Chapter Fifteen – The Breach in the Veil
The second morning of the Refining did not bring the relief of a gentle sun. Instead, the gold and violet orbs rose with a harsh, blinding intensity that turned the Enclave into a kiln. The Trialmasters stood as silent as statues, their shadow-robes absorbing the light, creating dark holes in the shimmering landscape.
"The breath is your foundation," the mental voice of the Lead Trialmaster echoed, vibrating through Elaria's skull. "Now, you must learn to command the flow. The kingdom is wounded, and a ruler must be the poultice. If you cannot mend the small, you shall never sustain the great."
A row of silver-leafed trees was brought to the center of the meadow. Each one was blackened, their crystalline branches weeping a thick, dark sap that smelled like old copper.
"These saplings have been touched by the Void," the Trialmaster continued. "Use your essence. Use your intent. Bring back the light, or watch them crumble into ash."
Elaria looked at the dying tree before her. It felt cold, a deep, soul-sucking chill that reminded her of the winter nights in her stepmother's cellar. Around her, other candidates were trying different methods. Kaelen was pressing his hands against the bark, trying to force his own warmth into the wood. Serapha stood back, her eyes glowing as she tried to "see" the sickness and pull it out with her mind.
Elaria didn't touch the tree. She closed her eyes and felt the vibration of the sickness. It was a discordant note, a jagged scream in the middle of a lullaby. She opened her mouth and began to hum, a soft, low melody that she used to sing to herself when she was bruised from Lady Virelle's temper.
As her voice rose, the golden ripples from her lips didn't just drift; they sought out the cracks in the silver bark.
Miles away from the training meadow, in the jagged "Gray Marches" where the border between Aurelion and the mortal world grew thin, Lyssara pulled herself out of a pile of dead, ashen leaves.
Her throat was raw, and her heart was hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. She looked back, expecting to see the porcelain-masked creature, but she was alone. The "scout" had dumped her here like trash near a side-entrance to the kingdom a crack in the reality of the forest that wasn't supposed to exist.
"Elaria?" Lyssara croaked, her voice failing.
She looked up and gasped. The sky was wrong. The trees were wrong. Everything was too bright, too beautiful, and it made her feel filthy. She looked down at her mud-stained dress and the small kitchen knife still clutched in her hand.
"I shouldn't be here," she whispered, fear turning into a cold, sharp anger. "This isn't for me."
But as she looked around, she saw a narrow path made of white pebbles leading toward the Great Spire. She couldn't go back the "hole" she had fallen through was gone, replaced by solid, unmoving oak. If she stayed here, the strange, glowing animals she heard in the brush would surely kill her.
She had no magic. She had no song. But she had a lifetime of practice at being exactly what people needed her to be to survive.
"If this is a kingdom," Lyssara muttered, wiping the dirt from her face with a spit-moistened hem, "then it has servants. And servants hear everything."
She began to walk, not toward the candidates, but toward the back ways the kitchens, the stables, the places where the "vermin" of a palace lived. She just needed one person to believe a lie. One person to give her a cloak and a name.
Back at the Refining, Elaria's song reached a crescendo. The dark sap on the tree began to turn clear, then silver. The black rot receded, and a single, tiny bud sprouted from the tip of a crystal branch.
Elaria slumped forward, gasping. She wasn't exhausted, but the emotional weight of the tree's pain had been immense.
"Adequate," the Trialmaster's voice rang out.
Elaria looked up, hoping for a kind word, but the Trialmaster was already moving toward the next candidate. Only Lord Malrec, watching from the high balcony, gave her a small, secret nod.
But the moment of triumph was short-lived. A sharp, stinging sensation erupted in the back of Elaria's mind. It was a psychic "pull," a sense of wrongness she couldn't explain. She looked toward the distant palace walls, her eyes searching the shadows.
"What is it?" Nyra asked, noticing Elaria's sudden tension.
"I don't know," Elaria whispered. "But I feel like... like a ghost from my past just walked over my grave."
Beneath the palace, in the dim light of the servant tunnels, Lyssara had already found her first target: a young, wide-eyed page carrying a tray of fruit.
"Please, sir," Lyssara said, her voice instantly shifting into the tone of a frightened, innocent noblewoman who had lost her way. "I was attacked on the road. My guards are dead. Can you help me?"
The lie was perfect. The wicked game had begun.