Progress was not a straight line. It was a jagged, frustrating ascent up the mountain itself—two steps forward, one bone-jarring slide back.
The candle in the storeroom became my world. Kaelen's order was relentless: fifty times a day, every day. The first ten repetitions were a triumph of focused calm. The next twenty were a battle against a mind that wandered to the watching knights, the biting cold, and the immensity of what I was supposed to become. Repetitions thirty through forty would see failures—a small surge that scorched the barrel or a fizzle of nothing as my focus shattered. The final ten were performed in a state of numb, mechanical determination.
Kaelen did not watch every session. But he would appear, silent as a shadow, at random intervals. He'd observe five repetitions, his expression giving nothing away, and then leave with a single, laconic note. "Your breath hitches on the ignition. Control the breath, control the spark." Or, "You're anticipating failure on the later attempts. Each one is the first one."
His critiques were never about the power itself, only about my technique and my mindset. He was training a soldier, not a saint. It was precisely what I needed.
After a week of candles, he moved me back to the Foundry Yard. This time, it was empty save for him, Lyra, and Damien. The watching crowd was gone, but the pit's volatile ley energy remained.
"The candle is stillness," Kaelen said, standing well back. "The yard is a distraction. The ley energy will react to your emotional state. You will light the candle here. Now."
It was a different beast entirely. The whispering, silver currents of earth-power twined around my legs, a chaotic static that buzzed against my senses. My own holy power, now more responsive, prickled in response, wanting to engage, to dance, or to dominate.
I centered myself, ignoring the alien energy, and focused on the memory of gentle light. I held out my hand.
A spark sputtered and died. The ley lines at my feet flared silver, as if scoffing.
I took a deeper breath, pushing down irritation. Again. A small, wobbling flame of gold appeared above my palm. Before I could guide it, a tendril of ley energy snapped up from the ground like a whip, tangling with my flame. Both energies dissolved in a shower of harmless, conflicting sparks.
A grunt of frustration escaped me. The vent in the pit responded, belching a plume of heated, silver-tinted air.
"You are not alone in the room anymore," Kaelen's voice cut through. "You are in a conversation. Ignoring the other speaker is rude. And in a fight, it's fatal."
I stared at the chaotic vent. A conversation?
The next attempt, I didn't try to block out the ley energy. As I summoned my small flame, I also extended a sliver of my awareness downward, not to fight, but to… acknowledge. To feel the wild, ancient pulse of the mountain's power.
The ley energy stilled, just for a moment, as if surprised. My golden flame stabilized, burning cleanly. Carefully, I let the flame drift toward the candle. A ribbon of silver energy rose alongside it, not interfering, but weaving a parallel path, a curious escort. The candle wick ignited. The silver ribbon touched the flame and dissolved, its energy seemingly spent or satisfied.
Silence.
Lyra let out a low whistle. Damien raised an eyebrow. Kaelen simply nodded, once. "Again."
The days blurred into a cycle of exhausting, incremental improvement. My world shrank to the rhythm of training: mornings in the storeroom for foundational control, afternoons in the yard for learning to maintain that control amidst distraction and interference. Evenings were spent in near-total depletion, often falling asleep over a spare meal in the garrison hall, too worn to notice the lingering stares of the knights.
Their attitude began to shift, minutely. They no longer called me "The Sunder" where I could hear it. The dismissive mutters faded. They saw the grueling work, the sheer dogged repetition. They respected effort, even if the source was still strange. I was no longer a sudden, dangerous spectacle but a raw recruit undergoing the harshest basic training imaginable.
One evening, as I pushed a tasteless stew around my bowl, a hulking knight with a braided beard set his tankard down heavily across from me. Rurik, the master-of-arms. He had watched every yard session with a critic's eye.
"Your footwork's a mess," he grunted, not looking at me. "When the ley surge came from the left vent, you leaned right. Put your weight into it. Ground yourself. Power flows from the roots up, girl. Even pretty golden power."
It was the first unsolicited advice, delivered like an insult. It was also perfectly correct. The next day in the yard, I adjusted my stance, planting my feet as Rurik advised. When the next ley surge came, I rode the energy instead of fighting it, and my candle-lighting was swifter and cleaner.
I caught Rurik's eye from across the yard. He gave a single, curt nod.
It wasn't acceptance. It was an acknowledgment of a lesson learned. In Frosthold, that was currency.
My control was growing, but my power was not. If anything, the more I learned to channel it with precision, the more I became aware of its vast, dormant depth. The small flames and sparks were like drawing a single cup from an ocean. The pendant helped stabilize the flow, but it also made me more sensitive to the ocean's tides. I began to have strange, vivid dreams—not of the past, but of light moving in vast, intricate patterns across a darkened land, of a song made of pure resonance.
I woke from one such dream gasping, the pattern etched behind my eyes. On a whim, during my storeroom session, I didn't just summon a flame. I tried to shape the light, to form the first curve of the pattern from my dream.
An intricate, curling line of solid golden light, like a strand of luminous wire, hung in the air for a breathtaking second before collapsing.
I hadn't just released power; I had sculpted it.
When Kaelen did his random check-in that day, I showed him. Not the pattern—that felt too private—but the ability to form a simple, stable shape: a small, glowing circle.
He watched the circle of light hover, his face impassive. When it faded, he was silent for a long moment. "The Church's holy magic is blunt. Barriers, waves of force, healing touches. The effect is… precise." He looked at me, and for the first time, I saw a flicker of something that might have been concern. "This isn't just control, Rosalind. This is artistry. It suggests a potential they don't have. A potential they will fear and will either seek to own or to destroy."
The weight of his words settled over the small, cold room. My progress was no longer just about personal safety or battlefield utility. I was evolving into something unprecedented.
"What do I do?" I asked, my voice small.
"You get stronger," he said, his tone returning to its usual granite practicality. "Strong enough that when they come to decide if you're a tool or a threat, the cost of making you either one is too high for them to bear. Now. Make a square."
The training continued, the grind unrelenting. But the goal had subtly shifted. It was no longer just about lighting candles or withstanding ley lines.
It was about becoming undeniable.