fucking manual for thought-form construction.

I moved closer. The symbols were a mix—Norse runes, alchemical signs, some shit I didn't recognize. But the pattern was clear enough. Building blocks: will, belief, purpose, release. Steps for creating semi-autonomous magical entities. Little worker spirits you could send out to do specific tasks.

Warnings too. Carved deep, like Kraus had really wanted this part to stick: Lose control, they turn on you. Define poorly, they interpret creatively. Create too many, they drain you dry.

Yeah. Filed under "use sparingly."

The toilet tank was next. I phased through the porcelain—one advantage of being incorporeal—and found more etchings inside the tank itself. Temporal anchoring techniques. How to fix your consciousness to a specific point in time before projecting. Blood sigil on the body, specific rune sequence, focus on the now.

That's why I kept slipping into the past when I projected outside CNCC. No anchor. I was drifting through time like a leaf in a stream, landing whenever the current took me.

Kraus had solved that problem decades ago. Left the solution in his fucking toilet tank.

I checked the ventilation grate last. Had to squeeze through—even in astral, tight spaces felt wrong. But there, carved into the metal ductwork behind the grate, was Kraus's darkest work.

Binding rituals. Instructions for enslaving another person's will. Making them puppets. Taking away choice, autonomy, everything that made someone human and turning them into a meat robot that did what you wanted.

I read it all. Needed to know how it worked—if only so I'd recognize it if someone tried it on me. But the whole time I was reading, my skin crawled. This wasn't magic. This was evil wearing magic's clothes.

Behind the binding instructions, carved even deeper—like Kraus had hidden his final message where only someone serious would find it—was an inscription in German. Books had been teaching me basics, but I sketched it anyway. Would need his help translating.

I followed the golden tether back to Cell 47. Snapped into my body with the usual disorienting jolt. Took a breath. Another. Checked my watch—two hours gone. Books was definitely awake now, reading by the dim light from the tier.

"You find what you were looking for?" he asked without looking up from his book.

"Yeah. Kraus left me homework."

"The good kind or the kind that gets you killed?"

"Both."

Four weeks. That's how long it took to decode Kraus's architecture grimoire. Nightly visits to Cell 23, sketching everything I could see. Days spent cross-referencing with library books, figuring out what the symbols meant, how the techniques worked. Books helped with the German, translated the philosophical stuff I couldn't parse.

The old Nazi had been brilliant. Racist piece of shit, yeah, but brilliant. He'd encoded his entire practice into that cell. Every surface had lessons. The walls taught protection. The bunk taught creation. The toilet taught time. The ventilation taught domination.

I took what I needed. Left what I didn't.

Temporal anchoring came first. I practiced in Cell 47, Books watching like this was the most interesting biology experiment he'd ever seen. Blood sigil on my forearm—small, discreet, looked like a scratch to anyone who didn't know better. The rune sequence was simple: Dagaz for day, Jera for year, Raidho for journey. Combined, they meant "now." Present moment. Anchor point.

I projected to the yard. Stayed in the present. Saw inmates in real-time, not six months ago or three weeks future. Just now.

"It worked," I said when I snapped back. My nose was bleeding—the sigil took more out of me than I'd expected—but it fucking worked.

Books handed me toilet paper. "You're getting better at this."

"Or the magic's getting better at using me. Kraus warned about that."

"Then stay vigilant."

Yeah. Easier said than done.

Layered wards took a week to implement properly. Cell 47 already had basic protection—the shit I'd thrown up after the Brotherhood came for me that first time. But Kraus's technique was different. Multiple spells, different purposes, stacked like armor plating. Each layer exponentially stronger than the last.

I added three new layers. First: physical barrier enhancement. Made the walls harder, denser, resistant to force. Second: magical deflection. Any spell thrown at this cell would bounce. Third: perception filter. Anyone looking for me specifically would have trouble finding Cell 47. Their eyes would slide past it, their minds would find reasons to check other cells first.

Cost me two nosebleeds and a splitting headache that lasted three days. But when I was done, Cell 47 was the most protected space in CNCC. Maybe the most protected space I'd ever created.

Books tested it. Tried to remember our cell number while I was maintaining the perception filter. Took him five minutes to get it right, and he lived here.

"That's deeply unsettling," he said.

"That's the point."

Thought-form construction I only tested once. Too dangerous, too draining, too much potential for shit to go sideways. But I needed to know I could do it.

Library cart day. Gibbins walking behind me like usual, scrolling his phone like the world's most disinterested prison guard. I visualized a small entity—barely conscious, single purpose. Looked like a gremlin in my head, all spite and mischief. Gave it one task: make Gibbins drop his phone.

Poured will into the visualization. Felt it take shape, become semi-real. Released it.

The thought-form zipped across the tier, invisible to everyone but me. Wrapped around Gibbins's wrist. Yanked.

His phone clattered to the concrete. Screen cracked. Gibbins cursed, bent to pick it up.

The thought-form dissolved. Job done, no reason to exist anymore.

I kept pushing the cart like nothing happened. But my head was pounding, my nose was bleeding, and I was so exhausted I nearly collapsed when I got back to the cell.

Books caught me. "What did you do?"

"Tested something. Won't do it again unless I have to."

"Good. You look like death."

Took me two days to recover. Thought-forms weren't toys. They were weapons. Expensive, dangerous weapons that cost more than they were worth most of the time.

But I could make them. That knowledge alone was worth the price.

Blood wards were the final piece. Permanent protections tied to location, not person. I added them to Cell 47's corners, tiny sigils drawn in my own blood, activated with focused will. They'd last until someone stronger came along and broke them. Since I was the only practitioner in CNCC—the only one I knew about, anyway—that meant they'd last as long as I was here.

The cell was mine now. Truly, completely mine. Warded tighter than a drum, protected six ways from Sunday. Nobody was getting in unless I let them.

The binding rituals I read. Understood. Refused to use.

Books helped me translate the final inscription—the warning Kraus had carved behind the ventilation grate. We sat in the library, Books reading the German I'd sketched, speaking it soft so nobody else would hear.

"Die Macht wählt sein Gefäß." He paused. "The power chooses its vessel."

"Yeah, Kraus said that before. What's the rest?"

Books kept reading. "Nutze es weise, oder es wird dich verzehren. Ich dachte, ich wäre Meister. Ich lag falsch. Die Magie benutzte mich so sehr, wie ich sie benutzte. Mache nicht meinen Fehler, Junge. Sei stärker als ich war."

"Translation?"

"Use it wisely, or it will consume you. I thought I was master. I was wrong. The magic used me as much as I used it. Don't make my mistake, boy. Be stronger than I was."

We sat there quiet for a while. The library was empty except for us—Tuesday afternoon, nobody gave a shit about books when there was yard time available.

"He was warning you," Books said finally. "At the end, dying, he had enough clarity to see what the power had done to him."

"Nazi regrets. Touching."

"Don't be flippant. This is important." Books closed my sketch, looked at me direct. "Kraus gave you everything he knew. Techniques, knowledge, power. But he also gave you a choice. Use it like he did—to dominate, control, serve your ideology—or use it differently."

"I'm not him."

"No. But you could become him. Power's seductive. It offers solutions to every problem. Protection. Wealth. Respect. Fear. All the things you need to survive in here. Easy to start crossing lines when the lines get you killed."

"That's why I have you. Moral compass and shit."

Books smiled. "That's why you have you, Thor. I can advise. You decide."

Yeah. He was right. Every spell, every working, every choice—mine. My responsibility. My soul on the line.

We created the framework that night. Back in Cell 47, Books on the upper bunk, me on the lower. He pulled out a library book—Kierkegaard, some dense philosophy shit nobody else would ever check out—and opened to the back cover.

"Write them down," he said. "Your principles. The lines you won't cross."

I thought about Danny. About Rochelle and unborn Jamal. About Chains dying of cancer, pain managed but not cured. About Rey wanting me to curse some Kingsmen because gang politics. About the Brotherhood wanting full commitment. About the Warden's warning. About Kraus's final message.

I wrote six principles in tiny letters inside the back cover:

1. Never enslave another's will
   2. Don't harm innocents
   3. Don't work gang violence
   4. Charge fair prices
   5. Refuse jobs that cross lines
   6. Use power to protect, not dominate

Books read them over my shoulder. "Good. Now the hard part."

"What's that?"

"Keeping them."

Saturday. Phone call day.

Connor picked up on the second ring. "Thor. How you holding up?"

"Better. Yeah. I'm good."

Silence on his end. Then: "You sound different."

"Different how?"

"Less scared. More... I don't know. Settled."

I leaned against the payphone, watching the yard through wire mesh. Latin Kings on the basketball court. Brotherhood at the weights. Black Kingsmen scattered throughout. Everyone in their territories, everyone knowing the lines.

"I found my place here," I said. "Weird thing to say about prison, but it's true."

"Your place doing what?"

Couldn't tell him. Wouldn't understand. "Just... surviving. But better at it now."

"Marco called again. Wants to apologize. Says he thinks about what happened every day."

"Don't care."

"Thor—"

"I mean it. What Marco did, what happened—that's done. This is mine now. I own it. He can keep his apologies."

Connor was quiet again. "You really have changed."

"Two years'll do that."

We talked about his daughter. She was six now, asking questions about everything. Why's the sky blue. Where do babies come from. When's Uncle Thor coming home. That last one hurt, but I handled it.

Eight more years. She'd be fourteen when I got out. Might barely remember me.

"I’ll see you all as soon as I can," I'd told Connor. Though at the time I thought I had eight more years. Turned out I was wrong about that. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Fifteen minutes passed fast. The automated voice cut in: "One minute remaining."

"Love you, man," Connor said.

"You too. Tell the little one her uncle's thinking about her."

"Always do."

Click.

I hung up. Walked back to the tier. Cell 47 was waiting. Books was waiting. Wednesday library cart was waiting.

But I wasn't scared anymore.

Wednesday morning. Library cart. Gibbins with his replacement phone, scrolling like the first one never died.

Inmates approached. Same requests, different day. Love spells, protection sigils, curses on enemies. I evaluated each one against the framework. Personal business? Sure. Gang war? No. Innocent target? Absolutely fucking not.

Old Man Petersen wanted another dick spell. "Last one wore off."

"They do that. Fifteen."

"Ten?"

"Fifteen or keep your limp dick."

He paid.

Vinnie Pipes asked for a protection sigil for his daughter. Birthday coming up, wanted her safe. I drew it for free, same as always. He tried to pay anyway. I refused. He nodded, respect in his eyes.

Prophet Muhammad requested a theological debate about the nature of divine will versus human agency in magical practice. I told him to ask Books—way above my pay grade. He laughed, said he would.

By lunch count, I'd taken seven jobs. Turned down four. Two Brotherhood requests for gang curses—Werner looked disappointed but not surprised. One Latin Kings request that felt like a setup—told the messenger no, walked away before it escalated. One independent who wanted me to make his cellie disappear—told him to fuck off, that crossed every line I had.

The magic was mine. The choices were mine. The consequences would be mine.

I could live with that.

That night, I took stock.

Books was reading again—always reading. I lay on my bunk staring at the ceiling, counting up where I stood.

Time served: Two years, give or take. Felt like twenty. Felt like two days. Time was weird in prison.

Time remaining: Eight years. Long time. Enough to master what Kraus left me. Enough to figure out what magic looked like outside these walls—if it worked at all out there.

Position: Established. "El Bruja" wasn't just a nickname anymore. It was a brand. A reputation. Fear and respect in equal measure.

Allies: Books, first and always. True friend in a place where friendship was currency. Werner, complicated—protected me but wanted commitment I wouldn't give. Vinnie, respectful—old-school criminal who understood honor. Scattered clients who paid fair and didn't cross lines.

Enemies: Rey and the Latin Kings, hostile since I refused their curse. Some Brotherhood members who wanted full commitment thought I was disrespecting the ink. Anyone who figured out I was Danny's snitch—though that seemed unlikely two years later. Maybe Danny himself, if he ever got transferred back. Doubtful. Violent offenders didn't usually return to medium security.

Reputation: Fear kept me safe. Respect kept me employed. Isolation kept me sane, weirdly enough. Can't betray people you're not close to. Can't lose what you never had.

Wealth: Comfortable by prison standards. Commissary account flush. Trade goods stocked. Cash hidden under the sink—couple hundred at least. Enough to handle emergencies, buy protection if the Brotherhood alliance ever collapsed.

Magic: Advanced practitioner. Still learning, still growing. Dangerous to others. Dangerous to myself if I wasn't careful. Kraus's grimoire gave me techniques that would take years to fully master. Temporal anchoring, layered wards, thought-forms, blood magic, all of it. Plus whatever I'd discovered on my own. Chaos magic meant no limits except the ones I set.

Soul: Intact. So far. Books helped with that. The framework helped with that. Refusing the binding rituals helped with that. But Kraus's warning echoed: The magic used me as much as I used it.

Had to stay vigilant. Had to keep choosing right over easy. Had to remember I was Thor O'Reilly from Parkdale, not some prison demigod who could do whatever the fuck he wanted.

The power chose its vessel. Yeah. But the vessel still got to choose how the power was used.

I'd choose different than Kraus. Had to. Or I'd end up like him—brilliant and broken, powerful and poisoned, dying with regrets carved into ventilation grates.

Two years down. Eight to go.

The runes hummed under my skin. Blood memory. Will made manifest. Chaos magic.

I was Thor. Not the god. Just a guy from Parkdale with Nordic tattoos who learned sometimes the ink chooses you.

And I had work to do.

Thursday afternoon. Yard time.

Vinnie Pipes found me by the fence, away from the gangs and their territories. He looked around, making sure nobody was close enough to hear.

"Got some news," he said quiet. "You know Danny Keyes?"

My stomach dropped. "Yeah. Why?"

"Word from up north. Violent offenders facility. Danny found himself a practitioner."

The world tilted. "What?"

"Another spellslinger. Like you. Been working magic in that facility for years, apparently. Older guy, serious reputation. Danny's been paying him for workings."

"What kind of workings?"

Vinnie shrugged. "Don't know specifics. But Danny knows about you. Knows what you can do. And now he's got his own witch."

He walked away before I could ask more questions. Smart. This conversation never happened. Just two guys in the yard, shooting the shit.

I stood there processing.

Danny Keyes. The man who killed Rochelle and Jamal. The man I snitched on, sent to violent offenders, thought I'd never see again. He'd found another practitioner. Someone with years of experience, serious reputation, magical firepower I couldn't even guess at.

And Danny knew about me.

The Brotherhood could protect me from Latin Kings, from rival gangs, from regular prison violence. But this? This was different. This was magical. This was someone with power coming after someone else with power.

This was a problem I couldn't ward my way out of.

I looked at my hands. The blood sigil was fading on my forearm—would need to refresh it tonight. Protection wards hummed around Cell 47, layers deep, strong as I could make them. Kraus's techniques lived in my head now, ready to use.

But I wasn't alone in the magical world anymore. Wasn't the only one slinging spells in Ontario's prison system. Someone else was out there. Someone older. Someone Danny Keyes had access to.

Books was right. The hard part wasn't learning the magic.

The hard part was what came after.

Yeah.

That was gonna be a problem.

END OF BOOK 1