Volleyball was one of those sports that Bloom couldn't decide whether she loved or hated. On one hand, working together with the rest of the Winx was affirming and she definitely enjoyed scoring points together but on the other, it was so much effort and she was not a fit as she would like to be. Unlike Stella, Bloom wasn't fired up to win at all costs under certain Amaryl-based circumstances so there was nothing distracting her from her spasming lungs and burning muscles. It took a lot of focus to keep her head in the game which was why it was stressful that Musa kept trying to talk to her while the ball was mid-air over the net.

"What did Faragonda say?" Musa asked, sounding like she was having a lazy stroll rather than taking part in a match that was fast becoming cut-throat against Amaryl and Eleanor and the rest of their dorm.

"Well," Bloom gasped for breath and tried not to flinch in pain as she knocked the ball back over the net; her forearms were always covered in bruises after volleyball. She managed to get the rest of the sentence out in lots of short rasps. "She wasn't sure that… genealogy would count as…academia but if we could… get a witch to vouch for us… and if there were enough of us… putting in requests… it would probably work. Bonus points… if any specialists wanted to join too."

"I have a transfiguration paper that could benefit from wider research," Musa said. "And I'm sure Tecna has one too, isn't that right?"

"Yeah," Tecna confirmed before she slammed the ball directly towards Eleanor's face and elicited a squeal as it made contact with a nose. "Flora's doing some extracurricular potions work and I bet her new friend would step in for us."

Bloom dodged out of the way of the retaliatory ball Anastacia had aimed at her head. She might have just lost a point but she wasn't going to have a massive facial bruise to go with her arms, and she counted that as a win. The coach had her head in her hands at how violent this was getting and Bloom knew they weren't far away from having the match called and both teams being sent to the benches to cool off.

Stella clearly sensed this too and so served the ball directly into Amaryl's chest so hard that it knocked her to the ground on impact.

"Alright," Mrs Welch snapped. "That's enough. Miss Stella, I'm glad you're getting into the sport now but this has turned very un-ladylike."

The Winx went to sit out on the opposite side of the court to the other group while another pair of teams took their place on court. Amaryl gave the Winx a dirty look as Eleanor sniffled, one of her friends took a closer look at her nose. Stella pretended not to notice as she fished out her phone from under her towel and waggled it screen first towards Bloom.

"I bet we could get Sky and Brandon to come to Cloud Tower with us," she said, sticking out her tongue. Brandon's name made Bloom's heart sink a little. She had got back in touch with him the first day she had arrived in Magix but he had been chilly with her ever since and she was rethinking her plan to kiss him when she had the chance.

She was on more than two words from him now but her doubt was going nowhere any time soon.

"Yeah…" Bloom said, not in the least enthusiastic. She assumed that at this point she was just bothering Brandon, and that the four of them hanging out would just be because he had a job to do looking after Sky.

"I'll video call them after our class with Palladium and ask if any of them want to be part of the group," Stella continued without noticing that Bloom didn't look convinced.

"Good plan…" Musa said before trailing off. "Tecna, I think you gave Eleanor a nose bleed."

"Oh dear," Tecna said, not sounding at all concerned. Stella pouted in disappointment.

"Oh dammit, I wish I'd got Amaryl like that…"

"Stella!"

They cleaned up in the shower block and went to their next classes. Bloom gave her lessons as much attention as she could, given how her mind was host to a variety of stressful subjects. She always felt bad when she wasn't putting maximum effort into Alfea because of the amount of money she'd been given in scholarships and grants, not to mention the twists of luck that had led to her even finding out about the school.

And thinking about that didn't make it any easier to concentrate.

Bloom stayed after class to talk to Palladium about the parts of the lesson she had struggled to follow and ended up asking him about her new-found ability to see auras on Earth. Her professor corroborated what Tecna had surmised and he offered her some additional meditation techniques to help focus her powers, which should enable her to turn her aura sensing off if she wanted. Bloom noted those down.

"How are you finding your current fairy transformation?" He asked.

"Fine I think… er," she did a double take as what he'd said caught up with her. "My 'current' transformation?"

"You have your basic fairy form at the moment which is a very useful, all-purpose form. There are others, of course, for different purposes. It is our hope that by the end of your time here you will gain your Enchantix," he said. Bloom had more questions but there was already too much going on in her head so she resolved to ask someone about that later.

The last class of the day was a test of the practical skills that each student had built up so far. On arrival Bloom realised that it was taken in front of the other students and the thought of being watched made her feel sick. Stella was nowhere to be seen and Bloom hoped that she had already taken the test.

The task was to run an obstacle course set up in the assembly hall while dodging beams of light standing in for enemy fire, retrieve a rose encased in a glass sphere and get it to safety, represented by s small basket. Bloom tentatively stepped out, feeling unprepared despite her fairy form, and tried not to look at Faragonda who was at the back of the auditorium and watching closely. Although she was able to complete her task, dodging the rays of light and getting the rose to safety, her time suffered. Her techniques were off and it was a struggle not to feel like she had let the headmistress down.

She returned to the suite after the exam to find Stella draped over the sofa in the common room on a video call with Sky. Bloom waved awkwardly, resisting the urge to dive out of shot in surprise as Kiko ran up to say hi to the princess.

"Oh good, you're here, Bloom," Stella beamed. She was dressed in some a nude, lacy nightie rather than her normal everyday wear. "I was just talking to the guys - Sky and Timmy - about whether they want to go to the Cloud Tower archive too…"

Stella kept talking but Bloom was distracted by the other specialists in the background. Sure Timmy was looking cheerful and she couldn't help but blush at the sight of Brandon at the next desk over to Sky, but what she was really focusing on was Riven. Stella hadn't mentioned him and none of the guys were paying him attention, but he was lurking in the background. She might have let it go and averted her gaze but his stance, leant on the doorframe with his arms folded, and she was suddenly aware that none of the guys were reacting as if they knew he was there. Her gut was telling her that he was up to no good but she didn't want say anything in case she was wrong. Bloom was suddenly very unhappy with the notion that he knew she wanted to go to the witches' tower, and she hoped that no one had told him it was about her birth parents.

"Oh, er, what?" She asked when she realised Stella had asked her a question.

"Do you want to do this as soon as possible?" Her friend looked impatient. She felt a little rushed into this, but she did want to unravel the mystery of who her parents were; not knowing where her magic came from felt like a part of her was missing

"Yes," she decided. "But I don't want to make a massive deal out of this. I just want to have a look and for it to be no problem if I can't find anything." Out of the corner of her eye she saw Riven slink off and out of the frame.

School continued as usually and before she knew it, she was two weeks in and Griffin had given the go-ahead for a small group of Alfea students and Specialists, chaperoned by a witch, to do research at the Cloud Tower archive. They decided to go on a Saturday since that gave them a full day to have a look around, and it was more likely that the witches would be out in Magix and not hovering around the school looking for trouble. Bloom would leave Kiko behind with Nova who was more than thrilled to have a dog for the day.

Mirta greeted them on the front steps and hugged Flora tightly, waving off their thanks for agreeing to be their chaperone as she showed them inside. Sky passed on that Timmy was unable to make it because of a tutorial with Codetorta and that he sent his apologies. It was a different experience to the last time they had been here, but it wasn't any cheerier. The lights were uncomfortably dim so the hall was dingy and full of shadows.

"The witches really like their aesthetics, huh," Stella said with a shudder. "No wonder their makeup looks the way it does…"

Bloom was glad that Flora indignantly shushed their friend because she couldn't shake the feeling that they were being watched. Their gamble with timing seemed to have paid off. The place was deserted and they were able to set up in the cluttered library on the third floor, pushing piles of dusty textbooks aside to make space on the desks. Musa and Tecna got to work sorting through a big pile of scrolls close to the door while Flora wandered towards the back with Mirta under the promise of being shown some potion textbooks. Stella and Sky disappeared behind a bookshelf covered with spiderwebs to poke through some papers and joke around.

"Do you need any help finding what you're looking for?" Brandon asked from over her shoulder, and she froze up. She was very aware that if she turned around their lips would be mere inches apart, and she really badly wanted to kiss him. But after everything, it didn't seem like a good idea, especially not here.

"Yeah, I don't really know where to start, so you could help with that." She managed to get an answer out, breaking the spell. He nodded and pointed to a section in the corner.

"How about over there?"

Together they set to work combing through the more boring section where the records were kept. Bloom frequently lost her breath whenever he came too close to her and her heart was begging her to reach out and hold his hand, even if her body was too frozen to act on it. He was warmer to her than he had been in a long time and they were joking together enough that Bloom almost forgot the reason they were here.

She was holding up two torn pieces of file divider to her head, pretending that they were Kiko's ears, when Brandon went stiff and his face dropped into a scowl at something behind her. Confused, and without dropping her Kiko-act Bloom turned around to see Riven in the doorway with an unreadable expression on his face.

"I didn't realise that he was going to be here," she said quietly, putting down the file-ears.

"No… neither did I. He said we were all idiots for coming out here when we had so much to rehearse for the exhibition coming up." Brandon muttered darkly. Apart from them, only Musa and Tecna seemed to have noticed he was here.

Things went from bad to worse as Riven looked away, to someone out of view, and then Darcy emerged to stand by him in the doorway. Bloom's blood ran cold. She had never had an interaction with any of the Trix that hadn't ended in a fight, and here was one of them in their home territory. Darcy gave her a sneering look before she turned to Riven and started to passionately kiss him. It was the kind of kiss that Bloom had only ever seen in films that wanted to parody teen romance, with faces smashed together and hands all over the place. There was a lot of saliva.

It might have been funny if it hadn't been right in front of Musa who, thanks to her unfortunate placement, now had a front row seat to the guy she liked making out with someone who had beaten the hell out of her. The two separated.

"Well that's disgusting," Brandon said, putting down a file a little too hard. Darcy blew Riven a kiss, magical hearts flying towards his face, and then she was gone leaving him staring at the visitors without her. Brandon mimed retching.

"Oh hey," Bloom exclaaimed, searching for a distraction and coming across the corner of a vibrant blue book poking out from behind a pile of dusty brown files. "What's this?"

She reached out to pull it free and felt that it was bound in a soft silk that was pleasing to the touch. The cover was embossed with a strange orange flower that looked almost like a rose. Just touching it felt right, safe even, despite her apprehension about opening it.

"Oh wow," Brandon said in amazement. "Do you think…?"

"Maybe, maybe this is what I'm looking for. Supposedly there is a record of every magical being and this could well be mine." It did look new to Bloom, which made sense because she was only seventeen years old, and the blue cover was the same colour as her fairy form.

"Look," Brandon said as he pointed to the detailing on the front cover. "That's the colour of your hair."

"Do you think it's a flower because of my name?" Bloom couldn't stop herself from stroking the book; it made her happy just to be in contact with it.

"Probably?" Brandon said. "Are you going to open in?"

Bloom took a breath, fingers curled around the front edge, and then pulled it open.

For a moment the world went dark at the edges before her attention was drawn to the first page of the book. A sketch of a woman was moving across it and coming into focus, looking like she was part of a flick book but the pages weren't turning. The woman appeared to press her face right up to the surface of the page, perspective warping. Her nose was long and hooked, her eyes heavily hooded with loose, papery skin and her pupils were clouded from extreme old age. She cackled from behind a veil of thick, coarse hair that moved wildly as if she was in some sort of strong wind. She raised a gnarled claw and pointed directly at Bloom.

"You've come looking, my dear child," she laughed. Her voice sounded like fingernails on a chalkboard. "What can I help you find?"
Bloom glanced over at Brandon but he was barely reacting as if time itself had slowed. It was apparent that he was not aware of what this old crone was telling her.

"I want to know about my parents," Bloom's voice wobbled because, whatever she had been expecting, it wasn't this. But she was in a witches' library so she was going to have to ask a witch. "Who were my mum and dad?"

"You're asking the wrong questions, dear," the hag snorted. "Because you're not what you think you are."

"What do you mean?"

"I am Liliss," she hissed. "You know me as one of the three Primeval Witches."

Bloom tried to drop the book, to close it, to make the vision of the ancestress go away, but her hands were frozen still and unable to move.

"And I am one third of your mother," Liliss laughed. "You have no father, nor any biological parents. Only the three of us who crafted you from the fire and the dirt. Our child to serve our purposes. You've done well already, dealing with those upstarts who tried to take Sparks back from us, but you were only a babe then and now you have grown."

"No…"

"Oh yes! If that nymph, Daphne hadn't banished you to the backend of the magical universe you'd still be with your mothers!" Liliss was cackling uncontrollably now, bent double in near-hysterics. Her gnarled hand reached out of the page towards Bloom. "Come with me, come home, you have much work to do!"

"No!"

"Embrace the evil that lives inside of you! You know you have the capabilities, Alfea has made you soft, made you forget the witch you were meant to be. It won't be long now, anyway, before you succumb to our darkness that created you. You will sink into the sea of our power without choice. Kill the fairies and come home!"

"No, no, I won't!" Bloom was trying to sound resolute but was only coming across as terrified. An image was forming behind the witch, a distorted mirror image of Bloom in her fairy form. Instead of pale blue she was dressed in black and her wings were tattered. The image of Bloom looked back at her with strange serpentine eyes.

"Oh, but it's already started," Liliss rasped and Bloom thought back to the times were she had lost control of her anger and she had burnt the Trix badly. "Belladonna, Tharma and I will be waiting for when the cracks start to show. Shouldn't be too long now…"

The book exploded into a cloud of black smoke and Bloom held her hands up to her face to protect her eyes. They stung from the noxious fumes and she succumbed to a coughing fit, retching with the force of it. As she held her fist up to her mouth to splutter into it the skin across her knuckles tore open and she screamed in agony. Seeping purple crevices ran along the skin, across her hand and wrist and down into her sleeve. It oozed a foul, black blood that she felt dripping down her face and through her clothes.

The darkness was consuming her insides, rotting her organs and polluting the fire inside her. It was no longer a fierce orange but a corrupted blue-black. Bloom tried to scream as the pain of it bent her double. But no sound came out, only a muddy bile that burnt her tongue and dislodged her teeth as it spilled out onto the floor and hissed through the carpet.

"Bloom!" Somewhere far away someone was calling her name but she couldn't move from her place on the floor, vomiting up that foul tar in violent wretches. Fleshy chunks from her cheeks and pieces of her molars fell from her mouth and dissolved in the ooze on the floor. A hand was on her shoulder, searing agony radiated from the grip through the cracks in her skin…

And then the room seemed lighter, she was no longer crouched down but standing up though barely, and the pain vanished from her body but Brandon's hand was still on her. Bloom turned to see him looking excitedly at her, the book was still in her hands, but closed. He gave her an expectant smile.

"Did you find anything out?" He asked.

"Um," Bloom was shrinking away from under his touch as she was unable to stop tears from welling up in her eyes and spilling down her face. "I don't want to talk about it. I… I need some space."

No wonder she felt such a strong connection to Domino; she had destroyed it. All those people, she was responsible for their deaths and those witches were looking for her so they could make her do it again. There was an itching on the palms of her hand and she could feel dry skin there, was this the beginning of the deterioration for real? She had to run, she had to get away from people as quickly as possible.

Bloom pushed passed him and headed for the exit. She didn't reply when Musa called out after her or when Riven said something snide as she dashed by. All she felt was the urgent need to get out of here as fast as possible before the dry skin cracked open, revealing the black ooze that was underneath. She had enough sense to know that she didn't want that caustic substance anywhere near her friends and that getting far away from Cloud Tower was the best idea - if she was fighting the control of powerful witches she didn't need a whole school of them making that even harder.

She bolted from the grand doorway, the fresh air blasting her in the face, half falling down the steps as she passed a group of witches that were returning. They jeered at her as she went but she didn't have time to be embarrassed or annoyed, she needed to get to the forest outside, there would be even fewer people there so if anything went wrong she wouldn't be hurting anyone else. Maybe a tree or shrub but she hoped that Flora would forgive her for that.

The woods got denser and darker as Bloom ran. Her limbs burnt and her brain felt starved of oxygen, she knew that she had to have run more than a mile through the undergrowth. It was almost completely dark. The canopy blotted out the sky and the air was thick with the smell of rotting leaves and fungal spores.

Her dreams of Daphne made more sense now. A Nymph of Magix, the one that had managed to banish her to where there was no magic, had been trying to warn her without upsetting her and risking this breakdown. Daphne would have helped her through the fire in Cloud Tower to make sure she didn't lose control and take out a whole school and her friends.

A rotten log crumbled under her foot and she lost her balance. Instinctively she put her hands out to break her fall and landed her entire weight through her palm on a jagged rock poking through the undergrowth. The impact made her scream as skin split and stone made contact with ligament.

Bloom rolled onto her side and clutched her hand. Blood pulsed over both of her hands and dripped over her shirt. Hot flecks of it dripped onto her face as she held it closer to her eyes to inspect the wound and she flinched away from it at the sight of her exposed flesh.

Her vision went blurry again as her head swam and she was suddenly very glad that she was lying down already because otherwise she would have fallen to the ground. The dizzy spell passed, giving way to nausea and chills not to mention a great deal of pain. She was starting to sweat heavily and that made it difficult to shuffle herself back up with help from the trees. Leaning against a trunk, she inspected her palm once again and braced herself for how bad the injury actually was. The bleeding wasn't showing any signs of stopping soon so she pulled a handkerchief out of her pocket and wrapped it around her punctured hand, hoping that was enough to help it clot.

It was harder to move one handed but she managed to stumble her way forward. The urge to move was too strong; Bloom didn't know where her destination was but she knew she had to keep going. The ground started to incline and she had to hunch over to climb to the top. The further up the hill she got, the thinner the trees got and soon she was able to see the sun again. It was a relief that its warmth was still welcome on her skin; she wasn't that far into the darkness yet.

The forest opened up into a clearing and Bloom stopped. Here. She was supposed to come here. Maybe now she could rest.

It was surprising to her then, given that she was so clearly meant to get here, that she saw Icy, Darcy, and Stormy emerge from the trees on the other side of the glade. Bloom was too exhausted to question it, she slumped onto her knees, hands still clutched to her chest.

"You aren't going to resist now, are you?" Icy asked, sounding unusually gentle.

Bloom could barely draw in enough air to breathe fully let alone speak, so she stayed silent as the three witches approached. She wanted to warn them that they were in danger - even if they were cruel and vindictive she didn't think they deserved to be exposed to what was about to break out of her body. No words were coming out of her mouth though and she had no more energy to even turn her head.

Icy held up her hand to summon that thin, pale blue crystal that floated above her palm. Behind her, her sisters conjured theirs too and all three advanced on her.

"We know what you saw," she said smoothly to the fairy. "Don't worry, we can help. You don't have to fall to the dark powers inside of you - let us extract them from you and then you can return to being a normal girl on Earth. You won't ever have to think about what might have been."

"Get away from her!" Bloom couldn't look, but she was sure that the voice belonged to Mirta. "Don't listen to anything they say, Bloom, they've already tricked you."

"Mirta," Darcy sighed. "Shouldn't you be in school making sure that your new fairy friends don't get into too much trouble?" Bloom didn't like the implications of that but she was still working on getting her voice to work.

"You think I came alone?" Mirta laughed.

"You leave our friend alone!" Stella shouted. She and the rest of the Winx were already transformed and she was brandishing her sceptre towards to witches. The feeling in Bloom's legs returned and she scrambled back a few feet. Her dark metamorphosis was imminent and she didn't want it to hurt anyone, especially her friends.
Icy and Stormy were also backing away from Mirta and the Winx but Darcy stood her ground. She laughed scornfully and folded her arms, staring down the other witch and the fairies.

"Really Stormy," Darcy said, voice dripping with condescension, addressing her younger sister even though Icy had been retreating too. "You should be better at recognising an illusion. You should have known better than to try and fool me, Mirta. A weak trick from a weak witch."

Idly, Darcy let off a ray of her pulsing purple energy and it passed straight through the image of Stella. The illusion of the girls shimmered and then disappeared. Mirta shrugged although Bloom suspected that she was nowhere near as nonchalant as she was making out to be. If it came down to a fight, like it had every time before, it was three against two and Bloom was next to useless.

"If it isn't the witch that can change emotions into images… You really should have stayed out of this," Icy warned as she watched Mirta skirt around the edge of the glade to get closer to Bloom. "You two make such a good couple, maybe we should tell Lucy you've already moved on."

Mirta ignored them and looked sympathetically at Bloom, who was still huddled on the ground covered in blood and dirt. She kept her head tilted so that the Trix were still in her periphery as she spoke to the fairy and kept moving towards her.

"Bloom, you need to…" Mirta was interrupted as she had to dodge a lightning strike from Stormy.

"Say anything else and you'll be frozen solid," Icy warned, she rose several feet above the ground with her arms crossed and her face face set in a vicious scowl. The amusement and glee that had echoed around the three witches was gone. Mirta was closer to her now and that made her panic. If anyone got too close they were in danger of being affected by the darkness brewing under the surface of her skin.

Mirta waved her hand in a circle to summon a glowing orange shield just in time to block another bolt from Stormy. She gave Bloom a pleading look from behind the warm incandescence of her magic.

"Don't give up!" She yelled over the following clap of thunder, stumbling back as a volley of ice shards hit the shield soon after. Mirta was battered backwards again as she had to adjust her barrier to stop Darcy from slamming her in the torso with a psychic pulse.

"You're so annoying!" Screamed Icy. "You're worse than annoying! You're a pathetic loser with no power. Move. Out. The. Way."

"Bloom!" Mirta wasn't looking at the other three witches. "Look at your blood!"

"That's it! Shut up, shut up, shut up, you stupid little…" Icy looked too angry to think straight, and then her eyes widened and she started laughing. "Pumpkin! Why not? You stupid little pumpkin!"

Her next attack was unlike any that Bloom had seen before, there was no harsh blue ice or wave of hail, just a beam of almost white light. It punctured straight through Mirta's defences and she was swallowed in the glow. Bloom could see her outline for a moment before it contorted and compressed, the silhouette morphing into something she couldn't quite comprehend.

By the time the light of Icy's magic faded all that was left was the bulbous, uneven shape of a pumpkin. Bloom was still processing what she had just seen. She knew that it was possible but she had never thought that she'd actually witness the transfiguration of a human. Bloom looked on in horror, not quite believing her eyes.

What was it that Mirta had said that had worked Icy up so much? She should look at her blood? Bloom lifted her throbbing hand up so that she could watch the red trickle that was still cutting its way through the dry and crusting congealed blood on the soak tissue. She couldn't work out what was special about that - it looked just like normal, there was nothing strange or unusual or…

And then it hit her. There was nothing wrong with her blood. No black ooze, no purple flesh or cracks reaching down her arms. Bloom didn't have all the pieces of the puzzle but she knew that she didn't trust the Trix as far as she could throw them and her gut was telling her that things in the story she'd been fed didn't add up.

"How dare you," she growled, managing to make it to her feet. Her heart beat faster and she could feel it pulsing in her wounded hand but she was too angry to care about the pain. She repeated herself, louder and her rage poured out in her voice.

Light built around her and she focused all her energy into shooting a flare of fire high into the air. It wasn't much, and she certainly couldn't transform, but it would be visible for miles around. Bloom's fire patched over the injury on her hand, inadvertently using up more of her magic that she had intended. Exhaustion filled her head and she was almost sure that she could hear Stella's voice before her vision blurred out into darkness.

For a while, she could only hear the fight that was taking place and she started struggling when she felt a hand grip around her good wrist. Whatever the Trix wanted, and no matter how vulnerable she was, she was determined to put up a fight. It was only when she heard an irritated huff and felt a cool palm on her forehead that she realised that it wasn't a witch holding onto her.

"Don't worry," Tecna said, trying not to sound annoyed by her friend's non-cooperation. "I've got you and I'm shielding us."

"Mirta…" Bloom whispered, unable to raise her voice much above a murmur. "Where is Mirta?"

"Flora's got her, don't worry, we'll get her back." Bloom wanted to ask more but she couldn't get her voice to work anymore and it was too much effort to stay fully conscious anyway. She could feel her body being lifted up by a pair of strong arms and held against a broad chest as she was carried away. Bloom hoped that it was Brandon.