I woke with a gasp, the taste of ash and iron still clinging to my tongue. The Spire's shadow lingered behind my eyelids, its jagged silhouette carved into the darkness of my room. My skin was damp with sweat, the sheets tangled around my legs like chains. The dream clung to me, its echoes sharper than reality—cold stone beneath my palms, the figure of smoke and shadow leaning close, his voice a low rumble that seemed to vibrate in the marrow of my bones.

"You're braver than I expected."

I sat up, my heart pounding a frantic rhythm against my ribs. My fingers found the locket at my throat, its silver surface warm against my skin— a reminder of the legacy I'd failed to inherit. The room was dark, the hearth cold and lifeless. Father had forbidden the servants from lighting it after I'd scorched the rug at thirteen, trying to coax fire sigils into life.

"Magic isn't a child's game," he'd said, his voice as cold as the unlit hearth. But we both knew the truth: the flames hadn't just died when I touched them—they'd recoiled, as if the magic itself feared me.

I swung my legs over the edge of the bed, my bare feet brushing the icy floor. The dream's weight pressed down on me, its images refusing to fade. The crumbling bridge, the Spire's silver-lit towers, the stranger with eyes like twin embers—it felt less like a dream and more like a memory. Or a warning. He had never been there before. Whatever he was.

I dressed mechanically, pulling on the ivory scribe's robes that hung loose on my frame. The fabric was coarse and unyielding, a far cry from the enchanted silks worn by the magicians I'd once hoped to join. The belt of braided silk cinched tight at my waist, a mocking concession to my station. Mortals weren't permitted to wear magic-touched fabrics, but the Vale crest stitched in silver thread at my collar ensured no one would question it. A leash disguised as a favor, I thought bitterly, tightening the belt until my ribs ached.

The courtyard was alive with the clash of steel and the crackle of spells when I stepped outside. Adversaries drilled in the mist-shrouded dawn, their shouts echoing off the distant silhouette of the Ash Temple. I paused at the edge of the training grounds, my gaze snagging on a lithe figure wielding twin blades of molten amber. She moved like liquid fire, her braided hair streaked with ash, her laughter sharp as she disarmed a hulking opponent twice her size.

"Adversary Kaela," a voice grumbled behind me. "Show-off."

I turned to find Jesse looming like a stormcloud, his broad frame sheathed in the Aevarin Legion's signature silver-and-bronze armor. The quartermaster's face was gaunt, his eyes the dull bronze of old bloodstains. A scar split his left brow, pulling his mouth into a permanent sneer.

"The carts leave in five minutes," he said, tossing me a leather satchel bulging with scrolls. "Try not to slow us down."

I caught the bag, my fingers brushing the hilt of a dagger strapped to his belt—obsidian, unadorned, its edge glinting with a faint violet sheen. Rare. Illegal. A weapon meant for killing things that shouldn't exist.

"Good morning, Jesse," I muttered, slinging the satchel over my shoulder.

He snorted, already striding toward the convoy. "Hope you're ready for today. Your father and I have a great plan for the next few weeks of your training."

I followed him to the carts, my stomach churning. The other soldiers climbed in behind us, their silence heavy and expectant. Jesse was never one for casual conversation.

As the cart lurched into motion, Jesse leaned back, his scarred face shadowed beneath the canvas roof. "First, you'll spend a week with Maris and Jarek. They're the only scribes left in the kingdom who haven't gone mad or vanished." His tone was clipped, almost annoyed. "After that, you'll train with the Adversaries. Three months, give or take."

"Three months?" The words burst out of me before I could stop them. "Why would I need three months to learn how to scribe spells? I've been reading, writing, and memorizing my entire life. This is what I'm damned to after everything?"

I don't mean to snap. But its too late before the acid pours from my mouth. Three month to learn how to write spells and edit scribes is almost as horrible as the time my father forced me to try clairvoyancy classes at age twelve.

Jesse's gaze widens at my sudden tenseness, then hardens, his scar pulling taut as he frowned. "This isn't about scribing, girl. It's about survival. The world doesn't care what you're damned to. It only cares what you can endure."

I clenched my jaw, my fingers tightening around the satchel's strap. Three months. The timeframe wasn't arbitrary—I could feel it in my bones. Three months from now was officially my eighteenth birthday. When the judges claim over me would be permanently official. There were few cases of young magicians failing to manifest until their eighteenth birthday.

This wasn't training. It was an exile. Until I proved to be a complete disappointment.

The cart jolted to a halt, and I glanced back through the open end of the wagon. The Adversary grounds sprawled before us, a riot of color and chaos that seemed to pulse with life even in the early morning light. At the center stood a cone-shaped tent, its patchwork of silks shimmering like a mirage. The fabric twisted and spiraled down the structure, each panel a different hue—crimson, gold, emerald, indigo—catching the breeze and rippling like liquid flame. It was a far cry from the austere stone halls of the Temple, where even the air felt heavy with the weight of centuries.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Jesse nudged me forward, his hand rough on my shoulder. I stepped down from the wagon, my boots sinking into the soft earth. The air here was different—sharp with the tang of ozone and the faint metallic bite of blood. The grounds were alive with movement: Adversaries sparring in the open, their magics clashing in bursts of light and shadow; others tending to weapons or gathered around fire pits, their laughter sharp and unburdened. The colors were brighter than I remembered, the vibrancy almost overwhelming after years spent in the Temple's muted halls.

I hadn't been here since I was a child. Back then, the Adversary grounds had been a place of wonder, a forbidden world just beyond the Temple's walls. But at fifteen, Father had decided it was too dangerous for me to venture here. "The Dusk Legion has eyes everywhere," he'd said, his voice cold. "You're safer in the temple."

Now, standing here, I couldn't help but feel the weight of what I'd missed. The temple had long been my prison, its walls lined with ancient tomes and the hollow-eyed scribes who tended them. But here—here was life, raw and untamed. The Adversaries moved with a freedom I'd never known, their magics unrestrained, their laughter unburdened by the weight of legacy. For a moment, I let myself imagine what it might have been like to grow up here, to train among them, to belong to something more than ink and parchment.

Jesse's voice shattered the thought. "Scribe Tia. Keep up."

I followed him toward the tent, my steps faltering as the ground shifted beneath me. The patchwork silks seemed to ripple with a life of their own, their colors bleeding together in the early sunlight. As we drew closer, I caught the faint scent of incense and citrus.

The tent's entrance was flanked by two Adversaries, their faces painted with swirling patterns of ash and gold. They watched me with unreadable expressions, their eyes glinting like shards of obsidian. One of them stepped forward, her movements fluid and deliberate, and gestured for me to enter.

"Welcome to the scriptorium," she said, her voice low and melodic. "Scribe Tia, We are honored by your presence."

The scriptorium hums with the rasp of reed pens and the dry-leaf whisper of turning pages. The Temple scribes move through the gloom like ink-smudged ghosts, fingers stained twilight-blue from handling leviathan-gall pigments. An image I cannot seem to picture myself in.

Maris was hunched over a palimpsest, her bad leg stretched stiff as a coffin nail - the same posture she's kept since her boy followed will-o'-wisps into the Steppes. Near the arsenic-green vats of fixing solution, Jarek of the Silenced Tongue polishes obsidian tablets, throat-scar gleaming in the lamplight. His head snaps up as I pass, predator-swift, and for a heartbeat his shadow against the ochre wall seems crowned with antlers.

I freeze. The air tastes of burnt wormwood and the metallic tang of his awareness. His hands still - long-fingered, ink-bloomed hands that suddenly remind me of smoke curling round temple pillars. My dream-stranger's hands, shaping constellations from void.

Maris' quill screeches across vellum. The sound flays the illusion. Jarek's shadow shrinks to mortal proportions as he resumes polishing, whistling through his tracheal slit - not birdlike, but the low two-toned warble of steppe hawks calling mates to nest.

"First time in the village?" Maris croaks, not looking up. Her needle-sharp smile carves wrinkles into parchment skin. "You'll hate it."

Jesse materializes behind us, smelling of armor oil and dread. "Maris is in charge of you until I return from the border skirmish." He leans over her desk, voice fraying. "Encourage her."

Maris unstoppers a vial of indigo ink. "Locals'll either worship you or sell your bones to flesh-traders. Mortal marrow brews potent tonics." She winks, ink pooling like blood on her palm. "Stay inside, and your throat stays slit-free."

Another cage. I dig my nails into my palms as Jesse flees.

The scriptorium swallows his absence whole. Towers of scrolls teeter in corners, feathered quills spill from baskets, encyclopedias crowd shelves—Celestial Temples of the North, Rites of the Drowned Spire, Lexicon of the Bloodbound. My fingers trail over gilded spines. No entry for the Ash Temple. Only a gap, dust-outlined, where a tome once lay.

Jarek whistles sharply, jabbing a finger at a crumbling tower of old tablets, half-swallowed by vines. The ruins hum with residual magic, their stones etched with warnings in a language that makes my head throb.

"Curses nested in every syllable," Maris says, watching me sway. "Your father taught you their tongue?"

"Enough to parse warnings." I reply.

"Clever girl." She dips her quill, the motion ritual-sharp. "But the Aevarin loved layered curses. Touch a tablet, and your womb might birth scorpions. Read a poem aloud, and your lungs fill with glass." She gestures to the looming stacks. "You'll learn to see the rot beneath the words. Starting now."

Maris slides a quill across the desk, its sharpened tip gleaming like a shard of obsidian. The feather trembles in my grip, but as Maris places a brittle scroll before me, I feel it—a flicker in my veins, faint but undeniable. Not magic. Something older. Something that hums in the spaces between my ribs, like a chord struck deep within the earth.

The script unfurls, its edges crackling like dry leaves. The glyphs are jagged, alive, writhing under the lamplight like serpents caught in a dance. The title alone makes my pulse quicken: "The Bridge of Ash and Bone."

Maris leans over my shoulder, her breath warm and sour. "Transcribe it. Word for word. But don't read it aloud." Her voice drops to a whisper, sharp as a blade. "Not unless you want your tongue to turn to stone."

I press the quill to parchment, the nib catching on the fibers. My hand moves almost of its own accord, the words flowing through me like water through a cracked dam. The meaning unravels as I write, each glyph translating itself in my mind:

The bridge spans the void,

its arches carved from the ribs of the forgotten.

Each step is a prayer, each plank a plea—

but the gods are deaf, and the mortar is blood.

The wind sings of betrayal,

its voice a blade against the throat of the sky.

The bridge trembles, its bones groaning,

as the weight of the unworthy cracks its spine.

And then—it falls.

Not with a roar, but a sigh,

as if the void itself has exhaled.

The unworthy plunge,

their screams swallowed by the abyss,

their names erased by the ink of eternity."

My hand falters. The quill snaps, splattering ink across the parchment like spilled blood. The room tilts, the air suddenly thick with the scent of iron and smoke. For a heartbeat, I'm back on the crumbling bridge from my dream, the Spire's shadow looming above me, the stranger's voice whispering in my ear.

"You're braver than I expected."

Maris's hand lands on my shoulder, her grip like iron. "Breathe, girl. The poem's curse is in the reading, not the writing. You're safe."

But I don't feel safe. The flicker in my veins has grown into a hum, a resonance that echoes in the hollows of my bones. The poem isn't just words—it's a memory. A warning. A key.

And somewhere, in the depths of my soul, the smoke-shrouded stranger laughs.