The slums of Keystone slept under a film of fog and filth. Fish-gut smoke, wet stone, and the sour tang of stagnant water turned the night thick enough to chew. Jayden pushed his cart down the canal road, bare feet slapping against mud. The bucket in the cart sloshed, spilling half of what he'd spent the day hauling.
"Still hauling puddles, rat?" someone jeered from a bridge above.
He didn't look up. When you lived in the gutters, the easiest way to survive was to keep your eyes down. Words were teeth; walking away kept your throat intact.
He turned into an alley barely wider than his cart. The walls leaned close — patched planks, painted once with bright dyes that the rain had long since bled away. Here and there, tiny glyph-lamps flickered weakly, their blue runes fading from lack of fuel. Beyond the slums, higher up the hill, the city of Keystone shone — true lamps burning steady, soft music leaking from taverns, banners trailing like tame flames. The air there was clean. The air here tasted of iron and effort.
Jayden stopped at the dock behind a crooked row of shacks. One of them was his. The place leaned over the canal as if listening for gossip. Through a gap in the wall, lamplight spilled onto the water, yellow and kind.
Inside, Bram sat mending a net by hand. His fingers were thick and scarred, his back bent but steady. "You're late," he said without looking up.
"Got stopped at the gate," Jayden muttered, setting the bucket down. His voice was hoarse from smoke and river air.
"Those guards again?" Marla asked from the stove. She was small, hair streaked with gray, eyes bright enough to chase shadows. Steam rose from a battered pot, filling the room with the smell of broth and saltweed.
"They said the canal's closed for purification." Jayden's mouth twisted. "Funny, since they dump their trash in it."
Bram grunted approval. "The world runs on funny things." He tied off the net and looked at Jayden, really looked. "Eat. You'll do no work on an empty gut."
Marla ladled soup into a chipped bowl and set it before him. Jayden ate quickly, the warmth chasing the cold from his fingers. The room was small, but full — shelves of worn tools, a wall charm of the Water glyph Bram had carved years ago, cracked but still humming faintly.
Outside, the neighbors argued and laughed. Mave from next door scolded her sons for stealing her lamp oil; old Joric sang to his pigeons. Life here was thin but it was life.
After dinner, Jayden lingered by the doorway, watching the faint reflection of Keystone's upper districts shimmer on the canal. Towers and bridges glowed like veins of light, elemental energy thrumming through crystal conduits high above. From here they looked unreal, like stars pretending to be human work.
He rubbed his hands together. The scars across his knuckles itched — reminders of small fights, not great ones. He thought, not for the first time, about the people up there — those born with sigils and runes that answered when called. Elemental users. Aspirants.
*I won't die here,* he told the reflection, quietly.
Bram's voice floated from inside. "Stop talking to water, boy. It listens too well."
Jayden smiled despite himself. "Then maybe it'll listen better than people."
---
Later, thunder rolled low and long. The canal rippled with silver. Jayden lay on his mat, half-dreaming of nothing, when the air changed. The smell of ozone crept in like a warning.
A flash — white and soundless — and the shack trembled.
"Marla, stay with him!" Bram's shout tore the dark. "Jay, get under the—"
The door exploded inward, and light filled every corner. A figure stepped through, tall and calm, lightning running lazy patterns along his arms. The world seemed to dim around that glow.
"Wrong address," the stranger said, and raised his hand.
Bram charged, raw courage wrapped in old rope and callus. The hook in his hand caught nothing. The next instant blazed too bright to see. Jayden heard the crack, smelled burning wood and salt, felt the air rip apart.
He lunged for Marla. The roof groaned. She was half-buried under splintered beams, breathing shallowly. Another strike howled through the shack. Jayden threw himself over her. The blast lifted them both, flung him into the wall.
His vision fractured — blue light, white smoke, Bram's voice fading into thunder. Through the haze he saw the stranger's wrist: a jagged rune, twin bolts crossing like fangs of a storm. Then the ceiling collapsed.
---
When he woke, rain beat the ruins. Smoke rose in thin streams. The shack was gone, reduced to ribs and ash. Marla lay unconscious, her pulse a flutter under his fingers. Bram was still.
Jayden tried to drag her to the street. His arms shook. The canal had risen, licking at the wreckage. Lightning danced along the clouds, crawling like veins.
He made it three steps onto the pier. Wood splintered. The world tilted. The canal opened beneath him and took him whole.
Cold sealed around him, heavy as iron. He kicked upward; the current pulled harder. The surface shrank into a trembling circle above him, then vanished. His lungs screamed. Images rolled through his mind — the burning shack, Bram's hands, Marla's still face, the twin-bolt rune.
*Weak again. Always weak.*
Something inside him refused that thought. The same quiet anger that had lived under his ribs flared and hardened. He stopped thrashing. Let the water close. Drew breath where none existed.
*I will be the strongest.*
The current shivered. Light rippled through the depths.
The canal dissolved.
---
He fell through a sky made of water. Stars floated above and below. The light was soft and endless, a dream of oceans that had forgotten their shores. He struck ground that rippled like glass. The pressure of the deep hummed in his bones.
Before him, a gate of tide rose — runes shifting like living creatures, their light bending around him. Whispers threaded the current: a language of drowned syllables.
*Resonate… or be erased.*
The words weren't sound. They were law.
A breathless voice older than storms moved through the depths.
*You are unshaped clay. You are the silence between storms. Why do you reach?*
Jayden's body trembled; his mind felt half-torn apart. The water pressed, testing him, measuring him, waiting for surrender.
"Because…" his voice cracked, "…I refuse to drown."
The runes flared. The water roared, alive and infinite. He felt himself pulled into it, down and through. Darkness folded over him like wings.
And then a whisper from the elemental codex — cold, vast, neither kind nor cruel — slid through the current. Runes swirled in the dark, etching themselves into his vision.
"Aspirant," the voice said, echoing in the marrow of his bones.
"Welcome to your first Water Trial."