The training grounds had never felt so heavy. Not from the cold stone underfoot, nor the towering walls that caged them in like wolves pacing their pens — but from the weight of whispers. Ever since Kael's surge of silence, the abyss within him spilling out in that near-catastrophe, every eye lingered on him too long. Every breath seemed held when he walked past.
Some whispered in awe, others in dread.
"Did you feel it?" one trainee muttered to another. "Like the world went deaf."
"It's not normal," Rynna snapped. Her blade hissed free of its sheath, a nervous tic. "It's not human."
Kael ignored them, but inside, he felt the truth of it. His silence wasn't a weapon he commanded. It was a beast gnawing at its leash, hungry, eager. The void wanted out.
Darius, usually brash, had grown cautious. He no longer mocked Kael's quiet ways, but watched him with narrowed eyes. A rival? Or a danger he couldn't yet measure.
Jorek, however, had changed most of all. His curiosity was sharp as a knife. He shadowed Kael's movements, searching for signs, piecing together secrets. His muttered notes to himself spoke of obsession.
And Veyron… Veyron trained like a man possessed.
Day after day, the crackling flare of his flame lit the dusk sky. His strikes grew sharper, his aura hotter, his body hardened in single-minded purpose. Each time his eyes found Kael across the grounds, there was no hate — only a fire that demanded to be answered.
But Kael had other shadows to wrestle with.
That night, when the moon cast silver bars across the sleeping hall, Kael slipped away. Down into the black corridors, to where even the bravest trainees dared not tread. The air grew colder. Quieter. The silence here was not his — it belonged to someone older, sharper.
Ashen Vox emerged from the dark as though he'd been there all along, his cloak melting into the void around him. His voice was low, steady, almost amused.
"You're losing the leash."
Kael clenched his fists. "It's not a leash. It's eating me alive."
Vox circled him, eyes gleaming like twin embers in the dark.
"Good. Let it. The abyss is not meant to be tamed. It is meant to consume — and in its consumption, you will find your shape."
He stopped, facing Kael with the weight of a mountain behind his words.
"But raw silence is chaos. Power without form. To survive the clash ahead, you must give it structure. You must weave the void into something more."
Kael's breath came heavy. "How?"
Vox raised his hand, and the shadows around them bent inward, folding into blades, whips, shapes without names. Then, with a wave, they collapsed back into nothing.
"You are Silence," Vox said, "but silence is not absence. It is command. The void doesn't erase — it dictates what cannot be."
Kael felt it then. A pull. A new edge hidden within the dark. Not just muting sound, but muting motion, muting force. If he reached deeper, he could still the very rhythm of the world around him.
But the moment he tried, the abyss surged too far. The silence expanded outward like a suffocating wave, and Kael staggered, clutching his head. Vox's hand snapped forward, steadying him, his voice a cold anchor.
"Focus. Choose. Do not drown."
Kael gasped, pulling the silence inward, forcing it smaller, sharper. A line instead of a flood. For a moment, the world around him froze. Dust hung still in the air. His heartbeat pounded like thunder against the emptiness.
Then it broke. He stumbled, falling to his knees, sweat dripping.
Vox crouched beside him, a ghost of a smile tugging his lips.
"Better. Still wild, but better. Harness this, and the flames will bow to you."
Kael's eyes flickered, caught between fear and a rising, dangerous hunger.
The next day, the training grounds erupted in a storm not of silence, but of fire.
Veyron stood before the assembled trainees, his aura burning like a sun breaking through stormclouds. His voice carried across the courtyard, filled with heat and certainty.
"Kael. No more hiding. You and I — here. Now."
The crowd hushed, tension spiking. Darius leaned forward, eager. Rynna tightened her grip on her blade. Jorek scribbled furiously, eyes wide with the promise of revelation.
Kael stepped forward. Shadows seemed to follow him, subtle, suffocating. He looked at Veyron, and for the first time, he didn't see a rival or an enemy. He saw the fire that would test his abyss.
And deep within, the silence purred.