I’m a tactician. I’m a survivor. If there’s a pattern here, I’ll find it.
It takes hours.
But I find it.
And it’s worse than anything he admitted to.
The oldest crystals show Ironhold as it was when I was young. Peaceful. Prosperous. My parents alive and happy, running the forge that had been in our family for generations.
I pick up a crystal showing my father at his anvil, hammer raised, sweat gleaming on his brow. My mother is in the background, laughing at something he’s said. I’m there too—small, maybe eight or nine—watching them with adoration in my eyes.
I don’t remember this moment. Don’t remember a time when I looked at anything with adoration. Don’t remember what it felt like to be a child who believed the world was safe.
He stole that from me. Stole the girl I would have been.
I set the crystal down carefully, resisting the urge to shatter it. I need the evidence intact.
The crystals from my twelfth year show the first chaos-beast attack.
It came out of nowhere—that’s what everyone said at the time. The beasts had never ventured this close to the villagebefore. We lost three people that day, including Old Marcus who had been training me to fight.
I remember that day with perfect clarity. Remember the screaming, the blood, the way the beast’s claws tore through Old Marcus’s chest when he pushed me behind him. Remember his blood on my hands as he died, his last words telling me to run.
I was twelve years old. I didn’t run. I picked up his sword and I fought, and somehow I survived.
That was the day I decided to become a warrior.
I find a crystal that shows the beast’s approach. Find another that shows the path it took—directly through territory that should have been warded by Stone Court magic. Territory that Karax, as Guardian, was responsible for protecting.
The wards failed that day. Just for a few hours. Just long enough for the beast to reach us.
I check the dates. Check them again.
The ward failure happened three days after Karax started watching me. Three days after he decided an eight-year-old girl “had potential.”
My hands are shaking as I set the crystal down.
Not coincidence. Never coincidence.
He didn’t just watch my mentor die. Hearrangedit.
I move through the crystals methodically now, my mind cold and clear even as something inside me is screaming. The pattern emerges with horrible clarity.
Age thirteen: The village healer, old Greta, dies of a sudden illness. No one else catches it. Just her—the woman who mighthave noticed if something was wrong with me, who might have recognized the signs of omega biology emerging.
Age fourteen: Jorin arrives in Ironhold. He’s a wandering fighter, skilled and patient, and he takes over my training where Old Marcus left off. For two years, he’s the closest thing I have to family. He teaches me everything he knows.
Age sixteen: Jorin leaves. Suddenly. Says he got word of a job opportunity in the southern territories.
I find the crystal showing his departure. But I also find what the confrontation with Karax didn’t tell me—what happened the day before Jorin decided to leave.
A Stone Court messenger arriving at his home. A conversation I wasn’t there to witness. A bag of gold changing hands.
Karax didn’t just “nudge” Jorin away. Heboughthim.
I dig through more crystals. Find more patterns. Each one drives another nail into the coffin of the life I thought I understood.
Age fifteen: Mira, the healer’s apprentice who might have shared my burden of protecting the village—she receives a mysterious letter offering her an apprenticeship in the capital. She leaves within the week, apologizing but saying it’s too good an opportunity to pass up.
