For one brief moment Swift almost felt free.

Free from the buzzing of the Trill. Free from the disapproving eyes of his parents. Free from being replaced, from being rejected and pitied for a mistake that wasn't even within his control. Free exactly as his grandmother had hoped for him to fly again with Whisper just as his name intended.

But something wasn't right. It didn't feel like the same soaring freedom he felt when performing with Whisper. It felt cold and cloying like walking through a snowstorm without boots, draining and dragging on and on until he finally succumbed to the cold.

'Help.'

Swift's eyes burned open, grit and sawdust searing his vision but still his arms played on, spurred by the winds of change around them. Shapes of shadows skittered about the floor, frost creeping by to trap them in a dance of his own design. But it wasn't him. It was Whisper.

'Help me.'

Her overwhelming fear almost knocked him prone, the delicate storm of ice and wind making his skin tremble with goosebumps. He could barely see against the Windchill, desperate to link one discordant note after the other while scanning for his fallen Agar. But he couldn't.

"Swift, what are you doing?"

The shadows morphed into masses of people, crowds swelling and struggling to break away from the music. The Trait that surrounded the entire tent in a wall of bracing winter ripped away the surrounding support beams in a frenzy to be free. But Stealth didn't want to be free.

"Whisper's in trouble, Stealth. I have to get to her. I have to-"

"No! It's for the Limelight, remember? Our dream, don't you want that? Or did you take my Agar away just so you could go after yours and ruin it like last time?"

Swift stumbled backwards a little, struggling to keep his footing and shock off his face. His twin's train of thought completely rattled him but he kept a tight hold on his bow. 

He hadn't realised how much of a hold Silvera's beliefs had on him until he repeated her selfishness right back. The sheer stupidity of luring Bobble away to somehow ruin the very thing their family prospered for was unthinkable. They would die without their Agars. 

"Of course not, but I need to save her. My Trill it-"

"Of course it's your stupid Trill. It always is. Whether it's getting your Degraders or making that violin. Silvera was right, you always get what you want. For once, why can't I?"

The winds the twins had conjured began to die down but the air began to get colder and thinner like standing on the highest peak of Mt Aaracosta. The rushing crescendo of notes dipped solemnly into a quiet violin solo dotted by the occasional overtaking of an angry flute.

"Stealth…"

"Why can't you stay with me?"

The Windchill erupted in a flurry of major and minor conflicting chords, the Ice Traited completely abandoning his twin to the storm. His flute remained at his side, Stealth desperate to keep playing to keep a hold of the overwhelming force but everything was too much to shoulder alone.

"Because I can hear them!"

The Will' O Wisp let out a sharp major note that sent everything to an abrupt halt, bow flaring as it crested across the strings in one fluid flash of movement, cutting through the icy squall. An ominous blue moon hung in the air like a spotlight, signifying the end of the Windchill. The Limelight had arrived.

"I can hear them, Stealth. I can hear the Trollians. I hear them just as clearly as I hear you." Swift admitted, the breath knocked out of him.

The Air Traited could still see between the spell he had created, wrapping the twins in the harsh Nocturian winds they had conjured. A lone Trollian desperately scrambled above the fog hidden safety rig, a large gash of icy blue claw marks severing its cloud-like body. 

"That's ridiculous…" 

Stealth's hesitation heightened his desperation, begging his twin to see what he did. He needed his trust. He needed someone to believe him.

"It's the truth. Ever since my…accident the constant ringing in my head turns to words every time I'm with them. It's why I know she needs me now, why Bobble is missing, why I need to get to Wicker before he…"

A wail drew his attention up to the rafters but the silver dragon disappeared in the denseness of the flurry, leaving him darting around aimlessly much like before. But with their Traits empowered long after the music had stopped, their emotions still heightened by the storm, Swift failed to notice his brother's frost laden grip on his arm.

"You mean you hear what I tell Bobble? What I confide in him and desperately try to connect with him and you knew about it?"

"Sort of. He likes to rhyme, I guess, but that's not the point. Trollians are hard to translate and Whisper always uses Threespeak but right now she isn't. She's hurt, Stealth. She's hurt badly."

"So, you just lied about it? All that talk about my actions reflecting on my Agar was a lie!"

"No, I mean-"

"You mean what, Swift? That you've been spying on all of us with your little Trill?"

The din of his tinnitus swelled to unbearable lengths, the noise becoming too much for him to focus on anything but the ringing in his ears.

"No, I'd never-"

"I felt bad for you, y'know? Even the High Ringmistress said you'd soar again! But you don't even want to get better, do you?"

"Shut up!"

Stealth's outburst was cut short, the Will'O Wisp crashing to the ground in a swirl of sawdust.

"Just shut up, you, none of you have any idea what it's like to feel this way every, single day! I never asked to feel constantly betrayed by my own Trait, my own family because I can't control it, I can't control anything!"

The wind was still. The frost dwindled into single snowflakes. The wooden flute froze mid note, his brother’s hands still in mid motion but the breath to conjure sound wouldn’t come. Swift’s eyes met his twins, glassy and unmoving. His expression shifted from anger to frustration to fear in a matter of microsections, skin gaunt as the young boy dropped like a stone. He didn’t rise.

"Stealth?" 

His hesitant tone broke through the Windchill’s charm. Trudging through the knee length snowstorm, scrambling towards the still form of his twin still clutching at his throat desperate to cry out but trapped by the glamour of the performance. Swift was a blur of emotion, his mind blank, Trill burning his ears but desperate to reach him. He fell. No. He was pinned.

His threadbare shirt stuck fast to the gathered snow, a series of knives stuck impossibly tight to the loose ground still packed with all manner of grit and sawdust filled snow. He pulled and tugged at his clothes, his eyes blurry but darting around to the collapsing tent, the snapping sound of brittle wood making his hair stand on end. His Trill reacted to the old memory of plummeting from the rig's support, still disorientated but spurred on by fear and sheer adrenaline to break free.

“Don’t move. Don’t you dare move.”

Swift flinched at the sound of his mother’s voice, far harsher than he had ever heard her. Silvera stood in front of his parents, guarding his parents protectively despite his protests to get to his brother. The Fire Traited desperately tried to burn away the cloying frost, the circle tightening in on limiting Stealth’s injuries as much as they could. He couldn’t see his face. He didn’t see him fall. He didn’t see how his frost turned to hyper freeze channeled by his Trait. His Trill. His choices.

His lack of control.

“Please.”

Swift begged, desperately trying to reach his family to no avail, the ice sapping his strength and vision as all the shapes and sounds blurred into one. He could hear his father’s desperation, his mother’s screams but Silvera grabbed him wordlessly at his collar, unhooking her dagger off the floor. He didn’t have the energy to fight back. She dragged him away like some sort of monster, tears burning her eyes as his father’s Trait seared his eyes shut with exhaustion. 

“Help me, Swifty.”

His eyes burst open. A burning forest surrounded him. Close enough to touch. He grasped the air with a fervour he didn’t know he possessed, knocking the Flickerwick heir off her feet and rid her of her knives. A gale of wind sent them flying, the melting snow slickening his grip as he ran but still the familiar cloud-like form eluded him. Dancing between the long, thin like trees the rubble and collapsed tent poles became nothing more than stepping stones. His family surrounded his brother. No one was looking for Stealth’s Agar.

“Bobble!”

The Steam Trolliain turned its head, its strange, disjointed form trapped under a mound of snow. His normally bouncy, plump body was now  translucent blue, barely visible against the night sky as he flickered in and out of sentience. Swift fought the urge to scoop him up, desperate to keep him warm but a part of him, a ringing warning of Trill-like eeriness, forced his shaking hands to remain still.  

“Where’s Whisper?”

His voice caught in his throat, hoarse and unsure as questions swam in his mind before silencing. Bobble was too weak to reply. Swift could barely tell what part of the Trollian’s phasing body was its head, all of its once well-crafted clouds collapsing and rearranging itself until finally it could no longer do so. Only a red thread emerged, entangled against the blue moonlight spotlight of the Limelight.

‘Whispi not here.’

The response made his blood run cold. The same jovial cadence broke into his mental state as his heart shattered over and over again. The Trill sang out in response to his sorrow, pleading for someone, anyone to help a creature no one else would even if it wasn’t his own. He remembered the clearing in the Ironthorn forest, the first time the warm Fyrebloom breeze became more than just his Trait, the mesmerising steps that led into his first solo performance and the very first arrow he had knocked and let soar with the wind. 

Struck down from nowhere, Swift clutched his head. A burst of pain delayed his outcry, white hot against his peripheral as he sunk down into the frost encrusted dirt. The grit dug against his cheek, the fading burn reopening at the sheer force of his father’s hand pressing him against the dirt. He hoped Bobble was OK.

"You care about those damn spirits more than your own family?"

As if speaking his own thoughts aloud, Strongbow brought everything to the forefront, Swift’s delayed reaction miles behind the reply he so desperately wanted to give. No. Of course not. Traited mattered more. Family mattered more. Family never lost control. But he had. 

"Those spirits are what keep us alive! You could've died without Flicka!"

Strongbow sighed, the change in his voice startling his son more than any wrong note ever could. Swift didn’t feel his hand rise off his chest. The pressure remained but he didn't dare to do anything more than sit up. 

"We can find plenty more of these things when the Limelight is over. They are expendable, Swiftling."

Swift preferred being slapped. That part of him, that burning part burrowed deep beneath any kind of Trait, any kind of desperate recognition he once longed for died. He knew what was right. Not true, not in the slightest. But right in the sense of what he cared about most.

"You mean…you're just going to…let them die?"

"You could've killed your brother."

Another slap. No. Deflection. Not what he asked.

"Bobble keeps him alive! I could've-"

"Bobble didn't do this. You did."

It was then that Swift noticed his father's Trait. Everything was silent. His Trill. His family. Everything. Completely frozen in a bubble of time untouched only by searing flame. The flame of change that only the Timekeeper could alter. Strongbow.

The Ringmaster of the Limelight placed his hand in his lap, concealing something under the crook of his arm but gestured to the destruction around him. The flash freeze that had enveloped the tent stretched across the campsite and to the far reaches of the Ironthorn Forest.

"Is this yours, Swift?"

Strongbow unravelled the Will' O Wisp violin untouched by grit, grime, frost and flame. It no longer hummed with the power of his Trait, now a simple wooden violin crudely made by himself. Swift nodded, barely able to speak.

"Yes. I made it with Whisper."

The Air Traited blinked and in that moment, two things occurred in quick succession. The Timekeeper's Trait stopped. Strongbow took one look at his son, picked up the violin and smashed it.

"No!"

Swift lunged for his father but was wrenched back by an arrow pinning him to the ground once more. But there was no blistering heat from the attack. Just a cool, deadly silence that stretched for miles longer than any flash freeze ever could. His mother. Nyxia: the Banshee.

"Go, Swift. Leave."

But mother-"

"No. I've given you enough chances. Whatever that accident did to you I'll never know but...I want you out. Now."

Swift's heart plummeted, the sight of his mother still clinging to a prone Stealth with everything she had. His father was right. He had done this.

"I don't have to perform in the Limelight, I'll-"

"No. You don't understand. You're no longer part of our family...and you're no longer welcome in the Silver Strings with that liability."

Swift couldn't breathe. Despite the arrow inches from his throat he desperately pulled it out, scrambling towards his broken family with everything he had. But they wouldn't even look at him.

"Mother? Please...no. I won't complain about my Trill ever again...please, I-"

Your Trait is a curse and I won't let you hurt anyone else. Not anymore." 

Swift tried to grab her arm but she shrank away, brandishing a Nightspell rune to protect herself. Horrified, the Air Traited tried again with the only choice he had.

"Stealth?"

His brother shivered helplessly in his mother's embrace, Silvera desperately trying to keep him warm. Swift couldn't do anything.

"No, please. I'll find a cure, I'll get more Degraders I promise, I…"

Nyxia's eyes were filled with tears, burning with fury her husband could never comprehend.

"It was never the Trill, Swift. It was you. I never wanted to believe it but your father was right. You're…you're a necromancer."