aka. Qifrey is bound to you by a magic string, problems arise the moment fear enters the relationship — how are you two going to deal with these uncertainties?
Qifrey x reader
cw: none
AN: guys the sentences are confusing me too, trust I've had 3 people read over this and we all agreed that this might be the most complicated piece of mine yet — bear with me please
In the earliest days of magic, before glyphs were carved into stone and before witches learned to coax light from ink, the world was woven from threads.
Not metaphorical ones, but real strands of living magic that stretched across the land like veins of gold. They connected rivers to mountains, storms to seasons, hearts to hearts. Even now, centuries later, remnants of those primordial threads linger beneath the ribs of every witch, dormant until they recognize another. The scholars say the threads remember what people forget. They say the threads choose long before the heart understands.
Yours lay quiet for years, a faint shimmer beneath your skin, unnoticed and unremarkable. It stirred only when you stepped into Qifrey’s atelier — a place built on old enchantments and older secrets. The atelier breathed like a living creature. Its beams were carved with glyphs that shifted like migrating birds when touched by sunlight. The floorboards hummed with ancient spells, soft as a heartbeat. Shelves bowed under the weight of spellbooks whose pages rustled even when no wind passed. The air smelled of cedar, ink, and the metallic sweetness of magic. It was a place where creation was not an act but a condition of existence.
And in that breathing magic, your thread woke.
It unfurled from your chest like a line of gold ink drawn in the air, trembling with the shock of recognition. Qifrey felt it before he saw it. He turned toward you with a startled softness, his single visible eye widening as the thread shimmered between you. It was delicate, quivering, as though unsure whether it should reveal itself. He didn’t touch it. He simply looked at it with a reverence that made the air feel suddenly sacred.
The apprentices whispered about it for days. Soulmate threads were rare, and yours glowed brighter than most. It pulsed faintly whenever you and Qifrey stood close, a soft heartbeat of shared magic. You felt it in small moments — when he guided your hand over a glyph, when he laughed at something quiet, when he brushed past you in the narrow hallway. The thread hummed with possibility, with promise, with the quiet certainty of something ancient and inevitable.
But threads are sensitive things. They respond not only to love, but to fear.
As the weeks passed, you began to feel a tension in the golden line. It wasn’t painful, not yet, but it was there — a subtle pull, a faint ache. Doubt crept in like cold air through a cracked window. You wondered if the thread was a blessing or a burden. You wondered if Qifrey felt the same. You wondered if you were enough for him, or if the thread had chosen for you both without asking.
The atelier noticed before either of you spoke. Magic is sensitive to emotion. The glyph‑etched beams dimmed slightly, their glow fading whenever the thread strained. The enchanted windows showed storms more often, even when the weather outside was clear. Spell‑dust settled thicker on the shelves, as if the air itself had grown heavy. The world around you mirrored the fraying inside you.
Qifrey approached you gently, as if you were a fragile spell circle he didn’t want to disturb. He didn’t ask what was wrong. He simply stood near you, letting the thread speak for him. It dimmed. It trembled. It pulled.
And in a moment of quiet panic, he tied the first knot.
A small one, clumsy and desperate. A knot made not of malice but of fear — fear of losing you, fear of watching the thread snap, fear of being left alone with the silence of an atelier that had grown used to your presence. But knots change the way a thread lies. They pull. They strain. They remind you of breaks that almost happened.
You felt the knot immediately — a tightness in your chest, a heaviness in your steps. You didn’t know what he had done, only that something felt wrong. The thread, once smooth and luminous, now carried a small imperfection. A bruise. A memory of fear.
And the atelier, which had once felt like a sanctuary, suddenly felt like a loom whose rhythm you no longer understood.
---
The thread between you had become a landscape — no longer a single golden line, but a terrain of knots, frayed fibers, and patched places where magic had been forced to remember what hands had done to it. It stretched from your chest to Qifrey’s like a river that had survived storms, its once‑smooth surface broken by the evidence of every moment you had faltered, every moment he had feared, every moment the world had asked more of you than you knew how to give.
The atelier around you breathed with its own ancient rhythm. The fire in the hearth crackled softly, sending thin ribbons of smoke curling upward like stray threads seeking a place to belong. The flames cast amber light across the carved beams overhead, making the glyphs shimmer like constellations caught in wood. Outside, the enchanted windows showed a gentle snowfall drifting over distant mountains — a quiet illusion meant to soothe apprentices, though tonight it felt like a reminder of how cold the world could be when hearts drifted apart. The air smelled of cedar and ink and the faint metallic sweetness of spell‑dust, a scent that had become the background music of your shared life.
And in that warm, flickering glow, the thread revealed its imperfections.
Some knots were small, barely more than a twist in the gold, tightened in moments of quiet panic. They clung to the thread like frozen dew, fragile and translucent, holding the memory of a single breath where he thought you might slip away. Others were larger, thick and clumsy, tied with trembling hands in the dark hours when the atelier felt too big and your silence felt too heavy. These knots bulged like scar tissue, uneven and stubborn, refusing to lie flat no matter how gently you touched them.
There were places where the gold had dulled, losing its shine as though the magic itself had grown tired. These sections lay like faded embroidery, worn by the friction of doubt. They carried a heaviness — the weight of words left unsaid, of glances avoided, of nights spent on opposite sides of the room pretending the thread did not ache. When the firelight touched these dull patches, they did not glow; they only absorbed the light, quiet and resigned.
And then there were the blackened parts.
Thin segments where the gold had turned dark, as if charred by unresolved hurt. These were not knots, not frays, but burns — places where the thread had absorbed too much tension, too much fear, too much longing without release. They pulsed faintly, like old wounds that had never fully healed. When your fingers brushed them, the magic shivered, remembering the moment it had dimmed. The blackened places were the hardest to look at — not because they were ugly, but because they were honest.
Qifrey had tried to mend these places with scraps — thin strands of other threads, borrowed from spells meant for repairing cloth or restoring broken glyphs. They were not gold. They were pale silver, soft blue, muted copper, woven in with careful hands. These scraps wrapped around the damaged sections like bandages, holding the weakened fibers together. They were uneven, mismatched, undeniably imperfect — but they kept the thread from breaking.
Some scraps were tied gently, their ends tucked neatly into the weave. Others were knotted hastily, their loose ends sticking out like stray hairs. A few were frayed themselves, worn thin from the strain of holding two hearts together. But they remained, stubborn and loyal, refusing to let the thread fall apart.
The thread, once a single flawless line, had become a tapestry of survival.
It carried the memory of fear, the evidence of mistakes, the scars of unraveling. It carried the softness of repair, the warmth of forgiveness, the quiet strength of choosing each other again and again. It was no longer the thread that fate had given you. It was the thread you had made together — shaped by your hands, your hesitations, your hope.
The atelier responded to this new thread with a kind of reverent acceptance. The fire crackled more warmly, its flames rising higher as though encouraged by the resilience woven into the golden line. The glyphs on the beams glowed with a deeper amber, their light soft and steady. The enchanted windows shifted from snowfall to gentle rain, droplets sliding down the glass like blessings. The air hummed with a quiet harmony, as though the magic had decided that imperfection was not a flaw but a form of truth.
You touched the thread, feeling its uneven texture. It was not beautiful in the way ancient texts described. It was beautiful in the way lived things are — flawed, weathered, resilient. A testament to survival. A testament to choice.
The thread pulsed gently beneath your fingers, as though acknowledging your touch. It did not shine uniformly. It did not lie straight. It did not pretend to be perfect. It simply existed — stubborn, mended, alive.
And in that moment, you understood something the scholars had never written, something the ancient texts had never dared to say:
Soulmate threads were never meant to remain pristine.
They were meant to be altered by the hands that held them.
Love was not a smooth line.
It was a tapestry woven from imperfect hands.
It was knots tied in fear, stitches sewn in hope, fibers patched with whatever scraps you had left.
It was effort.
It was sacrifice.
It was choosing to mend instead of discard.
The fire crackled softly behind you, its warmth settling over your shoulders like a cloak. The atelier breathed with you, its magic steady and calm. And the thread — uneven, knotted, patched, blackened, glowing — pulsed with a quiet, persistent light.
Love was never meant to be flawless.
It was meant to be tended.
---
And so, in the hush of the atelier, with the fire murmuring in the hearth and the glyph‑lit beams glowing like distant stars, the thread between you settled into its final shape — not perfect, not pristine, but whole in the way only tended things can be. It hung in the warm air like a constellation drawn by trembling hands, its knots glinting like memories, its frayed places whispering of storms survived, its patched sections glowing faintly where borrowed scraps held the fragile magic together. The dull gold shimmered softly, accepting its scars; the blackened segments pulsed with a quiet resilience, no longer wounds but reminders of the depth of what had been endured. And as the fire crackled, sending sparks drifting upward like tiny embers seeking a sky, the thread breathed with you — rising and falling, glowing and dimming, alive in its imperfection. In that moment, surrounded by the gentle hum of old enchantments and the soft rustle of spell‑dust settling on the shelves, you understood that love was not the golden thread fate had given you, but the tapestry you had woven from fear and hope, from unraveling and repair, from silence and reaching back. It was a thing shaped by your hands, strengthened by your choices, softened by your forgiveness. And as the night deepened and the atelier wrapped itself around you like a cloak, the thread glowed with a quiet, persistent light — a promise not of perfection, but of endurance. A promise that even the most frayed magic could be beautiful when tended. A promise that love, in all its knots and scars, was still worth weaving.
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I fucking adore Ace's unstoppable big mouth. This boy decided to be a bitch and said that NO ONE will ever stop him. Housewarden Riddle the red tyran with the anti-magic powers ? Yeah who cares you're going to get called a whiny baby in front of everyone. Vice Housewarden Trey who cooked a really tasteful dessert to help you apologize? Fuck you, you cowardly submissive lettuce, if you don't have the balls to stop your so-called childhood friend's madness then I WILL. Ace doesn't even have his magic anymore but on SEVENS he's going to fight everyone with the sheer power of stubbornness. And if his words aren't enough to get through you then you can bet that you're getting slapped without hesitation. He's so fucking funny, he has exactly 0 percent of respect in his whole body so don't expect him to have any consideration for anyone's past trauma. I think we all need an unapologetically disrespectful friend like Ace. He's singlehandly keeping everyone's ego at acceptable level by constantly dismissing them.
Please don't read this if you are uncomfortable with the yandere!
You awaken in a place that claims to be a hospital. Everyone speaks of ink, witches, and attacks as if they belong to everyday life. Your memories of your own world are perfectly intact. The only thing you can't remember is how you came to be in theirs.
I think this story is geared more toward a female reader, though the first few chapters are fairly neutral. Feel free to give it a try! :3
Pairings and tw will be added in future chapters.
You slowly wake up and try to make sense of what's happening. Women bustle around you. Everything looks… strange. One of them tells you you're in a hospita The room doesn't look anything like a hospital ward. And the nurses themselves resemble nuns far more than medical staff.
Anisha - the "nurse" who spoke to you earlier - helps you sit up and props a pillow behind your back. The whole situation begins to feel like some kind of masquerade or stage play, but the pounding in your head is all too real.
"Poor thing. You have no idea how lucky you were to get off so lightly after the attack," Anisha says, speaking more to herself than to you as she mixes together a handful of ingredients.
"The attack?" For a moment, you wonder if your confusion is the result of a head injury. But your memories of the hospitals and doctors you know are far too vivid to be dismissed as delirium. Most likely, you're in some remote settlement. A very remote one. A place where the locals have abandoned every modern convenience for reasons known only to themselves.
“The Brimmed Caps. You don't remember?” the girl Women asks, holding out a dose of medicine. You obediently swallow it. “I'll let the doctor know you've woken up… and that you're having memory problems.”
She slips out of the room so quickly that you don't have a chance to ask any more questions. Everyone else has already left as well. You mull over her words. The Brimmed Caps? It sounds strangely familiar. But the pain in your temple suddenly flares, and a sharp ringing fills your ears. You abandon the effort to remember and decide it's best to go with the flow.
The doctor gives you even fewer answers than Anisha did. You comfort yourself with the thought that he doesn't have to be friendly to be a good physician. The young woman standing behind him offers you a gentle smile, helping ease your anxiety for a moment. The man curtly asks about your symptoms, makes notes in what you assume is your medical chart, and dictates a new list of medicines for the nurse to administer. None of the names sound even remotely familiar to you. In the end, the doctor concludes that your head injury isn't severe enough to have caused amnesia. No ink was found on your body. What is that even supposed to mean? Most likely, he explains, the extreme stress triggered a protective response in your brain, leaving a gap in your memory. With that, the doctor decides his work here is done and leaves, once again placing you in the nurse's care. Anisha is quick to reassure you.
“Medicine and plenty of rest should help your memories return. In time, they'll come back,” she says, gently patting your hand. “Tomorrow, the vice-captain of the Knights Moralis will arrive. He sent word a few days ago that he wanted to question you, but you were still unconscious. Don't worry if you still haven't remembered anything by the time he arrives.”
The vice-captain of what? You realize you've missed half of what she said. Your bewilderment is too overwhelming to ask her to repeat herself. Anisha tells you to get some sleep. Their medieval remedies are already beginning to work. Your eyelids grow heavy. Just before you drift off, a realization flashes through your mind. All of this reminds you of something. You don't manage to remember what.
Pairing: Qifrey x gender neutral reader (romantic) qiflings x reader (platonic)
Synopsis: When the plans got ruined by the weather, you decided to make something about the sad little faces of the girls and made their day even better than the previous plans assumed.
Warning: nothing but pure fluff and bad grammar.
The sky was dark, covered by dark clouds that had been raining non-stop since yesterday. The cold wind was howling, trying to find a way inside the cosy atelier. 4 little girls were sitting in the living room, their faces gloomy and clearly upset.
Today they were supposed to go outside and camp outside in the garden and bake marshmallows over the fireplace, but the weather unfortunately had other plans, and because of that, their idea needed to be moved to another day.
All of them were so excited and were looking forward to it all week. After breakfast they all gathered in the living room and were quietly sitting curled up in different parts of the living room studying. Qifrey was in the kitchen washing the dishes, Olruggio was in his room working on another urgent project and you were folding the laundry and delivering it to the girls' rooms.
The whole atelier was quiet except the sound of rain hitting the glass windows. Everyone seemed to be in a worse mood. You felt bad for the girls because you saw how excited they got when you mentioned doing the small camp if they behaved and finished their small test prepared by Qifrey with good scores.
You were walking around from room to room thinking about what to do to make the girls feel better and cheer them up because you genuinely felt a sting in your chest whenever you looked at their upset faces blankly staring into the spell books. While walking into Tetia's room, you tripped over one of her dolls, and the basket with laundry went flying, fresh white sheets getting everywhere. You cursed under your breath and started getting up when you noticed that one of the sheets landed directly on the chair, making a small tent, and then the idea hit you. It was like a The light bulb that was refusing to cooperate finally decided to enlighten your mind. You quickly got up and started grabbing and folding the sheets again. When you were done, you quickly went to the living room and happily turned towards the girls.
"Gather every pillow, blanket and duvet you can find and bring them there! And bring some chairs and rope," you said cheerfully.
Girls looked at each other confused.
If we can’t have a camp outside, we will get one inside!
Girls' faces immediately lightened up from excitement, got up, and scattered around the atelier to grab everything they needed. Qifrey, who heard the commotion, came to the living room gently drying his hands with a towel and sent you a questioning look.
You just smiled and told him to prepare cookies, chocolate and marshmallows and the small portable metal grill that was more of a metal bowl on legs that they almost never used. He just raised an eyebrow before chuckling and turning around to fulfil your wish.
When the girls returned, you all got to work carefully placing chairs into a circle and tying the brooms to them with a rope to make the tent higher. Then the base was ready; you started placing the blanket on them, successfully covering all of the chairs and gently tying the blankets together and placing books on them to make sure they wouldn't slip away. Tetia was running around the tent helping you with the blankets while Richeh and Agott were arguing about how to place the blankets and books and how to make the most comfortable pillow bed.
When everything was ready, you looked at the tent. Something was missing. You looked at Richeh and smiled before asking if she still has some of her crystal ribbons. She looked at you with a a twinkle in her eyes before running to get her pen ink and some papers while Coco and BrushBuddy were in the kitchen grabbing the snacks Qifrey prepared and stealing a cookie or two before heading back, which only made the white-haired man chuckle and shake his head.
When Richeh was back, you carefully placed the bows inside the fort on the back of the chairs and added a small chain of lights that gives a delicate golden glow throughout the tent. Meanwhile Qifrey gently placed the grill in a safe distance from the tent and placed pillows around it and placed small sticks on them for the girls to put their marshmallows on. When the whole setup was finally ready, the girls couldn’t help but jump for joy at the sight of the tent and makeshift campfire with a fireball spell inside it giving a gentle and warm glow.
The rest of the day was spent in a much happier atmosphere. The girls were laughing and talking while baking the marshmallows. They tried giving some to the brush buddy, but the melting snack shut its mouth shut, and the poor creature had trouble opening its mouth again, which made all of the girls sitting in the circle laugh until their bellies started to hurt. You showed how to make smores, and the girls ended up absolutely loving it. Especially after even though she didn’t want to admit it. But it was clear the small treat took over her heart completely.
After eating, girls sat in the tent on each of your sides, curled up next to each other while you were reading them stories from the book you brought from the great hall’s library some time ago. Tetia was lying on Richeh’s arm, and Agott was sitting really closely to Coco, intensely listening to the story.
You were so focused on the book you didn’t notice a figurine standing in the doorway watching the most important people in his life sitting together having a great time without a care in the world. In that moment there was nothing more he could wish to have. He was smiling and looking at you with such love in his eyes; if you noticed him there, you definitely would see the unmistakable look of love he was giving you right now. He loved seeing you with his apprentices like this, letting them be kids without the burden, fear or responsibilities, and it made his chest hurt from how much joy and love he felt in that moment You were nothing but good to them, and seeing you made them happy was the thing that made his whole week much better.
Later the same day when you were cleaning up the small mess you made with the girls, Qifrey approached you from behind and hugged you, giving you a small kiss on the neck and whispering a small
"thank you."
You just chuckled and gave him a small smile, a gentle blush covering your cheeks.
"I just wanted to make their day a little better after the previous disappointment."
"And you gave them much more than that. I haven't seen them this happy in weeks... You genuinely made those girls' lives a little better… They probably will remember this day for many, many years and might even think of it as one of the happiest days they had in their lives."
He took your hand in his and gave it a gentle kiss on the knuckles.
"That's why I want to say thank you.. for making them feel like children when the world expects them to grow up too fast... Thank you for being there and making them happy and keeping the small spark of children's innocence in their hearts still there and thriving..."
You were too stunned to speak for a second before you recovered and gave him a tight hug, burying your face in his chest, listening to his heartbeat.
The day started with bad moods, disappointed little faces and ruined plans but ended up filled with loud laughter, warmth and love, and everything ended up better than the girls could've ever imagined. <3
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