Aria's POV
The five elements hit me at once, and I'm certain I'm about to die.
Fire slams into my right side like a burning fist. Water crashes against my left with the force of a tidal wave. Earth rumbles beneath my feet, trying to swallow me whole. Air whips around me in a tornado that steals my breath. And Spirit—the rarest element—presses against my mind like ice picks stabbing into my skull.
I should be torn apart. Scattered across the amphitheater in pieces.
But I'm not.
Instead, something impossible happens.
The elements don't push me away. They're being pulled into me.
I feel fire spiraling around my right arm, hot but not burning. Water coils around my left like a living snake. Earth explodes beneath my feet, lifting me off the ground. Air catches me, holding me suspended. And Spirit—oh gods, Spirit—floods into my chest and makes my left eye burn with silver light.
"Stop!" Vice-Chancellor Morwen shouts at the Master Elementals. "Stop the ritual!"
But they can't. I can see the panic on their faces as they try to cut off their power, but it keeps flowing toward me like I'm a drain and they're water circling it. The amphitheater fills with light—red, blue, brown, white, silver—all swirling around my body in a storm that grows stronger with every heartbeat.
Students scream. Some try to run, but magical barriers lock the exits. They're trapped, forced to watch whatever I'm becoming.
My body lifts higher into the air. I'm not controlling this—it's controlling me. Power floods through my veins like liquid lightning, filling spaces I didn't know were empty. For nineteen years, I've been a locked box. Now someone's smashing the lock with a hammer, and everything inside is pouring out at once.
"Pentaelemental," someone whispers, and the word spreads through the crowd like wildfire.
Pentaelemental. The thing from stories. The monster from history books.
The creature that killed fifty thousand people five hundred years ago.
No, I think desperately. No, I'm not that. I'm just Aria. I'm nobody.
But the power doesn't care what I think. It keeps building, keeps growing, until I feel like my skin can't contain it anymore. I'm going to explode. I'm going to take everyone with me.
Through the chaos, I search the crowd for my mother. Maybe she'll know what to do. Maybe she'll save me.
Marina Thornheart sits frozen in her seat, staring at me with an expression I can't read. Our eyes meet for one brief moment—my mismatched eyes, one green like hers, one silver like a freak—and I silently beg her for help.
She looks away.
Just turns her head and looks away, like I'm already dead.
The betrayal hits harder than the five elements combined. My own mother. The woman who carried me for nine months, who raised me, who kissed my scraped knees when I was little—she's abandoning me just like everyone else.
My father sits beside her, slowly shaking his head in disappointment. Not surprise. Not horror. Just disappointment, like this is exactly what he expected from his defective daughter.
I'm drowning in power and dying of loneliness at the same time.
Then I find him.
Kael Nightshade hasn't moved from his seat in the upper section. While everyone else screams and panics, he's perfectly still, watching me with those unnerving violet eyes. He's not afraid. He's not running. He's just... watching.
Like he's been waiting for this.
The thought should terrify me, but instead, it's the only solid thing I can grab onto. Someone sees me. Someone isn't looking away.
"Contain her!" Vice-Chancellor Morwen commands, and suddenly guards in silver armor rush toward me with weapons drawn. Not practice weapons. Real ones.
They're going to kill me.
"I can't control it!" I scream, but my voice is drowned out by the roar of elemental magic. "Please, I don't know how to stop!"
One guard launches a spear made of ice directly at my chest.
The water element around my left arm reacts on instinct, catching the spear mid-air and shattering it into mist. I didn't even think about it. My power just... defended me.
"She's attacking!" someone shouts.
"Kill her before she kills us!"
More weapons fly. My elements block them all—fire melting ice, earth stopping arrows, air deflecting blades. I'm not doing any of it consciously. It's like my body knows how to fight even though I never learned.
The amphitheater cracks beneath us. Students in the lower sections scramble away as fissures spread across the floor. Magical barriers protecting the crowd start to flicker and fail.
I'm destroying everything, just like the prophecies said I would.
"Stop!" I beg, talking to my own power. "Please stop!"
But it won't listen. The five elements spiral faster, brighter, stronger. My vision blurs with tears and silver light. This is it. This is how I die—not from their ritual, but from my own power tearing me apart from the inside.
Then I hear a voice, calm and cold as winter ice, cutting through the chaos.
"Enough."
Kael Nightshade appears in front of me in a blast of shadow magic, moving so fast he's just a blur. He shouldn't be able to teleport—that's advanced Spirit magic that takes decades to master—but there he is, standing between me and the guards with his hand raised.
"She's under my authority now," he announces in a voice that makes even Vice-Chancellor Morwen hesitate. "By right of the Nightshade Crown's covenant with this academy, I claim jurisdiction over all Spirit-related anomalies."
"This isn't an anomaly!" Morwen protests. "This is a Pentaelemental! She's too dangerous to—"
"She manifested Spirit element," Kael interrupts, his violet eyes blazing with power. "That makes her mine to handle. Or do you wish to challenge the crown's ancient rights?"
Silence falls. Even the Vice-Chancellor doesn't dare challenge that authority.
Kael turns to face me, and I see something flash across his face—recognition, fear, and something else I can't name. He's close enough now that I can see my reflection in his eyes: a girl floating in a storm of magic, glowing with five different colors, looking more like a weapon than a person.
"Come with me," he says quietly, extending his hand. "Or die here. Your choice."
The elements around me pulse wildly, reacting to his presence. I should refuse. He's clearly planning something terrible. But the alternative is being torn apart by guards or my own power.
I reach for his hand.
The moment our skin touches, something snaps into place between us—a connection that burns brighter than all five elements combined. I gasp as I suddenly feel his emotions flooding through me: shock, terror, fascination, and a hunger so intense it makes me dizzy.
His eyes widen. He feels it too.
"What—" I start to ask.
But Kael doesn't answer. Instead, shadows explode around us, and the amphitheater disappears.