The pre-dawn chill on the outskirts of Embermark bit into Hatim's skin, deeper than mere cold, as though the ash-dusted wind sought marrow and memory. They trained here—on the broken hem of the city—where the Sinks ended and the wilderness began, and where silence hummed louder than any voice.
The ground was a cracked lattice of stone and soil, split with shallow channels where veins of pure Akar shimmered. They pulsed dimly beneath his bare, blackened soles—like a heartbeat just under skin—thrumming, waiting.
Every movement stirred the ever-present ash, a whispering cloud of grit that clung to his breath and eyelids. And yet, out here, beyond the choking depths of the city, the air tasted different—cleaner, colder, more honest.
Hatim stood trembling before Kander, his chest rising with the ragged breath of someone who had poured out too much, too fast.
The effort to wield Akar left him brittle—like a clay pot fired wrong, full of hairline cracks. He could feel the current beneath his skin, that subtle hum, but when he reached for it, tried to shape it… it slipped away like water cupped in shaking hands.
A Glimmer-Owl cried in the distance, its echo mournful. Ash-Antelopes scattered in startled grace across a jagged ridge. The wilderness didn't speak with lies. Out here, everything listened.
"You move like a beast too long in a cage," Kander said, his voice low, stripped of pity. "And your Akar—flickers. Like a candle that's forgotten why it burns. What do you feel?"
Hatim closed his eyes, trying to find words for what seethed within him. "A heat. A thrum. Sometimes clarity, like truth tearing through fog. But then—" his voice caught, "the echoes return.
Fragments. A girl's laugh. An old hand. A door swinging shut. They distract me. They… hurt."
Kander nodded, slowly. "Those echoes… they are the price of memory. Yours are chained. And chains distort the flow. Akar cannot move through blocked channels. This is why you fail. Why your glyphs collapse. Your intent is not whole. You cannot speak the language of Akar if your tongue trembles at the sound of your own name."
He stepped forward. His hand, gnarled and calloused, rose.
A glyph appeared—drawn not by ink or tool, but shaped from light itself.
A perfect hexagon. Six equal sides, balanced and unwavering. From apex to base, a single golden line bisected it cleanly—like a blade of light holding a world in place.
The glyph pulsed with resonance, humming deep into Hatim's teeth, like a bell struck in his bones. Within its geometry, purpose thrived. It didn't glow; it declared.
"This," Kander said, "is Veshan. The glyph of shielding. Its symmetry speaks order. Its truth is protection. It is among the First Words—the glyphs from which all understanding flows. It is not a tool. It is a sentence in the true language of Akar."
He pressed his will into the glyph, and it thickened—golden lines becoming walls, radiant and unyielding. A training dummy, heavy with sand and stone, soared toward it—launched by a flick of Kander's fingers.
The shield met it like a mountain meets rain. There was no shatter, no recoil. Only silence. The glyph had not even trembled.
Kander turned to Hatim. "Akar is not a wild force to be bent. It is order given voice. Its language is geometry. Glyphs. Symbols carved not into stone, but into reality. If you do not speak with clarity, it will not answer. It is not cruel—it simply will not respond."
Another glyph bloomed: a triangle, upward-pointing, its apex sharp, its base solid. A single horizontal line stretched across it, taut like a drawn bowstring, as if capturing the very tension of movement.
"This is Sennari—the glyph of swiftness. Not speed for speed's sake, but the truth of being where you must, when you must. The grace of wind over water. The intent behind the movement."
He pressed it to his skin, where it sank into his arm like ink into cloth. The golden lines seemed to ripple and tighten around muscle and bone, an almost invisible tremor of acceleration. In an instant, he was gone—then back—before Hatim could exhale. Only the lingering light marked his absence, a faint glow clinging to his arm.
Then came a square. Solid. Dense. From its center radiated a jagged line, like an earthquake frozen in gold. The glyph churned with weight and fury.
"Tharnel—the glyph of force. The mountain's fall. The hammer that breaks the sky. But even this—even fury—must be structured. Without order, it is not power. It is chaos. And True Akar does not answer chaos."
He let the glyphs dissolve.
Hatim stood silent, the words burning into him. These glyphs—they weren't tricks or sigils. They were language. They were truth. And Akar, at its purest, did not listen to noise. It listened to truth, expressed in form.
"You must become the sentence you speak," Kander said. "The glyph must not just exist—it must be felt. Understood. If you lie in its shape, it will die in your hand. This path, of mastering glyphs, is one way to wield Akar. But as your meridians strengthen, you'll find other avenues. The same resonance that carves these glyphs can also be turned inward, to sculpt your very flesh and bone. To make your body a temple of Akar."
He handed Hatim a gourd—smooth obsidian, etched with intricate containment glyphs. Its surface was cool, almost absorbing the pervasive warmth of the Akar veins nearby.
"This is Akar Elixir. It does not give you power. It widens your meridians—those inner channels that carry your essence. Right now, yours are like clogged streams. This will cleanse them, prepare them. Not just for shaping external glyphs, but for the profound internal changes a Wielder can achieve. But push too hard, and you will rupture. Even fire must flow gently or it destroys the hearth. Our Akar burns, Hatim.
It burns. Carry a coolant, always. Your channels can overheat, and water can be used now as the only balm."
Hatim drank. The warmth hit his chest like sunrise through frost, immediate and potent. His skin pricked with a thousand needles of energy.
The world sharpened, colors deeper, the low hum of the Akar veins beneath his feet suddenly clearer, almost melodic. The echoes retreated, quieter behind the roar of clarity, like frightened birds.
"Now," Kander said, voice hard. "Return to Veshan. Find the shape within yourself. Not for survival—but for someone else. Protection is not a shield. It is a promise."
The days blurred. Weeks passed, not in time, but in repetition. The rising and falling of Embermark's twin moons. The grinding of his bare feet against ash-strewn stone, the constant whisper of the wind over exposed Akar veins.
The weight of glyphs etched into flesh and mind. Hatim trained like a man possessed—not by ambition, but by need. He drank the elixir, always followed by gulps of water, feeling the cool liquid soothe the internal inferno, guiding the Akar flow.
The glyphs responded more now. Not perfectly, but longer. Brighter. Stronger. Veshan no longer flickered—it held, its perfect hexagon a solid declaration.
The Sennari glyph, when he tried it, clung to his muscles, a thin golden membrane that made his limbs twitch with suppressed speed. He felt the pull, the potential for his body to become something more, beyond just external power.
And then, one morning, after surviving Kander's furious barrage, after standing behind a shield etched from his soul, Kander sat him down. Something in the old man's face had shifted. Not pride. Something deeper.
Desperation.
"You want your past?" Kander asked, his eyes fixed beyond the ash horizon, toward the spires of the Crowns. "You want the truth? Then there is only one way forward now."
Hatim's heart stuttered. He had heard rumors. Whispers in the Sinks. The Trial. The death sentence wrapped in ceremony. His voice was barely a whisper. "You mean… the competition?"
Kander met his eyes. "No. The Trial of Resonance."
Hatim flinched. The name was heavier than he'd expected. Resonance. As in harmony. As in judgment.
"It is no mere contest," Kander said. "It is a reckoning. A crucible to prove not just skill, but resonance—that your Akar speaks true, that your intent aligns with the order and creation it demands. If you succeed, if your performance is… convincing… if your glyphs declare your truth without faltering… they may grant you passage into the Lower Noble houses.
Into their halls. Their archives. Into the records of the Fountain of Memory."
A scar tugged at the corner of Kander's mouth. "I trained among them once. Before exile. Before truth became unwelcome."
He stepped closer, voice tight with memory. "They hold knowledge of the Unbinding, Hatim. Of Ancient glyphs no longer spoken aloud. Of the purest veins of Akar. Of truths that burn through memory. If you want to find Lyra… if you want to remember who you were… you must pass the Trial. You must force them to see you."
Hatim looked past him. Toward the veiled Crown spires.
Once, they had looked distant. Untouchable. Now, they looked like the end of a path. And the beginning of another.
He clenched his fist. The glyph of Veshan stirred faintly beneath his skin.
He would speak his truth.
And the Akar would answer.