Chapter 7 #2
Apparently the entire eastern half of Alareth had collectively decided explanations were optional.
The next set of doors opened into a vast chamber, and I stopped again.
The Hall was enormous.
Pale stone curved upward into a ceiling that disappeared behind floating lights.
A circular dais sat at the center of the floor, surrounded by rising tiers of benches.
They weren’t full, but there were enough people waiting that the room felt occupied in a way I didn’t like.
Men and women in robes of different colors.
Several people in dark training leathers.
A handful with narrow metal clasps at their collars.
One woman had a spear propped against the bench beside her. Another was writing without looking up.
Most of them turned when I entered.
One didn’t.
He stood near the far end of the chamber, half beyond the reach of the floating lights.
At first I noticed only the black.
Black leathers. Black coat. Black hair falling untidily over his forehead. A sword at his hip and another weapon crossed along his back. Nothing about him belonged in a council chamber. He looked like he had come directly from somewhere people were allowed to bleed on the floor.
Then he looked at me.
Green-gray eyes. Cold. Steady. Not at all surprised. That was what held me.
Everyone else in the Hall was trying to make sense of me. I could feel it in the way they watched. Curiosity. Concern. Maybe suspicion. He looked like he already had.
A thin curl of shadow wound once around his wrist.
My rune warmed.
I sucked in a breath.
His gaze dropped.
Not to my face.
My ribs.
Then back up. Unease slid through me. Not fear exactly. Familiarity made even less sense, so I refused to call it that.
“Candidate Alerain.” The voice came from the dais. I turned.
A man stood near its edge. His hair was dark with silver beginning at the temples, his robes charcoal rather than any elemental color. He wore no crown, no staff, no ridiculous ceremonial chain. He didn’t need one. The entire room had quieted before he finished saying my name.
“Magister Halos,” Calis said behind me.
So that was him.
He looked at me for a long second. “Come forward.” I did. Coren remained near the doors. Calis followed until I reached the circular markings carved into the dais.
Halos gestured once. “Inside.”
The second I stepped across the line, the air changed. A low hum moved through the stone beneath my boots and into my legs. My rune tightened beneath my ribs.
Halos noticed. “Lyra Alerain. Twenty years old. Raised in Edenlo.”
“That’s me.”
“Biological parentage?” I hadn’t expected that to be the first real question.
“I don’t know.” He waited. “My mother found me.”
“Maia Alerain.” I looked at him sharply. He already knew her name.
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Outside Edenlo. At the edge of the forest.”
“How old were you?”
“A baby.”
“Was anything left with you?”
“No.” A few people in the seats shifted. I forced myself not to look at them. “Maia told me she found me wrapped in cloth. She died before I could ask anything else.”
The words came out flatter than I meant them to. Halos stopped asking. For a second.
Then his gaze moved toward my side. “The rune.” I stiffened. “I need to see it.”
I stared at him.
He seemed to hear the command in his own words. “May I examine it?”
That surprised me enough that I answered before I could decide whether I wanted to. “Yes.”
I set Maia’s cloak carefully at my feet and lifted the left side of my shirt just enough to expose the mark beneath my ribs.
The rune brightened.
Silver-blue lines curled over my skin, delicate and strange, extending farther toward my back than they had when it first appeared.
The room went quieter. Someone murmured something I couldn’t hear. Calis stepped closer. She had known the color. She hadn’t known the shape. I could tell.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing yet.”
“That phrase is beginning to make me violent.”
Halos’s mouth tightened faintly before he looked at Calis. “Configuration?”
“Too developed for a first mark.”
My stomach dropped. “Meaning?”
Calis looked at me. “Meaning I haven’t seen one settle this quickly after initial manifestation.”
“Is that dangerous?”
“I don’t know.” At least she said it.
Halos nodded once to her. Calis raised her hands. Gold Light appeared over her palms. It was warm and soft and nothing like mine.
I tensed anyway.
She noticed. “I’m examining the rune.”
“I know.”
“Then breathe.”
The gold Light separated into small symbols that floated toward me. The first passed through my shoulder. Cold prickled over my skin despite the warmth of the light. Another crossed my sternum. Then one touched the edge of my rune and everything went black.
The golden symbol shattered.
Every floating light in the Hall vanished at once. Someone swore. My rune flared so brightly I saw the bones of my own fingers where I had grabbed the edge of my shirt.
Silver-blue light filled the room.
Faces appeared around me in washed-out fragments.
Calis had taken one step back. Halos was staring at the mark. And the man in black was no longer standing still.
His shadows had climbed both arms. They moved across his shoulders like smoke caught in water, stretching toward the dais. Toward me.
His face remained calm.
His eyes did not.
For one heartbeat, our magic seemed to pull at the space between us. Then the Hall lights returned. My rune dimmed. And his shadows dropped.
I let my shirt fall. “I didn’t do whatever that was.”
“We know,” Calis said.
Halos looked toward the far side of the room.
By the time I followed his gaze, the man in black had folded his arms again. Nothing around him moved.
“Again,” Halos said.
“No.” This time the room actually reacted. A low murmur. Halos looked at me. “My magic just put out every light in here. You got your answer. I got none. I’m not doing it again because you’re curious.” Calis’s eyes moved toward Halos.
I waited. So did everyone else.
Then Halos nodded. “Okay.”
That threw me more than if he had argued.
He stepped away from the edge of the dais. “Tell me about Edenlo.”
So I did.
Not everything.
Some things still felt like they belonged only to the people who had been there.
I told him about the scream from the western road. The birds. The first wraith. Ferin’s charms breaking. The fire tower cracking and falling through the square. Nara going into the bakery because there was still a child inside.
My voice almost stopped there.
It didn’t.
I told him about Maia.
Irelia.
The two wraiths. The distance between them. “I couldn’t get to both.” Halos said nothing. “I had to choose.”
“And you did?”
“No.”
His brows drew together slightly.
“I wouldn’t.” I looked down at my hands. “I remember thinking no. That was it. Just no. Then the cord on my wrist broke.”
My fingers touched the empty place where the protection braid had been. “There was Light under my skin.”
“What did it feel like?”
“Like being torn open.”
Calis’s lips pressed together at that. I kept going before anyone could ask something else. “Then it went everywhere.”
“How many wraiths remained afterwards?”
“None.” The room shifted around me. I hated the way people breathed differently when they heard that.
Halos didn’t. “What did you feel before the release?”
Irelia bleeding in the road.
Maia against the well.
The wraith’s hand around my throat. “Everything.”
“And during?” I almost said the same. Then remembered it. The other thing. Farther away. Waiting beyond Edenlo. “Hunger.”
Silence.
Not ordinary silence.
The kind that happened because too many people had stopped breathing at once.
I looked at Calis. Her attention had gone to Halos. At the edge of the Hall, the man in black had become completely still.
My pulse quickened. “What?”
Whatever he was thinking disappeared behind practiced composure. “Was the hunger coming from the wraiths?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
I struggled for the words. “The wraiths were hungry. This was…” I stopped. He waited. “It was worse.” No one asked me to explain further.
“Did it speak?”
“No.”
“Show you anything?”
“No.”
“Have you felt it since?”
“No.” The Veil rose inside my mind again. Lines. Darkness. One going out. I kept my face still. Halos watched me for a second too long.
Then he let it go. “The manifestation remains classified as Light pending further assessment. Field details remain restricted to relevant instructors, wardkeepers, and authorized personnel.”
A woman somewhere behind me began writing.
“No discussion among candidates,” Halos added.
That made me look at him. “Why?”
“Because they do not need to know your history before you do.”
The answer hit strangely. I glanced toward the benches. The man in black was still watching me. Apparently some people already knew enough.
Halos continued. “You begin foundational assessment tomorrow with Mistress Calis. Until then, you do not attempt deliberate wielding alone.”
“I don’t know how.”
“Your quarters are in the Luminari Halls under the Aurora Circle. Initial access only until your evaluation is complete.”
“What does that mean?”
“You’ll be told tomorrow.” Halos looked toward my ribs once more. “If the rune changes, if your magic manifests without intent, or if you feel the presence from Edenlo again, you report directly to Calis or to me.”
I nodded.
Then the shadows outside came back to me. “What about if shadows move?”
Calis looked at me. “Move how?”
I glanced toward the far side of the Hall. The man in black was gone. I hadn’t seen him leave.
“The ones at the gate leaned toward me.” Calis and Halos exchanged a quick look. There it was again. The silent language adults used when they wanted to talk in front of the children without actually saying anything.
“What?”
“Report it if it happens again,” Halos said.
I hated this place.
The meeting ended without anyone announcing it. People began standing. Papers disappeared into folders. The woman with the spear slung it over one shoulder and left through a side door. The older candidates filed out in small groups, several of them looking at me once before moving on.