By sunrise, Silas had already ruined the shape of the iron twice.
The billet lay across the anvil in a dull red bar, no longer hot enough to spark beneath the hammer but still bright along its thinner edge.
Silas turned it with a pair of tongs.
Too narrow on the left.
He had compensated for a bad strike with three better ones, which had only moved the problem farther down the metal.
There had been a time when he could fit a spring into a housing no wider than his thumbnail.
Now his arms were five years old.
It remained offensive.
He raised the hammer again.
"You're chasing it."
Silas stopped.
Garrick Hale stood in the doorway between the forge and the kitchen, a chipped mug in one hand. His hair looked as though he'd slept against a wall.
Silas glanced at the billet.
"Chasing what?"
"The mistake."
Garrick took a drink.
Silas waited.
His father sighed, apparently disappointed that the lesson had not completed itself.
"You hit too far in. Then you hit the other side to fix it. Now you're fixing the fix."
Silas looked again.
Annoyingly, Garrick was right.
"What should I have done?"
"Stopped after the first bad strike."
"And left it crooked?"
"Seen why it went crooked."
Garrick set the mug down and crossed the forge.
He rarely taught.
He corrected, sometimes. Grunted often. On exceptional days he might demonstrate something once and then behave as if repeating himself would violate a religious principle.
This morning, he took the hammer from Silas.
"Watch."
The billet had cooled below a proper working heat.
Garrick did not strike it.
Instead he held the hammer over the iron, letting its face hover where Silas's last blow had landed.
"Your wrist turned."
Silas frowned.
"Not much."
"Didn't need much."
Garrick moved the hammer through the arc slowly.
Silas saw it then. A slight rotation just before impact.
His smaller body had been compensating for the weight.
"Again," Silas said.
Garrick did.
Silas adjusted his stance.
"That's why the left side spread."
"That's why you started chasing it."
Garrick returned the hammer.
"Heat it."
Silas worked the bellows.
The coals brightened from orange to white at their centers. Heat rolled against his face, carrying the bitter smell of coke and scale.
He slid the billet back into the bed of coals.
Garrick leaned against the bench.
"You know what good iron looks like?"
"Clean grain. Low slag. Even carbon if you're making steel."
Garrick stared at him.
Silas realized, belatedly, that this might have been more answer than a village five-year-old was expected to give.
He added, "I listen."
"To who?"
"You."
"That was your first mistake."
Silas hid a smile.
Garrick looked toward the glowing billet.
"Good stock makes a smith's work easier. Doesn't make him good."
Silas pumped the bellows again.
"What does?"
"Getting something useful out of bad stock."
There was no grandeur in the way he said it. No speech. No proverb delivered for the ages.
Just a blacksmith talking about metal.
Still, Silas remembered it.
The billet brightened.
He drew it out, set it on the anvil, and raised the hammer.
This time he watched his wrist.
The blow fell square.
Garrick gave the smallest nod.
Outside, a bell rang twice.
Silas lowered the hammer.
His father looked toward the door.
Neither of them needed to ask.
Awakening morning.
Garrick picked up his mug again.
"Go wash."
Silas set the hammer down.
"You're not coming?"
"No."
Silas had expected the answer.
He still found himself watching his father's face.
"Old Jack said most parents go."
"Old Jack says a lot of things."
"That's true."
Garrick drank.
Silas waited another moment.
His father looked at the iron instead of him.
"Don't keep the Concord man waiting."
That, apparently, was goodbye.
Old Jack Miller inspected Silas from boots to hair before allowing him onto the road.
"You washed."
Silas looked down at himself.
"Yes."
"And wore shoes."
"Also yes."
"Good. I had concerns."
"You always have concerns."
"That's why this village still has roofs."
They walked toward the center of Briar Glen.
The rain from two nights earlier had left the road soft at the edges. Wagon wheels had cut twin grooves through the mud, and the morning smelled of wet leaves, chimney smoke, and the first cold hint of autumn.
Families were already converging on the Awakening Hall.
The building had been constructed by the Concord rather than the village, and it showed. Its walls were squared timber over a stone foundation, its windows glazed instead of shuttered, and a narrow metal emblem sat above the entrance: nine points arranged around an empty center.
Silas had passed the locked building hundreds of times.
Today the doors stood open.
A woman hurried across the road ahead of them, dragging a girl by the hand.
Jack groaned.
"Nell Baker."
The woman heard him.
"She's five."
"You said she wasn't yesterday."
"She was confused."
"About her birthday?"
"Children get confused."
Nell looked up at her mother.
"I told you I—"
"Hush."
Jack muttered something Silas suspected he was not supposed to hear.
"Seven, then," he said. "Concord clerk's going to love that."
Inside, the hall was larger than Silas had expected, though nearly empty.
A row of benches lined one wall. The Concord emblem had been burned into the floorboards near the far end. A folding table stood beneath the front windows, supporting a leather case, several bound forms, an ink bottle, and a clear crystal sphere mounted in a brass cradle.
Six dark stones had been placed on the floor.
Not arranged yet.
Silas studied them.
Each was roughly the size of his fist, black enough to swallow most of the morning light. Thin metal lines had been fitted into channels cut through their surfaces.
Conductors, perhaps.
Or anchors.
He wanted to pick one up.
He did not.
The man from the wagon stood behind the table.
He looked younger in daylight than Silas had expected, perhaps in his late twenties. His travel coat was dark blue, cut close enough not to interfere with movement, with a silver Concord clasp at the throat. A narrow badge on his left breast bore the shape of a wolf's head above two small bars.
His boots still carried dried mud from the road to Greyhaven.
Old Jack removed his hat.
"Officer Ward."
The man glanced up from the registration sheet.
"Mr. Miller."
"Got one more than expected."
"I noticed."
Mrs. Baker opened her mouth.
Ward held up a hand.
"If she's five, I'll Awaken her. If she's four, the stones won't care what either of you wrote down."
Mrs. Baker closed her mouth.
Silas decided he liked him.
Ward looked over the children.
His gaze paused briefly on Silas.
The same look from the night before—or perhaps Silas was imagining significance because Garrick had reacted to it.
"Parents outside once we begin," Ward said. "Village officer can stay until I've checked the register."
Jack nodded.
The parents did not look pleased.
Ward appeared entirely unconcerned.
He checked names, dates of birth, household registrations, and finally pressed a small Concord stamp into the bottom of the page.
Power, Silas thought, did not always arrive carrying a sword.
Sometimes it arrived with ink.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
"All right." Ward closed the ledger. "Parents out."
There were protests, mostly quiet ones.
Nell Baker's mother kissed her forehead three times.
A boy named Thomas Greer looked ready to bolt after his father.
Silas stood near the end of the line and watched the room empty.
Old Jack remained by the door.
Ward finally turned toward the children.
"My name is Evan Ward. I'm a field examiner of the Concord, Level Twenty-Six Tempered."
Silas's attention sharpened.
A number.
At last.
Ward indicated the badge on his coat.
"You don't need to remember the title. What you do need to remember is that I've performed more First Awakenings than any of you have had breakfasts."
Nell raised her hand.
Ward stared at it.
"What?"
"How many?"
The corner of his mouth moved.
"A great many."
Nell lowered her hand, dissatisfied.
Ward crouched and arranged the six black stones into a hexagon.
"You're going to stand in the middle when I tell you. You may feel heat. Cold. Pressure. You may hear something that isn't there. Your Eidolon may appear in your hand, behind you, around you, or in a way none of us expect."
Thomas looked more alarmed with each sentence.
Ward noticed.
"Nothing in this room is going to eat you."
Thomas raised his hand.
"What if my Eidolon eats people?"
"Then we'll revise the instructions."
A few of the children laughed.
The tension eased.
Ward stood.
"Before we start, one more thing. An Eidolon does not tell you whether you're good, bad, clever, stupid, brave, or worth listening to."
That sounded practiced.
"However, it does tell us something about what kind of Aether your body can develop. So don't lie about what you feel, and don't try to force anything."
He pointed at Thomas.
"You first."
Thomas swallowed.
"Why me?"
"Because you're closest."
That answer seemed impossible to argue with.
He stepped into the stones.
Ward rolled his shoulders once.
Then something changed.
Silas felt it before he saw it.
Pressure gathered in the room—not wind, exactly, but a tightening against the skin. The hairs on Silas's arms lifted.
A gray shape moved beneath Ward's shadow.
His back straightened.
His shoulders broadened inside the coat, not grotesquely, but enough that the fabric pulled across them. His eyes changed from brown to a pale predatory amber. His fingers lengthened slightly, nails darkening into hard curved points.
Behind him, for a fraction of a second, Silas saw the outline of a great wolf.
Not a normal wolf.
Too tall at the shoulder.
Too narrow through the waist.
A spectral thing of timber-gray fur and watchful eyes.
Two luminous Crests unfolded in the air behind Ward.
They were not simple circles. Each was formed from interlocking lines and broken sigils, like heraldic marks built from light. One carried the impression of hooked fangs. The other suggested running legs.
Then they settled close to his body.
Thomas made a small noise.
Nell took one step backward.
Silas shifted his weight before he could stop himself.
Left foot half a pace behind the right.
Center lowered.
Hands loose.
Blackthorn training.
Ward's amber eyes flicked toward him.
Silas relaxed.
Interesting.
"Timber Wolf," Ward said. "My Eidolon. The two Crests mean I've passed two thresholds. Nothing about this is dangerous unless I decide it is."
He touched two fingers together.
Aether moved.
The six stones answered.
Thin gold lines ran through their metal channels. Light rose from them and joined overhead, forming a faint enclosure around Thomas.
The boy froze.
Not from fear.
His expression changed.
His mouth opened slightly.
Ward's voice softened.
"Don't fight it. Breathe. Think about your right hand."
Points of pale light lifted from the stones.
They passed through Thomas's clothes and skin without resistance.
More gathered.
Then they rushed toward his palm.
Something formed there.
Wooden handle.
Iron head.
A small hand axe.
Thomas stared at it.
"My dad has one like this."
"Probably not unrelated," Ward said.
He stepped closer and examined the axe.
"Wood Axe. Armament Eidolon. Useful even if it never develops beyond this."
Thomas brightened.
"Can I fight with it?"
"First we find out whether you can train."
Ward picked up the crystal sphere from its cradle.
"Hand here."
Thomas placed his palm against it.
Nothing happened.
He waited.
Still nothing.
Ward watched for another two seconds before pulling the sphere away.
"No measurable Innate Aether."
Thomas's excitement collapsed.
"So it's bad?"
"No."
Ward's answer was immediate.
"You'll likely never be a Bearer. That's not the same thing."
He tapped the manifested axe.
"Once you learn to call that properly, you'll cut wood faster than your father does. Depending on how well it develops, maybe a great deal faster."
Thomas looked at the axe again.
The disappointment did not disappear.
But it changed shape.
"Can I keep it?"
Ward almost smiled.
"It's part of you."
Thomas spent the next minute learning how to dismiss it.
The others followed.
A girl awakened a narrow Weaver's Shuttle, beautiful and useless to the Concord's crystal.
Another boy produced a Farm Hound that appeared as a russet shadow around his feet. For three hopeful seconds Ward thought the animal might have enough Aether response to register.
It did not.
Nell Baker awakened a Cast-Iron Ladle.
She cried.
Her mother, waiting outside, heard the first sob and attempted to enter.
Old Jack somehow stopped her.
Silas learned several things.
First, inheritance mattered but not cleanly. Nell's father was a cooper and her mother baked bread. Neither explained a ladle, unless family history stretched farther than anyone bothered to record.
Second, an Eidolon did not need trainable Aether to affect ordinary work.
Third, the Concord examiner had become slightly more tired after each Awakening.
Not exhausted.
But the tension around his eyes was growing.
The stones required power from him.
Useful.
Then came Mary Bell.
She stood in the circle with her eyes squeezed shut so hard her entire face wrinkled.
Gold light rose.
Something green emerged from her palm.
A stem.
Two leaves.
Then another thin runner that curled around her wrist.
Ward stared at it.
"So that's our plant for the morning."
Mary opened one eye.
"What is it?"
"Wildvine."
Silas knew the plant.
Everyone in Briar Glen did.
It climbed fences, invaded bean rows, wrapped itself around abandoned carts, and returned every spring no matter how thoroughly farmers tore out the roots.
Old Jack had once spent an entire afternoon cursing it behind the storehouse.
Mary looked hopeful.
"Is it good?"
Ward considered the question before answering.
"Good at surviving."
"Can I be a Bearer?"
"We test first."
The crystal remained dark.
Mary's shoulders dropped.
Ward dismissed the result with less ceremony than before.
"No Aether response. You'll still find the Eidolon useful if it strengthens with age."
Mary stepped out.
Silas looked at the tiny green runner as it vanished into her hand.
Wildvine.
Common.
Persistent.
Almost impossible to kill.
There were worse qualities.
"Silas Hale."
He looked up.
Ward was watching him.
His turn.
Silas entered the hexagon.
From the doorway, Old Jack gave him an encouraging nod.
Ward lifted one hand.
"Ready?"
Silas looked down at the six stones.
"No."
Ward waited.
Silas added, "But you can start."
That earned him a brief look.
Then gold light climbed the room.
Warmth struck first.
Not heat from a forge.
Something cleaner.
It passed through skin without stopping, filling his chest and arms, slipping between muscles, gathering along pathways he had spent five years trying to understand.
Silas forgot the room.
His Blackthorn breathing discipline reacted instantly.
Aether rushed inward.
For years he had felt resistance whenever he pushed his internal practice beyond a certain point. Not pain. Not weakness.
A wall.
No amount of repetition had moved it.
Now, standing inside the Concord's Awakening array, something touched that wall from the other side.
Silas inhaled.
The obstruction trembled.
Not broken.
Recognized.
So you are real.
The thought arrived with almost indecent satisfaction.
Light gathered under his skin.
Ward's posture changed.
Silas heard him breathe in sharply.
The amount of gold in the hexagon had increased.
Not slightly.
The motes poured from all six stones now, swarming around Silas like sparks caught in an invisible current.
Old Jack leaned away from the doorframe.
Ward stopped looking tired.
"Don't move," he said.
Silas had no intention of doing so.
The pressure inside him intensified.
Something seemed to unfold in his right hand.
At the same instant—
His left palm went cold.
Not cool.
Cold.
And heavy.
For the space of a heartbeat, Silas felt the impossible impression of weight pressing downward through his bones, as if something vast had tried to fit itself into the shape of his hand.
Blackthorn had survived for generations because some knowledge was never displayed in front of strangers.
Silas closed his left fist.
Ward did not notice.
His attention was fixed on Silas's right hand.
The gold light collapsed inward.
A thin green stem lay across Silas's palm.
For several seconds no one spoke.
A small leaf uncurled.
Then another.
The stem lengthened by perhaps an inch and curved around the base of his thumb.
Silas recognized it immediately.
So did Ward.
The examiner's expression changed in stages.
Expectation.
Confusion.
Then unmistakable disappointment.
"Wildvine."
Mary Bell, waiting near the wall, perked up.
"Same as mine."
Silas turned his hand.
The plant looked almost disappointingly ordinary.
The leaves were slightly darker than Mary's had been. The stem felt cool against his skin. If there was anything remarkable about it, Silas could not see it.
Yet he could feel it.
A connection.
Not like holding a tool.
More like discovering a hand he had always possessed but never learned to move.
He thought of withdrawing the vine.
It vanished.
Effortlessly.
Silas summoned it again.
The stem returned.
Interesting.
Ward was already moving toward the table.
"All right. That's everyone."
Silas looked at the crystal.
"You haven't tested me."
Ward stopped.
A small silence settled across the hall.
"You awakened Wildvine."
"Yes."
"Wild Eidolon. Extremely common. I've never personally seen a trainable one."
Silas glanced toward Mary.
"Then the test should be quick."
Old Jack coughed into his fist.
Ward looked at Silas for a moment longer.
Then he picked up the crystal.
"Fair enough."
He held it out.
"Palm flat. Don't push. It draws what it needs."
Silas touched the sphere.
The world lurched.
His internal power moved.
Not metaphorically.
Not gradually.
It tore toward the crystal as though a sluice gate had opened inside him.
Silas tried to pull back.
He couldn't.
The sphere was not merely measuring the energy he had cultivated through Blackthorn breathing.
It was recognizing it.
Drawing on the same current.
His suspicion from the Awakening array hardened into certainty.
Aether and the force he had cultivated since infancy were not separate things.
Or, if they were, they spoke the same language.
A spark appeared inside the crystal.
Then another.
Blue-white light spread through its core.
Ward's hand tightened.
The glow doubled.
It reached the inner edge of the glass.
Then kept climbing until the entire sphere shone so brightly that reflections leapt from every window in the hall.
Nell stopped crying.
Thomas whispered something Silas did not catch.
Old Jack simply stared.
Evan Ward went motionless.
Silas felt the pull cease.
He removed his hand.
The crystal remained bright for another second before slowly fading.
Ward looked at Silas.
Then at the sphere.
Then back at Silas.
"Do it again."
Silas raised an eyebrow.
"You said it draws what it needs."
"Humor me."
Silas touched the crystal a second time.
Light flooded it almost immediately.
Ward swore under his breath.
Old Jack leaned forward.
"What?"
Ward did not answer.
He set the crystal down with unusual care.
"What?" Jack repeated.
The examiner looked as though someone had presented him with a locked strongbox and then informed him the contents were worthless.
"Perfect Innate Aether."
Jack's face went blank.
Silas looked between them.
"Meaning?"
Ward rubbed a hand across his jaw.
"It means the sphere has reached its limit."
"What limit?"
"Ten."
The number settled somewhere important in Silas's mind.
Ward continued.
"At First Awakening, the highest natural Aether reading an unmarked body can sustain is the first threshold. Ten measures. Most children show nothing. A child with one or two has a possible training path. Three or four is good. Five is the sort of result the Concord reports immediately to an academy."
"And ten?"
Ward gave him a long look.
"Ten is rare."
"How rare?"
"Rare enough that I'm trying to decide who is playing a joke on me."
Silas glanced at the crystal.
"It gave the same answer twice."
"Yes. Thank you. I noticed."
Old Jack finally found his voice.
"You're saying he's already Level Ten?"
"No."
Ward's answer came sharply enough to cut through Jack's excitement.
"This is where people misunderstand the system."
He tapped the table with one finger.
"The boy has enough Aether to stand at the first threshold. That does not make him Marked."
Silas remembered the two luminous structures behind Ward.
"Your Crests."
Ward looked at him.
"Exactly."
For the first time that morning, the examiner seemed to forget Silas was five.
"Levels one through nine are Awakened. At the tenth threshold, the body's Aether structure stops expanding on its own. To go farther, a Bearer needs a Crest."
"From an Aetherbeast."
Ward's expression shifted.
"You know that word?"
"I've heard it."
A safe answer.
Old Jack had mentioned beasts. Hunters told stories. Garrick had once refused to repair a spear because, in his words, anyone stupid enough to put that many teeth marks in a shaft deserved to buy a new one.
Ward nodded.
"A Crest gives the Aether somewhere new to go. It also changes the Eidolon. Sometimes a little. Sometimes a great deal."
Silas looked at his empty palm.
"And after the first Crest?"
"You become Marked. Then you can grow toward the next threshold."
"Twenty."
"Yes."
"And another Crest."
Ward's eyes narrowed slightly.
"Yes."
Silas began assembling the structure.
Threshold.
External catalyst.
Permanent integration.
Repeat.
It was not the system he had known in his first life.
But it was a system.
That mattered.
For five years his Blackthorn practice had refused to advance beyond the same invisible barrier. He had treated it as a problem of age, physiology, perhaps even the incompatibility of two worlds.
Now there was another possibility.
His internal practice had reached the first threshold before he possessed the structure required to cross it.
A Crest.
His pulse quickened.
Not because Ward had called him rare.
That was merely a label.
A mechanism was useful.
"Can a Wildvine take a Crest?"
Ward's enthusiasm dimmed.
There it was again.
The plant.
He looked almost irritated by it.
"Technically? Yes."
"Then what's the problem?"
Ward folded his arms.
"Compatibility."
Silas waited.
"An Eidolon isn't an empty cup. You don't hunt the oldest beast you can find and pour its power into yourself. The wrong Crest can give you an Art you can't use, damage the Eidolon, stunt later development, or kill you during integration."
That was the first thing anyone had said about the system that Silas immediately trusted.
Power with no cost was usually a sales pitch.
Ward went on.
"Strong Blood Legacies have generations of records. They know what kinds of beasts work, what ages are safe, which traits tend to carry over. Wildvine has almost none of that."
"Because nobody trains it."
"Because almost nobody with Wildvine has enough Aether to justify training it."
A circle.
Low expectations created little research.
Little research justified low expectations.
Silas knew that kind of system too.
Old Jack stepped farther into the hall.
"But with ten..."
Ward exhaled.
"With ten, I'd test him even if he'd awakened a wooden spoon."
Nell Baker looked offended.
"Mine was iron."
Nobody answered her.
Ward took a blank form from his case.
He filled it out in a quick, practiced hand.
Silas watched the lines.
Name.
Household.
Place of Awakening.
Eidolon.
Innate Aether.
Ward paused before the last entry.
Then wrote:
10 — Perfect
Below it, he added a Concord notation Silas could not read upside down.
Ward sanded the ink, shook the sheet, and passed it to Old Jack.
"Keep that dry."
Jack accepted it with both hands.
"What does it do?"
"It proves the result when somebody in Greyhaven accuses you of exaggerating."
Jack looked personally wounded.
"I do not exaggerate."
Ward glanced at Silas.
Silas remained silent.
"Mm."
The examiner began packing the stones.
Silas watched each disappear into its padded slot.
"You said the wrong Crest can kill someone."
Ward did not look up.
"Yes."
"So who chooses the first one?"
"Someone qualified, if you're fortunate."
"And if you're not?"
Ward closed the case.
"You make an expensive mistake."
That answer was more useful than reassurance would have been.
Silas looked again at the registration sheet in Jack's hands.
A few hours earlier, he had been a blacksmith's son with an unexplained barrier inside his body.
Now the Concord had placed a number beside his name.
Ten.
Perfect.
A word that sounded much more certain than the world actually was.
Ward fastened his case.
His gaze dropped briefly to Silas's right hand.
"Shame about the Wildvine."
Silas looked at him.
Ward did not mean it cruelly.
That made the judgment more interesting.
It was not prejudice for the sake of prejudice.
It was experience.
Statistics.
Years of seeing the same plant fail to become something greater.
Silas thought of the iron billet waiting on Garrick's anvil.
Bad stock did not become good because someone believed in it.
You studied it.
You heated it correctly.
You learned where it bent, where it cracked, what impurities it carried, and what it could survive.
Then you worked.
"Maybe," Silas said.
Ward paused.
"Maybe what?"
Silas looked down at his empty palm.
"Maybe it's enough."
The examiner gave him an odd look, then slung the case over his shoulder.
"Five years old and already arguing with the evidence."
"No."
Silas met his eyes.
"I just haven't seen enough of it yet."
For a moment, Ward said nothing.
Then he laughed once.
"Greyhaven is going to enjoy you."
He stepped outside.
Old Jack stared after him.
Then slowly turned toward Silas.
"Greyhaven?"
Silas looked at the paper in his hands.
Jack looked down too.
His expression changed.
Silas saw the calculation begin.
Village sponsorship.
Academy.
Travel.
Money.
Garrick.
That last one caused the old man's mouth to flatten.
"This," Jack said, "is going to be a conversation."
Silas suspected that was an understatement.
They followed Ward into the morning.
The Concord wagon was already being prepared for the next village. Ward exchanged a few words with the driver, checked the straps on his case, and climbed aboard.
Silas waited until he had one foot on the step.
"Officer Ward."
Ward glanced back.
"What does an Aetherbeast have to do for you to take its Crest?"
Jack made a faint choking sound.
Ward studied Silas for a moment.
Then his expression lost what remained of its amusement.
"Usually?"
"Yes."
"You kill it."
The road seemed quieter.
Silas looked beyond the village roofs.
Past the cornfields, the land rose into wooded ridges. Morning mist still clung between them, hiding the deeper valleys.
He had walked those hills.
Not far.
Never far enough that Garrick or Jack would have called them dangerous.
Somewhere beyond the farms, beyond the familiar deer trails and creek beds, lived things that could change the structure of a human soul.
Ward settled into the wagon.
"Don't go looking for one."
Silas looked back at him.
"I'm five."
"That's not the reassurance you think it is."
The driver clicked his tongue.
The wagon rolled away.
Old Jack remained beside Silas with the Concord certificate clutched in one hand.
For several seconds, neither spoke.
Then Jack looked down at him.
"You aren't going into the woods."
"No."
"Good."
"Not today."
Jack closed his eyes.
Silas turned his attention toward home.
Toward the forge.
Toward Garrick.
His right palm still remembered the cool weight of the Wildvine.
His left remembered something else.
Something he did not yet understand.
Dense.
Cold.
Heavy enough that, for a single instant inside the Awakening array, it had felt as though the bones of his arm were being pulled toward the earth.
Silas curled that hand into a fist.
Blackthorn had taught him many rules.
One had kept him alive more often than any technique:
Never reveal a piece of yourself before you understand what it is worth.
He started up the road.
Behind him, Old Jack hurried to catch up.
In his pocket was a document declaring Silas Hale a boy with a common Eidolon and a perfect reserve of Aether.
Silas had the distinct feeling that only half of that description was true.