TWELVE #2
She banks hard, slicing through the sky, and I let myself breathe—truly breathe—for what feels like the first time in days.
Up here, there are no titles. No expectations.
No tangled webs of power and loyalty pulling me in different directions.
Down below, the courts play their endless games, alliances shifting like sand beneath my feet.
As the Spiritborn, I’m tied to them whether I like it or not.
But here—here, I am weightless.
The wind rushes around me, tugging strands loose from my braid, wrapping around me like an embrace.
I’ve always been of the Earth Clan, raised to stand firm, to endure like stone beneath the weight of the world. But in this moment, with the sky stretched infinitely before me, the air has never felt more right.
Is it possible to belong to more than one place? To feel right in more than one home?
I wield all four elements. The Fire Clan claims me, the Earth Clan raised me. But the wind knows me too. The way it carries me now, the way it moves with me rather than against me—maybe I belong to the sky just as much as the ground.
And water.
The thought creeps in unbidden, unexpected. Where does the Water Clan fit?
Wind moves as it pleases, boundless and untamed.
Water has depth, shifting between calm and chaos. It can be gentle, lapping against the shore, or relentless, carving stone into nothing over time.
Have I ever truly felt it? Not just wielded it, but felt it—like I do the earth beneath my feet, the fire in my veins, the wind in my lungs?
I don’t know.
Calryx hums in approval, her presence an unremitting force beneath me, as if she already understands what I haven’t yet found words for.
I realize I am not just one thing. Maybe I never was.
The thought lingers, but another creeps in alongside it. Something that has been pressing at the edges of my mind for weeks.
The wards.
The eggs.
The balance of this realm is shifting, and whether I am Fire, Earth, Air, or Water, I can feel it in my bones. The bond with Calryx has changed me, made me more attuned to the forces at play.
If the dragons are tied to the wards . . . and the eggs have remained dormant for three decades . . .
What does that mean?
I hesitate before speaking, choosing my words carefully. This isn’t just some court secret, something whispered between nobles behind closed doors.
This is dragon knowledge, ancient and sacred. And Calryx—no matter how much she cares for me—is still bound to it.
I lean forward slightly, tightening my grip.
“The wards . . . the eggs . . . ” I try to piece together the thoughts tangled in my mind. “I know they’re connected. I can feel it, even if I don’t understand how. But no one speaks of it. Not openly.”
A pause.
“And if the eggs have remained dormant for three decades, if the wards are weakening . . . ”
I swallow.
“Something is wrong, isn’t it?”
Wind roars around us, but Calryx does not answer. Her silence stretches, pressing against my mind like a weight.
Then, at last, she speaks.
“What you are asking . . . is not a thing that is given. Not because it is withheld—but because it is not whole.”
I swallow, my thoughts turning faster, trying to make sense of it.
“You speak of the wards. The eggs. You feel the connection.” A pause. “That is not wrong.”
My pulse quickens.
“Then something is happening,” I press. “Something is changing.”
“Yes.”
The word lands with quiet certainty.
Calryx is silent for a moment, her wings shifting as she catches the current.
“Your Archivist already knows more than most,” she says at last. “The histories. The prophecies. The old fractures between the Clans.”
A pause.
“But knowledge is not the same as understanding.”
I frown, thinking of the research Valen has been doing and what he’s shared already.
“He sees the pieces,” she continues. “But not yet how they fit together.”
The wind rushes around us as her wings tilt slightly.
“None of us do.”
“Then you do know something,” I say.
“I know what the world feels like,” Calryx replies. “I know when it shifts. When something moves where it should not.”
A beat.
“The eggs should not be still.”
Velkar’s Descent.
The memory surfaces, sharp and sudden.
Valen stood before us, telling the history of that sacred place—the wards, the dragons who had poured their magics into them to hold the realm together. He spoke of the eggs too, how they had stopped hatching, and how that meant wards were weakening.
At the time, I didn’t fully understand it. I didn’t know how the wards were sustained, only that they were—and that they were failing.
Before those lessons, I had never even thought to question it.
My world had been fields and village roads, the predictable rhythm of something small and contained. When rumors of the wards weakening reached us, they felt distant. A problem for somewhere else. Something that would never touch us.
A chill runs through me.
“And the wards?” I ask.
She does not answer immediately.
“I have never known them to weaken,” she says at last.
The admission lands heavier than anything else.
“Then something is wrong,” I whisper.
“Yes,” she responds without hesitation.
I tighten my grip slightly, leaning into her.
“Tell me what it is.”
Silence. Longer this time.
“What you ask is not withheld from you,” Calryx says at last. “It is unfinished. I know what the Guardians entrusted to me. I know what I have lived. Nothing more.”
Her presence settles around mine, calm but immovable like the mountain range beyond our fields at home. The wind rises around us, loose strands of hair whipping across my face.
“The Guardians told you when to call to me,” I add, the memory of our bonding rising—how that certainty was already there, placed in her long before she found me. “They knew.”
“They knew enough.”
“Enough?”
“To send me to you,” Calryx says. “To tell me when the time had come. To tell me what I must protect.”
My grip tightens against the saddle.
“But not why?”
A low sound moves through her, something close to sorrow.
“Dragons do not carry all truths, Virelya. We carry the truths entrusted to us.”
I swallow, my thoughts shifting, trying to catch hold of something just out of reach.
“So the Guardians know more.”
“Yes.”
“And they didn’t tell you.”
“No.”
The answer lands harder than I expect.
Calryx banks gently, the movement smooth beneath me.
“I was not made their equal in this,” she says. “I was chosen for you. That is the truth I carry.”
For me.
The Spiritborn is her truth.
“You were assigned to me.”
“Yes.”
“Years ago?”
“Yes.”
The air seems to thin around us.
“And you never questioned it?”
“I questioned everything,” she says. “But questioning is not the same as being answered.”
I go still.
Calryx’s presence presses gently against mine.
“You seek a whole answer from a creature given only a piece.”
The words are not harsh, but they cut anyway.
“Then what piece do you have?” I ask.
A pause.
“The eggs should not be silent,” she says. “The wards should not be weakening. And whatever has changed began before you awakened.”
Thirty years.
The thought moves through me before I can stop it.
“Before I was born,” I whisper.
“Yes.”
Her wings stretch wide, carrying us higher.
“You are already beginning to understand. Not because I gave you the answer, but because you are feeling where the pieces do not fit.”
The wind rises around us.
“You feel the fracture. You feel what has changed.”
A pause.
“That is where it begins.”
The words smother me.
The world is shifting—and somehow, I can feel it. Like something inside me has been pulled open, made aware of forces I was never meant to touch.
The wards. The eggs. The balance of this realm—everything is changing, and it isn’t contained somewhere far away.
It’s here.
Moving.
Unraveling.
And because of what I am . . . I can feel it, just like the dragons.
The weight of it crashes down on me all at once.
My breath turns shallow. My fingers tighten against Calryx’s neck as I fold over the saddle, pressing my cheek to her smooth scales.
In.
Out.
I force myself to focus.
The cool press of her scales beneath my skin.
The rush of wind in my ears.
The unabating pull of Calryx’s magics anchoring me in place.
Here.
Now.
I breathe again.
“Virelya?”
Calryx’s voice cuts through the spiral, touched with something sharper than usual.
“What’s wrong? I can feel your heart racing.”
“I’m okay . . . I’m okay,” I manage, my breathing beginning to slow. The thoughts still circle, but they start to settle, like sand disturbed beneath water, sinking back into place.
“What unsettled you?” she presses.
I take another breath and straighten in the saddle.
“It’s a lot to hold,” I confess.
Her wings beat hard, lifting us higher. I tighten my grip out of instinct, even though the magics holds me firmly in place. Then her wings stretch wide, leveling as we glide, clouds drifting beneath us. Through the breaks, I catch glimpses of the land far below.
“It is a great deal for one to carry,” she says. “But you do not have to carry it alone.”
A swell of emotions rises in my throat. Tears sting my eyes, but the wind steals them away before they can fall.
“Thank you.”
“You are never alone, Virelya. We are bonded for life. You have me by your side until your last heartbeat.”
A pause.
When she speaks again, there is a hint of teasing in her voice.
“And there is the Warlord.”
A smile breaks across my face.
“Yeah, yeah,” I mutter.
We fly in silence for a while.
I let the wind take over, rushing past hard enough to drown out thoughts of the prophecy, the dormant eggs, the weakening wards. Calryx’s shield lets me keep my eyes open, taking it all in.
Below us, the world blurs.
The colors streak by. Deep green forests, sun-bleached fields, the dark ribbon of a river carving through the land. Villages scatter the hills like tiny clusters of stone, barely distinguishable at this height.