Chapter 17
CALRYX IS CALLING
SEVENTEEN
“ . . . Only in the relinquishing, will the gods claim her.”
—VALEN’S JOURNAL
AMARA
Valen. I need to find him.
The halls are quiet in the morning light, the stone walls still hold the coolness of the night. But my blood runs hot.
All I can think about is the pull in my chest—the unmistakable call resonating in my bones.
My steps are quick. Focused.
Calryx is calling me.
I never understood what the dragon-rider bond truly meant. Not until now. Not until this moment, when something deep and vast and ancient tugs at the center of me—like a thread buried in my soul has been suddenly pulled taut.
It’s not words. It’s older. Deeper. A summoning woven through my bones.
I find Valen in his chambers, hunched over a sea of parchment—his brow furrowed, sleeves ink-smudged, lost in concentration. The scent of ink and old vellum wraps around me.
When Valen looks up and sees my face, something in his expression shifts.
“You’re up early,” he says carefully.
“I need to tell you something.” The words are barely held back, straining against my chest. “Calryx is calling me.”
Valen stills. Completely. His fingers—still hovering over some ancient script—stop mid-trace. He doesn’t blink. Doesn’t breathe.
“Pardon me?” he says, voice low and clipped, like he’s not entirely sure he heard right.
“I don’t know how to explain it,” I say, stepping closer. “But I can feel her. Not just through the bond I’ve read about in the riders’ records, or in the books you’ve given me. It’s more than that.”
My voice falters, my breath hitching.
“It’s like she’s reaching for me—like she knows me. In a way dragons never have before.”
A beat.
“She wants me to come to her.”
Valen doesn’t speak. He just watches me—unmoving. The weight of his stare lands heavy across my skin. Then, slowly—too slowly—he sets his quill down with deliberate care, as if the slightest wrong movement might break something.
His eyes never leave mine. And when he speaks, his voice is too calm.
“Who is Calryx, Amara?”
“My dragon.”
His silence stretches long enough that the excitement buzzing in my chest begins to fray.
“Valen?” I whisper.
“This makes sense,” he says at last, his voice flat. Measured.
I blink. “It does?”
He leans forward slowly, fingers lacing together, studying me—like I’ve shifted shape in front of him. A puzzle that won’t fit together.
“Dragons always call their riders,” he says carefully. “It’s how the bond begins.”
I nod, but it feels hollow. Impatience coils low in my chest. “I know that.”
“When a dragon calls, that person becomes their rider. The bond allows them to channel magics—amplifying the elemental gifts already in their blood, passed down through their clan. It accelerates their connection. Deepens their power.”
I frown. “But I already did that. I was able to channel before Calryx ever called to me.”
Valen exhales sharply through his nose, and this time, the look in his eyes isn’t neutral. It’s tight. Calculated. Laced with disbelief.
“Yes,” he says slowly. “And that should not have been possible.”
A slow shiver works its way down my spine.
I’ve known I’m different. That my connection to the elements—my ability to channel—had come before I had any right to wield it. But I had never stopped to think about what that meant.
I swallow hard. “So why did a dragon still call to me?”
Valen’s expression tightens. His hand presses against the desk, fingers curling slightly—like he needs something solid beneath him. Something real.
“I don’t know,” he admits. His voice is quieter now, but no less intense. “But I do know this—the timing is not a coincidence.”
Something shifts in me. Like a fog slowly pulling back out to sea to reveal the shoreline.
I stiffen. “You mean—”
“Calryx didn’t call you until after you merged all four elements.”
The words land between us like the final piece of a puzzle clicking into place. I’d spent so long wondering why I was different. Why my magics didn’t follow the rules.
But I never stopped to think about when it had begun to matter.
“If dragons always call to their riders,” I say slowly, “why didn’t she call to me sooner?”
Valen says nothing. But his silence is loud. Deafening.
His jaw tightens, eyes flickering with the weight of a truth that’s only now beginning to break through. A reckoning.
Everything he’s built his life around—his research, his teachings, his understanding of magics and dragons—it’s all being questioned at this moment.
And I’m the reason why.
Finally, he speaks. “Maybe . . . because you weren’t meant to be a rider in the way we understand it.”
The air in the room thickens. Like the very space around us can feel the shift.
His gaze drifts past me, unfocused, lost in thought.
“It’s possible that the bond between dragons and riders was never meant to be the beginning of something—but rather a continuation.
Maybe . . . once upon a time, people could channel magics on their own.
Freely. Maybe the dragon bond wasn’t what gave power, but what magnified it. ”
I draw in a shaky breath, trying to hold onto something steady—but the only thing I’m sure of is this: something is changing. And it’s already begun.
I meet his gaze. “You think the history we know is . . . wrong.”
Valen doesn’t answer right away. When he finally does, his voice is heavy with truth.
“I think,” he says, “that history has never accounted for someone like you.”
Something flickers across his face then—a slow-forming realization that unsettles him enough to make his throat work.
“Amara,” he says, voice suddenly hesitant.
“Your existence challenges something ancient. Something no one recorded—or something no one wanted recorded.” He pauses, tilts his head, like he’s seeing me differently now.
“Or maybe . . . you’re something completely new.
Something the world hasn’t seen before.”
His voice drops, quiet but certain. “This changes everything.”
The weight of it should have made me falter. But it doesn’t.
“I have to go to her,” I say, the conviction already taking root in my chest.
Valen exhales sharply. His hands press flat against the desk, as if he needs something to ground himself. “I know.”
Our eyes meet, and for the first time since I entered the room, I see it—flickering beneath the surface of his measured calm.
Awe.
He nods slowly, then presses his fingers to his temples, like he’s wrangling too many thoughts into a single answer.
“We have to prepare you,” he says at last.
I frown. “Prepare me for what?”
“For what comes next.” His gaze sharpens, all hesitation gone now. “For completing the bond.”
Something in his tone punches the air from my lungs. I don’t want to wait. Every part of me is screaming to go—now.
“You didn’t think to prepare me?”
“I didn’t know this would happen,” Valen admits, his voice tight. He leans forward, bracing his weight on his forearms. “I didn’t think it could happen. You were already channeling magics before Calryx ever called to you. That has never happened before.”
A chill ripples down my spine.
“But now that it has—” He shakes his head, almost to himself. “We don’t have the luxury of uncertainty anymore. The bond between rider and dragon isn’t just emotional. It’s a merging. A fusing of magics.”
His eyes find mine again, steady and grave. “And for you . . . we don’t know what that’s going to look like.”
I swallow hard, the weight of his words settling in my chest like a stone.
“You’ve already merged the four elements on your own. That alone is unprecedented. And now a dragon has called to you after that point.”
There’s something razor-edged in his stare now—focused, assessing.
“We don’t know if that means the bond will function the same way it always has. It could be more powerful. Or something entirely new. The Prophecies don’t say anything about the Spiritborn being dragon-bonded.”
I stare at him. “You think this changes the way the bond works?”
Valen hesitates. “I think we would be fools to assume otherwise.”
The pull in my chest remains steady—anchoring. But his words chip at the edges of that certainty. The more he speaks, the more I realize how unprepared I truly am.
Valen sees it too.
“Amara,” he says carefully. “Do you feel any different?”
I considered the question. Do I?
No. Not different. But . . . more.
“I feel . . . clearer,” I admit. “Like I’m standing at the edge of something, and I know I’m supposed to step forward. I feel ready.”
Valen studies me, his expression unreadable. Controlled. But not calm.
“You think you’re ready,” he says. “But this isn’t just about answering a call. Once the bond is complete . . . there’s no undoing it.”
Something in his voice coils tight in my chest.
“Tell me.”
Valen leans back slightly, tension in every line of him.
“The bond is not just about communication, Amara. It’s a merging.
Of powers. Of wills. Of life itself. When a dragon bonds with their rider, it strengthens what’s already there.
The rider’s Elemental magics sharpen. The dragon, in turn, draws from those magics. Together, they become something more.”
I nod. But it feels . . . insufficient.
“I’ve read that,” I say. “But that’s not the same as living it.”
Valen exhales. Runs a hand through his hair—then lets it fall against the desk like even holding it up is too much.
“You’re different,” he says quietly. “You channeled without a dragon. No one has ever done that. Not in any known record. You shouldn’t have been able to.”
He pauses. Thoughtful. Troubled.
“You have to be ready for the Trust Fall,” he says quietly. “Because once you leap—there’s no climbing back. The bond doesn’t just connect you. It changes you. And I don’t know what that means for someone like you.”
A breath escapes me, slow and heavy. “You think it could . . . change me.”
Valen doesn’t answer right away. His jaw clenches. His eyes flick away.
When he speaks again, it’s soft. Steady. Final.