The Daemon moved like broken memory.
One moment it was only shadow and whisper, the next it scraped itself into the world like something remembered wrong. Tavian froze as it crept across the clearing, limbs reshaping with every step. Bone folded into skin, then reversed. A face split open into a mouth, but no words came, only the rasp of thought still trying to become language.
The Whisperkin darted behind his leg, fur standing on end. Raijara surged inside his chest like a struck chord.
"Call me," she said, her voice sharp. "Now."
Tavian's heart pounded. He lifted his hand, uncertain if it would even work.
"I don't know how," he whispered.
"You don't need to know. You need to feel."
He pressed his palm to his chest, to the bondmark, and reached.
The Pulse responded.
Not gracefully. Not cleanly. It tore through him like a sky breaking open, a flood behind old stone. Lightning cracked along his spine. His breath vanished.
Raijara did not descend from above.
She erupted from within.
Stormlight flared across his skin in jagged threads. His legs staggered under the sudden weight of her. The air around him shifted. Time itself slowed for one breath. Then the storm answered.
Wind exploded outward, kicking dust into rings. Mist spiraled from his ribs and pooled around his feet. His eyes burned with pressure he couldn't name. Raijara's voice filled his chest now, fierce and steady.
"Push it. Let it see what it touched."
Tavian thrust his arm forward, Pulse screaming through his bones. Lightning arced from his fingers, wild and crooked. It missed.
The Daemon recoiled anyway, flinching from the sheer force. Its form distorted again. It tried to become something taller. Then smaller. Then many at once. It flickered with memory that didn't belong to it.
He pulled again.
Another blast. This one struck true.
Light and Veil surged together, shearing through the Daemon's middle. Its body split like soaked paper, unraveling in a howl of soundless thought.
Tavian collapsed. The storm cut off like a breath held too long.
He hit the ground hard.
His hands trembled. Smoke curled from his fingertips. The bondmark on his wrist pulsed like an overworked muscle, alive but angry. He couldn't move. Could barely breathe.
Raijara steadied him from within, her presence firm and grounding.
"You are not broken," she said. "But close. Too close."
Tavian blinked tears from his eyes. His mouth tasted like copper and rain.
A voice cut through the haze.
"Tavian? Get down!"
He looked up.
Kaelenna, his younger sister, burst through the trees, staff already spinning. She didn't wait for an answer. Ember surged from her grip, trailing fire in a perfect arc. Behind her, two beasts bounded into view, a sinewy hound cloaked in Ash, and a stocky, flame-backed drake that snorted smoke with every breath.
The second Daemon barely had time to form.
Kaelenna's fire struck before it could choose a shape. It shrieked and split apart, pinned to the earth by heat and weight. Her hound lunged to tear through what remained. The drake circled wide, snarling.
The clearing burned with light.
Kaelenna exhaled hard, chest rising and falling. She turned to him.
"What did you do?"
Tavian tried to stand. "I didn't mean to. It just happened."
Kaelenna looked at his wrist. Then at his face. Her expression changed.
"You bonded," she said softly.
He nodded once.
She crouched beside him and touched his shoulder. Her grip was warm.
"Well," she said. "That explains the sky."
The Whisperkin padded forward, sniffed Kaelenna's boot, then leapt into Tavian's lap with a chirp. He let out a breathless laugh.
Raijara stirred again, not speaking, but present.
Kaelenna glanced around.
"You didn't fight that thing alone, did you?"
"I had help," Tavian said, nodding to the bondmark.
Kaelenna's eyes narrowed. "No wonder my beasts dragged me here. I was at the southern post when I felt the sky shift."
She stood again, gaze scanning the trees.
"You hit it hard. But this wasn't a real one, was it?"
Tavian shook his head.
"It felt like it was echoing me. Or Raijara."
Kaelenna's hound barked once and returned to her side. The drake hissed at the trees. The woods had gone too still.
Then came the sound.
A horn. Long. Low.
Wrong.
Not Kaltravan.
Kaelenna's face went pale.
"That's not ours," she whispered.
The Whisperkin hissed and leapt onto Tavian's shoulder, ears pressed flat.
Tavian reached for his bond again, but the Pulse burned raw. Like a wound still bleeding. Raijara whispered through his bones.
"This was only the beginning."