ADARA

How long have I been travelling through this doorway? Her vision blurred the longer she stumbled on an unknown path to her end, the route dark and her footsteps echoed while stars pushed forward, stretching into the flow. Where am I even going? I should've asked what's next instead of asking what was in the bottle. Adara hooked her fingers in her crimson shawl, its red shade holding the remnants of a mother's past love where light birthed shadow. Stories of golden warriors, crescent blades in hand with a metal wyvern, a crystal wrapped around its feathered tail. Her own broken steps shattered the darkness back into radiance, a flickering wave extending outwards as the stars twirled and changed, a hazy image of something far away, but it haunted her memory.

A pier over a lake, but when she came closer, it shifted out of view, a whisper of icy wind while the path remained hidden to her. Alone, she travelled onwards with nothing but someone else's oath. It shivered against her chest, the whites intermingled with the emeralds. Lakes birthed blood-soaked mountains. Clouds dripped red magma from the jaws of beasts. Closer to the edge, she shuddered at the familiar mirage of snow-white hair, standing over the abyss while it crawled its way up the rock face. The ground trembled in its wake, and she came closer to their back while scales made of snow fluttered in the air around them, a wyvern who was also a man, a crescent blade hooked onto his hip. "Euron? Evyriaz?"

Is this the end of the travelled road?

"Welcome to what my magick feels like to use, Adara. I can see everything and nothing all at once." A voice, unmistakable when the blurry shape turned around and brought itself into focus. Violet tides broke apart grey waves as the feathers fluffed out in grey stalks. The wrong name, for there was only ever one when he stepped through the blur with his hand out, sharpening the images into the twilight sea of the crystal's heart, or the world's truth. His hand dropped to his side, his single step shattering her perception of the road. "Fenrer was always more clever than he ever gave himself credit for... more than I ever gave him credit for."

Yuven.

Snowflake scales disappeared with his own powerful, authoritative tone which contrasted Euron's gentle, but no less fierce voice. Yuven Traye stopped in front of her with a slow point to the oath necklace around her neck. "Somehow... he always knows," he said, the edges of his melodic, but ice-cold dialect.

Adara lowered her hands from her mouth to press them against his point of interest. "Are you... here right now?"

Yuven's gaze trailed over her and a plume of mist left his nose in one long huff. "You know, the one thing I failed to teach you was how to let go, how to not trust what your eyes can see and to trust what you can't," he said. "Power in perception, how the truth lies under blankets of constant illusions." His lips folded in the familiar, scrunched way and told her the reality of who was in front of her, a shard, a small piece through Fenrer, but as real as the one who stayed behind on Euros. "How your perception of your magick caused you so much grief all throughout your life. You think you're the first one?" He snapped his fingers together. Space bent to time around her, and the sea stilled underneath their feet. "Am I here physically? No, you know that, but I was no less here than I was over there." Another snap, and the field shifted to the Prunal fighting grounds. "No less here than I was right there." He pointed up to the empty seat, where his shadow sat with his leg folded, one over the other.

"Why didn't you come with us?" Adara begged for an answer not from a Keeper whose voice bespoke lies, but an Avaerilian who knew nothing but harsh honesty. Two extremes. "I need you here, Yuven." Another step closer to her friend, his feathers squeezed together. "I needed you here, why couldn't you see that?"

"I could see it," Yuven said, his fangs slipping over his lips. "You want the truth from me? I could not bear to hurt Fenrer more than I have... from the moment we met, the moment he stretched his hand out to me through my darkness and dragged me into the light." He swung his arm in an arc and broke her home to bring forth the training grounds of Euros, the citadel spires piercing the firmament of white clouds. "But we never know what will come. We can prepare all we want, for every situation you can conceive." His fangs tightened against his lips and he shook his head. "But sometimes... we can't prepare at all."

Her shoulders slumped. "Yuven, I don't think I can do this."

Yuven considered her and his fangs slipped behind his lips. "Really? After facing and talking to a corrupted wyvern that would've torn you to shreds and left nothing behind had you failed to reach the small light within a soul buried in murk, the Elder Convocation would be easy. After all... they're only human, and you better remember that." He held himself straighter and wings curled into a mirage. "Though they like to sit on their pedestals, their thrones, they're not gods. So, you have only one path ahead of you. You don't think you can do this? Well, Adara Sazaka..." He raised his crescent blade to her chest, the hook tickling her stomach. "You don't have any other recourse but to walk."

Yeah... that's Yuven. "I don't know where I'm walking."

"Anywhere you want, I'm not the one taking this test... but we are also always taking this particular one," he said and sheathed his blade. "Neven taught me as such though I failed to heed it time and time again, what it was he was trying to tell me... and I guess that makes us not so different." His nose scrunched at his own words. "Think about all the people who walked though they knew not what they were about to get into. Think about every time you found yourself with that same choice, full of fear, and yet you walked though everything inside you would've rather sat down and died. You want a true testament of your power? In my eyes, you've already proven that a thousand Avaerilian lifetimes over, and the only person that needs to see that is not me, not the Elder Convocation, but you." He withdrew his seaxs. "So, Adara, though I am not here... I always was." He tore his blades through two glyphs.

Adara shuddered when the sea fell away to reveal pedestals and pillars. People froze. Crowds full of ice-cold curiosity and the Elders looking down upon her. Her gaze trailed all around her while the silver rivers turned into magma with her movements, pulsating, writhing. In the sea of bodies, she frowned when Reyn stared down at her, his back pressed against Fenrer, who had slumped forward into the king's protection. Opal flames blazed, and she whipped around to Yuven when he dropped the seax's, on the edge of her inferno. "So." He folded his arms and time kickstarted in slow motion and the flames grew with her breath and anxiety. "Are you going to kneel so easily after everything?" Intensity struck her when he pinned his feathers and scowled at her. "Is that what you're about to amount to, Adara Sazaka?"

Lilies broke into the aurora, rising higher to scorch the colours within the stadium. "Can they see you?"

Yuven shook his head. "If you're so keen to lie down and accept the abyss... remember you've outlived it multiple times. So. Get. Up." He walked through her flames without fear or hesitation, his image blurred when he came closer, and Adara feared the scorching blaze when the silver mamba bubbled and popped around him. "Don't kneel to these people who haven't earned your respect, your reverence. You were not born of this world to have either of those things for them. Show them not what you are, but who you are, because at the end of the line, at the edge of your life, that is all you'll have. These tests are a farce, a ploy to validate their perception of the Anima. And I taught you better than that."

His words echoed when time sped up through the flow when she turned in his shadow upon a set of mosaic stars and the flames spat out embers with her movement. People tensed up, but she faced the pedestal's foundations and the jaws of a Derelict who found itself locked in stone when she stretched her hand through the darkness to create light. Every face blurred behind the birthing wildfire and tangled weaves wrapped around the barrier to connect with each piece, lashing, protective whips when she allowed her glyph to spin out of her hands. It strengthened against its beams of light to pierce storm clouds, Reyn widening his eyes in slow motion as he supported Fenrer in her peripheral vision, surrounded by the terrified residents of Prunal, who shouted obscenities while people lost their lives.

Blight. Curse. Monster.

Her breath shuddered in her lungs when she tore her gaze upwards and her flames obeyed with a ripple. Embers burst apart into twilight ashes as the shadow of a phoenix came closer to the mirror in her dreams, its shriek shaking the heavens themselves. Lips parted, she vibrated with rage and pain, chewing on a thousand cut lives. Eyes on her, she put her foot forward and gave the phoenix, the bird in the cage, a voice.

"I am not a monster!" she released the fumes. "And if you think I am, you can shove it up your pompous, condescending asses!"

It shattered and the flames fell into the lake and the lilies came back to life. In the reflection of the Oath, Yuven grinned at the same time as his Oathbound, their own connected reflection, while Reyn hid a laugh behind his hand while everyone else gave a start at her heated defiance. Left in the radiance beneath her, she took a step back from the crowds of judgement and perception. Her memories stolen from her, broken apart and replaced with new ones. Fenrer, who faced down a charging deer and stopped it with his own hands. Yuven, who crushed the crystal and created a whirling gale to slingshot them all the way to Sivaport. People clamoured, but she stifled the flames and let them die on her own terms. Yuven had disappeared, as if he hadn't been there at all while Fenrer slipped out from behind Reyn, brow creased with exhaustion as both Hanekans shook with laughter.

It sped past her when Convocation Guards escorted her out of the stadium and into a waiting room full of books. She expected fear to clutch her throat, but for once since she met the two Storm Wardens, she found herself lighter instead. It glowed underneath her skin and she bathed in its compassionate warmth. On her heel when someone opened the double doors to reveal Fenrer with a wide smile on his face. "Yuven would be proud," he said, breathless as he rushed up to her to grab onto her shoulders.

"I know. Thank you. Both of you."

Fenrer pursed his lips with a bit of deviousness when she lifted the necklace off her neck to put it back around his. Her hand drifted down his shoulder to rest against his chest. Lost in a moment, she embraced him instead and savoured the comfort when he held her in return. In a field of snow roses splattered with frost, a gentle summer breeze hushed through her nose when she buried her face into his neck. "Just promise me you two will work this out," she whispered.

Fenrer breathed out a long sigh. "We always do. We always will."

"Good... what does the Elder Convocation have to say?"

"After you very ceremoniously told them to shove it with the force of a maelstrom..." He tilted his brow against hers. "I don't think they'll bother you any further, and the Storm Wardens would happily continue to give you sanctuary as we have given many others."

"Now what?" she asked. "Now that I don't have them looming over my head?"

Fenrer withdrew from her with a thoughtful hum. "Well... there is a solstice celebration Hirishi was supposed to host in Azahama, and I think you need to move forward from this. However, we need to go to Fallholt and rest up, I don't want to keep you in this city, and it's quieter over there. After the main feast and party... we'll go back home."

Home.

"I'd really like that," she said and found her strength to smile once more. "Fenrer... was that really Yuven that was projected to me?"

Fenrer matched her expression. "I carry a piece of his soul, do I not? I called upon it. It was a piece... but yes, it was him."

"Will he know then? What happened?"

"He'll know. He won't know why exactly... but he will."

A laugh escaped over her lips and he grinned further. "It's over."

"It's over," he affirmed.

The shadow of the headsman's axe faded underneath a blanket of rain and gave way to a silver sun.