Chương 7: Chapter 6: The Dying Suns

The high-walled training yard, the manicured hedges, the granite fountain—all had been efficiently replaced, repaired, and scrubbed clean by the house servants before dawn. There was no visible trace of the Stillstorm explosion. Elma sat at a small, polished wooden table in the nursery, a stack of blank parchment before her. Her body was a map of dull, lingering aches, a stark reminder of the concussive force that had hurled her into the shrubbery. The pain was irrelevant.

What mattered was the efficiency of the power she had briefly commanded. Her gaze, flat and intense, was locked on Christa. She listened to every word. Slacking, even for a moment, could be fatal. Christa sat opposite her. Her silver hair was pulled back into a braid so tight it seemed to tug at the corner of her eyes.

"What you did yesterday, Elma," Christa said, her voice low and controlled, "was dangerous. Not brave. Not clever. You came within seconds of tearing the air itself apart. You must never attempt something like that again." Elma's jaw tightened. I was trying to stop the water. I reacted to a kinetic threat with a counter-kinetic defense. It failed because I didn't know the mechanics.

"It will not happen again," Elma stated. It was a promise of competence, not obedience. Christa looked up, studying Elma's gaze for a long moment. She nodded once, a sharp movement. Christa raised her hand, and with a soft, rhythmic pulse of intent, a perfect orb of water materialized above her palm. It hummed with a quiet stability that made Elma's previous explosion look like the work of a clumsy animal.

"You tried to build a wall of air to stop a few droplets," Christa said, her eyes fixed on the floating sphere.

"You used a mountain of pressure to answer a needle's worth of force." She tilted her hand, and the orb drifted toward Elma, stopping inches from her face.

"You already know how to touch the world directly. You did it with the fountain. You didn't need a storm, Elma. You could have simply... resonated with the water. You could have claimed it as your own."

"Feel it," Christa commanded. Elma raised her small hand. She reached for the orb with the new invisible extension of herself. She felt the boundary of her influence touch the surface of the sphere. It felt heavy, cold, and surprisingly vibrant, like holding a heartbeat in a net of glass. Slowly, Christa lowered her own hand. She withdrew her will, peeling back her control like a layer of silk. For a terrifying millisecond, the orb wobbled, its surface tension shivering as gravity tried to reclaim it.

Elma's eyes snapped open with a sudden, unwavering focus. She gripped the water, pinning it against the air with a silent, iron-willed command. The orb stilled. It hung there, suspended beneath Elma's tiny palm. Christa's hand moved in a series of sharp, rhythmic flickers. Pop. Pop. Pop. Three more water orbs materialized. With a casual flick of her wrist, she sent the first one whistling through the air toward Elma. Elma didn't flinch. She felt the orb enter her space and simply commanded the water to halt.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original. The orb stopped dead, suspended six inches from her nose, shivering under the sudden, absolute arrest. Christa threw the second, then the third. They followed the same trajectory, slamming into the invisible wall and hanging there like beads of glass. Elma stared at them for a second, then with a sharp, dismissive wave of her hand, she shoved the air.

The three orbs were hurled aside, splashing harmlessly against the floor. Christa smiled, offering a few light claps.

"Beautiful, Elma. That was... much better. Precise." But Elma's eyes didn't soften. They narrowed. The efficiency of the exercise made the previous day's disaster feel even more like a calculated failure.

"Why didn't we start with this?" Elma asked. Her voice was flat, cutting through Christa's praise like a blade.

"Yesterday, you let me call a storm. Today, it is simple. Why the risk?" Christa's smile faltered. She pulled her hands back, her fingers nervously twisting a loose thread on her sleeve.

"You... uh... you needed to feel it through battle first," Christa stammered.

"I didn't know you would call a bloody Stillstorm." Elma watched her mother's throat move as she swallowed hard. She's guessing. She has no experience in teaching anyone. Elma looked down at her hands, then back at the damp patches on the floor where the orbs had shattered.

"How do I make it?" Elma asked, her gaze returning to Christa.

"I can catch your water. But how do I make the water appear from nothing?" Christa let out a short, breathy laugh.

"You are still so young. For now, we must focus on the foundation. You must strengthen your connection to your field and feel the boundary as clearly as you feel your own skin." Elma sat back, her face a mask of four-year-old compliance.

"I understand," Elma said. Christa was far from the best teacher, but the way she reacted made it hard to dismiss her point.

To find the answers her mother couldn't provide, Elma needed data. The Grand Library of House Altheris was less a room and more a multi-tiered cavern of forgotten intelligence. It was massive, smelling of dried leather, ozone, and old paper. Dust motes drifted through the high shafts of sunlight, and the silence here was deafening. She walked past rows of towering shelves until she reached the central rotunda. It was almost entirely empty, save for a single figure sitting at a long mahogany table.

He looked young, his features smooth and sharp, yet his hair was a striking, uniform gray. He paid her absolutely no attention. His focus was entirely consumed by a heavy, brass mechanical globe resting on the table next to him. Inside the glass sphere, three miniature suns drifted in a slow, perfectly synchronized orbit around the miniature planet. She ignored him, pulled a thick, leather-bound volume titled The Mechanics of the Flow from a lower shelf, and dropped it onto the table.

The heavy thud of the book echoed through the quiet room. The moment the pages fluttered open, the gray-haired man froze. His quill paused mid-air. For the first time, he turned his head, his sharp eyes locking onto her.

"Who are you?" he asked, his voice low, carrying a strange, dry rasp. Elma blinked. She was the only child living in the main manor, the daughter of the Sovereign. How did a resident of this house not recognize her? Instead of answering, she tilted her head and leveled a flat gaze at him.

"Who are you?" The man stared at her for a beat, a faint, amused twitch pulling at the corner of his mouth.

"You've got attitude," he murmured, shaking his head. He turned his attention back to the brass globe, his quill scratching against a scrap of parchment.

"Must be the current Lord's child." Elma felt the cold sting of being dismissed. Without a word, she snapped the heavy book shut with a sharp crack, stepping closer to his side of the table to force her presence into his space. Up close, the air around his desk smelled faintly of vinegar and chemical preservatives. Glancing beneath the heavy mahogany lip of the table, Elma's gaze fell upon rows of glass jars tucked into the shadows below.

They were packed with preserved specimens—shriveled limbs, discolored organs, and the severed parts of unfamiliar animals floating in murky fluid. She shifted her focus to the brass mechanism on the desk. As she studied the miniature globe closely, she noticed the topography of the world map etched into its surface. Massive swathes of the continents were stained a deep, unnatural crimson. Near the southern expanse, a particularly massive, jagged blotch dominated the land.

"Is that...?" she began, her finger hovering just over the glass.

"Yes," The man answered without looking up from his notes.

"That is the Red Shore."

"Is that what you are studying?"

"No," he said gesturing toward the three glass spheres orbiting the brass world.

"I am studying them. They are dying." Elma tracked the intricate, clockwork paths of the miniature stars. Following the lines, she saw that the vast majority of the etched continents only ever received the faint, passing glow of a single sun at any given time. But right in the center, perfectly aligned beneath the convergence point where all three paths intersected, sat Veraxys. It was the only nation on the map that received their full, concentrated radiance.

"Did you know they were once just a single sun?" he asked, his voice dropping into a quiet, reverent cadence.

"Centuries ago, after its essence disappeared, the sun fractured. It split into three, each one drifting into a different orbit."

"So what's the problem?" Elma asked.

"The problem," the man said, "is that without their essence, they're weakening. Day by day." Elma frowned.

"Weakening how?"

"Their light is fading as we speak. Eventually… it will be extinguished." Elma's eyes widened.

"And no one is concerned about this?" He gave a faint, humorless exhale.

"People rarely concern themselves with things that aren't urgent to them at the moment." Elma looked down at her hands, thinking.

"I suppose that's true." The man leaned back in his chair, the leather groaning softly beneath him. He looked down at her, the exhaustion in his face softening into something resembling curiosity.

"It has been a very long time since anyone bothered to speak with me. My name is Arem. What brought you to my corner of the world today?"

"I am Elma," she stated, matching his level tone.

"I came to learn about Resonance." Arem straightened up, a sharp, genuine gleam returning to his eyes as he folded his hands over his notes.

"Well then," he said.

"What exactly do you want to know?"