ADARA

—Upon the flow's truth, the elementals are evershifting, entwined and in love. There are no strict schools of thought when it comes to magick. Flames give birth to life to scatter across the ground, the ground washes into the endless waves of the largest oceans to the smallest ponds. Air shifts and creates ice or heat waves — and understanding this balance of the world, how these forces of nature are one in the same is key for the young magickae exploring their powers for the first time until they face their moment of truth. Pages flipped down her fingers until she found herself face to face with the same moment of truth it spoke of with only her life on the line. Nineteen Turns she lost to learn with one more to reconnect with her memories with the help of Yuven Traye, who turned his back on her and everyone.

The Four Faiths. Her forced test in irony and hypocrisy. Ojain, the Gatekeeper, Pyon, the Seeker of Truth, Evyriaz, the Traveller with a second name, and Ivara, the Phoenix of Evenfall — the closest thing to 'schools' of magick the magickae world had. The only hint the Elder Convocation will give me to prepare myself with. Adara sat on the same fountain bench as before. Golden glimmers sparkled underneath the droplets which poured out of the wings of the stone hippogryph. Without a stalwart shield, she had only herself and her own stubborn power. Which doesn't want to work half the time unless I... stop thinking. Her fingers rubbed the tough casing of the book for comfort, and she lifted herself away from its studded cover at footsteps closing in. Dawn broke upon his scaled armour of leather greys, where the wyvern clung onto the star it swore to protect.

"It's time," Fenrer said and took the book from her when she held it out.

For that moment of truth they're going to force upon me. Lost in bitterness, she murmured, "Are you going to tell me your plan?"

"It'll make sense when we're there." Fenrer nudged her in the back. "If there is any hint I can give you, it's that the answers to the Four Faith's aren't always obvious," he said as he took her through the gleaming city of Azahama, with its marble roads and bright storefronts. "Each one relates to the others in some small way, and that's how you're going to succeed." He brought a finger in front of his face with a warm, hopeful grin she feared to break in one fell swoop. "Think about what Yuven and I have tried to teach you over the course of our journey, even with the storms we've faced together." Up the large steps to the double doors, where Convocation Guards opened up the way to her doom, Fenrer took her aside into a small corridor. "You are going to go in there, Adara... and you're going to show them. I will be part of the audience at the final stretch with King Reyn and Sovereign Hirishi. The first three tests will be you — and you alone." He tapped her on the collarbone. "Most of all, have faith in yourself."

Adara released her strangled laugh and shook her head. "I... don't know how to, Fen." I don't know how I'm going to break your heart in the worst way.

Fenrer tilted his head at the clamour of deep bells, echoing through the tower spires. His fingers hooked through the silver chain when he drew his oath off his neck to place it on hers instead. Its weight shone across a frozen, jadeite thicket deep within a crystal the wyvern's tail embraced, the star cupped in her palm to mix with silver lilybells. "We are still here," he said. "We haven't left your side, and we're not about to start now. I once told you that Yuven takes his duty more seriously than most... I bid you to believe in us both."

"He's not here," Adara pointed out.

A curled smile grew upon his lips to dig in both his cheeks as he flicked the crystal oath before touching his brow to hers. Warmth spread from the contact and the burden upon her brow wasted into rivers of clarity, a hand outstretched, dragged out of the darkness of her own creation. Fenrer released her and guided her to the first door, where Yuven bemoaned the reality that he didn't want this any more than she had. The Convocation Guards stood closeby, and Fenrer released her with a nod as he headed into the darkness with a small crowd. Over the mosaic of stars and moons, she cowered in the shadows of the same pedestals, all alone with only a promise to carry her forward.

Elder Orianna stood at the lectern. "Adara Sazaka, you are to undergo the Four Faith's to test the limits of your Anima magick," she said, tone cold and lacked empathy for her fearful plight underneath the threat of a steel edge. Her hand outstretched and a glyph of deep blues spread out to match the design of the mosaic.

Adara jolted when beams of light poured out of the aqueducts, and it completed to let out a low rumble, and she jolted when the stars detached from the moons and she ascended into the heavens of the navy spire. Gemstones breathed as the lift crawled its way closer to the distant beacon tickling her soul. Her Anima. Embers curled along a flaming tail over her palm and the continuous rumble echoed in her own heart instead. From what I understand... Ojain is first, the Echoniic Gatekeeper. Swaths of red wheat broke apart while a woman stood in the way of an enveloped crimson-soaked gate, where toothy tendrils gripped on the edges and tried to tear itself through. Not a deity... a woman who sacrificed her life to make a break between us and the Derelicts, the Great Crimson Dusk of old in hopes of a world she'd never see. The test she faced... of endless hope in the unknown at the risk of her life, to open the way. Adara clung onto the oath when the lift came to a slow stop.

Starlight fell from small tubes in the roof to create a veil across a stone monument, a circular structure met in four directions above her head, clashing into an empty crystal. Runes lined each side, bereft of power. If she's the Gatekeeper... I have to also... find the gate using my power — the power that was more common back in her time. Glyphs of phoenix wings bloomed over her palm as she focused it into a compact form. The first thing Yuven taught her, a little light to shed into the shadows. It reflected off the multitudes of runes within the area of thick walls and carved stone likenesses of wolves howling into the air. Moonstones lined the lift she stood upon, each one split by the four sections of the stone structure. A groan left her throat the longer the seconds stretched on with no answer in sight. Too bad I don't know how I'm supposed to go forward! Think, Adara! What would Yuven do? Adara slumped onto the ground beneath the empty crystal. Who am I kidding, he would've figured it out and bulldozed his way through whatever this is. He's the one that can turn into a ghost, who can make realistic copies of himself and overlap them over someone else. I can't do that. I don't have bloodline magick.

Just... me. Adara got onto her feet, spurred by her own thoughts. At the end... It's just me. Her magelight lifted to the tip of her pointer where its light reflected off the empty crystal. At the end of it all... Her breath escaped her chest while she watched Fenrer drag himself through the mud, a beautiful, sorrowful staff in his hands to send the dead to the Otherworld, opening the gates to the twilight sea with just his own power, and not a deity. It wasn't gifted to him by a higher power. It was a part of him, a part of the world they were born on, a cruel, merciless, dark world. Her magelight hovered over her head when the shadows intensified. By way of magick, split four ways. Adara pointed at each section and grew magelights from her glyph as it stretched to connect the stone arches. I need to open the gate and head into the truth. Attention back on the larger magelight above her, she pushed it upwards to let it pierce the crystal. Silver bloomed across the connection, pouring with molten magma. Terror shuddered through her heart and caused the embers to flare outwards, but she bit on her tongue and repeated a single mantra of never bowing to anyone but herself. If there's one person I need to prove something to, it's myself. Runes burst apart into misty flowers as she poured all her endless might into the little magelight and its hope.

Shadow became light. Luminescence let out a single breath, but she allowed the flames to brush against her skin which scorched everything in her path, baleful light to contrast comforting, loving shades. In the end... not so different. Ashes bit into her skin, but when she looked at her hand, it was empty of power. Stars bounced into a runic glyph as she tore her way through the gates of her own soul, and she resisted the urge to scream when the light blinded her. Lost in the darkness, she found herself on her ass when the lift lurched beneath her, waiting for her sight to return.

Light, into shadow.

"And so the Anima opens up another truth."

Adara blinked at the voice in the dark, the viper in the tar. Sight corrected, she took a small step back at who sat at the table which stretched across the smaller room. Beneath her, the silver rune hummed, and an invisible force urged her forward as the lamps above her head lit up to cast their features in light. Spiralling tunnels of pitch considered her with a line of scrolls, and a bottle beside each. Blackwall sat in the single chair.

"What are you doing here?" she snapped and rushed forward, but went face first into a barrier before she could launch herself across the table.

"You can consider me a proctor of this particular test," Keeper Blackwall said. "It is my duty as a Keeper of Pyon... whose test you have crawled your way into — he who sought knowledge and paid many a price for the insatiable." He got out of the chair to wave his hand over the scrolls. Parchment unfurled and broke wax seals to reveal empty pages, but she drew back at the pressure radiating from them. "Oh yes... good that you can sense what these are. You're lucky, Miss Sazaka... these are the safest Obscura Texts within the spire, and I'm here to make sure you retain your mental faculties all the same."

"Safest, but you still say that you're here to make sure I don't lose my marbles?" she demanded and came closer to the scrolls, her head letting out a piercing shriek when she tried to peer into the nothingness of an empty white void. "What am I supposed to do, read them? I thought only Aurus could do that, or was that a lie?"

Blackwall tutted. "I believe that would be telling you the answers, Miss Sazaka, and the point of a test is to apply knowledge..." He tucked his hands in his thick black sleeves with an affable smile bred of misdirected intent. "I shall answer a single question and give a hint in return, because labour to believe it, Adara, but I do want you to succeed. I've already seen your potential with the world crystal of Naveera's history. This should be easy. So go on, ask a question, seek knowledge when there is no right or wrong answer. Pick your question carefully." He raised a finger. "You only get one freebie from me."

Thousands of questions danced in her head, but she followed her instinct. "What are those bottles for?"

Blackwall considered the stout phials. "A question posed, and by my sacred duty I am bound to answer the spoken word," he said, and the scrolls wriggled with life. "These bottles, Miss Sazaka, will open your magick and mind to an immutable truth, for the world isn't so simple. Take a drink." He reached underneath the table to reveal a quill. "And let your soul write upon its annals."

It broke with a realisation. "You don't want me to read the Obscura Texts... You want me to write in them."

Blackwall slid back into his chair and folded his hands together. "You're free to believe that, to see that as the truth... but are you so willing to write it down, to ask the world a question? Pick a scroll and a bottle and write to your heart's content. Write your name. Write the names of the people you've met. Write about your history. Write a fairytale if that is your wont. After all... history is written one way or another. Just not always with ink." He set his elbows on the table and the eyes of tar bore into her, a challenge of her will.

Adara looked over her options, but each one looked the same on the surface, each bottle full of clear, bubbly liquid full of little stars. "I don't trust you."

"Good thing this test isn't about trust... quite the opposite. You're halfway there." Blackwall tapped his fingers against the barrier, and Adara jolted when it thickened until he disappeared into snaking shadows to split her from her proctor and the other half of life.

Instinct dragged her forward to the middle scroll where Blackwall had sat. In the chair, she shuddered when pressure locked her in place and she grabbed the bottle. Uncorked, she downed it and frowned at its tasteless texture. Lips smacked, she clung onto the quill and stared into the shimmering parchment as the weight in her head lightened once more. So... write whatever? Write whatever into this... weird 'scroll'? Adara tickled her chin with the quill, then set her hand upon its paper surface. Its little fibres tickled her skin, but she pressed the tip of the quill against it, ready to write, but unprepared on what to ask the world. Any question in the world, and it will answer with the truth? How does paper respond to a question I write? Adara chewed on her lip, and knew what she had to write.

In the future untold, upon my name, Adara Sazaka — what does it truly hold?

Adara jolted at the beautiful silver ink which danced and swirled upon the parchment before it disappeared into the stained scroll. Seconds turned into minutes, into eternity, and she scowled at the lie. About to leap out of her seat to break the barrier Blackwall created, she froze at the sound of fluttered scratching. Her heart pounded with the beat of an uneven writer as she sat back down, her mind screeching at the visage of the scroll contorting.

The Ashes of a Phoenix.

"What does that mean?" she asked the new, black ink.

It disappeared, and she leaned back when the scroll writhed and convulsed, before rolling shut, the wax seal replaced with a fresh one. Her skull threatened to cave in on itself when it raised into the air, and pulsed out of existence. Black snakes brought down the barrier to reveal the empty room on the other side with no sight of Blackwall to answer further questions. The table split apart to open a gleaming doorway, but she slumped in her chair, the questions too heavy on her mind, the handwriting a familiar echo.

With no clear answer, she lifted herself out of the chair to travel on to the next faith found in the wings of a wyvern who was also a man.