The days had blended into one another inside the sanctum, though Alatar no longer marked their passage by light or shadow. His measure of time was in the strain of his will, the tremors in his limbs, the steady burn in his mind whenever he reached beyond himself to summon the ash.
Barachas stood ever watchful, a towering silhouette, his eyes aglow with quiet fire. He had ceased to correct Alatar's posture, no longer guiding with the simple words of patience. Instead, his silence became a test of its own. Silence that weighed like a mountain.
"You hold ten circles now," Barachas finally spoke one morning, his voice low but commanding. "Ten gates of ash that whirl at your will. But do you mistake mastery for completion? No. A single step forward on this path opens twenty more yet unseen. Today—no, from this day onward—you will call twenty. Some vast as gateways, others fine as a blade's edge. You will bend them not into one likeness, but into many, scattered forms. Weapons. Surfaces. Shields. Objects to carry and cast aside. And all together you must hold."
Alatar's jaw tightened, not from fear but from the recognition of the immensity before him. "Twenty," he whispered, tasting the word as though it were a bitter fruit. "To keep them moving—each one different—yet all under the same command…"
"Yes," Barachas said, eyes narrowing with faint satisfaction. "This is control. Not endurance. Not strength. But the harmony of many threads bound to a single hand."
Alatar inhaled, closing his eyes, reaching into himself. The ash stirred. It always began the same: a faint echo in his veins, like molten cinders coiling beneath his skin. He pulled upon it, and the air responded—first sluggish, then in great rushes—until the particles of grey-black ash bled forth from the ether around him.
The ten circles he knew came easily now. They rose, familiar, obedient, orbiting him in steady arcs. But when he willed more into existence, the strain struck at once. His temples burned. His lungs tightened as though wrapped in cord. The eleventh circle sputtered into being, then the twelfth—loose, uneven, both threatening to collapse the whole.
Alatar gritted his teeth. Sweat rolled down his brow. His arms trembled though he did not move them. His mind reached, demanded, commanded—yet the thirteenth refused to hold. It scattered in a spray of ash like broken glass.
Barachas' voice cut through the collapse. "Good. Fail. Fail again, and again. Each failure is your body reforging the shape of command."
Days passed in this manner. Each morning he rose, already weary from the night's restless dreams, and began the summoning anew. Some days he reached thirteen before they broke. Others fourteen. Rarely fifteen. Each failure ended with ash scattering across the sanctum like storm winds, leaving him gasping on his knees.
But Alatar's resolve did not fray. He studied the failures, brooded over them in silence during long hours in his quarters. He traced them as one might trace cracks in a blade, learning where the fractures lay, how they might be reforged.
Weeks later came the breakthrough. The twentieth circle snapped into place. For the first time, twenty rings of swirling ash spun about him—some vast and wide as doors, others small and precise, all alive beneath his will. The strain nearly broke him, but for a few moments, he stood inside a storm of his own making. His arms hung low, his body shaking, yet his eyes blazed with pride.
Barachas' smile was rare, but it showed then. "You see now. Quantity bows when command is true. But command alone is not your end. Now—shape them."
Alatar nodded, forcing breath into his lungs. His focus tightened. At once, several of the circles collapsed, not into nothing, but into forms. One shrank, twisted, solidified, becoming the crude outline of a spear. Another stretched, hardening into a blade that gleamed dully though forged of ash. A third spread like mist across the ground before him, flattening into a surface upon which his boots could stand.
The effort was immense. To hold all twenty had strained him to the brink. To now maintain circles, weapons, and objects at once—his skull throbbed, his vision blurred. He staggered, nearly lost them all.
"Hold!" Barachas thundered, his voice a lash that tore through the weakness creeping in.
Alatar roared back, not in anger but in pure will. His knees bent, but he did not fall. He clenched his fists, his eyes snapping open, and the twenty forms steadied once more. The spear remained sharp, the blade true, the surface beneath his boots solid as stone. The rest swirled around him—some still circles, others beginning to warp into hammers, daggers, crude shapes of his imagination.
Minutes felt like hours. His body screamed to stop, to collapse, but his spirit denied it.
When at last he released them, the ash exploded outward in a vast cloud, raining back down across the sanctum floor. Alatar collapsed to one knee, drenched in sweat, chest heaving—but smiling.
Barachas approached, his heavy steps echoing. He did not offer a hand, nor did Alatar expect one. The primordial lord only looked down upon him, eyes glowing with the weight of countless ages.
"You learn, boy," he said with quiet pride. "You learn what others take centuries to touch. Do you feel it? The difference in yourself?"
Alatar lifted his gaze, exhausted yet unwavering. "Yes. The more I break the ash to my will, the more it bends. It no longer feels like resistance. It feels… like obedience."
Barachas nodded. "This is the first true step to dominion. Not that the ash moves, but that it yields without struggle. In time, your call will not rattle your bones. The ash will leap to serve. But you must go further still. Twenty is not an end. Nor a hundred. Nor a thousand. You must command until command itself feels beneath you—until will and action are one."
Alatar let the words sink into him, their weight both daunting and exhilarating. His hands, though trembling, clenched into fists. He could see it—the future where the ash bent at a mere thought, where shapes were endless, where his will was unopposed.
"Yes," he whispered, his voice low but steady. "I will not stop."
Barachas looked at him for a long moment, pride glimmering faintly in the abyss of his eyes. "Good. Then rise. Tomorrow, we begin anew. Not ten, not twenty—but beyond. And you will not falter."
Alatar rose, his body weak, his spirit alight. He had taken another step further into a path without return. The path of command. The path of dominion.
And though the toll had nearly broken him, he welcomed it—for the ash was his to master, and the chains of weakness had begun to shatter.