Kaltrava, four days before the Speaker Rite
The air in Kaltrava always smelled of moss and smoke, like something ancient had just finished breathing and hadn't quite decided if it would exhale again. Tavian liked that about it. Or maybe he just told himself that, the same way he told himself he didn't mind waking up before the sun just to carry firewood for a rite he wasn't invited to.
He balanced the bundle of wet logs on his shoulder, spine already aching from the slope, and forced his feet up the slick, root-tangled path toward the elder hearth. His boots squelched in mud that seemed to whisper with every step. Hollow-breath, the old ones called it, earth soaked with the memory of beasts that had once passed this way.
Tavian glanced over his shoulder, half expecting to see something watching him from the underbrush.
Nothing.
Again.
Still.
He'd had that feeling for weeks now. That someone, or something, was following him, just far enough behind to stay unseen.
He shifted the wood and kept walking.
By the time he reached the hearthring, his shirt was soaked through and the mist was just starting to glow with morning light. The hearth stood at the top of a rise framed by stone teeth, seven slabs carved with clan markings, circling a fire that hadn't been allowed to die for three hundred years. Today it was little more than smoke and whispering ash.
Sariah was already there.
Of course she was.
She sat cross-legged beside the fire, face still, eyes closed, both hands resting on the ground like she could feel something moving underneath it.
Her beasts waited just beyond her shoulders.
Seyla, the Verdant Hart, her shape like that of a great deer, though her antlers curled into spirals of living vine. Her hooves left no mark, yet moss grew brighter where she stepped. Small motes of green shimmer trailed from her antlers, drifting like pollen in morning light.
Maerith, the Hollow Wolf, was shadow made flesh. His fur never quite settled into full form, sometimes smoke, sometimes ash-gray strands that moved as if stirred by an unseen wind. His eyes were empty of light, but not of perception.
They didn't look at Tavian.
Neither did she.
"Morning," he said, careful to keep his voice casual.
Sariah opened one eye. "You're late."
"You're early."
"I've been here since moonfall."
Tavian set the wood down harder than necessary.
Sariah ignored the gesture.
"Elder Velin says the Rite will be finished before dusk."
Tavian didn't answer.
"You could watch," she added. "If you wanted."
He kept his back to her, arranging the logs like it mattered.
"I wasn't invited."
Sariah stood, dusting off her knees like the weight of the world was just something she could brush away.
"You don't need an invitation to care."
He looked up then, and for a moment the twinness of them hit hard. Same bone structure, same wide-set eyes. But hers glowed faintly now, touched by Pulse and power and favor. His did not.
"You say that like it's easy," he said.
"It is," she said. "Or it should be."
Behind her, Maerith growled low. Not at Tavian, just into the air, like warning something no one else could sense.
"The sky itches," Maerith muttered, voice like gravel swept through wind. "Storms do not hide this long."
Seyla turned her antlers, eyes calm but alert.
Sariah went still.
Tavian watched them all tense together and felt, again, like a stone just outside the river. Present, but never moved.
"What is it?" he asked.
Maerith's growl deepened. The fur along his shoulders lifted.
Then, just as suddenly, it stopped.
The Hollow Wolf sat down.
"Gone again," Maerith said. "Or pretending."
They walked back together, mostly in silence.
Kaltrava woke slowly, green and dripping and half-submerged in memory. The trees here didn't just grow; they listened. Each root remembered footsteps. Each branch whispered to the next. And between those breaths lived the beasts.
Small ones moved through the canopy, feather-backed wits and darting vinekits. A Stonecrawler, the size of a goat, with shale-plated limbs and mossy eyes, blinked once as they passed, then melded back into bark. Its species was known to ferry memory spores between grave-sites.
A pair of children darted past on the path, laughing, a Common-class skybeetle flitting above them like a nervous parent. The beetle glinted blue and gold, wings thrumming in bursts of alarm, bonded, likely, to the younger one. Used often as early bond companions and weather-scouts, they were quick to flee but quicker to warn.
Tavian said nothing.
Sariah eventually broke the quiet. "You've been having the dream again."
He stiffened.
She didn't need to ask. She always knew.
"It's just a feeling," he muttered.
"You dreamed of the Veil opening again, didn't you?"
He didn't answer.
She continued anyway.
"Last time that happened, the Storm caught fire. That wasn't a normal dream, Tay."
He hated when she called him that. Not because it was wrong, but because it reminded him of when things were simpler. When he wasn't the only sibling left unbonded. When he wasn't just a shadow beside her glow.
Their mother was waiting at the lower tier.
Amahra Ke'Meira stood with her arms folded, a woven sash of Hollow-Verdant Pulse wrapped around one wrist, tribal glyphs drawn in fresh ash across her brow. She didn't smile when she saw them, but her presence alone was a kind of gravity, something you felt in your gut before your eyes caught up.
Sariah approached first, lowering her head slightly.
"Mother," she said.
"Sariah," Amahra returned. "Is it done?"
"The hearth is set. Tavian helped."
Amahra's gaze shifted to her son. Her expression didn't change.
"Good," she said. "We need to keep the fire steady. No disruptions before the Rite."
Tavian nodded, unsure whether that counted as praise.
Amahra turned to Sariah.
"Go prepare with the Speakers. Your beasts should rest before the summoning."
Sariah went without hesitation. Seyla followed like a second shadow. Maerith lingered, eyes on Tavian for one heartbeat longer than was comfortable, before slipping after his bond.
Then it was just Tavian and his mother.
He waited.
She didn't speak.
Finally, he broke the silence.
"You think it's strange, don't you? That I still haven't bonded."
Amahra's eyes narrowed, not in anger, but in measurement.
"You're seventeen."
"I know."
"You're a Ke'Meira."
"I know that too."
She studied him.
"Some trees grow faster in shade."
Tavian blinked. "Is that supposed to help?"
"No," she said. "It's supposed to remind you that you're not broken. But you are behind. And in Kaltrava, being behind gets you trampled."
She turned before he could answer.
Tavian stood alone, fists clenched.
And somewhere, not far, but not near, a storm cracked.