The bell struck once, and the mountain seemed to hold its breath.
Mist threaded the pines along Dawnspire Peak, softening the world into silver and frost. A hundred robed figures moved in measured cadence across the flagstones, palms cutting arcs through the cold air, fingers trailing faint skeins of pale light. The ritual bell tolled again—low, resonant—a sound you felt in your ribs. In the front row, older disciples flowed like water around stone, each motion so clean it made the air itself look clumsy.
Alaric Vale stood in the back line, where the mist lingered and the chill liked to bite. He mimicked the form with steady focus—shoulder, wrist, breath—but the flow never quite came alive in him. When he shifted his stance, the stone scraped faintly beneath his boot. When he exhaled, his breath came too sharp, like he was trying not to shiver.
"Hold the wrist," Elder Halvern said, not looking back. His voice carried easily. "Aether rides the bone, not the knuckle."
Alaric adjusted. The motion smoothed, but it was still only motion. His reflection in the polished bronze of the bell showed a thin young man, a scar at his throat, earnest eyes that never quite hardened into pride.
The bell's third strike rolled across the courtyard like thunder pressed flat. Robes settled, hands lowered. Elder Halvern swept his gaze over them—blue eyes bright, hair bound with a plain clasp. "Better," he said. "We keep the rites because the mountain remembers us by them. Cultivate in good order."
He lifted a palm; emerald light shaped the air into a floating leaf that bore him aloft. The disciples bowed as he drifted into the fog. Silence held for a breath, then broke into laughter and chatter. Lines dissolved into knots of friends.
Alaric wiped his palms on his sleeve and waited until most had scattered. It was easier to leave unnoticed.
But three shadows cut through the mist and stepped into his path.
"Alaric," Dorian drawled, narrow eyes flicking to his throat, "how's that pretty neck of yours holding up?"
"Still attached," Alaric answered lightly. His hand brushed the fading scar, more acknowledgment than defense. "Though I thank you for asking. Few brothers would recall such a small thing."
The stout boy beside Dorian laughed. "Small? A mortal swordsman nearly split you open like a hog at feast. What kind of disciple lets a peasant put steel to his throat?"
Nearby disciples turned at the sound of it, smirks spreading. It wasn't cruelty, not to them. It was safe sport, easy ridicule.
Alaric stood calm, hands folded. He did not scowl. His eyes even seemed amused, which rankled more than any denial.
"You're right," he said. "I was careless. I lack your instincts, Padrick. My thanks for the reminder."
Padrick blinked, wrong-footed. He had expected excuses, maybe stammering. He got neither.
Dorian leaned closer, voice sharpening. "Careless? You've been here five years and still look like a boy pretending at robes. When the Order sends you out again, should we chain a guard to you? Or hand you back to the mortals? You'd fit better among them."
Alaric reached into his sleeve. His fingers drew out a stone the size of a coin, edges glowing faintly, light pulsing like a heartbeat. A low-grade Aether Stone—precious to a novice.
He held it out with a hint of awkwardness, as though embarrassed by his own boldness. "Then I must thank you again. You pulled me from that fight before it grew worse. A debt should be paid. Please—take this."
The laughter faltered. Disciples slowed, curious. Dorian's hand froze mid-gesture.
"You—what?" he muttered.
Alaric's cheeks colored, his voice warm. "It's right to pay debts, however small."
For a moment, the courtyard tilted between silence and absurdity: the supposed fool offering tribute, the sly tormentor suddenly caught on display. Dorian's ears reddened. He shoved the stone back with a snap.
"Keep it," he said too quickly. "We're brothers. I need no reward for… trivial aid."
Padrick frowned, confused, but Dorian's glare cut him short.
Alaric bowed slightly, gratitude without servility. "Then I'm doubly in your debt, Lord Brother. Thank you."
The word Lord hung like a stone dropped in water.
Dorian turned away first.
Alaric lingered until they vanished into the fog. Only then did his smile fade, leaving quiet calm.
He left Dawnspire's terrace behind, boots crunching along the gravel path into the Broadmere forest. Pines crowded close, dripping the last of the mist. Far above, the bell gave one final note and fell silent.
A raven wheeled overhead, its shadow gliding across the path. Alaric tilted his head, watching wings carve through fog, and smiled faintly. Easier to envy birds than men.
He had been a man once—ordinary, terminal, done by twenty-seven. Hospitals, monitors, sterile air. Every conversation a negotiation with grief. His lungs had betrayed him, collapsed under a weight of broken genes.
He remembered closing his eyes to machines and opening them here—gasping on cold stone in a mountain shrine, wrapped in threadbare cloth, a child reborn with nothing but echoes of another life.
That was nineteen years ago. Nineteen years of borrowed time.
His hand brushed his chest. Beneath cloth and bone, his core glowed faintly with Ascendant Breath—dim, always dim. The masters spoke of roots: Celestial, Earthbound, Mortal. Prodigies who lit skies with their first inhalation of Aether. His was mortal, middle grade. Enough to crawl, never to soar.
Average.
The word sat in him like a pebble in a boot. Average could still live two centuries, so long as he survived. Average might, with luck, stumble into the seat of elder. But average would never command fear.
He paused on a moss-covered bend and laughed softly. "So be it. Two centuries is more than twenty-seven."
The laugh scattered into the trees, startling a squirrel into flight. Adjusting his satchel, he climbed toward Hollowspire Peak, where his dwelling clung to the mountainside.
By the time he arrived, sunlight had torn the mist into thin ribbons over the gullies. His home was modest: a three-story pavilion of oak and slate left by some forgotten disciple. The gate wards shimmered as he touched his token, enough to deter beasts and petty thieves.
Inside, a silver-bloom tree dominated the courtyard, blossoms spilling fragrance so rich it nearly masked the damp air. Beneath it waited a wooden chair, worn and creaking but steady.
Alaric dropped into it, pushed with his boot, and let it rock back and forth. The rhythm was unhurried, marking a time beyond drills and lessons.
He poured tea from a clay pot left warm on the coals. Steam rose into the blossoms above, weaving bitter leaves with sweet petals. He drank deeply, though his body needed little of it now.
From here the world almost seemed kind. The mountain stretched below, dotted with shrines and cottages, smoke drifting from chimneys. Beyond, the Broadmere Valley gleamed, villages clinging to its rivers. If he closed his eyes, he could forget the smirks and the failures.
They called him weak. They called him useless. They weren't wrong.
Yet the words did not wound. In his first life, ridicule had been sharper than knives. Here, in a world of blades and Aether, words felt light as ash.
He sipped again. "Water does not strive," he murmured, recalling a line from Earth. "Yet nothing withstands it."
That was the truth of his path. He would not blaze. He would accumulate—grain by grain, until the river shifted course.
A blossom fell onto his shoulder. He plucked it, tracing its veins until his vision blurred. A nap tempted him. To sleep beneath the scent of flowers, to wake stronger—that was enough for an average man.
His hand drifted to the stone table beside him. Fingers traced its weathered surface until they caught in a groove, a hollow worn smooth by time.
Something stirred—old, hidden, waiting.
At first it was only texture. Then a faint vibration, pulsing up through nail and bone.
Alaric froze.
The blossoms above shivered though no wind stirred. His breath dragged, metallic. The courtyard blurred, colors bleeding into one another like wet paint.
A sound swelled inside his skull, like the Dawnspire bell struck from within. He tried to pull his hand away, but the hollow clung. Light bled from the groove, endless, as though a buried star exhaled.
Then the world cracked.
The pavilion dissolved into a forest of towering trees with faintly glowing bark. Mist pooled thick at his feet, yet he walked upon it as if on glass.
A realm—nested inside his mind.
He steadied himself against a trunk that thrummed with Aether. Power pressed against his skin, poured into his lungs. More than any ritual courtyard, more than any elder's hall. Enough to drown a mortal in radiance.
"This… is mine?" he whispered.
Above, the canopy shuddered. Shapes loomed in the fog, outlines heavy, metallic, waiting. Not beasts. Not men. Silent constructs slumbering in rows, moss grown over armor, still as statues yet brimming with menace.
His heart pounded. The scar at his throat burned.
The ground itself shifted, as if the realm had drawn a breath.
The forest leaned toward him.
The mist swallowed him whole.