Page 251 of Elemental Becoming

“I may be Air Clan by birth, but I’ve learned from them all.”

I study him, skeptical. “Then prove it.”

He doesn’t argue. He simply closes his eyes and exhales.

And suddenly, he’s gone.

Not in body. He’s still sitting beside me, legs folded, hands resting on his knees. But the presence I’ve grown used to, the low hum of Elemental energy that always surrounds him, subtle but constant, vanishes. Like someone snuffed it out mid-breath.

Even Calryx reacts. Her wings twitch where she perches a short distance away, her attention snapping toward us. She felt it too.

I stare at him, unsettled. The stillness isn’t just around him.

It’s inside him.

As though every thought, every emotion, every trace of power has folded inward and disappeared into a place I cannot reach.

I swallow, the hairs on my arms rising. “What did you justdo?”

When he opens his eyes, they’re steady and unshaken.

No smugness.

No theatrics.

Just calm.

Collected.

Entirely in control.

“I became still,” he says simply. “True stillness isn’t the absence of motion. It’s the mastery of it.”

“What is that?” I ask quietly. “That kind of stillness . . . is there a name for it?”

Valen’s gaze lingers on me, thoughtful. “The Water Clan calls itthe Second Breath.It’s the moment after fear. After instinct. The space where you decide what happens next instead of letting your emotions decide for you.”

I stare at him.

That sounds impossible.

Valen watches me for a moment longer, then nods once.

“Close your eyes,” he instructs.

I hesitate. Just for a second. Then I do as he asks.

“Now breathe in. Deeply.”

I draw in air through my nose. My lungs stretch wide, almost uncomfortably so.

“Hold it,” he says. “Feel how it expands. How it presses outward, wanting to escape. But don’t let it. Not until you choose to.”

My chest begins to ache as the pressure builds, but I keep it in. Every part of me tightens around the need to release it.

“Now release,” Valen says. “Slowly.”

I let the air slip out, not all at once, but in a long, controlled stream. I feel it, not just in my lungs, but in the way my shoulders ease and the tension in my ribs unwinds. It’s subtle, but tangible.