POV: Luna

  Selene was not a foolish girl. Too clever for her age, too quiet for her own good. That made her dangerous in all the wrong ways. The kind of servant who didn’t serve, only observed.

  And this morning, she was early.

  Long before Cain stirred in his sheets—still curled in the unnatural silence of dreams too heavy for a boy his age—Selene slipped through the back stairwell of the dormitory, notebook pressed discreetly to her chest, cloak drawn high. She moved with precision, steps so light they barely disturbed the dust of the wooden steps.

  I watched her from the rafters of the building, unseen, unbothered. A wind spirit need not knock. We are always present—especially where we’re not supposed to be.

  She made it to the communication room near the administration wing. The crystal comm-orb in the center of the table pulsed faintly as she pced her hand upon it.

  “Reporting,” she whispered. “Subject Cain William has settled into his dorm. Behavior has been quiet, non-confrontational. However, st night—”

  She paused, gncing over her shoulder.

  I smiled, invisible to her.

  “—I observed Luna, his guardian spirit, speaking with someone outside the window. I attempted to listen, but… the wind sealed the area. Completely soundproofed.”

  Another pause. Her fingers tightened against the orb. “I suspect a high-ranking magical entity. Possibly the Archmage herself.”

  A flicker of static. Then a calm voice, male, cold.

  “Continue observation. Report any deviation from expected behavior. Do not interfere with the spirit. Especially not that one.”

  Selene lowered her hand, bowing her head slightly. “Understood.”

  She turned to leave.

  And found me standing in the doorway.

  I let her see me fully—my humanoid form swathed in pale robes that danced in air untouched by her breath. My eyes were half-lidded. My hair stirred with phantom breeze. I made no sound, but the floor creaked behind me anyway, because fear is loud when it sinks its cws in.

  Her fingers moved subtly toward her belt.

  “Do not,” I said simply.

  Selene froze.

  My voice was soft. Polite, even. But I let it carry the weight of centuries.

  “I know what you are,” she said.

  “Then you should also know what I am not,” I replied, stepping closer. “I am not bound by elven w. I do not kneel to kings, and I do not obey mortals who whisper in corners.”

  She didn’t flinch, but her pulse betrayed her—ticking fast in her neck like a small animal cornered.

  I stood beside her now.

  Close enough to feel the breath she dared not take.

  “I will allow your games,” I said calmly. “I will allow your notes, your spying, your pitiful reports.”

  My tone dropped lower, soft as silk drawn over steel.

  “But if you so much as breathe a threat toward Cain… if you dare write a single word of harm into your little book, Selene—then I will open you to the sky, and let the wind know what your heart sounds like as it’s scattered to every continent.”

  She didn’t speak.

  She didn’t need to.

  I had heard her apology in the silence.

  I vanished before she could blink.

  POV: Cain

  I woke up gasping.

  Sweat clung to my neck. My eyes searched the dim dorm room as if it might vanish.

  But it was still there.

  The bed. The desk. The clean walls. The empty bowl of fruit I had murdered the night before.

  No forest.No dirt floor.No dying fire.No… Luna.

  The dream had been cruel. The hut had stood exactly as I remembered it. I could smell the herbs on the shelf. I could see the bundle of rags that had been my mother’s st bnket. But Luna was gone. That’s what had broken me, even in sleep.

  I rubbed my eyes and groaned.

  “Morning already?” I muttered. “I was just starting to get comfortable in my emotional damage.”

  “I would suggest you rise faster,” Luna’s voice came from the side, where she was already standing near the window, eyes locked on the sky. “Your first lesson begins now.”

  “Lesson in what?” I rolled to the side, then remembered. “Ah. Magic. Right. Spirit-guided magical instruction from an elemental sovereign I accidentally bonded with while naming a wolf. Totally normal.”

  She turned.

  “Ignore your sarcasm and sit cross-legged.”

  I blinked. “I usually prefer breakfast before spiritual enlightenment, but sure.”

  Ten minutes ter, we were seated across from each other on the floor. Luna had drawn a ring of white chalk infused with runes around us both. The air inside the ring felt… denser. Like I was sitting inside a bubble filled with humming tension.

  “You have magic in you,” Luna said. “But it sleeps. Mortal casters must create a vessel to refine it—a core.”

  She drew a breath.

  “And so, we begin the forging.”

  She expined how magical cores are developed in stages, based on resonance and color. Each color represented a level of purity, strength, and affinity.

  Bck was the first. Crude. Unrefined.

  Then came Red, Orange, Yellow, and so on—up to White, the domain of legends.Each stage had subtypes: Dark, Solid, Light—each referring to the depth of refinement.

  “Mages of renown,” she said, “those with real influence, have cores between Blue and Silver. Humans, elves, dwarves… the strongest barely touch White. Spirit-bound? Rarer still.”

  “And I have… nothing,” I said.

  “Yet,” she corrected.

  She taught me the Breath of the Gale, a meditative breathing style meant to pull tent mana inward. It started slow. I felt nothing. My stomach itched. My back ached. I was sweating for no reason.

  “Breathe,” she said. “Feel the world. The way air carries sound. The way leaves turn. That’s the wind. That’s me. Listen to it.”

  It wasn’t easy.

  The first hour was nothing but me cursing in creative ways and Luna correcting my posture like I was a fallen fence post.

  But slowly… something stirred.

  Like wind shifting through a cave long closed.

  A pull behind my ribs.

  “Again,” she said.

  We practiced until the sun was overhead. And then again the next day. I forgot to be sarcastic after a while. Not because I ran out of jokes—please, I’m a factory of bitter wit—but because this mattered.

  This wasn’t just magic.

  It was proof.

  That I could grow.That I wasn’t just the boy on the border.That I wasn’t just something they tossed away.

  Selene didn’t say anything as she watched from the doorway those next two days. She brought water. Food. She cleaned up after me like a dutiful maid.

  But she never looked Luna in the eye again.

  Smart girl.