The morning after the battle was a grey, damp affair, the mist clinging to the stilt-huts like a shroud. Arrion sat on the edge of the central platform, his bare torso exposed to the cool air as Kestrel applied a poultice of local moss and rendered bog-fat to the angry, lightning-bolt scar. The villagers moved around them in hushed reverence and palpable relief, offering bowls of thin broth and glances filled with awe. The Watcher had not returned.
Briar stood nearby, lipping at sparse reeds, his dark coat beaded with moisture. The Thorn pulsed softly, its warmth a gentle counterpoint to the deep, aching cold that seemed to have settled into the new scar tissue.
It was into this quiet scene that the old man walked.
He didn't emerge from the mist so much as the mist seemed to part for him. He was ancient, his back as bent as a wind-gnarled willow, his skin the color and texture of old tea-stained parchment. He leaned on a staff of smooth, dark wood that seemed to have been worn by countless hands. His clothes were simple, travel-stained robes of undyed hemp, and on his feet were sandals woven from river-reeds. He moved with a slow, deliberate grace that spoke of immense distances walked, not of frailty.
His eyes, however, belied his apparent age. They were a clear, sharp grey, like chips of flint, and they missed nothing. They swept over the village, over Kestrel's wary posture, over Briar's watchful stillness, and finally settled on Arrion and the livid, lightning-forged scar on his chest.
The old man stopped a few paces away. He didn't speak at first. He just looked at the scar, his expression unreadable. Then he sighed, a sound like dry leaves skittering over stone. And then he laughed—a short, sharp bark that held no humor, only a profound, weary irony.
"So," the old man said, his voice a dry rasp that nonetheless carried easily. "The untempered storm makes its mark. On the hills, and now on himself. A fitting testament."
Arrion stood, a move that made him tower over the newcomer, but the old man didn't flinch. He simply tilted his head, his flinty eyes taking in Arrion's full height, the Ascended strength in his frame, the lingering pain in his grey-blue eyes.
"Who are you?" Arrion asked, his hand drifting instinctively toward Nightshade's hilt.
The old man ignored the question. He took a step forward, surprisingly swift, and before Arrion or Kestrel could react, he tapped the end of his staff against the center of the lightning-bolt scar.
It was not a hard tap. But it sent a jolt through Arrion that was not pain, but a sudden, shocking resonance. The scar flared with a flash of blue-white light, and for an instant, Arrion felt the chaotic, trapped energy within it writhe like a caged beast. He gasped, staggering back a step.
The old man watched him, unimpressed. "All your years in the wild," he mused, shaking his head. "Hunting beasts. Running from men. Bonding with a forest king. Even touching the face of the void itself. Has it taught you nothing of the most fundamental law?" He leaned on his staff, his gaze piercing. "Power is not a club to swing, boy. It is not a wall to slam against your enemies. It is not a fire to be unleashed."
He took another step, his voice dropping, becoming as intimate and inevitable as groundwater. "I am a messenger. Sent from a… concerned party. One who watches the composition of things and dislikes a screeching, discordant note. My mandate is simple." He pointed the staff, not at Arrion's heart, but at the scar. "To teach you to temper that. To channel the storm, not be its conduit. To make you a vessel, not a volcano."
He paused, letting the weight of the words settle in the damp air. "Or, if you prove too brittle, too proud, too foolish to learn… to break you before you break the world around you. Destruction is also a form of tempering. Scattered ore cannot cause an avalanche."
Arrion stared, the truth of the backfire, the agony of the scar, the cosmic warnings from his dream all crashing together. This was the teacher. Or the executioner. Sent by the "concerned party"—the Azure Emperor? The Aetherium? One of the other watchers?
Kestrel had her dagger drawn, positioned between the old man and Arrion. "You'll do neither," she hissed.
The old man flicked a glance at her, and a faint smile touched his cracked lips. "The little warden. The king's choice has sharp eyes. She may stay. She may learn too. It often helps the predator to understand the stream it drinks from."
He turned his full attention back to Arrion. "You tried to release your power. You tried to push it out of yourself like a shout. You are not a shout. You are a riverbed." He gestured with his staff to the surrounding mire, the slow, meandering channels of dark water. "Look. The water here is lifeless, stagnant. It has no flow. It takes, it does not give. But even here, the principle holds."
He knelt, surprisingly spry, and with a finger, drew a quick pattern in the wet mud of the platform: a series of winding lines with obstructions—rocks, bends, narrows. "Power," he said, tracing a line from a high point, "is the water from the mountain. Pure potential. Your will," he tapped a 'rock', "is the obstacle. Your body," he traced the 'channel', "is the path. If you simply let the water crash against the rock, it sprays wildly, erodes everything, and goes nowhere." He mimed an explosion with his hands. "Like last night."
"But if you understand the rock, if you shape the channel…" His finger moved the water-line around the rock, guiding it, letting it gain speed in the narrows, pool in the bends. "…the water moves with purpose. It carves the rock over time. It joins other streams. It becomes a river. It reaches the sea. The power is not released; it is channeled. It is given direction, purpose, efficiency. The scar on your chest is where you tried to be a geyser. You must learn to be a watershed."
He stood, brushing the mud from his finger. "That is the first lesson. The only one that matters until you grasp it. Your vindicator's aura is not a blast. It is a current. You must feel its flow within you before you ask it to flow through you."
Arrion looked from the simple mud-diagram to the complex, painful scar on his chest. The lesson was so obvious it was humiliating. He had spent his life learning the flow of an animal's movement, the path of an arrow, the leverage of a sword. But he had never thought to apply that same principle to the new, terrifying energy inside him.
"Who sent you?" Arrion asked again, his voice quieter.
The old man's smile returned, enigmatic. "A dragon who prefers rivers to mountains. An emperor who prefers stability to spectacle. Call me Lo. It is a name that means 'current' in a tongue forgotten by men. I am your teacher, or your dismantler. The choice, as always, will be shown by your actions."
He looked around the poor village, at the watching, fearful faces. "We will stay here for three days. Your body needs to integrate the… lesson of the scar. And you have three days to learn to move a drop of water from your fingertip to the pool without touching it. When you can do that without burning yourself, we will move toward the Marches. Your quest and your education will now walk the same path."
He turned and began to walk toward an empty hut the headman quickly gestured to, as if compelled. Over his shoulder, he said, "And do not try to blast the water, giant. Guide it. Or the next scar will be your last."
Lo the messenger disappeared into the hut, leaving Arrion and Kestrel standing in the mist, the mud-diagram of streams and rocks already beginning to blur in the soft rain, a silent, fundamental map to a power he possessed but did not understand. The teacher had arrived, armed not with spells, but with principles, and the first exam had already been failed, etched in lightning on Arrion's skin. The path to the Marches had just become a path to mastery, and the cost of failure was no longer just his own death, but the unraveling of the very power he sought to wield.