A chill wind whipped across the Silent Crag, carrying the tang of salt and the scent of damp earth. Elian Vane stood over the felled aether-beast, its head a pulped ruin, the crude stone he’d hurled with aetheric force still clutched in his hand. Knight Kaelen, his face streaked with grime and blood, watched him with an unsettling intensity.
Elian felt a ripple of unease. Helping Kaelen had been an impulse, a raw reaction to the knight's pain, but the risk was undeniable. If Kaelen spoke of a boy on a forgotten crag who could shatter beasts with an unseen hand, Elian’s quiet life would shatter with it. He’d be hunted, dissected, or worse – drawn into the very world his mother had warned him against.
Yet, Kaelen had offered respect, a rare courtesy on this isolated edge of the Shattered Aethel. He’d treated Elian not as a crude shepherd, but as an equal, even in his own distress.
“Are you hurt badly?” Elian asked, his voice low, the words feeling foreign after hours of silence.
Kaelen, however, didn't answer. His gaze, once fixed on Elian, now darted to the headless aether-beast. A flicker of alarm crossed his features.
“Watch out!” Kaelen’s shout tore through the air.
No explanation was needed. The aether-beast, a moment ago a lifeless husk, convulsed. Its shattered neck pulsed with an sickly green light, an undulating aura where its head had been. The creature lurched upward, a headless, spectral hunter, and lunged toward Elian.
Instinct, sharp and sudden, flared. Elian pushed off the ground, a frantic scramble backward. The phantom jaws snapped at empty air where he’d stood. He could feel the cold void of its aetheric presence, the corrupted currents that held its ruined form together.
The beast’s charge carried it past him, its heavy body rolling dozens of feet before righting itself. It seemed untouched by its own momentum, propelled by something beyond flesh and bone.
“Undead spirits ignore physical blows!” Kaelen yelled, pressing a hand to his bleeding brow.
“How do I stop it, then?” Elian demanded, his mind racing, trying to perceive the aetheric architecture of this reanimated thing.
“Fire or bolt-light!” Kaelen’s words were strained, but clear.
Elian extended a hand, focusing. He tried to draw heat, to twist the ambient aether into searing flame around the beast. He pictured the burning embers his mother tended, the crackle of a warm hearth. The aether around his palm shimmered, a faint warmth, but it dissipated before it could coalesce into anything substantial. It was like trying to mend a ship’s mast with a whisper – the raw power was there, but the *application* eluded him.
Kaelen’s eyes widened, a flicker of understanding dawning. He had seen Elian’s raw strength earlier, but this clumsy attempt at elemental manipulation confirmed something profound. Direct shaping of complex aetheric currents, especially against a living (or unliving) creature, required a precise causality that Elian clearly hadn’t been taught.
And certainly, a boy on an isolated crag wouldn’t know how to disperse the corrupting aether of a slain beast, lest it reanimate.
“Don’t just reach for it,” Kaelen shouted, “*Focus* it! Give it shape, then propel it!”
Elian absorbed the advice. He was used to manipulating aether with subtle nudges, to mending and perceiving. Direct, destructive force was different. He closed his eyes for a heartbeat, picturing the intricate lines of a map, the way currents flowed and converged. He’d always understood *paths*.
When his eyes opened, a faint, shimmering orb of light began to coalesce above his palm. It wasn’t just raw heat; it was structured, contained. He channeled more aether, feeling the currents within his own core twist and churn, then, with a sharp, outward thrust of his arm, he *launched* it.
The orb, a focused spear of white-hot aether, shot across the space, impacting the aether-beast’s pulsing, green neck. A shriek, raw and chilling, tore from the creature as the concentrated energy clung to its spectral form, consuming it.
The beast thrashed, rolling on the rocky ground, trying to extinguish the burning aether against the earth. But Elian’s channeled force, unlike Kaelen’s earlier physical blows, was not deterred. It fed on the corrupted aether, a relentless, consuming hunger.
Elian fixed his gaze, pouring every iota of focus, every thread of his will into maintaining the searing current. The creature’s form flickered, its green radiance dimming, shrinking. After what felt like an eternity, but was likely thirty heartbeats, the spectral body convulsed one last time, a final, ragged wail echoing across the crag, before it dissolved into nothing but fading mist.
Both Elian and Kaelen let out a staggered breath, the tension releasing like a stretched rope snapping.
“Is it truly gone?” Elian asked, the words raspy.
“Yes… For now. Absorb the residual aether, Elian. Unless you wish to face another of its kind.” Kaelen pointed to the spot where the beast had vanished.
Absorbing aether was not difficult, though Elian had only ever done it subconsciously, drawing power from the very air of the Crag. He extended his hand, imagining the lingering currents, the faint impressions of the beast’s raw power. A tendril of the same pale green aura, less sickening now, flowed from the ground and seeped into his skin, into his very bones.
A strange sensation coursed through him, a chill and a warmth intertwined. It was as if something alien, yet profoundly *right*, was settling deep within him. A new strength, a sharpening of his senses, began to awaken. It was thrilling, unsettling, and undeniably potent. His body shivered, humming with the foreign power.
“Is this truly your first time absorbing aether in such a way?” Kaelen asked, his voice hushed.
“Yes,” Elian managed, still grappling with the internal shift.
“Unbelievable.” Kaelen shook his head. “The raw potency… Most grow their connection slowly, with age, or through long study. This… this is a torrent.” He looked at Elian with a new understanding, a respect bordering on awe. “To command such power without formal training… Tell me, young Vane, to what noble lineage do you belong? Your house must be ancient.”
Elian flinched. The abrupt shift in Kaelen’s tone, the sudden formality, felt like a barrier rising between them. He didn’t want Kaelen, who had shown him such genuine courtesy, to humble himself before him. He was no noble, just a mapmaker and shepherd on a rock at the edge of the world.
“Let’s see to your wounds first,” Elian said, gesturing to the blood still oozing from Kaelen’s brow.
---
Kaelen winced, a soft groan escaping him as Elian dabbed a poultice of crushed leaves onto the gash above his eye. The herbal paste, cool and sharp, stemmed the flow of blood. Elian then wrapped a strip of clean linen, salvaged from his meager stores, around Kaelen’s head. His home, a sparse cave carved into the rock face, held only essentials: mapping tools, a few books, and simple remedies for the occasional scrape or sprain.
He wished he could simply mend the flesh with aether, but he knew the cost. Repairing another’s body required an immense outflow, a delicate reshaping of biological currents. To heal Kaelen’s scalp would drain him completely, leaving him hollow.
“My apologies, young master,” Kaelen murmured, his eyes closed as Elian worked. “To think I imposed such a task on one of your distinction.”
“I’ve told you,” Elian sighed, the frustration clear in his tone, “I’m no master, no noble. Just Elian. A shepherd, a mapmaker. I don’t even know who my father was, truly.” He fixed Kaelen with a stare, trying to convey the depth of his discomfort with the forced reverence.
Kaelen opened his eyes, met Elian’s gaze, then shook his head in resignation. “Alright, alright, Elian. Your point is taken.” A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched Elian’s lips.
“But I must ask,” Kaelen continued, his voice softening, “why does someone with your gifts live here? As a shepherd? No disrespect to the calling, but it seems… ill-suited for you.”
The question was a mirror of the one Elian had posed yesterday, regarding Kaelen’s presence on the Crag. Elian found he couldn’t answer with the same straightforward pride. He didn’t feel pride in his shepherding, only a quiet duty.
“It’s a long story.” Elian began to recount his childhood, the quiet life with his mother, the whispered warnings of the dangers beyond the Crag – the grasping hands of power, the cruelty of distant sky-spire lords, the stories of those who wielded magic being enslaved or exploited. He spoke of his own awakening, the strange, terrifying pulse of aether within him, and his mother’s desperate pleas to keep it hidden.
Kaelen listened, nodding slowly, his expression thoughtful.
“She was a wise woman,” Kaelen finally said, when Elian fell silent.
“Do you think so?” Elian raised an eyebrow, surprised. He’d expected Kaelen, a knight, to dismiss his mother’s fears as provincial, to assure him the world wasn’t so bleak.
“Twenty years ago,” Kaelen began, his gaze distant, “House Thorne, the family I served, waged a brutal war with the Obsidian Clans. Of our three thousand knights, nearly a third were lost. Nine hundred souls.”
“Almost a thousand,” Elian breathed, the scale of it staggering.
“The true tragedy,” Kaelen continued, a tremor in his voice, “was that every soul I held dear, everyone I knew personally, was among that third. My two closest companions, my wife, my son. All gone. Only I survived.” Kaelen’s face twisted with an emotion too profound for words. Elian could only guess at the depth of such sorrow, perhaps akin to his own loss, only amplified, multiplied.
After a long, heavy silence, Kaelen’s expression brightened, as if shaking off the weight of memory. “Your mother’s wisdom was sound in many ways. The life of a knight, or any warrior, is often fleeting. But there was one thing she misjudged, Elian. Your talent. It far exceeds that of a mere knight.”
“Does it?” Elian asked, a strange mix of skepticism and dawning hope stirring within him.
“It’s a little… humbling to say, given my current state,” Kaelen chuckled, a dry, raspy sound, “but I am a knight of considerable skill. Yet you easily bested a creature I struggled against, a creature that then reanimated with a corrupted spirit. And you did it without ever properly absorbing aether.” Kaelen took a slow sip of the goat’s milk Elian offered.
“That level of innate ability, Elian, makes you noble. Not just any noble, mind you. One of the highest rank. A Lord of the Currents, perhaps.” To Elian, it still felt unreal, a fantasy conjured by a man who had lost much. He had believed his mother’s words for so long, that his power was merely enough to protect himself, to be a ‘knight’ at best.
“My mother said my father was a knight,” Elian mused. “Could she have… not been entirely truthful?”
“Exceptions always exist,” Kaelen replied. “Not all children of great aether-weavers are equally gifted. Sometimes, a true master of currents is born to humble folk, or a powerful house produces one with limited sight. These cases are rare, but they happen. Life finds its own paths.” Elian thought of a family in the small fishing village across the strait, where a short, squat couple had produced a son taller than any man Elian had ever seen – a son who bore a striking resemblance to the village’s burly, red-headed boatwright.
“For that reason, Elian,” Kaelen continued, his voice earnest, “I believe you should leave this Crag.”
“Why?”
“Because humanity needs more like you. We are not yet the undisputed masters of the Shattered Aethel. The aether-beasts grow bolder, and the forgotten races—the Glimmerkin, the Stone-Shapers, the Sky-Lurkers—they bide their time, waiting for our endless squabbles to weaken us. And all the while, the noble houses war amongst themselves. A strong, virtuous noble, someone who can perceive and mend the very fabric of reality… one more such person, Elian, is desperately needed.”
The forgotten races. Elian had only heard tales, old stories from his mother, fantastical as myths. To him, they were no more real than the ancient gods. But Kaelen spoke of them as tangible threats, an encroaching shadow beyond the Crag.
“Besides,” Kaelen added, leaning forward slightly, “it is a waste for a talent like yours to wither here. You’re not truly content as a shepherd, are you?” He must have recalled Elian’s earlier evasiveness when asked about his life.
After a long moment, Elian gave a slow, reluctant nod. He wasn’t content. His maps were a comfort, but the restless intelligence, the power stirring within him, yearned for more, for understanding, for purpose.
“Your mother’s fears, while understandable, are largely exaggerated for someone of your capability,” Kaelen said gently. “An ordinary knight might be at risk, yes. But even the great houses show a certain deference, a certain respect, toward fellow aether-weavers. And someone as potent as you? There is no question.”
“So I wouldn’t be dragged off, forced into servitude by some distant lord?” Elian asked, the old, ingrained fear still a cold knot in his stomach.
“As with all things in the world, there are no absolute guarantees, Elian.” Kaelen’s honesty was stark.
A thousand thoughts spun through Elian’s mind, a storm of conflicting currents. A part of him, a part that yearned for belonging and purpose, wanted to believe Kaelen’s words, to embrace the possibilities. But the fear, nurtured since childhood, held firm, a silent, unyielding anchor.
While Elian wrestled with the silent turmoil, Kaelen sat patiently on the rough cot, his bandaged head a stark white against his weathered skin, quietly awaiting Elian’s decision.
After what felt like an eternity, but was perhaps only a few minutes, Elian spoke, his voice barely above a whisper.
“What… what could I gain, if I were to go?”
Reading the unspoken determination, the nascent hunger for a world beyond the Crag, Kaelen smiled, a genuine, warm expression. “That, Elian Vane, depends entirely on what you truly desire. Wealth, fame, power… or perhaps family, kinship, and a place to truly belong.”