Chapter 3
Morning broke gently over the Tower Temple, and with it came the familiar fragrance of incense curling through the air like whispered prayers. Azunya stepped out of his chambers, pausing for a breath. The scent stirred something deep in him—something he hadn’t realized he’d missed during his time in Khemet.
He stood on the first floor of the residential wing, the marble beneath his feet cool and polished smooth by centuries of use. These were the quarters reserved for Ascended Custodians—those who had completed their trials and were recognized as full bearers of the Aether. The students, still in training, shared dormitories farther down the eastern wing.
Life within the Temple was its own rhythm, distinct from the rest of Aetheria. Here, time moved in cycles of discipline, devotion, and discovery.
From his vantage, Azunya looked out across the open corridor to the training grounds below. The courtyard buzzed with youthful energy. Dozens of initiates—wide-eyed and hungry for greatness—moved through drills under the morning sun.
One group in particular caught his attention: four young custodians, likely no older than fifteen to eighteen, clustered near one of the dummies. Three boys and a girl. They were directly beneath him, and their voices rose easily to his ears—eavesdropping wasn't necessary.
The girl stood stiffly, brows furrowed, attempting to conjure fire. But instead of flames, a series of sharp gusts blasted from her hands, rattling the training dummy with each misfire.
"You're doing it wrong," said one of the boys—a tall, red-haired youth with a head full of unruly curls and the easy confidence of someone who’d never failed loudly enough.
He stepped forward, puffing his chest a little as the other two watched on. "You’ve got to feel the Aether," he explained, with theatrical emphasis. "Let it move through your whole body. It’s not about forcing it—it's about becoming it. Only when you’re one with it will it respond to your thoughts... then it’ll give you whatever element you ask for."
He smirked, already half-smirking at his own brilliance. “Watch this.”
With a practiced flick of the wrist and a dramatic narrowing of his eyes, the boy summoned flame—not from tinder, not from spark, but conjured out of the air itself. A stream of fire curled upward from his open palm, dancing for a moment before he let it fade.
“See?” he said, turning to the girl with a grin of triumph. “That’s how you do it.”
But the girl didn’t clap, didn’t smile. Her expression stayed flat, unimpressed. She simply crossed her arms, the wind still rustling faintly around her fingers.
One of the boys standing beside the girl—slim, with a head of frizzy, shoulder-length black hair—offered a quiet reassurance.
“You’ll get it with practice, Cerys,” he said gently.
His name was Ori. There was warmth in his voice, but his eyes flicked toward the red-haired boy with a touch of exasperation. “Lahm’s just showing off. As usual.”
Cerys didn’t respond at first. She only nodded, but the tension in her jaw said more than her silence did.
Then came the fourth: a shorter, bald boy with a sharp tongue and an even sharper grin. “Or maybe,” he said with mock sweetness, “she’s just not bonded deeply enough with the Aether to conjure fire.”
The jab hung in the air.
“Shut up, Anur,” Ori snapped, turning to him. “Coming from someone who hasn’t even bonded with the Aether at all. You’ll probably end up a scribe. At least Cerys can blow you across the courtyard if she wanted to.”
The grin vanished from Anur’s face like a smothered flame.
“If I had bonded,” he muttered, “my first spell would be on you, Ori.”
Lahm burst into laughter, loud and unrestrained. “You two fight like a married couple.”
Ori rolled his eyes, but it was Cerys who responded—her voice sharp.
“What are you laughing at?” she challenged, her tone cutting through Lahm’s amusement. “If you’re such a prodigy, let’s see you summon vine roots from the ground.”
The laughter stopped cold.
A pause. Not just from Lahm—but from everyone. Even among Ascended Custodians, manipulating plant life without the aid of a gauntlet was no easy feat. It required more than skill. It demanded communion.
Cerys’s lips twitched into a rare smile as Ori chuckled beside her. She raised her hands and signed something quickly—her gestures fluid and emphatic.
You heard him. Let’s see it.
The others caught on, and a few nearby students slowed their sparring to watch. A small crowd began to form, the anticipation electric.
Lahm hesitated. Just for a second.
But that was enough to see the doubt flicker behind his eyes.
Backing down wasn’t an option now.
Lahm swallowed hard, the heat rising behind his ears as the quiet around him grew too still. He closed his eyes, drawing in a slow, shaky breath.
He reached inward, seeking the flow of the Aether.
It was there—distant, reluctant, but present. Like a river behind glass.
He pressed his palm to the ground, fingers spread, and whispered a silent command. His other hand followed, tracing uncertain sigils in the air. He could feel the threads of life beneath the stone—the deep tangle of roots slumbering in the soil, hidden and stubborn.
Grow, he willed them. Begging the Aether for its blessing.
Nothing happened.
A breath of laughter slipped from Cerys. Ori joined her with a stifled chuckle.
“Come on, Lahm,” Ori called down, half-amused. “Everyone’s watching.”
“Don’t listen to them!” Anur hissed at his side, voice sharp with panic. “Just focus—do it before they all laugh!”
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Lahm grit his teeth. His brow furrowed. Sweat began to bead along his forehead as his arms started to tremble from the effort. He pushed harder, deeper into the Aether’s current, his mind clawing at its edge.
And then—
A sudden snap. A rumble beneath their feet.
Gasps rang out as a thick, gnarled vine burst through the stone tiles with a crack, curling upward like a serpent stretching to the sun.
Silence followed. No one moved.
Cerys’s mouth hung slightly open. Ori stepped back in disbelief. The laughter had vanished—replaced by awe.
Even Lahm remained still, eyes wide as he looked at what he had done. For a heartbeat, he didn’t seem to believe it himself.
Then, slowly, the shock gave way to something else.
Pride.
His lips curled into a grin—arrogant, triumphant.
He rose to his feet and turned to face them all, puffing his chest as the gathered students broke into applause and murmurs of astonishment.
“Ha!” Lahm shouted, voice carrying across the courtyard. “Cerys! Ori! What were you saying again?”
He gestured grandly to the vine twisting beside him. “Do you see this? One day, I’ll be Grand Overseer. And when that day comes—Cerys, you’ll be my personal watchguard, standing outside my chamber.”
Anur roared with laughter. “And what about Ori?”
Lahm didn’t miss a beat. “Ori?” he said with a crooked smirk. “He’ll be my personal servant. He’s useless otherwise.”
The boys laughed together, their voices echoing off the stone walls. But they didn’t notice what the others did.
Though Lahm had withdrawn his hand… the vine hadn’t stopped growing.
It continued to twist upward, slowly, unnaturally—splitting at the stem, forming strange tendrils that moved as if they searched for something.
Lahm didn’t see it.
The vine’s tendrils twisted unnaturally, reaching out—not aimlessly, but with intention.
Before anyone could react, they snapped toward Lahm and coiled around his leg, locking him in place.
He looked down, confusion breaking across his face. “What the—?”
But the question never finished.
With sudden force, the tendrils yanked, and Lahm’s footing vanished beneath him. He hit the ground hard, the wind knocked from his chest. Panic surged in his eyes as he clawed at the marble tiles.
“Lahm!” Anur shouted, rushing to his side, grabbing his arm to pull—but the vine’s grip was too strong. It dragged Lahm across the courtyard floor, a trail of grit left in his wake.
Students scattered in alarm. Shouts rang out. What had begun as a spectacle turned swiftly into chaos.
And then—just as quickly as it had begun—the vine stopped moving.
The courtyard fell still.
Then someone in the gathering gasped, pointing beyond the group. “It—it wasn’t Lahm. It’s him.”
All eyes turned.
From the outer edge of the courtyard, a lone figure stepped forward. Black robes fluttered faintly in the breeze—distinct among the white garments of the students. He walked with no urgency, no alarm, only a faint smirk pulling at the corner of his lips.
Azunya.
He moved through the parted crowd like a shadow drifting through sunlight, calm and unreadable.
As he neared the struggling vine, he raised his hand—then flicked his fingers in a motion so casual it seemed dismissive.
The tendrils recoiled instantly.
Like hounds scolded by their master, they released Lahm without resistance, slithering back into the earth from which they came—vanishing beneath the stones as if they had never been.
Silence settled over the training ground, heavy and electric.
Lahm lay flat on the floor, breath ragged, his confidence stripped as quickly as it had risen. Anur stood beside him, frozen, unsure whether to speak or run.
Ori and Cerys stared at Azunya, their expressions caught somewhere between awe and uncertainty.
Azunya looked down at the four of them, his expression unreadable, his voice calm.
The students who had gathered began to scatter, murmuring in hushed, startled voices as they moved aside.
“Never seen him before.”
“Is he even part of the Temple?”
“He’s not wearing a gauntlet…”
But Azunya paid no attention to their whispers.
His gaze remained fixed on the four before him.
“The Aether bonds with whom it wills,” he said softly, eyes lingering on Lahm, who still brushed dust from his robe. Then his focus shifted—first to Ori, then to Anur, and finally to Cerys.
He let the silence hang.
“What if I told you,” he continued, voice even, “that that’s the greatest lie the Temple ever taught us?”
The four students exchanged uncertain glances.
Lahm rose stiffly to his feet, brushing his robes clean as he joined the others in a loose line. Cerys, however, didn’t look unsettled. She tilted her head slightly, arms crossed, the wind still faintly rustling around her.
“We’ve heard that one before,” she replied coolly. “You’ll tell us we’re not trying hard enough, won’t you… Master...?”
She held his gaze, just a hint of defiance beneath the surface.
Azunya felt the corner of his mouth twitch—not quite a smile, but close. There was something familiar in her eyes. A glint of fire he remembered seeing in his own reflection, once upon a time.
“Master Baalberith,” he answered, watching her carefully.
A voice cut in behind him.
“I thought your name was Azunya.”
Azunya turned slightly.
A boy with deep ebony skin stepped forward from the crowd—one he recognized from the temple gates the day before.
“I don’t recall telling you my name,” Azunya said, eyes narrowing just slightly.
“You didn’t,” the boy replied without fear. “My brother did. I saw you speaking to him yesterday at the Grand Ascension.”
Azunya studied him for a moment. The posture. The voice.
“You’re Xur’s brother?”
The boy nodded. “Name’s Rezar.”
Azunya nodded once. “Well met, Rezar.”
Then, for the first time in days, he allowed a real smile to surface. It came and went like a breeze.
“Well then, Rezar,” he said, “I carry two names. One the Temple gave me when it found me… and the other Khemet gave me when I found them.”
His gaze drifted momentarily, his thoughts pulling him elsewhere.
“Now that Grand Overseer Myr is gone,” he added quietly, “I don’t see much reason to keep the name he gave me alive.”
A brief hush followed.
Then his voice shifted—lightening, casual, almost amused.
“But I don’t mind what you call me,” he said, turning back to the group. “Names are just masks. What matters is who wears them.”
“About what you said earlier…” Ori spoke up, his voice quiet but steady. “You said the Aether’s bond—it isn’t something the Aether chooses?”
Azunya turned his eyes to him, the playful edge in his expression fading into something more thoughtful.
“The Aether does choose,” he said at last. “It chooses whom to bond with. It chooses how much to give. That is what we are taught.”
He glanced toward Lahm, then gestured to Cerys.
“But doesn’t that sound like a decree handed down by fate? A limitation carved into you before you could even begin to rise? Why would the Aether choose to flow more freely through Lahm than it does through Cerys?”
Then Azunya looked directly at Anur.
“Or you, Anur—why grant you no flow at all?”
Ori’s gaze dropped to the ground, a flush of quiet shame rising in his cheeks.
Azunya’s voice, calm as ever, continued. “Does that sound like the divine justice of a fair god? Or does it sound like a convenient truth—crafted by men too proud to admit they don’t understand the very force they worship?”
A long pause followed.
Azunya smiled.
Not mockingly. But knowingly.
The kind of smile that plants doubt like seeds in fresh soil.
Azunya could see it—the shifting thoughts behind their eyes. The tension of belief cracking, just a little. That was what he wanted.
And then—
“No, no…” Rezar said, shaking his head. “That’s not how a custodian in training should think.”
Azunya raised an eyebrow, the smirk returning. “Well then, enlighten us, Master Rezar. Explain the imbalance in the Aether’s blessing.”
Rezar hesitated. He opened his mouth—then faltered, no answer ready.
Someone else stepped forward from the edge of the gathering. A girl with dark, radiant skin and cropped, coiled hair. Her posture was upright, her voice even.
“Rezar’s right,” she said. “The Aether chooses because it sees what we don’t. It understands what’s best—for all of us. Even if we don’t always like it.”
Rezar turned to her as she spoke, the light in his expression unmistakable. Admiration. Maybe something more.
Azunya noticed it instantly.
“And you are?” he asked.
Rezar quickly answered, “That’s… my friend, Carla. She’s training to be a healer.”
Carla nodded politely. Rezar smiled at her. She smiled back.
Azunya let the silence linger before he replied, voice softer now, but no less sharp.
“Then tell me this, Carla. If the Aether has denied its flow to Anur…” —he looked toward the shorter boy, still quiet and unsure— “and yet I can help him bond with it… would that not make it the Aether’s will after all?”
“That’s impossible,” Ori said, brows knitting as he looked between Azunya and Anur.
“Is it?” Azunya didn’t hesitate.
The challenge in his voice hung heavy in the air.
“Meet me here,” he said, turning away. “Midnight. Anur bonds with the Aether tonight.”
And with that, Azunya walked off—his black robes trailing behind him like shadow against marble.
The courtyard remained silent. The students stood motionless, eyes wide, minds racing.
Six young students, each changed by a single idea they couldn’t unhear.
***
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