At twelve, every child in Yuvale took the test.
You placed your palm on the stone in the shrine, and the stone told you which path lived in your blood. Most were nothing at all. Some were water, some wind. Once in ten years a child left with a mark bright enough to earn a letter from the southern academies.
Yuj never took the test.
He had touched a different stone weeks before—the shepherds' bench rock on the ridge. The evening had been too quiet. He laid his hand there because quiet had asked for company. The rock warmed under his skin in a way that made him feel seen.
After that, ovens liked him. Lanterns flared when he passed. Flowers opened early. The baker called it charm. The elders called it omen.
They talked softly, as people do when they fear being heard by the thing they're talking about.
Elder Toma finally came to the hut with tea and a face that made the tea taste wrong.
"It's time," he said.
"For what?" Yuj asked.
"To write a letter."
They wrote to Ember Academy, which sat above a city to the south and claimed to know what to do with children who lit up rooms they had not meant to light. The elder did not call Yuj a miracle or a danger. He called him early.
"Will they take me?"
"If they are wise."
"And if they are not?"
"Then we will teach you to be."
Yun read the copy they kept. "It says recommendation," she said. "That's better than warning."
"Barely," Yuj said, smiling. "You'll come?"
"I'm not on the letter," she said, laughing without warmth.
He didn't push.
That summer was the kind that forgets to be a season. Yuj learned when to leave fires alone and when to coax them with breath. He learned where the river was deep enough to swallow the sky. He learned when Yun needed silence more than words.
A storm came the night before the messenger arrived. Not a bad one—the kind that washes dust off and leaves the world sharper.
Yuj woke early and found Yun already sitting at the door, knees to chest.
"You don't have to see me off," he said.
"I'm not," she said. "I'm watching the valley breathe."
"That's rude," he said. "I wanted to be the poetic one."
"Try again tomorrow," she said, bumping his shoulder.
When the rider crested the road, she wasn't the red-armored knight Yuj had imagined but a woman with gray in her braid and mud on her boots.
"For Yuvale," she called, and the valley came out to answer.
She had one letter for the weaver's son, one for the potter's daughter, and one thin letter from Ember.
Yun broke the seal. They read together. Ember accepted. A tutor would come. Departure: within one month.
"A month is a lot of days," Yun said.
"A lot of evenings," he said. "We can race the river every one."
"You'll lose half."
"I'll let you think that."
They spent the month learning. The smith taught patience; the baker, timing; Yun, listening.
On the last night they climbed the ridge. The flowers below turned their skin red.
"When I come back," Yuj said, "let's go past the ridge."
"There will be more red," she said.
He watched her smile long enough to make a memory out of it.
Morning came warm and clean. The valley gathered the way it did for weddings. Someone tied a sash around his waist. Elder Toma pressed a small leaf-shaped charm into his palm. "For when you forget to be soft."
Yuj managed, "I'll make you proud."
He hugged Yun—too brief, too brave.
"Don't run toward the red things," she said.
"I'll run toward you," he said, and let her go.
On the road out he looked back once. The flowers were bright, the wind from the east lifting them in a wave. For a heartbeat the light flickered from red to green and back again
Yuj blinked. "Memory," he said. "Mercy."
He walked toward the south.