Square: The fortress, the unmoving wall. Tanks who everyone can rely on in times of peril.
Triangle: The spear, the vanguard. Damage dealers who carved their way with devastating power.
Circle: The vessel, the conduit. All-rounders who fill gaps and adapt as supporting figures.
Everyone wanted to visualise a triangle. A square would also be respectable. These were the shapes of heroes, the adventurers splashed across broadsheet headlines, the elites who ventured deepest into the White and returned with glory and tales of beasts slain.
But not the shape which appeared before Ardyn.
It hung in the void in a simple, perfect line of pale light. The circle pulsed gently in a bland, stale rhythm.
No, Ardyn thought, the word a silent scream in the static void. Not this. Anything but this.
He willed it to change. He imagined sharper corners, aggressive angles, the piercing point of a triangle... a square maybe?
The circle remained. Impassive. Unchanging.
It was just a shape, in a dream. But he knew exactly what it meant.
Ardyn woke with a gasp. The lingering image of the circle was seared onto the back of his eyelids. The hollow feeling had solidified into a cold, heavy stone in his gut.
This child appears to have great potential.
The words of the fortune teller their family visited a long time ago echoed in his head.
That scammer! Ardyn cursed to himself.
Downstairs, the clatter of breakfast was a familiar symphony. His mother's hum, his father's low chatter, his younger sister Lyra's energetic babbling about her classes. The air smelled nice - it smelled of a life balanced precariously on the edge of "just getting by".
For generations, the Pyre family had been "Low-Clarity Ascendants". His great grandfather had stabilized as a square spirit. A sturdy prospect many might believe, until they find out he was a ground sloth too slow to fend himself off, let alone defending others. He'd worked as a construction loader in the city's perimeter defenses.
The dream of a high-clarity Awakener, a talent who could join a prestigious guild, breach the deeper tundra, and pull the whole family into a better district... that was the family's silent prayer through the generations.
Ardyn walked into the kitchen, the image in his mind dragging at his steps.
His mother turned from the heater. Her eyes wide with anticipation as soon as she saw his expression. "Ardyn, did you...?"
His father lowered his broadsheet, the news feed about a rising star nicknamed "Direfrost" completing his training and preparing to step foot into the White.
Lyra stared, her spoon of porridge hovering mid-air.
"I saw it," he said, forcing his voice into a channel of confidence he didn't feel. "Last night. Clear as ice."
"And?" his parents rasped.
Ardyn took a breath, picturing not the bland circle, but the sharp, aggressive glyph from the Direfrost article. The lie formed on his tongue, born of that heavy stone of disappointment and the crushing weight of their hope. It was bitter.
No, he will coat it in the sugar of their dreams. No, his spirit will turn into that of a triangle soon.
"I see... some angles" he said slowly. "It looked like... a triangle."
The kitchen fell into a heartbeat of silence.
Then it erupted.
His mother burst into tears, pulling him into a hug that smelled of flour. His father let out a gust of a laugh, clapping him on the back so hard Ardyn stumbled into the table. "A triangle! By the Frozen Heart, a true triangle in this family!"
The lie warmed them like a furnace. Their joy was palpable, a tangible force that filled the cramped room. Fame, honor, security. It has never been so close to this family.
Ardyn saw the relentless, blue circle still hovering behind his eyes.
I swear I will change your shape, he thought to himself. I swear.
Weeks passed. Then, a crisp parchment envelope, sealed with blue wax stamped with a compass-star emblem, arrived at the Pyre doorstep. An official seal from the Polaris Integrated Academy shimmered under the light from the window. A scouting offer.
Citizen Ardyn Pyre, it read in elegant script. Your primary oneiric signature exhibits notable potential. You are hereby invited for preliminary assessment and enrollment...
The family treated the letter like a holy text. Ardyn packed his single bag under their proud, tearful gazes, a simple knife and a spare set of clothes his only possessions.
The steam-belching train chugged towards the Academy district, speeding past the endless, grey-stone urban sprawl that clung to the warmer fringes of the Tundra. Ardyn watched his reflection in the soot-smudged window. Behind his own eyes, superimposed on the passing frost-laced towers and cobbled streets, the circle still glowed.
He had gotten what he wanted. The chance. The ticket out.
But the Tundra didn't care about lies. It cared about consistency. It cared about delivery. It cared about what one has to offer.
The academy would be full of real potential. Their dreams would align with their prowess. The sons and daughters of legacy families, their bloodlines as ascendents of apex predators and titans. That was his competition.
He looked down at his hands, then his legs. In the secret dark of his room these past weeks, he'd strained until his head throbbed, trying to force something. The most he could manage was... a brief, shaky transformation of his feet shifting into sharp, grey talons for a few heartbeats before the strain overpowered him.
He, Ardyn Pyre, was a liar. His first true shape was that of a bird. Prey, in a world of predators.
The train's whistle shrieked as the great ice-etched spires of Polaris Academy loomed into view. It was less a school and more a fortress, its stone walls fused with glacial strata, built to hone human potential into weapons capable of to venturing into the frozen unknown.
Ardyn stepped onto the crowded platform, the cold air biting his cheeks. The weight of his family's hopes piled on his back wasn't helping much either.
He squared his shoulders, ignoring the phantom circle in his mind's eye.
There's still time. He muttered to the freezing air. I will change my fate. Just watch me.