NEVEN

"Have you thought about what the Warden-Commander said?"

Neven looked up from his study on energy reserve techniques against Derelicts and their draining properties with each bite they made, and Utuvar pointed out his weakness many times over; his lack of self-pacing, and it appeared Majen noticed it. "Hm?"

"About becoming Oathbound."

"I—" Neven hesitated. "I did, but there's still a lot I don't understand about it." He returned to the passage on ways to maximize power with more efficient energy expression against the flow, but returned his attention to Kemal when he held up another book.

"I've been reading up on it, remember?"He overturned his own tome with a fascinated expression. "It's exactly how the Warden-Commander and Warden Anaysa described it. A complicated magick ritual which ties two synced souls together — by leaving a piece of magick within the other. Distance will have no effect on that one piece. It's pretty interesting." He rubbed his nose then flipped to another page. "I mean, I like to think we're friends." He peered at him. "Unless in Naveera it's a bit more complicated."

"It can be, but I consider you a friend." Neven closed his book and gave Kemal his undivided attention. "I am also willing to attempt this, but did the book have any drawbacks of note?"

"Nothing she didn't mention," Kemal replied. "We should go give her our answer."

Neven stood up and left the Annex with him. For a while... I was scared of telling Mother and Father about him — people always whisper that Hanekans are brutes but... I don't see that. A passionate people, a prideful people, yes... but so are we. He curled his fingers together. But they were ecstatic that I managed to make friends in a strange place. As they moved through the corridors for the upper echelon of the citadel, they both slowed to a stop when Yusari rounded a corner. Her entire body stiffened, and he responded in turn.

"Lotayrin," she said, cold.

"Ovana," he replied through the buried snow.

"You two do realise I'm not an idiot?"

Neven broke from his daily staredown with her to turn to his best friend. "What do you mean?"

Kemal shook his head. "You can fool everyone else, but ya can't fool me." He winked and stuck out his tongue. "Because I know Neven made a small batch of poundcakes and for once didn't share with the rest of us, and when I pressed him for answers, he avoided the topic and took the dessert somewhere else."

Neven resisted the urge to face-palm at his slip. "It was a test of my mother's recipe," he said half the truth. "I am not the baker she was."

"Ah, so that's why Yusari was engrossed in a recipe."

Her ears flared red. "Kemal, no one asked!"

"Of course, continue as you were. Come on, Nev," Kemal said and walked further down the corridor. He nodded his goodbyes to Yusari, the act slipping over his cheeks with the washed heat of the sun when he went to catch up with him. Up on one of the tallest spires meant for the highest echelon of the Order, Warden-Commander Faehariel sat behind a desk in a room with an empty desk on the other side, reading a thick tome full of yellowing parchment. Neven brought his hand up in respect when she lifted her gaze.

"Warden Commander, we thought about what you told us."

Faehariel closed the hefty book. "And?"

"We'll do it," Kemal answered for both of them.

She smiled. "It will take some time for you to notice any substantial change if this works. If you'll follow me."

From the tallest points of the citadel to the lowest bowels, they took the small teleportation domes dotted for easier transport across the entire citadel. Another similarity to Irimount — though Neven's only experience with the teleportation domes was within the Grand Spire itself. Neven leaned closer to Kemal when they went ever deeper. "Are you sure you want to do this?"

"I wouldn't have brought it up if I didn't," Kemal pointed out. "What about you?"

"Yes."

"Then don't worry."

...Am I worrying?

Though he left the blizzard behind, death remained on his mind. Everconstant in the dance of life. It won't hurt. This will make us stronger. We could become better Storm Wardens if we're in tandem. Excitement swallowed the frozen dread as they entered the bowels of Euros, the blooming rose in the sky. Engraved doors filled the misshapen halls, carved by old magma.

They stopped in front of a door with star-flecked gems. With one wave of her hand, the door slid open. Obsidian glass shone along the marble foundations. Stars flickered and bounced with the gemstones swirling on the ground. Neven and Kemal stood on the sidelines when Faheariel sent a golden glyph sweeping across the circumference of the room. "I will ask this one more time," she said. "Are you certain this is what you want? Your bodies, souls, and mind must agree as equals, without a shred of doubt."

"I'm ready," Neven said.

"I am too."

"Take the cardinal points of the glyph across from each other," she said as the glyph shrunk and intensified in opal colours. Starlit spiderwebs weaved through the abyss and brought light in the dark. A connection of the flow. Magick dripped across the walls.

Neven stood face to face with Kemal underneath the world of stars.

"You two will be connected through energy." Faehariel brought her palms up into the air between them. Flames sparked to life, glittering with heatwaves as the spirals in her eyes spun tighter and overtook her gaze. "In no instance will one be without the other, even when distance separates you. Reach out through space and time."

Reach out through space and time... why is that familiar?

Neven reached through the stars all the same to grab Kemal's outstretched hand. Blizzard snows clashed against his skin, but oceanic rain washed the pain away all at once, a measured temperature. He waited for instruction while the deja vu gnawed at his soul. It dogged his thoughts and taunted him with a past he was unable to recall in clarity.

"We are all space, moving through time." Magick crystallized in the air when it raised off the gemstones, and the essence underneath the glass blazed to life. "You will see what the other has seen. For your experiences transcend the boundary of the world."

A baby giggled in the back of his mind, a faint memory of the departed.

Every gemstone flickered into one solid color.

"Space and time," Faehariel said and brushed her hand through the crinkling cascade of stars between them. "Sun and moon. Dawn and dusk. Silver light and crimson darkness." Her voice echoed throughout the chamber and his own head.

Trees touched the heavens in a blur of the world as he stood in a large town sat upon the coast of a large island. People made of shadows shuffled around him. Some of their faces were recognizable, like he knew them but found himself unable to put a name to the face. A lady left the large manor when a group of iron-clad warriors stomped up, the shadowed figures diving out of the way and hiding inside their houses. A young boy stood beside her, with a younger child clinging onto his older brother.

Dread returned, but not made of the blizzard's horror — but of questions left unanswered.

"I am sorry," the armored shadow said in Hanekan, but he frowned at his capability to understand it when he had not learned it. "We can't find Lord Tyronai anywhere. He arrived at Sivaport, then disappeared."

He disappeared, and that shadow isn't... telling them why. Neven frowned when the lady shed tears, and the two boys hid in her shadow.

Chills crawled up his back at a man's deep, forlorn song of Navei, "We haven't heard from Yoko in months. He wouldn't disappear without sending word," the crimson darkness shimmered. "I want—I'm going to find my baby brother."

Though the words came from his mind, he found himself unable to recognize the voice. Images shattered into pieces as he returned to reality out of another's soul. Sinew made of stars wound around their wrists, bound together.

"You are now Oathbound." Stars bounced across her fingertips. "Let nothing break the shield of space and time."

Neven released Kemal, then considered the questions left unanswered, a nagging question which refused rest.

Faehariel dropped her hands and smiled at them as the opalescent river died. "I'm sure you two want to discuss the experience. Go on."

Neven raced out of the room to escape the familiar but strange voice. He turned to Kemal when he caught up with him, gaze thoughtful. "Kem, was that your village? Your Dad was the Lord? Where did he disappear to?"

Kemal slowed to a stop and raised his thoughtful expression. "Is that what you saw?" he whispered. "Yeah... and no one asked questions." He shrugged his broad shoulders. "I didn't ask questions at the time either, but that's not what I saw, Nev. I saw something different."

"Really?" Neven leaned forward. "What did you see?"

A memory I can't recall.

"Well, I saw you — at least, I think it was you," Kemal admitted. "You were playing with a baby, but I thought you were an only child."

"I am."

Kemal tickled his cheek and sucked in his lips. "The adults were talking about some king. He wanted their cooperation and the baby. Something about it being an 'honor'." He air-quoted but cringed. "I don't think the adults saw it the same way. They were taking it as more of a threat, and the older guy... he was pissed. Pissed about something, he mentioned his baby brother and... then nothing."

"Are you sure?" Neven tipped his head. "I don't... remember anything like that."

"Well, the kid playing the baby looked a lot like you, scrawny and pale-haired, I don't know who else it could be." Kemal frowned. "You really can't remember that?"

"How old did I seem like?"

"Eleven, twelve, maybe? Give or take?"

"And I was entertaining a baby?"

"Yeah, but the memory ended." Kemal shrugged. "I don't feel any different otherwise, you?"

Neven shook his head. "Do you remember your father?"

"Better than my little brother does," Kemal said. "One day he left for Sivaport to go to court with the current king of Haneka. King Thormar." He shrugged his shoulders, but irritation cracked his strong features. "And that's the last we heard from him. Then, one day, the king's housecarls came to our island, said something about a Derelict attack at sea... with no survivors." Kemal's gaze dropped to his feet. "I don't know, it didn't sound right, why was my father out at sea? But, from that point, I dedicated myself to being a Storm Warden, to find an answer." Kemal took in a heavy breath, and the curiosity returned. "If you're an only child, who was that baby?"

Neven frowned. "I don't know... that part of my life is fuzzy. It's like there's this... gap, I don't know. I remember running around singing songs with my class and Magistera — straight to becoming an Ice Squire for the Knight Valiant of all people."

Kemal widened his eyes. "You didn't want to be a Storm Warden originally, right?"

Neven tested his words, then shook his head. "No," he admitted. "I wanted to be a Blizzard Sentinel. Like... my ancestor, Atoran Lotayrin." He swallowed airy pain and crushed it into his stomach. "This all feels like a dream sometimes. I told myself that this is what I want out of my life since I knew how to want. I wanted to be just like him. And then, one day... it just..." He tried to suppress the dam in his eyes, but the ancient sadness cracked his throat and ruined his song. "I couldn't do it. I couldn't stand there and be a performer. It felt wrong. I couldn't stand there thinking that this is all Atoran's legacy amounted to — entertainment, rather than doing good for Naveera as one of her knights."

Kemal frowned. "Do you even know anything about your ancestor?"

Neven nodded quickly. "Who didn't know things about Atoran?" He released his windsheared innocence. "He was a legendary knight, of course everyone knew him. He was a part of the 'Knights of the Round', the right hand to the Snow Prince, the once and future king of Naveera. I just wanted to live up to my name — and the legacy he left behind thousands of turns ago."

"Was he real?"

Neven frowned at his words, but there was nothing but genuine curiosity in his voice. "Why wouldn't he be real?"

"I'm not saying an Atoran Lotayrin never existed," Kemal corrected. "But my dad told me folktales can become... bigger than they really were in reality."

"Bigger than themselves, Kemal?" Neven smiled. "How does a story become bigger than itself?"

Kemal returned the gesture, but there was something far heavier to it. "Slowly."

It went silent between them, a different sort of silence than the one between him and Yusari, but no less comforting. Kemal shook his head, then asked, "Are you glad you're here? Does this feel right to you?"

"I am glad. I am glad to have met you and learned so much outside the blizzard," Neven said and his heart swelled. "I am happy to have seen this life, to experience it. It was hard at first, but... I wouldn't have this any other way."

I carried Atoran's legacy. Wings outstretched in golden fields with a single desire — the reason for flight. And I will carry that legacy my own way... by being a knight—a Storm Warden, for the world. 

I will protect it.

The low timbre purred out of the wyvern's throat when it lowered its head through the dark glass, then opened its eyes in full where once they were closed. As he lifted his head into the darkness of his mind to see the wyvern's gaze, to acknowledge its light, it followed. Golden feathers rustled against the unseen wind of the tundra.

Lost in thoughts, he stepped closer, and the wyvern followed with a tentative step of its claws. Through the mirror, a deep song of truth.

Father's voice echoed a tale.

"We have a deep connection with our ancestors... where once we were wyverns ourselves," he said. "We have lost this connection over time, but it remains. It remains in the form of our soul — look in the mirror, Neven... you might see that soul inside you if you give it a voice and hear its sole desire."

He lifted his head from the ancient fear dug in his bones and looked in the mirror.

Sapphires glinted across the beaded pupils when the golden-feathered wyvern considered him.