Sirius had become my best friend.

  His visits to the orphanage had grown fewer with time. What was once every day turned to four a week, then three, then two. Now he only dropped by when he could. Yet those years had already forged something between us that distance could not easily undo.

  We had spent much of the last five years side by side. Equal parts cleaning and training, equal parts chores and whispered dreams. I shared with him the tales I pulled from my books, and he brought me his own stories, old and new, until our lives felt woven together by both ink and memory.

  It had taken Mistress Elora a long while to allow Thorn to train us in the yard behind the orphanage. At first, she refused outright. But eventually she relented, realizing that I would not always be under her roof, and that leaving with skill rather than ignorance could only help me.

  Still, I suspected her change of heart had more to do with a quiet conversation she had with Asher. They did not know how far my tremor sense reached, and I had no trouble piecing together what had shifted after that meeting.

  I also noticed something else. Thorn and Asher shared more than a passing acquaintance. There was a weight in the way they regarded one another, the kind of look exchanged only by men who had stood shoulder to shoulder in hard places. It was the recognition of equals, of warriors who had faced danger and carried their scars without flinching.

  Their respect was unmistakable. Thorn gave a slight nod whenever Asher entered, and Asher returned it with the steady acknowledgment of a man who knew the worth behind that gesture.

  It was clear they knew each other, and that the respect was mutual.

  Sirius never spoke of his family in detail, but whoever they were had enough coin and care to buy the empty lot behind the orphanage. With that gift, the yard stretched wider and we carved out a space apart from the younger children.

  There we built our own training ground, a corner we could block off when wooden swords gave way to steel and drills grew into something more than games. It became the first place where we could train not only strength and endurance, but also proficiency with weapons. Thorn had been the one to bring the first blades, stocking the yard for what would become our lessons in war.

  Asher would join us in the yard whenever his time allowed, sometimes stepping in with pointers or showing a new technique. A few of the other children at the orphanage would wander in as well, eager at first, but none stayed with it for long.

  Sirius and I did. We were a pair, caught by the thought of what the future might hold, driven by stories and sharpened by discipline. We pushed one another through the relentless drills, through Thorn’s quiet but unyielding standards, and in that persistence, we found ourselves bound tighter than before.

  I had slowly grown into near mastery with the throwing knives during our training. My tremor sense gave me an unnatural advantage, granting me the ability to feel the world in such detail that it reshaped everything about how I held, released, and aimed. Each throw was made with certainty, as if the vibrations themselves whispered when to let go. What others struggled to learn over the years came to me as naturally as breathing.

  Dual-wielding knives in close combat, however, did not come so easily. That skill demanded a different kind of learning. It was not about listening to the world but about hammering movements into muscle memory, repeating drills until my body acted without thought. Still, with time, even this became another strength. As I began to blend my senses with the rhythm of practice, the knives in my hands moved with a precision that seemed far beyond my age.

  Thorn had noticed something else, too. My body healed faster than it should have. A cut, a bruise, even exhaustion itself seemed to fade quicker in me. I had not told anyone, but the truth was stranger still — the same energy that knit my wounds also renewed my mind. I needed almost no sleep. My body woke sharp, refreshed, as if night had never touched me.

  The price of it was hunger. Always hungry. The regeneration seemed to demand fuel. Food at the orphanage was never enough to test the limits, so for now, it only seemed a small gift. But I often wondered what would happen when I could eat as much as I wanted, when nothing held me back.

  Thorn pushed me harder because of it, relentless in drills and sparring. And when he realized shallow cuts and bruises closed almost as quickly as they appeared, he shifted my training from wooden practice blades to steel. That last year under his hand was different. The training was harsher, the lessons sharper, and the progress was undeniable.

  Not to be overshadowed by my growth, Sirius threw himself into training with equal determination. He handled every weapon Thorn placed before him with eagerness.

  His form with the bow was already steady, his sword strikes sharp enough to mark him above the average boy, and it was clear from the beginning that he had trained before. Someone had drilled him in the basics before he set foot in the orphanage, and that foundation carried him quickly past the fumbling stage most children never escape.

  At first, he tried to divide his time evenly, chasing proficiency in everything. But it was when Thorn pressed a spear into his hands that something shifted. Sirius adjusted his grip, stumbled through the first few thrusts, and then found a cadence as if the weapon belonged there.

  He continued to practice with bow and sword until Thorn judged him more than competent, but the spear became his focus. What began as an experiment grew into a passion. The reach, the weight, the balance, all of it suited him. Every drill sharpened his movements, every correction from Thorn was absorbed and repeated until his body remembered it.

  I think the spear also carried a deeper meaning for him. It was the weapon Thorn had driven through the boar that nearly ended his life years ago. Perhaps, in wielding it, Sirius sought not only skill, but also to match the strength he had seen in Thorn that day, to prove to himself that he could stand where he had once fallen.

  In time, he rose beyond simple practice. The awkward swings grew into precise thrusts, the clumsy spins into calculated maneuvers. His stance widened, his steps grew lighter, and the spear seemed to extend his body rather than weigh it down. What had started as talent became something more, a growing mastery.

  By the time I could throw knives into the smallest mark from across the yard, Sirius could hold the spear with a presence that demanded respect. His bow was accurate, his swordplay swift, but with the spear, he was becoming exceptional.

  It was during our training that Sirius also began to share what felt like secrets of the world with me as we neared our sixteenth name day. For an orphan, information was as scarce as coins. What we learned was below the average of other kids.

  I had pushed further than most, devouring any book I could get my hands on. History, adventure, catalogues of beasts and flora were my favorites. Asher had slipped me guild texts as well, tomes that detailed creatures, plants, and rare materials hunted for alchemy or craft.

  I think he hoped it would give me a head start for the day I was no longer under the orphanage roof, a storehouse of knowledge to draw from when I stepped out on my own.

  Still, even with my reading, I knew only fragments of the truth. Everyone whispered that the nobility were different. They were stronger, lived longer, and possessed abilities no commoner could dream of. I assumed that was simply the way of things. Yet Sirius, little by little, revealed the truth behind the curtain.

  That was when I first truly learned about shards. I had heard them referenced in some of the books I read, but no explicit details were given.

  They were crystallized aether, formed from beasts and monsters when slain, scattered across the wild places of the world. They could also rarely form in unique locations of high aether concentration. Hunters and guilds sometimes brought them back. They were typically used for crafting as a source of energy for enchanting or imbuing items.

  They could also be used on a person, though few dared try. To merge with a shard meant to willingly draw it into yourself, to bind your body to the essence of the creature or aether it had come from. If it worked, it granted traits or abilities tied to the beast or the environment from which it was harvested. But more often than not, it killed the one who tried.

  Deadly mutations, broken bodies, and twisted minds were the most common results. The risks were so great that most feared even the thought of it.

  The nobility, however, had found a way. Over generations, they learned which shards could be safely absorbed and passed those secrets down. Each house guarded its knowledge jealously, hoarding the shards that strengthened their bloodlines.

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  Some shards enhanced the body with greater strength, sharper speed, or endurance that seemed endless. Others magnified magic, a water mage who could turn a few drops of rain into a river or an earth weaver who could move stone as if it were grains of sand. Beyond that were more unnatural mutations.

  It was a path to power, but one lined with graves.

  Sirius told me that when a new noble line appeared, it was usually because someone had discovered a shard strong enough and safe enough to raise a family into power.

  The shard became the mark of their house, and the secret of it became their lifeline. What the rest of the world saw as a divine blessing was often just a carefully guarded fragment of crystal wrested from some hidden beast or location.

  It was through this explanation that my curiosity about my scars, my regeneration, and my tremor sense began screaming at me. I had read about wyrms, trying to understand the creature that had stolen my parents from me, but it was not until Sirius spoke of shards that something long buried came back to me.

  A memory, sharp and sudden, cut through the haze of my trauma.

  A stone. Black as night. Smooth as glass. Resting just within reach of my broken body.

  I remembered my hand stretching for it. I remembered the cold surface against my fingers. And then, nothing. Darkness swallowing everything.

  Was that a shard?

  Had it come from the wyrm?

  Had I merged with its crystallized aether and lived when others would have died?

  Sirius told me of tablets the nobility kept hidden, crafted artifacts that could assess a person and reveal what changes they had undergone. Shards, training, even other forms of growth, the tablets laid it out in systematic detail. They were another way the nobles tightened their grip on power, charting the best paths for their heirs to advance, whether through magical or mundane means.

  Shards, he reminded me, were not the only road to strength. They were simply the most dangerous. Their power was wild, varied, and often fatal. But with the tablets, the nobles could steer their own and avoid wasted lives, while commoners were left blind to such guidance.

  They could maximize the benefits from alchemical potions to specially crafted food. Shards were far from the only advantage the nobles had.

  Outside the noble houses, it was the guilds that stood as rivals. Asher belonged to one of these, and I began to see why they mattered so much. They gave men and women outside the noble bloodlines a chance to grow in strength together, creating bands that could stand toe to toe with the privileged. The great academies were the other counterweight, places where magic and knowledge were sharpened into rivaling power.

  It was a balancing act. Nobility, guilds, and academies, each holding the others in check. None able to rise too high without the others pressing back.

  Except for the king.

  He and his family seemed to stand apart, untouched by that balance. Whispers said they had access to multiple shards, their bloodlines woven with more than one power. That alone kept them where they were, unmoved for generations.

  The nobles were not careless with their shards. They learned to wait until at least sixteen years of age, sometimes longer, before allowing an heir to merge. This is why Sirius had begun to tell me about all this now. We were close.

  The younger a person was, the wilder the result. Some gained immense power, abilities beyond belief. There are only a few examples in history where the child did not die outright. Those who did survive had to be hunted down, as they had transformed beyond human, becoming more monster than man.

  The king himself had made it law that no one could knowingly merge with a shard before the age of sixteen. And he was known to enforce it.

  This was the way of the Velmine Empire. Beyond its borders, other races and realms had their own ways. Shards behaved differently with them.

  They could not merge with shards as humans did. Their bodies rejected the integration, unable to absorb the essence without being torn apart. Instead, they learned to draw the aether out of shards in different ways, pulling raw strength or sharpening the talents they already possessed.

  Elves were the most refined in this art. They channeled shard aether into their natural affinity for magic. A fire shard would not grant them new flames, but it would make their spells burn hotter, spread wider, and last longer. To an elf, a shard was not a new gift but a magnifying glass, intensifying the power that already flowed through their veins.

  Dwarves treated shards differently. They ground them, smelted them, and wove them into steel. A blade forged with shard aether could cut through armor as if it were cloth, and armor reinforced with it could turn aside blows that should have shattered bone. For dwarves, shards were not for the body but for the forge, and their mastery of binding crystal to metal was legendary.

  Halflings found other uses. They lacked the physical might of men or dwarves, and their magic was meager compared to elves, but they had wit and will. Shard aether heightened their agility, their senses, their quickness of hand and foot. A halfling thief who carried even a sliver of a shard might see better in darkness or slip through a crowd unnoticed. The aether sharpened the natural traits they had until they were honed close to perfection.

  Orcs were different still. Few shards survived long in their lands, for their warriors consumed them like meat. They burned through the aether in wild bursts, gaining savage strength for a time before it left them drained. It was a dangerous practice, often killing the weak, but those who survived became monsters on the battlefield, towering above their kin until the shard’s power faded.

  There were many more races that had unique relationships with the shards. The information seemed endless.

  It was hard to wrap my mind around it all. Sirius’s information about shards had set my thoughts spinning for weeks. Every time he shared another piece of knowledge during breaks in training or while we worked side by side in the kitchen, the questions only grew louder in my head.

  Finally, I gathered the courage to ask Asher.

  “Asher, I have a question for you,” I said, my voice tighter than I meant.

  He gave me that familiar roguish grin. “Go on then, Bryn.”

  I hesitated, the words sticking in my throat. “When you found me…” I faltered, struggling to piece the thought together. His smile softened. His eyes fixed on me.

  “I think I absorbed a shard,” I blurted out.

  There was a silence, broken only by the distant clatter of dishes in the kitchen. Then Asher nodded slowly, as if I had just confirmed something he already half-believed.

  “That does help connect a few dots,” he said. “When we found you, you should have been in ruins. Cuts everywhere. Your arm gone. But we found you whole with nothing more than pale scars and a new pale arm.” He gestured toward my arm. “It looked like magical healing, but not a kind I have ever seen.”

  “Cal thought maybe the caravan had been carrying a high-tier potion. Something rare and powerful enough to regenerate both flesh and limbs. I leaned toward that at first. But no potion I know leaves scars like yours. Not ones with that color.”

  He paused, collecting his thoughts.

  “And there was something else. The air around the wreckage stank of tainted aether. Dark elves, deep dwarves, both dabble in things that twist aetheric magic. Your family had traded with them, so it was not impossible that a potion or relic of theirs was in the mix. If that was the case, maybe it worked on you…”

  I sat frozen, waiting, heart pounding.

  “When you woke for the first time and then collapsed, nearly dying again, I knew something was off,” Asher said quietly. “So I watched you. Closer than you realized. In those early years, I made sure to keep my eyes on you. And I began digging. I searched the guild records for anything that matched your… condition.”

  He exhaled. “The closest I found was shard integration. Shards have been known to heighten senses, but rarely in a safe manner. Sight and taste are the only ones that have produced stable results. The others…” His eyes grew hard. “The others end badly. No one has ever recovered from sound, touch, or smell being altered that I could find.”

  He let that sink in before continuing. “So I brought my suspicions to the guild master. He is the only one besides me who knows. Though I suspect Thorn and Sirius’s house has their suspicions. The guild master gave me leave to watch over you, to protect you from others, and if necessary, from yourself. Because if it was a shard, and if it went wrong, you could have been as dangerous as the wyrm that destroyed your family.”

  My mouth felt dry. “But I survived.”

  Asher nodded. “You did. And I believe the only reason is your regeneration. It is not just your body, Bryn. It is your mind. Every fracture, every break in those early days, your gift mended. It stitched you back together when anyone else would have been lost.”

  He leaned closer, his voice quiet, “That is why you are still alive.”

  I let the words settle. At first they felt heavy, but as I turned them over in my mind, they began to bring clarity. He was right. Everything about my life since that day pointed to the same conclusion.

  Nobody really understood how far my senses had changed. Within fifty feet, I felt everything. Vibrations of footsteps, the scrape of cloth, the shift of breath.

  It was not just hearing or touch, but all my senses sharpened and layered until the world came alive in impossible detail. Beyond that, the impressions thinned, fading into faint outlines. It was like smoke trailing from a fire, still painting a picture, but never quite as solid.

  It had nearly broken me. The constant flood of sensation would have driven any normal person mad. And yet, over time, my regeneration gave me space to adapt. It healed the damage as quickly as it came, giving me the chance to train my mind as much as my body. Without it, I would not have survived.

  I wondered what that would mean if I tried to merge with additional shards… would my regeneration allow me to survive where others died?

  “I think… I think it might have been the wyrm’s shard,” I said at last. My own voice sounded strange as I spoke.

  Asher studied me for a long moment, then gave a single nod. “That has been my best guess. Both your regeneration and what I know of your altered senses match what we know of wyrms. Even more so with the kind of wyrm we fought that day.”

  He paused.

  “There are other traits that wyrm had that I have not seen you display. Perhaps they are buried, waiting, or maybe they will never come. Sometimes aspects of shards lie dormant until something stirs them awake. There is a reason the king forbids people from merging with shards before sixteen. It is not only the immediate danger, but the unpredictability of what might happen over time.”

  His eyes narrowed, though not in suspicion, more in thought. “Only time will tell which path is yours, Bryn. What matters is that you are still here, still whole, when many others would not be.”

  I let out a breath I did not realize I had been holding. “I guess all I can do is take it one day at a time and adjust as I go.” I hesitated, then added more softly, “Thank you, Asher. I would not be here without you. Even though I know things could have ended much darker if the mutations had been different.”

  He gave me a half-smile. “Of course, kid. I will always be around if you need me.”

  With that, he patted my shoulder once, firm and steady, then turned and stepped into the other room.

  I sat in the quiet that followed, the echo of his words lingering. For the first time, I felt the shape of my story starting to come into focus, though the ending remained hidden far beyond my reach.