Ledor lifted his hands slowly. “Easy,” he said, voice steady despite the sweat beading at his temple. “I just wanted to get a closer look.”
But he backed away.
Everyone did.
Because Kaelith’s throat began to glow.
It wasn’t the soft shimmer of her usual fire. It was molten, burning up through her chest with a pulse of raw elemental energy. The sound that came from her was ancient, not a roar, but a resonance,the kind that made your bones remember everything you had experienced.
We scattered, giving her space as her chest heaved?—
And she released it.
A stream of pure orange fire tore through the sky?—
—only for the flames to shift mid-air, twisting, until white-blue ice snapped into place. The stream of heat froze, suspended in the air like jagged glass, shards of crystal fire raining down in a slow, impossible snowfall.
Gasps echoed across the grounds. No one moved.
No one dared.
And Hein…
He stood beside her. His massive frame curled slightly around hers, not touching, but close and protective. His wings rose in a partial arch, shielding her from view, his eyes never leaving her.
Not once.
But this wasn’t just watchfulness.
It was desire.
Not lust, not hunger, but the kind of devotion born of something deeper. Recognition. Kinship. Their Bond.
Hein looked at her as if the storm in his blood had finally found a place to rest.
Kaelith was still trembling, her magic crackling around her like lightning caught in a cage.
And I realized?—
She wasn’t just summoning something.
She was becoming something else.
The whispering began slowly, like wind catching the edge of a flame, before it spread, flickering across the Ascension Grounds like wildfire.
Soft voices behind armored hands. Uneasy glances exchanged between guilds. No one dared speak loudly, not when Kaelith’s magic still shimmered in the air like a live wire, but it was clear?—
The ground beneath us was shifting. Sides were being chosen.
From the corner of my eye, I saw Remy standing to one side, Katama crouched behind him in a low, tense coil. His arms were crossed, but his gaze flicked across the field, assessing, calculating.
And then I saw it.
Crownwatch.
Three of their riders—highborns—peeled away from the others and moved subtly, almost casually, to stand at Remy’s side. Not in challenge.
In alliance.
