Chapter 8 #5
I press my lips together, considering. “The wards have been weakening for thirty years, and in that same time, the dragon eggs have remained dormant.”
It’s a fact everyone knows. A warning everyone fears.
For generations, the dragons of the realm have been a part of the world’s balance—fierce, untethered, powerful.
But for the past three decades, their eggs have lain cold and lifeless, refusing to hatch.
Not a single new dragon has been born. The connection is obvious—at least to those willing to see it.
The wards were built from the combined magics of the dragons and the elemental clans. If the dragons are failing to reproduce, if their life force is dimming—then the wards that tie them to the realm are failing, too.
Valen watches me, waiting.
“This isn’t just about the Shadow Forces,” I say quietly. “Something is happening to the balance of the world itself.”
His expression doesn’t change. But the way he nods—slow, knowing—tells me everything I need to know. He’s known this for a long time. He just wanted to know if I could see it.
Valen exhales, a weariness in the lines around his eyes. “The balance is everything, Amara.”
He leans forward slightly, resting his elbows on the table.
“It is the rhythm of the elements. The cycle of life. The forces that move the world forward. Fire burns, but it also renews. Water carves valleys, but it also nourishes the land. Earth gives strength, but it also crumbles. Air is freedom, but it can become a storm. The balance is what keeps these forces from tipping too far in one direction. It is what allows the realm to survive.”
I shift, uneasy. The words settle in my gut like stones. “And the dragons?”
“They are part of that balance,” Valen says.
“Not just as guardians, not just as legends—they are woven into the foundation of this world. They are more than the bonds they have with their riders—those that choose to bond. Their magics strengthens the elements. Their presence anchors the balance. Every time a dragon hatches, the world stabilizes. Every time one dies, the balance shifts.”
He looks at me. “But for the past thirty years, the eggs have remained dormant. And with them, the balance has begun to fray.”
I stare at him, the weight of his words settling like a stone in my chest.
“The balance is failing,” I murmur.
Valen nods. “It has been for decades.”
A chill runs through me. This isn’t just about the Shadow Forces. This is about the world itself coming undone. “And the Shadow Forces?” I ask, though I already know the answer.
“They are not just an enemy, Amara,” Valen says. “They are a consequence.”
The silence in the room is suffocating. I press my lips together, my heartbeat steady but too loud in my ears.
“If the balance is breaking,” I say slowly, my voice tight, “if the dragons are fading—”
“Then we are running out of time,” Valen finishes.
He reaches for the book between us. The leather cover is cracked, worn through to cloth at the corners. He opens to a bookmarked page, tapping the slanted, fading script.
“This was written in the final years of the Shadow Wars,” he says. “By a seer from the Water Clan. One of the last to record anything before the seals were forged.”
I lean forward, my fingers tightening around the warm ceramic of the tea cup.
He reads aloud:
“When the four wards weaken, and the clans stand divided,
The earth shall tremble, and sky shall burn.
The one born of all shall rise—
Spiritborn. Child of the breath and blaze and tide and stone.
Not forged. Found. Not chosen. Returned.”
The silence stretches, long and thin.
“There are more,” Valen says. “Some partial. Some destroyed. But they all say the same thing in different ways.”
“And you believe them.”
“I believe in patterns,” he says. “In convergence. And I believe the elements do not move without cause.”
I look back at the passage. The ink has run in places, but the words remain.
Not forged. Found.
Not chosen. Returned.
My throat tightens.
“This was always meant to happen,” I say. “Me. All of this.”
Valen’s voice softens—not with sympathy. With certainty.
“It’s already happening.”
I’d thought the war ended before I was born. But maybe it didn’t end at all. Maybe it’s been waiting.
I glance back at the page. The script. The prophecy. The pattern.
“So if a seer saw this at the end of the Shadow Wars . . . then the war never really ended. Did it?” I pause. “If the Shadow Forces were only contained, and the wards are weakening, and more are slipping through—”
My voice lowers. “We’re still in it. Aren’t we?”
I stare at him, my throat tight. The world isn’t breaking.
It’s unraveling.
Valen meets my gaze without flinching. “I believe we are, Amara.”
Two hours later, we are at the far training field. Valen gave me a break to join Lyra for breakfast, but now we’re back at it. The morning sun has fully risen by the time Valen and I leave his study and make our way toward the outer fields.
Unlike the usual training grounds near the outpost, this one is farther out, isolated, with nothing but open land and sky stretching around us. The grass is drier here, the soil cracked in places from past scorch marks. Evidence of fire training.
I know why we’re here.
Valen stops a few paces ahead, turning to face me. “You’re tense.”
I exhale through my nose. “I’m always tense when we do this.”
He tilts his head slightly, silver-blue eyes gleaming in the sunlight. “And why is that?”
I swallow hard, the dry air thick in my throat, my breath uneven despite the steady morning breeze.
I don’t want to do this. The last time I wielded Fire—truly wielded it—it nearly consumed me. The raw, untamed power. The hunger of it—the way it wanted to take more.
I lost control and nearly set Valen ablaze. If Thane hadn’t stepped in—hadn’t redirected it at the last second—I don’t know what would have happened.
I shake my head. “I nearly set you on fire.”
Valen actually smirks. “That was an inconvenience at best.”
My head snaps toward him. “An inconvenience?”
His smirk doesn’t fade. “You think that was the first time I’ve had to dodge a wildfire?”
I blink, thrown off balance by his calm.
“Fire responds to emotion,” he says. “Fear makes it wild. Resistance makes it violent. But understanding—”
He steps back. Gestures toward the open space.
“Understanding lets you command it.”
Valen watches me. Reading thoughts I haven’t spoken. He doesn’t press, but I can feel it. He’s thinking about how emotional I have been lately—tears during lessons, the earth rumbling during a training session with Thane. He knows I’m still carrying it. All of it.
Instead he gestures to the open space between us. “Let’s begin.”
I adjust the sleeves of the linen tunic clinging lightly to my skin. My soft leather pants stretch easily as I shift my stance. The chill morning wraps around me, but it does nothing for the heat already rising beneath my skin.
I stare at my hands, remembering the flames—how they licked up my arms without burning me. How they lunged toward Valen, like they wanted him.
I don’t want to do this. But I have to. For my parents. For the world that is coming undone.
For myself.
I take a breath and reach for fire.
Nothing.
Valen watches me, arms folded, his silver-blue eyes knowing. “You’re holding back,” he says.
I tighten my fingers into fists. “I don’t want to lose control.”
His expression doesn’t change. “Then start small.”
I can do small.
I swallow hard, nodding.
He steps back, gesturing to the stone torch stand set up a few feet away. A simple task. A controlled environment. “Light it.”
I flex my fingers. The wind stirs gently around me, but it does nothing to cool the heat already rising under my skin. I close my eyes, pulling for the flame. Just a spark.
I feel it first in my palms, a flicker of warmth beneath my skin like something waiting. Watching. I focus, directing it toward my fingertips.
A small ember flares to life, hovering just above my palm. I blink at it, my breath hitching, but I don’t let it fade. I push slightly, feeding it, shaping it, letting it grow just enough, a flame, curling gently in the air.
I flick my wrist, sending it toward the torch. The fire catches instantly, licking up the dry wood, burning steady.
I stare at it, the heat from the flames warming my face. It worked. No chaos. No inferno. Just fire, controlled.
Valen nods. “Again.”
I bite back a sigh and try again.
This time the flame comes easier, sparking at my fingertips like it was always waiting for me to call it. I light the second torch, then the third. Each one catches; the flames obedient and predictable.
For the first time, the fire isn’t fighting me. It’s following.
The last torch flickers to life, and I exhale slowly, my fingers still tingling with warmth. The fire is steady, controlled, just as it should be.
But I know what’s coming next. My body knows it too. Even before Valen speaks, anxiety coils low in my belly, a slow twisting heat, not quite pain but something close.
“Now,” he says, watching me closely, “try something bigger.”
I hesitate, my hands trembling as I close them into fists. Bigger is where I lose control. Where the fire stops listening.
Valen watches, reading the truth I haven’t said aloud. His voice is calm. Steady. Grounding.
“Breathe, Amara.”
I drag in a breath. It stutters.
“Again. Slowly.”
I inhale deeper. The cool air presses against the heat rising inside me.
“Good,” Valen says. “Now tell me, where do you feel it?”
I frown. “What?”
“The fear,” he says simply. “The tension. The resistance. Where do you feel it in your body?”
I pause, considering. I know the answer, but saying it out loud makes it real.
“My stomach,” I admit, voice tight. “Low. Deep. Like it’s coiling there, waiting.”
Valen nods, like this is exactly what he expected. “Good. Now breathe into that space.”
I close my eyes, the fire low in my belly, restless, waiting. A smoldering presence beneath my skin, never fully dormant. It pushes, presses, testing the limits of my control, like embers waiting for the right breath of air to ignite into wildfire.
I’ve tried to ignore it. Tried to focus on the other elements—on their grace, their patience, their flow. But fire doesn’t wait. It’s not patient like earth. It doesn’t flow like water. It doesn’t dance like air.
It demands.
I take in air, slow and steady, like Valen instructed. The morning air carries the first blooms of early spring. The wind stirs the tall grass around us, brushing against my skin, cool and steady, a contrast to the simmering heat within me.
Somewhere in the distance, a bird calls out, its song light and unhurried, as if the world isn’t unraveling. As if I’m not standing here trying to master something that once almost consumed me.
Valen’s voice remains calm, steady. “Don’t fight it.”
I stiffen, but he shakes his head before I can protest.
“You keep trying to push it away,” he says. “Trying to resist. That’s why you lose control.”
I swallow, my hands clenching, unclenching. “I—”
“Don’t fight it. Feel it.”
I exhale shakily. “I don’t want to—”
“Yes, you do.” Valen steps around me now, speaking softly but firmly, guiding. “You want control. But control doesn’t mean pushing something away. It means letting it in—and choosing when to let it go.”
I stare at the torches in front of me, the embers shifting in the wind.
“Breathe through it. Feel the anxiety. Don’t resist it.”
I close my eyes, my pulse pounding in my ears.
“Invite it in. Acknowledge it. Let it settle.”
I inhale, this time without bracing against it. I fill my lungs with the air, letting the coolness of it press against the heat in my core. It doesn’t smother the fire. But it reminds me that the fire isn’t everything.
Valen waits.
I let the air out, the tension unraveling, softening, easing away from the edges of panic I felt only moments ago.
Valen nods. “Now, set it aside.”
I feel fear knotted deep in my stomach, the coil of fire ready to burst free.
I don’t push it away this time. I lift it from my core, gently, carefully separating it from myself, but not rejecting it.
I envision placing it beside me, hovering at my side like a torch held in waiting. A controlled flame, not a wildfire.
The heat is still there, burning just outside of me, but it doesn’t suffocate.
I breathe in and out, the wind carrying my breath away, cool air caressing my face. Reminding me that I am still here. I am more than fire.
I open my eyes. The flames inside me are waiting.
And this time, I choose them.
Valen holds my gaze. “Good. Now call the fire.”
I nod once and reach for it.
I let it rise.
Flames burst to life before me. An inferno. The fire erupts outward, roaring to life in an arc of twisting flame, licking across the dry grass, spiraling up into the sky in wild, flickering tendrils.
Heat rushes over my skin, but it does not burn. The air shimmers with the force of it, waves of heat rolling outward, distorting the space between me and the rest of the field.
But I am not afraid. The fire moves because I will it to. It expands, crackles, pulses in time with my heartbeat.
My fingers curl inward and the flames condense into a single, controlled mass. The inferno obeys. I breathe out, my pulse thrumming, the fire shifting, waiting for my next command.
Across from me, Valen watches, fire dancing in his silver-blue eyes. The wind shifts, pulling at his robes, sending strands of his hair drifting across his face, but he does not move.
I meet his gaze, breathless, but sure. The fire flares one last time, then with a thought, I extinguish it. The flames vanish as if they had never been there at all.
For a long moment, there is only silence.
Then, finally, Valen speaks. “Good. Again.”