The flame at the edge of the courtyard crackled softly, casting dancing shadows against the ancient stone tiles. Kael stood in silence, watching it, the familiar flickering light offering no comfort. His mind buzzed, frustration curling in his chest like smoke.
"You ever wonder," he said quietly, his voice almost a whisper, "if there's a reason I keep failing?"
Nyric raised an eyebrow, his usual smirk tempered by a flicker of concern. "What, like some cosmic punishment?"
"Maybe not cosmic. Just... maybe it wasn't meant to be practiced by this generation."
Nyric scoffed, crossing his arms. "The ancient mortals achieved it. We aren't so different, just a bit more civilized."
Kael's gaze hardened, but he didn't respond. His hands were trembling now, not from fear, but from the tension still thrumming beneath his skin, the sharp, raw echo of a failed breakthrough. He felt like he was on the edge of something, yet that wall was always just out of reach.
Nyric's eyes caught the movement. "The backlash getting worse?"
Kael nodded, frustration tightening his jaw. "It's like trying to force open a locked door with my own bones. My mind can't break through."
"There's no other direction," Kael muttered, his voice thick with bitterness.
"There's always another direction," Nyric countered, stepping in closer, his voice dropping low. "You're attacking the barrier head-on, like a brute. But you're not a brute. You're a weaver. A reader. Think like one."
Kael turned toward him, eyes narrowing. "Then tell me what I'm missing."
Nyric hesitated, his gaze flickering between Kael and the distant mountains. When he spoke, his voice was softer, almost as if he were speaking to himself. "Your flame."
Kael blinked, his brow furrowing. "What about it?"
"You've never let it burn."
Kael's breath hitched. "You mean veinfire?"
"No. I mean you. All this effort to control it, to suppress it, to earn it… Maybe what you need isn't control. Maybe it's surrender."
Kael bristled, the words like daggers. "That's exactly what she warned me against. And it's the essence of the First Form."
Nyric's gaze sharpened, a faint hint of a smile tugging at his lips. "Yeah. And she's not wrong. But why go through that? We've got more refined methods these days."
The words hung in the air, a quiet challenge that Kael couldn't ignore. But before he could respond, Nyric gave a low sigh, stepping back. "I should go. Before she catches me here."
"She already knows," Kael muttered, sinking into his meditative pose again, though his focus was fractured. Nyric's words lingered in his mind, like a splinter he couldn't shake loose.
Nyric paused, eyes suddenly narrowing, his body stiffening. He tilted his head, as though listening for something Kael couldn't hear.
A faint disturbance rippled in the air, a strange energy Kael felt deep in his bones.
The next moment, an object crashed into the courtyard, shattering the stone tiles and throwing up a cloud of dust.
The flames danced erratically, their rhythm broken by the shockwave. Even the shadows seemed to recoil, as if recoiling from the very presence that had arrived.
The dust lingered, thick and choking. Kael snapped to his feet, heart hammering, instinctively bracing for danger. A primal sense of wrongness crawled up his spine.
"What was that?" he hissed, eyes scanning the shifting dust, searching for any sign of movement.
Nyric's eyes were hard as stone, his usual smirk gone. "It's a person."
Kael's chest tightened. "A person?"
Nyric stepped forward, lips tight with dread. "Kael—go. Find your mother. Now."
Before Kael could respond, a stone whistled through the air, slicing past him and embedding itself into the courtyard wall with a deafening crack.
A voice rumbled from within the dust, low and rough, almost like it had been carved from stone.
"I'd rather you stayed."
The dust began to settle, and through the haze emerged a figure—a dark silhouette that seemed to swallow the light. The man was a towering presence, easily nearly seven feet tall. His bare chest was a patchwork of scars, both old and fresh, winding across corded muscles like a map of endless battles fought and survived. Every mark told a story: wounds from blades, burns from fire, cuts from teeth—each a testament to violence, to a life built on destruction.
His pants were tattered, heavy boots scuffing against the earth as he moved with a slow, menacing confidence, as though he didn't care who saw him. No armor, no insignia, just a hulking mass of raw, untamed power. He was something beyond human, as if whatever force lived beneath his skin could destroy the world with a single motion.
Kael's breath caught in his throat. His pulse raced, the weight of the figure pressing down on him like a storm. What is he?
"What do you want?" Kael demanded, instinctively drawing on the pressure of his strained breakthrough, trying to muster any semblance of power. His hands shook as the air around him thickened with tension.
The figure's lips twisted into something like a smile—dark, predatory. "That'll make things easier."