Sleep never truly found him. When Kael finally closed his eyes, the cave slid away and the shadow-void received him—cool, endless, and quiet as breath before a word. Mist lifted off the black plane in loose swirls. Nathan stood in it, not the ragged specter from Kael's first fall but a younger cut of the same man: lean lines, iron poise, a gaze that filed the world down to its edges.
"Keeper," he said. Not a title. A measure.
Kael nodded. "You said two channels."
"Fire is bound. It obeys without tantrum." Nathan flicked his fingers; a petal of ember spun up, hovered, and died. "Your second is lightning."
Kael's chest tightened. "Jorin's?"
"The shape of it. Your Code will not mirror his exactly—it will pass through shadow. Think less of bright sky and more of a storm's backbone." Nathan took two steps back. "Understand first, then wield. Watch."
He rose without effort, as though the void itself had given him permission. For a breath he seemed far, a dark figure against darker air. Then light split his outline—white-blue threads braiding out from his forearms. They didn't crackle. They sang, a high, thin thing that hummed in bone.
Nathan cast his hand, and a spear of lightning fell. It struck far off, silently, and the shockwave rolled past a heartbeat later, ruffling the mist like cloth. Another cast. Another pillar. He caught the third in his palm and crushed it to a core so small it lived between two fingers. Up close, Kael felt the heat and the cold of it at once, a paradox that asked for discipline more than daring.
"This is not reach for the sky and beg for thunder," Nathan said, drifting back down. "This is pulse. Nerve to nerve. You sharpen the signal in you until the world answers."
"Will it answer me?" Kael asked.
Nathan's mouth tipped, almost a smile. "You've been answering it for weeks. You called a spark in a dead hallway and made men stumble." He let that settle. "But lightning is unforgiving. It tells the truth about form, about hesitation. If you move sloppy, it punishes. If you panic, it scatters."
The void dimmed, and a slim pole of shadow formed in Nathan's hand. He offered it, and as Kael reached, the rod became something he knew—weight and balance settling like an old promise. The shadow dagger. Its edge smoked purple-blue, the way volcanic glass smokes when wind meets it.
"Show me Ember Hold," Nathan said.
Kael cupped fire in his left palm, steady, coin-sized. He lifted the dagger in his right. "And now?"
"Thread the ember through the blade's spine. Do not feed the edge. Feed the center."
He tried. Heat ran too fast, and the dagger drank greedily, flaring along its curve. The edge brightened, then sputtered and went dark with a spiteful hiss.
"Again," Nathan said.
Kael drew smaller, thinner, until the ember felt like breath condensed—a quiet press in his wrist rather than a blaze spilling in all directions. He sent it into the dagger's centerline and held it there. The blade warmed. No glare. No smoke. The warmth settled into a steady, almost living hum.
Nathan nodded once. "You built a wire, not a torch. Good."
He stepped aside. "Now lightning. Only feel it. Do not emit."
Kael closed his eyes. He listened for a current under the quiet. It came in faint threads—tingles across scar tissue, a prickle down the mark that circled his forearm like thorned ivy. He imagined not grabbing it but aligning to it, the way Feyla spoke of water forming at her side, ready to be invited and not commanded. The sensation gathered in his right shoulder, then ran to his wrist in a single clean line.
"Enough," Nathan said before Kael could push. The line faded.
"You stopped me."
"You are full of new doors," Nathan said. "Walk through one a day, not all at once."
Kael let his eyes open. "Should I tell Jorin?"
A long silence. The mist drifted; somewhere, too far away to matter, lightning stitched two points and vanished.
"I would not," Nathan said. "Jorin is good. That makes him dangerous to your secret. He will want to shape you into something that survives his wars. You must become what survives yours."
"I owe him."
"Then pay him with discipline, not confession." Nathan let the dagger dissolve. He stepped closer, tone softening. "One more rule: never stack fire and lightning in panic. Layer or weave—never mash. If you're sloppy you'll cook yourself from the inside."
"Layer. Weave." Kael repeated it under his breath. The words felt like knots tied into rope.
Nathan tipped his head. "Shadow Step. Again."
They worked. Kael learned to nudge the void around his ankles and reappear half a stride to the side with no wasted sway. He learned to let the ember run the spine of a blow so that contact landed like a hammer with a breath of heat. He learned to call the first taste of lightning and then put it away, the way one learns to respect a cliff: with gratitude and caution.
When the void thinned and the cave returned, dawn had not yet found the mouth. Jorin slept light, his back to stone. Kael lay on the cold ground and watched the ridge turn the color of iron waiting to be forged.
"Don't tell him," he murmured.
Tell him you're getting faster, Nathan replied. And then get faster.
Kael was already moving when Jorin sat up. No words. They broke camp and headed out under a sky that looked like it had swallowed its own storms. The path ahead bent toward a world that would not be kind. That was all right. He was done begging it to be.