The pre-dawn chill on the outskirts of Embermark bit deeper than cold, as though the ash-dusted wind sought marrow and memory. Here, where the Sinks surrendered to wilderness, silence hummed louder than any voice. The ground beneath Hatim's bare, blackened soles was a cracked lattice of stone and soil, veins of pure Akar shimmering faintly—like a heartbeat just beneath skin, thrumming, waiting.
Every movement stirred the ever-present ash, a whispering cloud clinging to his breath and eyelids. Yet out here, beyond the city's choking depths, the air tasted different—cleaner, colder, more honest. Somewhere in the distance, a Glimmer-Owl cried, its mournful echo threading through the jagged ridges where Ash-Antelopes scattered in startled grace. The wilderness did not speak with lies. It listened.
Hatim trembled before Kander, chest rising with ragged breaths, brittle as a clay pot fired wrong, full of hairline cracks. The effort to wield Akar left him raw, the current beneath his skin slipping away like water cupped in shaking hands.
"You move like a beast long caged," Kander said, voice low and stripped of pity. "Your Akar flickers like a candle that's forgotten why it burns. What do you feel?"
Hatim closed his eyes, searching the storm within. "A heat. A thrum. Sometimes clarity—truth tearing through fog. But then…" His voice caught. "Echoes return. A girl's laugh. An old hand. A door swinging shut. They distract me. They hurt."
Kander nodded slowly. "Those echoes are the price of memory. Yours are chained, and chains distort the flow. Akar cannot move through blocked channels. This is why you fail. Why your glyphs collapse. Your intent is fractured. You cannot speak Akar's language if your tongue trembles at your own name."
He stepped forward, hand raised. A glyph bloomed—drawn not by ink or tool, but shaped from light itself. A perfect hexagon, balanced and unwavering, bisected by a golden line like a blade holding a world in place. The glyph pulsed deep into Hatim's bones, humming like a bell struck within.
"This is Veshan," Kander said. "The glyph of shielding. Its symmetry speaks order. Its truth is protection. Among the First Words—the glyphs from which all understanding flows. Not a tool, but a sentence in Akar's true language."
He pressed his will into the glyph; it thickened, golden lines becoming radiant walls. A sand-and-stone dummy launched toward it met the shield like a mountain meets rain—no shatter, no recoil, only silence.
"Akar is not wild force to bend. It is order given voice. Its language is geometry. Glyphs carved into reality. If you do not speak clearly, it will not answer. It is not cruel—it simply will not respond."
Another glyph bloomed: a sharp triangle with a taut horizontal line like a drawn bowstring.
"This is Sennari—the glyph of swiftness. Not speed for its own sake, but the truth of being where you must, when you must. The grace of wind over water. The intent behind movement."
He pressed it to his skin; it sank like ink into cloth. Golden lines rippled around muscle and bone, an invisible tremor of acceleration. In an instant, Kander vanished, then reappeared before Hatim could exhale. Only a faint glow clung to his arm.
Then a square appeared, dense and solid, with a jagged golden line like a frozen earthquake.
"Tharnel—the glyph of force. The mountain's fall. The hammer that breaks the sky. But even fury must be structured. Without order, it is chaos. True Akar does not answer chaos."
The glyphs dissolved.
Hatim stood silent, words burning into him. These were not tricks or sigils—they were language, truth. Akar listened not to noise, but to truth expressed in form.
"You must become the sentence you speak," Kander said. "The glyph must be felt, understood. Lie in its shape, and it dies in your hand. Mastering glyphs is one way to wield Akar. As your meridians strengthen, you'll find other paths—the same resonance carving these glyphs can sculpt your flesh and bone, making your body a temple of Akar."
He handed Hatim a smooth obsidian gourd etched with containment glyphs, cool to the touch.
"This is Akar Elixir. It does not grant power. It widens your meridians—inner channels carrying your essence. Yours are clogged streams now. This will cleanse and prepare them—not just for shaping glyphs, but for profound internal change. Push too hard, and you rupture. Even fire must flow gently or it destroys the hearth. Our Akar burns, Hatim. Carry coolant always. Water is the only balm."
Hatim drank. Warmth hit his chest like sunrise through frost, immediate and potent. His skin prickled with a thousand needles of energy. The world sharpened—colors deepened, the hum of Akar veins beneath his feet clearer, almost melodic. Echoes retreated, quieter behind clarity's roar.
"Now," Kander said, voice hard, "return to Veshan. Find the shape within yourself—not for survival, but for someone else. Protection is not a shield. It is a promise."
Days blurred into weeks—marked not by time but by the rising and falling of Embermark's moons, the grinding of bare feet over ash-strewn stone, the constant whisper of wind over exposed Akar veins. Glyphs etched into flesh and mind responded more—longer, brighter, stronger. Veshan held firm; Sennari clung like a golden membrane, twitching with potential.
One morning, after surviving Kander's furious barrage and standing behind a shield etched from his soul, Kander's face shifted—not pride, but desperation.
"You want your past?" he asked, eyes fixed beyond the ash horizon toward the Crown spires. "You want the truth? There is one way forward."
Hatim's heart stuttered. Rumors whispered in the Sinks—the Trial. A death sentence wrapped in ceremony. "You mean… the competition?"
Kander met his eyes. "No. The Trial of Resonance."
The name weighed heavy. Resonance—as in harmony, as in judgment.
"It is no mere contest," Kander said. "A reckoning. A crucible to prove not just skill, but that your Akar speaks true, that your intent aligns with order and creation. If you succeed—if your glyphs declare truth without faltering—they may grant passage into the Lower Noble houses, their halls, archives, and the Fountain of Memory."
A scar tugged at Kander's mouth. "I trained among them once. Before exile. Before truth became unwelcome."
He stepped closer, voice tight with memory. "They hold knowledge of the Unbinding, Hatim. Of Ancient glyphs no longer spoken aloud. Of purest veins of Akar. Of truths that burn through memory. If you want to find Lyra… if you want to remember who you were… you must pass the Trial. You must force them to see you."
Hatim looked past him, toward veiled Crown spires—once distant, now the end of one path and the beginning of another.
He clenched his fist. The glyph of Veshan stirred faintly beneath his skin.
He would speak his truth.
And the Akar would answer.
From the shadows beyond the training grounds, a subtle rustle stirred—the faint, almost imperceptible flutter of wings. The Babs, drawn irresistibly to Akar and memory, watched unseen, their eyes gleaming with ancient curiosity. They whispered among themselves, their presence a reminder that the threads of fate and power were never truly hidden, and that Hatim's journey was already entwined with forces older and stranger than he could yet comprehend.