Arden turned fourteen beneath a sky the color of pale steel.
Age in the Vaelorian bloodline carried little ceremony—no feast, no festival, no blessing. Instead, it carried expectation. And expectations, in their lineage, always arrived wearing the shape of discipline.
On the morning of his fourteenth year, he joined the five other Vaelorian youths in the lower courtyard, where frost clung stubbornly to the flagstones. Elder Rhyden stood waiting, arms folded behind his back, watching them form a rigid semicircle.
"Today," he announced, "your childhood ends."
A figure stepped from a side door.
He was tall, almost lanky, yet every line of his body spoke of hardened muscle. His dark hair was tied back in a careless knot. His robes were simple—practical, worn from movement rather than ceremonies. His eyes held the sharpness of someone who had survived more battles than stories dared to recount, yet a faint smirk tugged at his mouth, hinting that humor had not been burned out of him.
"This," Rhyden said with the tone of a man resigning himself to fate, "is Kael. He will oversee your training."
Kael raised a hand in greeting.
"Rules are simple," he said. "If you fall, stand. If you bruise, breathe. If you think I'm being unfair…"
He shrugged. "You're correct."
A few of the children exchanged uneasy glances.
Kael grinned. "Good. Let's begin."
Training under him blurred the days together.
Kael moved like a dancer shaped by storms, correcting stances with sharp taps of his staff and pushing them harder than any of them expected. Despite his humor, he spared no softness—not even the illusion of it.
"Your opponent will not pity you," he said more than once. "So I refuse to insult you by pretending otherwise."
Bruises became another language. Soreness, a constant companion. The youths stumbled, gasped, fell, and rose again. Arden was neither the weakest nor the strongest—but he learned quickly, and Kael noticed.
"You think before you strike," Kael told him one afternoon. "Good. Just don't think so long, you die."
Arden tried not to smile.
A week later, just as dawn bled pale color across the high windows, the Summoning came.
It was a deep thrum through the stone—neither sound nor flashy, but unmistakable. All six children froze where they stood, wide-eyed. Elders arrived moments later, robes whispering across the floor.
Elder Marath ordered guards, workers, and all non-Vaelorian blood to get out. The household gathered within the hall.
Arden's stomach knotted. Memories of the Summoning that had taken his brother surged like cold water. Yet he was not the trembling child he had been at nine. Fear still gripped him—but now it lived beside resolve, steadied by the hardships he and the other five had endured.
Elder Marethyn—the only woman among the elders—went suddenly rigid. A crimson mark flared to life across her arm, threading toward the center of the hall like molten script. Her expression flickered between serenity and resignation.
"The Choosing," she whispered.
Arden had never witnessed an elder chosen before.
There was no ceremony.
No farewell.
Only inevitability.
She turned—guided not by hands, but by the invisible pull of fate. Facing Elder Marath and the others, she bowed slightly.
"I am sorry," she said softly. "Everything I have achieved will be left in my room. I always wondered what it would feel like… if I were ever chosen." She swallowed. "Farewell."
Her gaze shifted toward Mariel Vaelorian. Words rose in her throat but died unspoken. Mariel lowered her eyes in quiet sorrow.
Elder Marethyn looked one final time at the six young Vaelorians and at Kael, then walked toward the sealed inner sanctum. The elders bowed their heads. Arden felt his breath snag as the doors closed behind her.
And then she was gone.
Like Lorian.
Like all who were chosen.
Kael dismissed the children early, but Arden's curiosity sharpened rather than faded.
In the days that followed, after each training session, he slipped away—searching the library's dusty archives, brittle scrolls, and half-decayed treatises. Nothing. No direct mention of the Choosing. No whisper of what the Chosen faced.
He lingered near elder chambers, catching fragments of quiet arguments—never enough to understand.
But some questions in the Vaelorian line were heavier than answers could bear.
Kael's relentless training soon crushed Arden's nightly searches. Days merged. Muscles ached. Footwork and defensive forms crowded his thoughts. Library visits dwindled to nothing.
One cold morning, as the children gathered for sparring drills, breaths misting in the frosted air, Kael circled them like a patient predator.
"Again," he ordered.
They obeyed.
Then Kael paused mid-stride.
Thaleus Vaelorian had entered the courtyard.
Arden's father rarely interfered with their training. He stood now in stark contrast to the children—broad-shouldered, quiet power humming around him like faint threads of light. His eyes softened at the sight of Arden, but only for a moment.
Kael twirled his staff lazily. "Come to evaluate my methods?"
Thaleus's voice was steady. "Only to remind you these children are not soldiers yet."
"They will be," Kael replied. "Best we begin shaping them properly."
The challenge between them was wordless.
Kael tapped his staff against the ground. "Care to demonstrate a correction, Master Vaelorian?"
Thaleus stepped forward, drawing his own staff from thin air in a twist of arcane light. "Gladly."
What followed left every child breathless.
Their movements carried an impossible rhythm—two tigers circling, striking, retreating. Staves cracked like thunder. Arcane glyphs flickered between their hands. Thaleus conjured shields of shimmering force; Kael shattered them with whip-fast counter-runes. Wind stirred with every impact. Footsteps blurred.
It was not a duel.
It was a conversation in a language none of the children yet knew.
When they finally stopped, Kael's grin stretched wide.
"You're rusty."
"And you talk too much," Thaleus replied.
Something ignited in the trainees—admiration, awe, and a hunger to one day become even a fraction of what they witnessed.
A few days later, Elder Marath summoned the trainees to the base of the Tower of Enclosure, perched atop the highest cliff beside the castle.
The wind felt thin there, mana occasionally flickering through the air like invisible sparks. Grand runes covered the tower's stone—elegant geometric patterns glowing faintly in the morning light.
"These glyphs," Marath said, resting one wrinkled hand upon the stone, "are part of the first warding array erected after the War of the Black Tide. They reinforce the Barrier's reach. Even here—far from the ocean—you can feel its breath."
He traced a spiral rune with his finger.
"It stops all that seeks to advance from the east. Nothing crosses. Nothing lives beyond it. One day—you may stand where I stand and understand the weight of that truth."
Arden nodded, though the meaning slipped through him like water.
As Marath continued his lecture, Arden noticed something—
there was no physical door.
Only a vast magical circle carved into the stone, inert and dim, like a gate awaiting a forgotten command.
Arden's curiosity rose.
"Elder… is that how you enter? And what's inside?"
"What I said," Marath replied calmly. "One day—if fate allows—you will understand."
One of the older trainees lifted his hand.
"ehhh Elder Marath… why bring us here?"
Marath did not turn to look at him.
"To give you perspective," he said. "And motivation. This tower is the legacy our ancestors left us. It binds our blood to its purpose. It binds us to the Barrier."
"The Tower of Enclosure holds the secrets to one of the greatest working of magic ever witnessed in Aresedal. And such a working is not a gift—it is a weight." His eyes narrowed, lines deepening across his brow. "Since the first protector forged the Barrier, a warden has been appointed by the tower in every generation to watch over it. From him… to me."
His voice lowered slightly.
"I hold the keys. I maintain its flow. I oversee the shield that keeps our lands intact. And today, you will be given a glimpse of the tower's power… of the Barrier itself… and of what presses against it from the far side."
The children stiffened.
Marath lifted his hand in warning.
"Keep your distance. Do not move. When the veil thins, the aura of the Unholy Lands may seep through—and it is not kind to the unprepared."
Then he faced the tower fully, clasping his hands together.
When he began to speak, the cadence of his voice shifted—deeper, older, resonant. The words were unlike anything Arden had ever heard in their lessons, a language that felt carved from the marrow of the world. The air trembled. Even the youngest trainees felt the tingles up their arms.
As the final syllable left him, Marath thrust one hand skyward.
A pulse erupted from him—soft but powerful—sending ripples through the grass and leaves, stirring the air like the aftershock of distant thunder. The tower's dormant carvings flared awake, flooding with sharp white-blue light. An aura climbed the height of the structure, pooling at its tip like gathered starlight.
Then the sky dimmed.
Not as a storm darkens it—but as a candle flickers before dying.
The horizon wavered.
The light returned.
And suddenly a vast, transparent dome of bluish radiance shimmered at the very edge of sight—stretching across the world like glass touched by moonlight. Ripples rolled across its surface in uneven waves, distorting its glow.
Arden's breath froze in his chest.
They stood upon the cliff, gazing out at the true shape of the Barrier for the first time.
When Marath finally turned back to them, his posture had eased, though his eyes still glowed faintly with mana.
"This," he said quietly, "is the inheritance of our line. One day, one of you will bear the burden of maintaining it."
He pointed toward the ripples trembling across the Barrier's distant curve.
"And those disturbances you see… those are the things that press against it. The horrors that would spill into our world if not held back. They have clawed at this shield for centuries."
With a final motion, he exhaled and withdrew his power.
The glow faded. The sky brightened.
The Barrier vanished from sight.
The world returned to stillness.
The trainees, however, did not.
Some collapsed to their knees. Others stood rigid, unsure whether what gripped them was fear or awe. Lira—a thin and shy girl among them—fell to the ground and retched. Arden felt his own stomach twist painfully, the aftertaste of heavy mana and distant malice churning inside him.
The demonstration had shaken them all.
Elder Marath watched them recover in silence, his hands folding neatly behind his back as the glow faded from his eyes. When he spoke again, his voice had returned to its usual strict, measured cadence—as if the display of immense power had never happened at all.
"A wizard's strength is necessary," he said, "but strength alone is a blunt instrument. A trained mind and an anchored will—those are sharper than any spell you could cast."
His gaze moved across each of them in turn, lingering on the pale faces, the trembling hands, the girl still kneeling in the frost-bitten grass.
"Do not forget your lessons. Do not neglect your studies. Today marks the beginning of your combat training, yes—but remember this: without knowledge, without discipline, all other talents amount to nothing."
The words fell like iron, steady and unyielding.