“Rhyslan Archer.” Rhys made a flourish with empty hands. The water answered with a single flat slap and a chill that climbed hislegs fast enough to take his breath. He came out cursing between his teeth, bravado thinned by shivers. High above, someone laughed once and stopped.
“Feyra Solen.” Feyra closed her eyes a heartbeat before stepping in. The pool met her like a mirror. She came back harder in the shoulders, nothing on her skin but cold.
“Irielle Vale.” The chamber leaned forward. Iri’s mouth parted as if she were about to ask permission, then she didn’t. She walked. The water shivered before she touched it. It braided around her ankles like silk. Professor Morren’s head tipped, listening to something only she could hear. Iri sank. The surface dimmed, not dark, only deep. A ring of current lifted like a circlet and turned. Light built from within the pool, soft at first, then sure. When she rose from the water, it lifted her higher. It spiraled up her limbs like liquid silk, pushing her into the air about four cubits high above the water. Pale aquamarine light radiated from the surface. Thaelyn gasped as Iri hovered above the pool, arms spread, her hair suspended like a floating crown. The runes at the rim flared sea-bright, and a sigil marking of circling waves swirled and appeared on the inside of Iri’s left and right forearms, blue-white and clean as starlight.
For a moment, no one breathed. Then sound crashed back, cheers and sharp cries breaking off stone. Iri’s feet found the terrace again. She laughed, then clapped a hand to her mouth as if laughter might be a fragile thing that could break here.
Thaelyn was halfway reaching for her when the next name was spoken, and a boy near the end of the row strode forward too quickly, chin high.
“Joren Vex,” Professor Morren said, steady. “Do not rush.”
He had already hit the water. He pushed at it with both hands, jaw clenched, breath held like a dare. The pool tightened around his knees. He set his stance and shoved deeper. The water answered with a clean coil and took him under.
“Stop,” Professor Morren called. “Yield.”
Bubbles climbed in a frantic chain, then burst into silence. A hand broke the surface and went under again. Someone screamed.Commander Dareth’s voice cut through the chamber. “Hold.” No one moved. The water smoothed. It did not give him back.
The next name arrived a moment later. It did not need to be loud.
“Thaelyn Marren.” Her body knew before her thoughts did. Her feet moved. The stone was slick. She stepped to the line, then over it. The cold climbed clean and serious as a blade drawn slowly, knee, thigh, waist. The pool neither welcomed nor refused. It waited.
She went under. Silence swallowed sound. The pressure was a hand on her chest. Her mind tried to scramble toward air. Something old inside her did not.
“Let go,” said the water. It was not a speech. It was the sensation of a door unlatched.
A memory rose, uninvited. A fever that had stained the world in wavering light. Her mother’s palm was cool on her forehead, but it was not her mother’s face. A lullaby hummed without words. River moss crushed in a bowl. Rain on a window, imbued with a child’s fear, and then the soft miracle of quiet after it passed.
Thaelyn’s lungs burned. She opened her hands in the cold and did not fight. The pool seized her like a tide and threw her forward. Stone met her knees. She coughed hard, salt and mineral bright on her tongue.
“Not Water,” Professor Morren murmured. The words were for herself.
Thaelyn wiped her mouth with the back of her wrist and stood. The room made a low sound. She looked up. Darian was already moving along the rail, his hand white on the stone, pride and worry warring in his face. Thorne stood very still, eyes narrowed, attention pinned to the ripples still unwinding from where she had been.
Garric leaned toward him, speaking quietly. Thorne did not answer. Something in the cords of his jaw told its own story.
The trial did not halt. The next cadet stepped forward, and the next was a boy from another squad who tried to shape a wave with his hands, teeth bared in the effort. “No,” Professor Morren said, voice rising for the first time. “Yield.”
He did not. The pool lashed. Water climbed him in bright vines and dragged. His cry cut short under the surface. The chamber braced as if it could withstand an impact.
“Because he challenged it,” Commander Dareth said.
Silence thickened. When at last Professor Morren lowered her hands, her mouth was a thin line.
“It is finished,” she said.
The climb back toward the light took longer. Their boots tapped softly on the stairs, and no one spoke until they stepped into the cold air. The usual sounds of the courtyard felt wrong.
Iri walked beside Thaelyn, her forearms still damp and shining, the fresh sigils pulsing faintly, as if they breathed. “It chose me,” she whispered, wonder softening every edge in her.
Thaelyn nodded. The movement felt like it belonged to someone else. “Good,” she said, and meant it. The word scraped and came out. She could not quite look at Iri’s arms. Not yet.
Feyra fell in on Thaelyn’s other side, quiet for once. “Some things should stay under the surface,” she said.
Darian waited near the arch, eyes flicking from his sister to Thaelyn. “You did fine,” he told Thaelyn.
Thaelyn pulled a breath that did not fill her. The pool seemed to linger under her skin, its cold nested in places breath could not reach. She turned once to glance back down the stairs. The feeling remained. Not an embrace. A hand that had pressed to her sternum, then lifted away. She did not know what it had found, only that she was not chosen.
Chapter
