Page 227 of Elemental Becoming

A low rumble echoes through my mind, dry amusementthreaded with affection. The feeling grazes my thoughts, warm and reassuring despite the power beneath it.

“Even humans can be trained. Eventually.”

The panic from earlier hasn’t fully faded, but the weight of it eases enough for me to breathe again.

“Eventually,”I echo through the bond.

Valen steps forward from where he’s been watching, hands clasped behind his back.

“That connection,” he says, nodding toward Calryx, “didn’t simply reject you. It corrected you.”

I look at him, still catching my breath. “Because I pulled too hard.”

“Partly,” he says. “But it was more than that. It wasn’t resistance. It was a disruption of rhythm.”

He stops a few paces away, gaze narrowing with thought.

“You reached before you listened. You tried to take before the bond had settled into balance.”

He pauses, to let the words fall with the weight they carry.

“But when you stopped, when you breathed, that moment just before the roar, you weren’t fighting it. You were close.”

He looks between us.

“You’re not meant to control it. You’re meant to move with it. And when you learn how . . . ” He pauses. “It won’t just keep you from burning out.”

Another pause.

“It will let you become something this world hasn’t seen in an age.”

The words settle in my chest. Not as a burden, but as a truth I am finally beginning to step into.

Inevitable.

As if the world has quietly shifted around me, and there is no putting it back the way it was.

Slowly, I let a breath release and step back into position. Thebond is still open. Calryx waits, present, patient, watching.

“Again,”I tell her.

This time, I don’t rush.

I reach. Not with effort, but with care, with intention. The power meets me halfway. A flicker of heat. The press of wind curling around my shoulders. It surges into me, but not like before. Less like a wave crashing, more like a current rising underfoot.

I brace, legs planted, and draw it in one thread at a time. The tension builds, but it doesn’t overwhelm.

“Good,”Calryx says. “You’re learning.”

Valen watches, saying nothing, but I feel his attention sharpen.

The wind lifts at my back. Sparks gather at my fingertips. This time, I don’t fight it. I breathe into it. And hold.

Then a thought catches at the edge of my awareness, quick and sharp. Valen’s words echo in my mind:something the world hasn’t seen in an age.

The weight of them slips through me, just enough to shake the rhythm. I lose focus. Just for a breath.

And the magics surge.