"Again."
Karíro's voice sliced through the air like a whip. He stood barefoot in the sandpit, arms crossed, eyes gleaming with a sharpness only seen in those who'd survived war. Fire danced lazily around his ankles.
Seraphina pushed up from the scorched earth, panting. Her palms were scraped raw, but the flame around her fingers hadn't dimmed.
"I'm not fragile," she muttered.
"No," Karíro agreed. "But your arrogance is."
"Balance," he said.
Fire flared in her chest, racing up her arms. She moved, quick as instinct, ducking low and launching a wave of flame to counter his flames.
It evaporated halfway.
She stumbled.
"Control isn't suppression," Karíro said, walking past her. "It's knowing when to burn and when to simmer. You are the flame—never forget that. But flames that don't learn control destroy more than they protect."
She gritted her teeth. Her braid was falling loose, and her shoulders ached, but she nodded.
She would control it.
Not because Karíro said so.
But because she'd once burned too brightly, and it cost her a past she could barely remember.
*****
Half a world away in the Valerborne courtyard, the concept of balance had a very different meaning.
Lioren's face hit the stone hard enough to bruise. Again.
Thaleis didn't shout. He didn't need to. He simply was—a presence that crushed and demanded without ever raising a hand higher than necessary.
Blood trickled down Lioren's chin. He wiped it with his sleeve. Didn't speak.
Thaleis struck him again. A cane this time—sharp, clean, not meant to maim, only remind.
"You exist to be useful. You are a blade. I forge you not for glory, but for legacy. Do you understand?"
Lioren stood, slow and deliberate. "Oh, perfectly," he rasped. "Would you like me to kneel and polish your expectations next?"
Thaleis didn't laugh.
The next blow cracked against his ribs.
No warning. No fury. Just clinical disappointment wrapped in steel.
Later, when the sun had dimmed and the shadows lengthened, a maid found him kneeling by the stone basin, bruises blooming beneath his shirt like flowers made of hurt.
"You need rest," she whispered.
Lioren didn't look up. "Rest is for people," he muttered. "I'm a sword, remember?"
And gods, how that sword still bled.
***
Elsewhere
Kael Aurelius had lightning dancing up his forearms, his easy smile hiding the fact that he was holding back less and less.
"You're pushing your limit," his sister warned from the terrace.
He winked. "Maybe the limit should push back."
A scroll rested on his table. Unopened. Waiting.
Something inside him already knew—it wasn't just the lightning that set him apart. It was how the storms listened.
---
Ivan Virellia, meanwhile, stood alone in the snow-laced hall of House Virellia, watching frost creep along the walls like sentient ink. His younger brother had just failed another awakening trial. Ivan hadn't even tried.
He already knew what the scroll said.
His ice did not just freeze.
It stopped time—slowed things at the molecular level. His tutor wept when they saw it.
Ivan didn't care.
Nothing ever felt warm anymore.
***
Celeste Nairoveth, lounging in a pool of shallow water, rolled her eyes at the scroll held up by her third maid of the day.
"'Anomaly'? Please," she scoffed. "Just because I don't need permission to breathe."
But her reflection in the water twitched wrong.
Too fast.
Too aware.
And she hadn't told anyone about the voice she sometimes heard in her own blood.
***
Back in the Ravenshade estate
Seraphina threw her last flame of the day like a blade. It hit dead center.
Karíro nodded. "Better."
She collapsed in the sand, panting, laughing softly.
Lioren stood elsewhere, shoulder bleeding, posture straight.
He hadn't made a sound all day.
But across the continent, both of them felt it.
The pull of something ancient.
The stir of names once erased.
Echo-born.
There were five now.
But only two carried the weight of memory.
And the fire and shadow inside them were beginning to stir.