The silence in the training room after the spar was heavier than any wall of stone. The other initiates wouldn't meet Kaelen's eyes. Where there had been curiosity or jealousy, now there was only fear. They had seen the sharp truth behind the "Shadow of Havenfall" stories—a power that was one slip of control away from killing one of their own. Anya dismissed them all with a sharp gesture, her own expression grim.
Kaelen walked back to his room alone, the echoes of their frightened whispers following him. He felt sick. Corin had been wrong to break the rules, but his own reaction had been far worse. He had almost become the monster they all feared he was.
For the next two days, he kept to himself. He skipped the communal meals, taking his food in his room. He avoided the gardens, not ready to face Elara's quiet, knowing gaze. He didn't feel like a hero or a sovereign. He felt like a dangerous animal that needed to be caged.
On the third morning, a different kind of summons came. It wasn't a chime or a soldier. A small, folded piece of high-quality paper was slipped under his door.
The message inside was short, written in the same elegant script he knew too well.
The spotlight is a dangerous place. It draws more than just admirers. A storm is coming. Be ready.
Isolde's warning was like a cold splash of water. She wasn't offering comfort or guidance. She was stating a fact. His sudden notoriety had made him a bigger target, both inside and outside the Citadel. The Anchor didn't just pull monsters; it pulled trouble of every kind.
The message shook him out of his self-pity. Hiding in his room wouldn't make the danger go away. He needed to get stronger, not just for the monsters, but for the politics and the jealousy he couldn't avoid.
He went to the training chamber, expecting it to be empty. But Commander Valeria was there, waiting for him as if she knew he would come.
She didn't mention the incident with Corin. She didn't offer sympathy. She simply looked at him and said, "Control is not the absence of power. It is the mastery of it. You lost mastery. Today, we regain it."
Her training was harder than ever. She pushed him to hold his shields under greater force, to shape his darkness into more complex forms—a narrow blade, a wide net, a dome around himself. The work was exhausting, but the focus required was a relief. It left no room for fear or doubt.
"Your power is a part of you," Valeria said as he struggled to maintain a dome shield under the assault of a training drone. "It reacts to your emotions. Fear. Anger. Panic. You must master yourself before you can truly master it."
He understood now. The spike of darkness aimed at Corin's heart hadn't been just the power's fault. It was his own anger, his own fear of being humiliated, that had given the power its deadly shape.
In the afternoon, he finally went to the garden. Elara was there, watering her glowing mosses. She looked up as he approached but said nothing. She simply offered a small, understanding smile.
He didn't speak either. He sat on the bench and watched her work. The simple, peaceful rhythm of her movements was a balm to his frayed nerves. After a long while, he took the smooth black stone she had given him from his pocket and held it in his palm. The gentle, calming energy from it helped quiet the restless Umbral power inside him.
"He was afraid of you," Elara said softly, not looking up from her plants. "And you were afraid of what he made you become. Fear is a poison. It clouds judgment."
"I almost killed him," Kaelen whispered, the words tasting like ash.
"But you didn't," she replied, her voice firm. "In the moment it mattered most, you chose control. You chose to stop. Remember that part, too. The world will always try to make you into its weapon. Your strength is in choosing when to be a tool, and when to be a man."
Her words, combined with Valeria's harsh training and Isolde's cold warning, finally brought a strange sense of clarity. He was surrounded by powerful women, each pulling him in a different direction. But his true enemy wasn't any of them. It was the chaos within himself.
That night, for the first time since the spar, he slept without nightmares. His sleep was deep and dreamless, a true rest.
It didn't last.
He was jolted awake in the dead of night by a sound he had never heard before inside the Citadel. It wasn't the clash of training or the hum of energy. It was the city's primary alarm.
A deep, wailing siren that cut through the silence, so loud it vibrated in his bones. It was followed by the frantic clanging of emergency bells from the wall.
Red lights flashed past his window, painting his room in pulses of emergency light.
He was on his feet in an instant, his heart hammering. This was different from the smaller alarm on the wall. This was a city-wide alert.
His door slid open before he could reach it. A soldier stood there, his face pale and tight with fear. It was the same young soldier who had first brought him to Valeria.
"Initiate! To the main hall! Now! It's a Breach! The eastern sector is compromised!"
The soldier turned and ran, his boots echoing down the now-bustling hallway.
Kaelen's blood ran cold. A Breach. The word every citizen feared. It meant the wall had been broken. It meant the Veil, and everything in it, was inside the city.
Isolde's warning echoed in his mind. A storm is coming.
The calm was over. The storm was here. And his unwanted crown of power was about to be tested in fire and blood. He grabbed his gear and ran into the chaotic hall, the Umbral energy within him rising to meet the danger, no longer a curse or a tool, but a necessary shield.