Chapter 12 #3
Taila says the mornings in Sevrin smell like salt and seaweed, and every home has wind chimes made of coral and shell.
Darius tells stories of the tide festivals, where the whole city gathers to honor the moon’s pull on the sea, with glowing boats and lanterns set adrift across the bay.
Their childhoods sound full of life and community.
Fenric is from the Air Clan’s capital, Caelir, a city nestled high in the northern peaks.
He says it’s quiet there, but never still.
The wind carries voices from miles away, and every sound echoes like it’s part of something bigger.
He grew up learning how to walk the skybridges before he could ride a horse, learning to balance on stone paths with nothing but air on either side.
He tells me about the high towers where scholars study wind currents like sacred texts, about children racing kites down the cliffs until they vanished into the clouds.
He says there’s a freedom in growing up surrounded by sky—that it teaches you to move light, to think fast, and to never be afraid of falling.
I learn about the Water and Air Clans from textbooks and Valen’s lectures—but it’s the stories of my friends, shared in laughter and memory, that stay with me. They make the world feel more real, showing me what I’m fighting for.
And it makes me think about where I’m from.
My village was small. Not carved into cliffs or built among the clouds—just tucked between forest and field, where the seasons were the only real markers of time. We didn’t have tide festivals or skybridges. We had harvest feasts and spring rains that turned the dirt paths to mud.
There were no towers, no scholars, no sweeping views.
But there were quiet mornings, when the mist clung low to the ground and the first light caught dew on every blade of grass.
We had market days when the square came alive with the scent of baked bread and fresh herbs.
Stories were not passed down in great halls, but around fire pits.
Sometimes I feel small when they talk about where they come from—like I’m made of simpler things, my roots not running as deep or wide. Then I remember that quiet isn’t the same as empty. Though I didn’t grow up with the roar of wind or the pull of the tides, I did grow up with something steady.
One warm spring day, we end up by the lake. The sun is high, the breeze soft, the kind of afternoon that begs you to forget the weight of training and war and just be.
Fenric is stretched out on his back, head resting comfortably in Darius’s lap, his eyes half-closed. Darius absently runs his fingers through Fenric’s hair, the gesture so natural I don’t think either of them notices.
Taila sits cross-legged in the grass, plucking petals from a wildflower. Lyra is beside me, her back against the same oak tree I’m leaning on, both of us watching the lazy ripple of the lake like it might carry our worries away if we stare long enough.
“I still think about the oyster caves sometimes,” Taila says suddenly, flicking a petal at Darius. “Remember that summer?”
He snorts, not looking up from Fenric. “When you almost drowned us both? Vividly.”
Taila rolls her eyes. “You were the one who thought you could hold your breath long enough to find the glowing pool. I was trying to rescue your sorry ass.”
“Ah, yes,” Fenric murmurs, eyes still closed. “Nothing says childhood friendship like almost dying together in a dark, underwater cave.”
Taila grins. “Sevrin’s full of hidden places like that. The tide carves out caves all along the cliffs—some of them only accessible at certain times of day, or only during certain moon phases. The elders told us not to explore them, of course.”
“We listened, obviously,” Darius adds dryly.
“We were eleven,” Taila says. “And curious. And stupid.”
“We found one cave where the whole inside glowed,” Darius says more quietly now, his voice thoughtful.
“Crystals embedded in the walls, glowing like moonlight underwater. We stayed there for hours, just floating in the pool, watching the light dance across the ceiling. It was so quiet. Like the world had stopped for us.”
Taila nods, softer now. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt anything that peaceful since.”
For a while, no one says anything. The breeze rustles the grass. Birds chirp sharply from the trees.
“That sounds beautiful,” I murmur.
“It was,” she replies, looking out at the water. “It still is, when the tides are right.”
Then Fenric speaks, his voice low and unhurried.
“My favorite place in Caelir was the skybridge to the observatory. It’s one of the highest points in the city—so high up, it’s often above the clouds.
” He opens his eyes, though he doesn’t move from Darius’s lap.
“When I was little, my older brother and I used to sneak up there before dawn, even when we weren’t supposed to.
The stones would be slick with frost, and the air was so thin and cold it hurt to breathe.
But if we timed it just right, we could watch the sunrise over the clouds. ”
He pauses, a faint smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “Maybe that’s what the gods see when they look down on us—light swallowing everything.”
Taila smiles at him, a little sideways. “You always get poetic when you talk about home.”
Fenric shrugs. “It’s hard not to. Caelir has that effect on people.”
He closes his eyes again, and Darius rests his hand on Fenric’s chest, a quiet gesture that somehow says everything.
I let my head tip back against the oak tree and close my eyes too.
They speak of home like it’s a song buried in their bones. Something that shaped them, still echoing now. And I realize—none of us ever left it behind.
Then Lyra shifts beside me, nudging my leg with hers like she knows what I’m thinking.
“You remember the orchard?” I ask her, eyes still closed.
She huffs a quiet laugh. “Which time?”
I smile. “That summer we kept sneaking in to steal peaches before the harvest festival. You fell out of the tree and blamed the wind for pushing you.”
Taila snorts, and Fenric cracks an eye open.
“It was a strong breeze,” Lyra says, utterly deadpan. “Very aggressive weather that day.”
I open my eyes and glance around at them.
“It wasn’t anything like your cities. We didn’t have skybridges or glowing caves. We had muddy paths and chickens that followed you around if you fed them once. Market days that started before dawn. Everyone knew everyone. If you did something embarrassing, the whole village knew by lunchtime.”
“We used to race sticks down the stream after rainstorms,” Lyra adds, softer now. “Pretend they were boats off to explore far off lands.”
I nod, the memory curling warm in my chest. “We made everything an adventure because there wasn’t much else. No grand festivals or crystal-lit towers. Just fields, forest, and whatever we could imagine.”
I shift against the tree, brushing a stray leaf from my arm. The warmth of the sun is starting to mellow, the light softer now as it filters through the branches overhead.
“You all know why I’m here,” I say eventually, my voice low. “The prophecy. Spiritborn. Everyone trying to decide what that means—before I’ve even figured it out myself.”
Lyra is quiet beside me. The others don’t interrupt.
“But what about you?” I glance at them—Taila, Darius, Fenric. “You could’ve stayed home. You didn’t have to come here, to the front lines. So . . . why did you?”
Taila leans back on her hands, looking up at the sky through the canopy.
“Because Sevrin isn’t safe anymore. The tides are shifting in more than one way.
There were raids along the outer villages, then closer.
I saw too many families lose everything while the capital tried to pretend it wasn’t happening.
I didn’t want to wait for it to reach my doorstep. ”
Darius nods beside her. “Same. I joined because I was tired of watching the world unravel from the sidelines. I wanted to do something. Be something more than just a healer patching up what the war leaves behind.”
He pauses, then adds, tipping his chin toward Taila, “And because she was going.”
Taila smiles faintly, but doesn’t look at him.
Fenric doesn’t answer right away. He stares at the sky, the wind lifting strands of his pale hair.
“Caelir doesn’t feel the war the same way,” he says finally.
“It’s high enough, distant enough, that some people think we’re above it.
Literally. But we’re not. I joined because I didn’t want to be one of the people who stayed comfortable while the rest of the world burned. ”
He closes his eyes again. “And maybe . . . because I needed to prove that I’m not just meant to watch the storm pass from above.”
He pauses, then sits up slowly, his gaze fixed on the lake now instead of the clouds. “My brother died in a battle along the eastern borderlands. He was part of the first wave sent to reinforce the outposts when the raids started getting worse. I was too young at the time to enlist.”
The wind stills.
“I used to think we’d be old together. Two brothers racing the wind, laughing at all the things we’d survived. But he didn’t survive.”
His voice is calm, but there’s a tightness in it—controlled, practiced. The kind that comes from telling a story too many times without letting yourself fall apart.
“I joined because someone has to stand in the storm. And because I couldn’t live with doing nothing while others were dying.”
Darius keeps stroking Fenric’s hair. Like he’s done it a hundred times before. His eyes soften as they meet Fenric’s, and a private moment passes between them.
Fenric’s face, usually so full of mischief and easy joy, is still now. Quiet in a way that makes my chest ache. I didn’t realize how much brightness he brings until it dims.
I reach for Fenric’s hand and squeeze it. He squeezes back.
“I lost my parents,” I say softly, my voice barely above the breeze. “In an attack on our village. It was quick. I was lucky to survive.”