Chapter 4 – First Light
Jai’s POV
The fire had died down to coals.
Jai sat in the dim glow, elbows resting on his knees, the pendant slack in his fingers. He hadn’t slept. Hadn’t moved much. The hours since Shanika left passed like water through stone—slow and wearing. He hadn't eaten. Hadn’t spoken. The silence had settled thick around him, and he didn’t bother trying to push it away.
He just breathed in the smoke and let the stillness hollow him out.
He wasn’t sure what he expected to feel—rage, maybe. Grief. Some clean, cinematic snap where the truth reshaped him into something noble and driven. But all he felt was hollow. Like his chest had been scooped out and filled with ash and fog.
Outside, the first hints of light were softening the edge of the horizon, brushing the mountains with gray-blue edges.
The truth was out. Spoken plain and sharp like a blade across stone. The shape of it still pressed against the inside of his skull, refusing to be smoothed away. It didn’t just sit in his mind—it burrowed deeper, closer to the place where instinct lived. The part of him that didn’t use words. That simply
He flexed his hand. The chain of the pendant cut faint lines into his palm. He didn’t even remember gripping it so tightly. It was the only thing in the room that felt real. Everything else—the hut, the hearth, the old woven mats—felt like a stage, like props left behind from a life he no longer belonged to.
Something had changed overnight. Not just the truth. Him.
His limbs felt stretched, his skin tight across unfamiliar muscle. His jaw ached faintly, like his bones had shifted beneath it. His spine sat differently now, straighter, like it had remembered something it had forgotten. Even his balance was off, like his body was still adjusting to itself.
He’d caught his reflection earlier in the basin’s water—briefly, distorted—but enough to see sharper lines where there hadn’t been. A stronger jaw. Shadows of cheekbones that hadn’t existed the day before. A hint of someone else in his eyes. Someone older. Or maybe just truer.
Jai didn’t know what any of it meant.
The bond? The bloodline? The academy?
It was too much. Too big. Like trying to drink the sky.
He wanted answers. He wanted to scream. But mostly, he just wanted to breathe without the weight sitting on his chest. Every breath felt thin, like it couldn’t quite fill him. Like he was inhaling through the cracks in a dam.
A quiet rustle outside. Then the heavy sound of paws.
Sheeren.
She padded into the hut like she belonged there, the great tiger’s form filling the space without apology. Her fur caught what little light remained, shadows and moon-pale stripes moving across her in ghost-silent waves. Her eyes met his—steady, calm, utterly unshaken.
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She didn’t speak. She didn’t need to.
The bond between them pulsed low and steady—warm where he was cold, grounded where he was unraveling.
She lay beside him, resting her massive head on her paws. No grandeur. No ritual. Just presence. Steady, certain, silent.
Jai exhaled, and for the first time in hours, the breath didn’t feel like it caught on something jagged inside.
He reached out, fingers brushing her fur. The contact steadied something in him, not because she offered comfort, but because she offered She had chosen him. And she was still here.
Even now.
Even knowing.
He didn’t know what kind of bond they shared—didn’t have names for it yet. But it was deeper than the words he’d grown up hearing. Deeper than the village tales about spirit-linked warriors and beast-born nobles. Those stories always made it sound like power, like destiny. Like something heroic.
But this felt quieter. More intimate. Less about legend and more about truth.
It wasn’t strength he felt from her. It was alignment. As if a piece of him had always been missing until she arrived.
Not a tool. Not a pet. Not even a protector.
Partner.
That word felt right in a way others didn’t. It echoed through him, low and certain, like the beat of a second heart.
And then—without warning, without shame—it broke open inside him.
Silent at first. Then shaking.
Deep, broken sobs that clawed out of his chest and into the silence like thunder.
He cried for the mother he never met, whose name he still didn’t know.
For the father who’d died defending a crown his son never wore.
For the people— people—who were slaughtered or enslaved or forgotten in the wake of a betrayal so old the world no longer mourned it.
He wept for the boy he had been. For the loneliness. The isolation. The way Shanika had kept him moving from village to village, never staying long enough for friendships to take root. Every time he’d gotten close to someone, they vanished from his life with nothing but a hushed explanation and a tightly packed bag.
He cried until his throat burned and his ribs ached and his voice became nothing more than breath.
And still, Sheeren didn’t move.
She just breathed beside him, the same steady rhythm—there, alive, real.
Eventually, he leaned into her. Not seeking comfort. Just to press his body against something that hadn’t lied to him.
They stayed like that for a long while.
The dawn crept in by inches, then feet, gold threading through the cracks of the hut like molten silk.
And when it finally became too bright to ignore, Jai stirred.
He pulled away from Sheeren, slow and wordless, and stood.
The pendant hung against his chest. He didn’t touch it this time. He let it settle into place like a weight he’d chosen to carry.
The hut looked smaller now. The walls more brittle, the floor more worn. Strange how nothing inside it had changed—only him.
He packed in silence, folding clothes, rolling his satchel tight. Shanika hadn’t left much behind—just enough for the road ahead. A waterskin. A weather cloak. A blade he hadn’t touched in over a year. He slung them over his shoulder without thinking.
His hands worked while his mind wandered, tracing lines that didn’t lead anywhere yet.
Who had he been, really? Just a hidden heir? A shadow of something greater? Or was that past nothing more than a reason to keep going forward?
By the time he stepped outside, the sky was streaked with firelight. Mist curled between the trees like breath from the forest itself. The valley below still slept, but the birds were beginning to call out one by one, announcing the day.
The road that led away from the village looked no different than it had the day before.
But now, it was his.
And he wasn’t walking it alone.
Sheeren moved beside him, silent as breath, her paws sinking soft into the earth. She didn’t need command or cue. Her presence was enough.
He didn’t know what he’d find at the academy. Didn’t know what the world expected from a boy who didn’t even know who he really was.
But Sheeren would follow him without needing to be asked.
And that was enough for now.
