By my twelfth year, I had learned to wall off the hornet's nest in my chest. I couldn't get rid of it, but I could build a cage of concentration around the buzzing, holding it back through sheer force of will. It was exhausting. Every waking moment was spent managing the power that churned inside me, leaving me drained and perpetually on edge.
This constant effort left little energy for anything else. During combat training, I was a joke. Other boys my age were growing into their strength, their movements sharp and sure. I was clumsy and weak, my limbs refusing to obey. I'd swing a wooden sword and my arms would ache with a weariness that had nothing to do with muscle. The whispers followed me everywhere. "The Builder's son… a weakling.""Strange boy." Each word was a stone, and I was drowning under their weight.
My father saw it. I could feel his disappointment like a physical presence. He wanted a son forged from the same iron as the North, and instead, he got me—a boy who preferred maps to swords, a boy who'd rather study the stress points of stone than the weak points of an opponent's guard. One evening, he watched me fail for the tenth time to parry a simple blow from Torren. He didn't yell. He just sighed, a sound heavier than any shout, and walked away.
The shame was a bitter acid in my throat.
Later that night, Torren and I slipped out to the edge of the wolfswood. This was our real training ground. Here, away from judging eyes, I let the walls down.
"Try the small one first," Torren said, pointing to a rock the size of a fist. He stood a few feet away, ready. He was my anchor, the lightning rod for the storm in my blood.
I took a deep breath and focused. I didn't push. Instead, I invited the power, gently coaxing the buzzing from its cage. The hornets stirred, and a familiar tremor ran up my spine. The rock wobbled. It lifted, shaking, an inch above the moss. It held for three seconds, then dropped with a soft thud.
I grinned, a rare, real grin. "Again."
The next one, slightly larger, rose just as smoothly. I could feel the energy flowing through me, a current I was learning to direct. I was getting better. Pride, hot and sharp, flared in my chest. I got cocky. I turned to a boulder the size of a small sheep.
"Rudr, don't," Torren warned, his voice tight.
I ignored him. I reached for the buzzing, but this time I didn't coax it. I grabbed it, pulled at it with all my frustration and all my shame. The power didn't flow; it erupted. The boulder didn't lift. It exploded, sending shards of granite screaming through the trees. One piece, sharp as a dragonglass dagger, sliced through Torren's sleeve, drawing a line of red on his forearm.
The buzzing vanished. The cold dread slammed back into its place. I rushed to him, my hands shaking. "Torren, I—"
He just looked at the blood, then at me. There was no fear in his eyes. Only a grim understanding. "The wall was too thin," he said, as if we were discussing one of my father's blueprints. He was right. My control was a lie, a thin sheet of ice over a raging sea.
That night, the curse's fever burned hotter than ever. The dream wasn't just a lonely beach anymore. It was a summons. I felt the island calling my name, a relentless, hungry pull that promised to tear me from my home. I woke up gasping, the knowledge a cold certainty in my gut: we didn't have years. We had months, maybe a year at most.
I found Torren before dawn, cleaning the blood from his tunic. I didn't have to say a word. He looked up, and I knew he felt it too, the closing window, the end of our time here.
"I'll start putting aside dried meats," he said quietly. "And I'll get us warmer cloaks."
Our childhood was over. We were no longer boys playing at being warriors. We were prisoners planning their own transport to a jail they'd never seen.