“I’m alright,” I cut in, forcing a smile as I stand, then sway.
Lu’ma reaches for me, but I steady myself, my jaw tight.
“I have duties, Lu’ma. We all do. Kailorien left early this morning, did he not?”
Lu’ma nods reluctantly.
“Then so must I.”
I pull my white cloak over my shoulders. The same pale, silvered weave as my only gown. The brooch at the collar has dulled over decades, no longer gleaming with its tiny, embedded rune. Another relic of splendor reduced to a placeholder over years of neglect.
I step toward the doorway, my gait stiff, controlled. Today, the Council will be expecting reported progress on the Grand Festival of Growth. I had spent weeks working with the reluctant priests at the Eastern Platform, readying wards against potential Creeper Vine intrusions, ensuring the platform was painted and ready. If I can make it there today and oversee the blessing structure and the webs myself, I will have the final pieces I need for my report this eve.
A start. A beginning.
But, the first stair takes my knees from me. I catch myself on the wall, panting, trying to ignore the fresh sweat prickling at my brow. Lu’ma is beside me in an instant, hands fluttering with alarm.
“I do not need help,” I insist, but it comes out too soft—too breathless—to sound like truth.
Lu’ma doesn’t argue. She simply offers her arm. We make it halfway down the corridor before I have to stop again. The light slanting through the crystal archways blurs. Every step is a calculated surrender: give some weight, now shift. Breathe in, then again. One more. But my body betrays me. My thoughts are a whirlwind of plans—altar placements,mana-flow alignment, a list of priests to see and speak to—but they slip from my grasp with each faltering step.
A voice speaks in my mind.
:: …cannot live without Silari’s breath…find him…use what you’ve been granted… ::
I shake my head. More hallucinations. They come, sometimes, even during the day. Perhaps I, too, am nearing madness after spending years trapped within the Doctrine. Or perhaps this is the voice that spoke to me decades ago upon the Moores. I haven’t heard it in so long, I’d nearly forgotten of it. The voice of my origins, perhaps. Once, I hoped to remember more about them. But now—I stroke the golden braid at my shoulder—now I only wish to survive, to fight for those I love, to be myself in a world that would erase me.
Lu’ma supports me at my elbow. I hate needing help towalk. Despise how my gown clings to my back. That the silk beneath my arm has grown threadbare. That Kailorien had likely seen the state of this. Ofme.
Most of all, I hate how much that matters. That hesaw.
Saw and yet said nothing, likely knowing it would upset me.
We round the final turn before the descent to portal hall.
I don’t notice him at first.
But I hear him.
A voice—firm, displeased—snaps across the corridor.
“Stop.”
I freeze in place.
Kailorien stands ahead. Alone. No Reskala. No heralds. His thick black cloak is slung over one shoulder, showing off the Resh’Agar’s blazing crest. His hair is tied up high, some strands still clinging to his skin from morning exertion in the Sparring Ring. His eyes narrow with fury, fixing on my dress first.
Then my face.
Then Lu’ma’s expression of thinly-veiled frustration.
“I instructed that she wasn’t to leave the wing,” he says to Lu’ma.
I lift my chin. “Do not turn your anger on her.”
“You’re burning,” he says flatly.
“No worse than before,” I counter. “I told you, this is commonplace.”
