The road to Aurenvale cut through the land like a scar.
Red earth. Grey stone. The occasional twisted tree, its branches permanently bowed from old storms.
Three riders and a boy walked that road beneath a sky still tasting of last night's rain.
Eryndor had been offered a horse.
He refused.
He preferred to feel the ground. To hear the shift of gravel, the hollow echo of hooves against stone, the faint tremor of the world beneath his boots. His steps matched his heartbeat. His heartbeat matched the quiet hum behind his ribs.
Resonance.
Still there. Still awake.
The blade at his hip whispered softly with each stride, its blue edge sheathed in worn leather Hadrik had cobbled together in a hurry.
He hadn't looked back at Rynvale when they left. There was nothing there he needed to see again.
The forge sound lived in him now. That was enough.
The assessor rode ahead, back straight, cloak trailing damp behind him. The two knights flanked Eryndor—one the man he'd shocked into the dirt the day before, armor still carrying faint scorch marks.
The knight hadn't spoken to him since.
The other, riding on his left, finally broke the silence.
"You don't look sorry," the man said.
Eryndor glanced up at him. The knight was older than he'd first thought—lines at the corners of his eyes, a scar along his jaw, his gaze sharp but not cruel.
"For what?" Eryndor asked.
"Striking a knight of Aurenvale. Flaring Resonance in a town square." The man snorted. "Most boys would be shaking."
"I was testing something," Eryndor said.
The knight blinked. "Testing—?"
"How quickly my resonance responds under pressure. How it interacts with foreign cores. How your armor carried the charge." Eryndor shrugged. "It was useful."
The scorched knight on his right made a choking noise. "Useful, he says."
The older knight chuckled under his breath. "Name's Ser Calen," he said. "That idiot is Ser Marren."
Marren scowled. "He's dangerous."
"So is the road," Calen said mildly. "Doesn't mean we throw it in chains."
Eryndor filed the names away.
"Marren's right, though," Calen went on. "Whatever happened in that storm didn't follow the usual rites. You didn't train your core. It just… opened."
"Lightning opened it," Eryndor said.
"You called it."
He thought about that. The sensation of raising the iron like a question. The storm answering.
"No," Eryndor said quietly. "I just listened."
They made camp that night beneath a broken stone arch—a remnant of some old road or forgotten shrine. The assessor sat near the fire, hands folded, eyes distant as he watched the flames.
Eryndor sat apart, sword laid across his knees. He ran his fingertips along the sheath, feeling the faint static that buzzed beneath the leather.
The storm-forged blade had not cooled. If anything, its hum had grown steadier. More… synchronized.
He drew it a thumb's width. Blue light pulsed along the metal, then dimmed. The air tasted of metal and rain.
"Again?" a voice asked.
Calen lowered himself to sit across from him.
"I thought knights slept early," Eryndor said.
"Knights sleep when they're not traveling with lightning rods," Calen replied. "Marren is halfway convinced you're a cursed artifact."
"Is that what they call unusual things in Aurenvale?"
"Only when they glow."
He nodded at the blade. "How much control do you have over it?"
Eryndor considered the question. "Some. Not enough."
He set the flat of the blade lightly against his palm. Focused.
The hum in his chest answered, sending a thin thread of Resonance flowing down his arm. Lightning flickered over the metal—no explosion this time, no wild outburst. Just a faint blue skin, crackling and vanishing.
The effort left his heart pounding slightly harder.
"Too much loss," he muttered. "Most of it bleeds into the air. I can't keep it on the steel."
Calen stared. "You woke three nights ago."
"Two."
"And you're already trying to route element flow along a fixed medium?"
"Yes."
Calen barked out a short laugh. "You're mad."
Eryndor sheathed the blade. "No. Just curious."
The assessor approached, boots silent despite the gravel. Eryndor noticed that—heavy man, light steps. Controlled resonance even in movement.
"Inappropriate demonstrations aside," the assessor said, "your instincts are… troubling."
"Troubling," Eryndor repeated.
"You treat lightning like a puzzle," the man said. "Most newly awakened Resonants spend their first weeks terrified of their own cores. You prod yours like a craftsman prodding a new furnace."
"Should I be terrified?"
"It would be safer," Vareon said.