Alatar shut the heavy door of his chamber behind him. The iron hinges groaned, sealing him inside the vastness of the sanctum's living quarters. He stood still for a moment, the echo of the trial still ringing through his body. His ribs ached where Barachas's spears had struck, though his blood had already mended the damage. Frost still clung to his fingertips, mingled with the faint soot of ash.
He flexed his hands, staring at them as though they belonged to someone else. "Barely survived," Barachas had said. And he had been right. Alatar had been one heartbeat from failure—yet within that crucible, something new had stirred.
The ice.
The ash.
And him, standing between them.
Alatar crossed the chamber, its high arched ceiling looming above like the belly of a cathedral. Tapestries lined the walls, woven with scenes of forgotten gods and wars long buried. A bed of carved stone sat against one wall, its surface softened by layered furs. Yet he ignored comfort. His mind did not crave rest.
He sat cross-legged upon the floor instead, the chill of the stone pressing against him. He closed his eyes.
Instinct is fragile, Barachas's voice whispered from memory. Mastery endures.
Alatar drew in a long breath, calling the ash. It came readily, answering his will like old companions. Black motes stirred in the air around him, drawn from the unseen reserves that seemed always to linger within his body. They gathered, circling in slow spirals, forming into spheres and rings as he had been taught.
This part felt almost natural now. He could shape them with a thought, their presence no longer as heavy as it had once been.
Then he reached for the frost.
The shift was immediate. His chest tightened, his breath grew cold, and the air itself seemed to fight against him. Frost crackled along the stone floor, spreading outward in fragile veins. His skin prickled with cold, and his lungs burned as though swallowing ice.
He clenched his teeth. "Yield," he hissed.
The frost did not resist—not quite—but it did not bend as easily as the ash. It was a harsher force, unyielding, rigid. Unlike ash's malleable haze, ice carried a sharpness that cut even its wielder. Alatar felt the strain of it gnawing at his mind, as though two voices whispered at once: one of smoke and shadow, the other of biting chill.
His first attempt was clumsy. The ash circled to his right, the frost to his left, both keeping distance as though repelling one another. When he tried to merge them, the spheres collapsed, dissipating into air with a violent crack of steam.
Alatar opened his eyes, panting. His body was slick with sweat despite the freezing air.
"Separate, they are children," he murmured to himself. "Together, they are beasts fighting in a cage."
Yet he had seen them yield, if only for a heartbeat in the trial. He could not let that slip vanish.
He steadied himself and tried again.
Hours slipped by.
Again and again, he called them forth. Ash spirals. Frost veils. Each attempt ended in collapse—shattered frost, scattered ash, choking plumes of vapor that stung his eyes. His muscles trembled with exertion, his mind screamed at him to stop. Yet each failure carried a whisper of insight: the ash needed to flow, the frost needed to anchor. One was storm, the other was stone. They could not be forced into union by brute will—they needed balance.
At last, in the dim glow of the chamber torches, he found it.
He conjured a sphere of ash before him, swirling like a miniature storm. Then he drew frost, not to cover it, but to weave through its spirals, like threads of silver through black cloth. Slowly, carefully, he guided them. The ash yielded just enough, flowing around the frost without resistance. The frost hardened just enough, holding form without breaking the spiral.
A shape began to emerge. Not shield, not blade—but something smaller, simpler. A single orb, half soot, half ice, spinning in delicate harmony before his eyes.
Alatar's heart hammered. His breath caught in his throat. He dared not blink, dared not move.
The orb hovered, trembling but whole.
For the first time, ash and frost did not reject one another. They wove. They lived as one.
Alatar laughed—quiet, breathless, a sound of triumph so foreign it startled him. His hands shook as he extended his fingers toward the orb, feeling its strange weight, its duality. Cold burned his fingertips, while soot brushed against his skin. Together, they felt… right.
He released it at last, letting the orb dissolve into the air.
Collapsing back onto his furs, he lay staring up at the vaulted ceiling. His chest rose and fell, exhaustion pressing down like lead. Yet within him, pride burned. This was no instinct. This was mastery, however small.
He dreamed of weaving ash and ice into endless shapes—walls, blades, storms. He dreamed of standing against Barachas, not barely surviving, but commanding.
---
The days that followed became a rhythm.
Morning: trial under Barachas's spears, his body bloodied and broken, his control tested under fire.
Night: quiet practice alone, weaving ash and frost into small forms—spheres, disks, daggers, even crude figures of beasts and men.
He failed more often than he succeeded. The ash sometimes smothered the frost, leaving only soot. The frost sometimes froze the ash solid, shattering it into shards. Each time, Alatar cursed, steadied himself, and began anew.
But each night the shapes lasted longer. Each night the weaving grew smoother. His mind no longer screamed with the strain of holding both; instead, it began to sing with the rhythm of their unity.
The strain was still immense. Blood sometimes dripped from his nose, and his body shook with fatigue. But his determination did not waver. With every failure, the seed of mastery took root deeper.
One evening, weeks after that first fragile orb, Alatar stood before his bed with ten woven orbs circling him, each half ash, half frost. They moved in unison, a dance of smoke and ice, circling his body like a constellation.
He raised his hand. The orbs shifted, reshaping into blades, each one blackened and gleaming with frost-edged sharpness. They hovered before him, awaiting command.
Alatar smiled, faint but fierce.
"This," he whispered, "is no instinct. This is mine."
---
The next morning, when Barachas entered the training chamber, he found Alatar already waiting. The young man stood tall, ash and frost swirling faintly around him, not in chaos but in measured control.
Barachas raised a brow. "You look… different."
Alatar's eyes gleamed. "Because I am."
The old warrior studied him in silence, then let a slow grin cut across his face. "Good. Then let us see what you have truly become."
The floor split open again, spears of stone rising like teeth.
Alatar braced himself, ash and ice gathering at his command. But this time, he did not feel two clashing forces tearing at him. He felt threads of the same fabric, weaving under his will.
For the first time, he was ready.