The next morning broke in gray silence.
Kael sat at the edge of his cot, fingers curled around the coin that had not left his palm since the dream. Its weight was negligible, but he felt it like a bruise in his bones—subtle, constant, cold. It hadn't stopped humming since he'd awoken, and while it made no sound to the air, it sang to something ancient in his blood.
He slipped it into his cloak and pulled the hood low before stepping out.
No one met his eye in the hallway.
Even the youngest recruits, normally noisy and foolish with their whispered rumors, shrank back when he passed. He couldn't tell if it was fear, awe, or disgust that silenced them. Maybe all three.
The training grounds were soaked in last night's storm. Mud clung to Kael's boots as he crossed the field to where the morning session would begin. Only half the usual cohort had arrived.
Bran was still gone.
Kael scanned the line of arriving students—but no trace of him, no report of his mission. Not even gossip. That was what frightened Kael most.
And then there was Eline.
She was here—barely.
She lingered near the sparring rings, her uniform crisp, eyes veiled by a veil of professionalism so practiced it hurt to look at. Her posture screamed distance. When Mirell greeted her—lightly, carefully—Eline replied without warmth. But when Kael passed within a dozen paces of her, she didn't even glance his way.
Not once.
He wanted to say something. A nod. A word. Anything.
But the shadow in his chest—heavy and churning—told him this was not the moment. That something fragile stood between them now, something sharp and shaped like memory.
Ser Whitmer arrived without announcement.
"Three-on-one sparring, staggered," he said in his clipped tone. "Target: Kael of Hollow Quarter."
Murmurs.
Kael stepped forward. The others hesitated.
Whitmer raised a hand. "Choose your opponents. I want you to pick who you fear."
Kael's throat tightened.
This was new.
This was personal.
His eyes moved across the gathered recruits and landed on the three who had watched him most closely in the last weeks—Mirell, Tovrin, and Liris. The ones who never spoke directly, only around him. The ones who whispered when they thought his back was turned.
He chose them.
The match was fast and brutal.
Mirell struck from the side with knives of black light. Tovrin manipulated terrain, drawing shadows up like claws from the earth. Liris used misdirection, feints inside illusions, forcing Kael to divide his focus.
But Kael had changed.
The whispers in his mind were clearer now—not voices, not fully—but impressions. A shift in air, a glance behind an illusion, the feel of pressure before the blow.
He flowed through them, not because he was stronger—but because something inside him had become harder.
More precise.
Tovrin lunged with a jagged blade of veil-forged matter—screaming light trapped in darkness. Kael twisted low, drew the shadows up around his left arm like armor, and blocked the strike with a glancing deflection. The veilstrike shattered. Tovrin gasped as it rebounded, staggered backward, and Kael surged forward—
—but stopped.
His fist, wrapped in raw shadow, hovered an inch from Tovrin's throat.
Just one breath, and it would've been over.
"I yield," Tovrin rasped, voice tight with disbelief.
Kael stepped back. Mirell and Liris didn't re-engage. They were staring—not just at him, but past him. As if something else had entered the ring with him. Something older.
From the edge of the field, Ser Whitmer's voice rang out. "Training complete."
Kael turned.
And saw Eline watching.
For the briefest of moments, their eyes locked.
Something flickered there—not fear, but a brittle calculation. A tightening of her jaw. Then she looked away as if he wasn't even worth watching.
He didn't know if it was her way of protecting him… or protecting herself.
That night, Kael sat alone on the rooftop overlooking the eastern cliffside. The fog below the citadel spilled endlessly over jagged rock and trees like a tide of clouds frozen mid-surge. The wind tasted of distant storm and shadowed wood.
He touched the coin again.
It had warmed.
Not with heat, but awareness.
When he closed his eyes, he felt it like an anchor—dragging him into a dream not yet formed.
This time, he didn't resist.
The dream rose up like smoke.
He stood in a chamber made of ribbed stone, walls curved and veined with pulsing light. The shadows here weren't empty—they were alive, threaded with emotion, memory, echo.
Eline stood in the center of the chamber, but younger again—maybe fourteen. Her Whisperer robes too large, sleeves rolled up. She spoke to someone hidden in the dark.
"Will he survive the binding?"
A voice answered—not human.
"If he remembers who he is, he may. If he forgets… then he'll simply become like the others. Shaped. Contained."
"And if he resists?"
"Then the world will bleed again."
Kael tried to speak, but no sound left his mouth.
Eline turned toward the shadows, unaware of him.
"Then we'll watch him."
When Kael woke, the coin was gone.
Only a black smear of ash on the table remained—etched in the shape of a crescent eclipse.