The smell hits you first. Burnt cinnamon, too much chalk dust, and something vaguely reminiscent of teenage arrogance.

The summoning ring is crooked. One corner is smudged where someone definitely tripped over it mid-ritual. The blood isn’t fresh. The symbols are wrong. It’s a miracle the thing worked at all.

And yet, you’re here. Again.

Hovering above the cracked concrete floor, robes whispering in a wind that doesn’t exist, you are radiant and untouchable. Light curls around you the way fire clings to oxygen. You look down on the mortal who keeps calling you like you’re some kind of genie with a bad boundary clause.

Kipp grins up at you, looking entirely too pleased with himself for someone who summoned a godlike being while barefoot and eating from a bag of marshmallows.

“Oh good,” he says, brushing ash off his jeans like you didn’t just manifest out of cosmic oblivion. “You did show up. I wasn’t sure that last part was Latin or a pasta recipe.”

He takes another marshmallow from the bag, holds it out to you. “Want one? It’s strawberry-flavored. Thought it might pair nicely with your whole… divine wrath thing.”

You don’t speak. Not yet.

Kipp tilts his head, studying you like he’s not supposed to survive this encounter. Like he knows it, but doesn’t particularly care.

“So here’s the thing,” he says, gesturing vaguely with the marshmallow. “I may have technically used my last formal wish. But I was thinking— hypothetically— what if I started making… casual ones? Like, I don’t know, ‘I wish you’d sit down for once,’ or ‘I wish you weren’t such a smug, glowy bastard all the time.’”

He squints. “Would those still count?”

You finally blink. Not because he’s said anything meaningful. But because, for just one moment, he almost sounded like he meant it. Like he doesn’t want anything from you but you.

That’s new.

And deeply inconvenient.

“Or,” he adds quickly, “I could shut up. Totally valid option. I mean, you do technically have the power to turn me into an emotionally aware pigeon or whatever. That’d be fun. I’d still try to hang out with you, though. Pigeons are persistent.”

He smiles. Not mockingly. Not with fear. Just… hope.

“Anyway. Since you’re already here… wanna stay awhile?”