“This place is cursed,” Rowan muttered under his breath, boots scuffing against the slick stone as he walked just behind Thaelyn. “Or haunted. Or both.”
“It’s not cursed,” Brynnek said, eyes scanning the towers ahead. “It’s history. We walk where the old bloodlines did. Where the first Skyborne fell.”
Darian grumbled, adjusting the clasps on his cloak. The wind caught the edges and flared them behind him. “Still cursed.”
Thaelyn didn’t answer. The path ended in the black tower of the Aerothar Spire, its stone veined with pale silver that shimmered when lightning brushed the horizon. No roof, no railings, just the wind’s raw power.
They climbed the spiral stair that wound along the tower’s edge. The storm thickened. Every step sent water slicking across the stone. By the time Thaelyn reached the top, her fingers were numb, her breath sharp and thin.
The trial platform stretched before them, flat, circular, andsuspended over the chasm. Sigils glowed faintly across its surface, remnants of enchantments older than the kingdom itself. The sigils were flickering in and out of sight; their magic seemed unstable.
Professor Syra Velnari stood at the center, her cloak unmoving though the wind howled around her. Her voice carried effortlessly. “Air remembers those who seek to master it,” she said. She turned, her scar catching the light like a blade. “The wind chooses none who cling too tightly. To be lifted, you must let go.”
One by one, cadets stepped forward. Some bowed their heads, others raised their arms to the sky. The wind answered none of them. One boy was thrown backward so hard that he struck the stone edge. Then came Iri Vale. Thaelyn’s stomach knotted as her friend stepped into the circle, braid unraveling in the gale. She stood still, hands open. The wind moved once, gently, like a curious animal, then drifted away.
“It hesitated,” Darian murmured.
Then, “Thaelyn Marren.” Her name cut through the storm like a blade. Thaelyn stepped forward, boots scraping stone slick with rain. The sound echoed through the ring of cadets, sharp and lonely. Every failure, the silence of the Water Trial, the stillness of the Stonegrounds, and the rejection of the flame pressed like stones against her ribs. This was her last chance. Her last breath to prove she belonged here.
You can do this.
The lie didn’t convince her. The wind pressed against her, wild and cold, tugging at her cloak as if testing her balance. It whispered through her hair, curious, circling, alive. She could almost hear laughter in it, the kind she remembered from her father’s forge, when sparks leapt too high, reckless and bright.
Thaelyn closed her eyes.Please. Just once, choose me.Nothing moved. The air tasted of iron. The silence stung.
Maybe they were right.Perhaps she wasn’t meant to stand among dragon-bound prodigies and noble bloodlines. Maybe she was only the blacksmith’s daughter who’d wandered too far, too foolishly, into a world not built for her hands. Her pulse thudded. The memory ofevery whispered dismissal clawed through her mind.Unmanifested. Unchosen. Unworthy.
She drew in a breath that hurt.Then I’ll make you see me.
Thaelyn spread her palms wide and let go. The wind struck her chest like a heartbeat. Once. Twice. Then the world fell away. Gasps rippled through the circle. Her feet left the ground, her braid whipped loose, cloak snapping open like wings. The current lifted her higher, weightless, soundless. For an instant, the storm became her, every gust her pulse, every breath her power. She felt alive. Free. As though the sky itself had remembered her name.
Then something shifted. The air thickened. The taste of it changed, metallic, sharp, wrong. The runes beneath her dimmed, from gold to rust, then to red. A hum vibrated through her bones, low and hungry.
What are you?she thought.
The wind didn’t answer. It growled. The updraft faltered, twisting around her in a violent vortex. Cold became heat. Awe became dread. Her stomach dropped as the current convulsed, tossing her like a leaf in a hurricane. Lightning flared across the spire, and for a heartbeat, she saw shapes moving inside the storm, shadows that shouldn’t have formed. Pain lanced through her ribs. The air squeezed, constricting. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. The pressure built until her vision blurred white.
It’s rejecting me.
No. It wasn’t rejection. It was recognition. Something inside the windknew her.It wanted her still.
The wind screamed. Thaelyn hung in its grasp, caught between sky and stone, as the runes beneath her feet flared to life. Light surged around her boots, not gold this time but an angry, seething red. The air that had felt soft moments ago now clawed at her skin, spinning faster, pressing against her ribs until her breath came in ragged gasps.
Professor Velnari’s voice cut through the gale like a whip. “Thaelyn! You have torelease it!”
Release it. The words made no sense. Her fingerstrembled, palms open to the storm. She didn’t knowwhatshe was holding, only that it wanted out, that it wantedher.
“How?” she shouted back, the wind swallowing her voice. “I don’t?—”
“Breathe!” Velnari barked. “Not against it,withit! The air mirrors your rhythm, slow it down!”
Thaelyn tried. Gods, she tried. She dragged in a breath that tasted of metal and rain, forcing her chest to rise and fall against the crushing current. For a heartbeat, the wind gentled, following her inhale like a tide pulling back. Then it roared forward again, doubled in force. Pain lanced down her spine. Sparks of crimson light scattered from her fingertips. She could feel her heartbeat in her skull.
“Focus!” Velnari’s shout came again, closer now, voice cracking with strain. “Do notfightthe current, guide it out through your breath!”
“I can’t!” Thaelyn’s voice broke, the words dissolved into the storm.
Her boots lifted from the ground again. Air wrapped around her arms, tight bands of pressure that burned and numbed all at once. The world spun. The storm was no longer outside her; it wasinher. She could feel every direction of the wind at once: spinning, collapsing, pulling.
