THE AETHERBORN

The wasteland trembled.

Thorne lay at its center, the cracked earth beneath him glowing with each pulse of his heart. Every breath came out as light. His body spasmed again, arcs of aether snapping from his chest in wild bursts that scorched deep spirals into the ground.

Marian knelt beside him, hair whipping around her face, the silver strands catching the blue-white glow. Her ring flared bright, then dimmed again under the onslaught.

"Thorne look at me," she said, voice tight with command. "Keep it together. Don't let your core fracture."

"It's too much," he gasped, eyes wide and unfocused. "It's trying to... tear me apart."

The air shivered, and another burst exploded from his chest, pure, searing light erupting in every direction. Marian threw up a barrier, her free hand sweeping a spiral of runes in the air. A shimmering dome flickered to life, shielding Elias from the blast. The impact rattled the shield like glass.

Marian didn't look back. She didn't have time.

She drew a quick breath and began sketching another pattern, faster now, lines of aether streaming from her fingertips. Runic Stabilization Circles, three, then five, forming around Thorne in glowing rings. The symbols pulsed in rhythm with his core, trying to sync with its frequency.

The first wave of energy hit the runes like a hammer. The outer circle cracked instantly, half the symbols bursting into sparks. Marian snarled a curse and slammed her palm against the ground, feeding it more power.

"Stay inside the lines!" she barked, voice nearly lost in the roar of wind.

Thorne managed a weak laugh through clenched teeth. "You think I'm going anywhere?"

Another pulse came. The second circle shattered.

Marian hissed between her teeth and switched tactics. "Fine. If you won't listen, I'll force you to."

She pressed her hand to his sternum. The contact burned, his skin was molten with light, but she didn't flinch. She closed her eyes and reached into the storm.

Aether met aether.

Her own current flared to life, a softer hue, pearl-white streaked with silver, threading through the wild ocean of his energy. She wasn't trying to overpower it, but to guide it, the way one current diverts another.

Her body shook as she channeled. "Come on… come on…"

It worked for a heartbeat. The storm inside Thorne bent toward her hand, seeking a path of release. She created a Siphon Thread, a controlled conduit between them, drawing a sliver of the excess into herself to buy him time.

Her breath hitched. The moment it entered her, pain lanced through her arms. Elderborn or not, his energy was different, raw, predatory, unrefined. It bit. Her veins glowed through her skin, cracks of light racing up her arms.

Thorne's head jerked up weakly. "Stop! Marian, it'll kill you..."

"Then hold together faster!" she snapped, voice shaking.

The ground under them cracked. The runic circles flickered out entirely. Thorne screamed, his back arching as another wave burst from his chest, ripping through Marian's siphon thread. The backlash threw her onto her back, blood on her lips.

Still, she crawled forward, eyes fierce and bright. "Fine. You want wild? I'll meet you halfway."

She lifted both hands and summoned half-real filaments of light, Phase Tethers, a technique she'd never dared use outside of theory. They shimmered, translucent, flickering in and out of existence as she drove them into the ground around him. Each one anchored to a crystal focus she pulled from her belt, embedding them into the soil.

"Stay still," she muttered, voice trembling from strain. "Let it breathe through these."

The tethers pulsed, connecting to his core's flow. They phased through the physical, threading into the aetheric storm itself. Thorne groaned, his body seizing as light rushed out through the filaments. For a moment, the wasteland shone like daylight.

Elias stirred within the shield, eyes fluttering open. He saw them, Marian crouched beside Thorne, hair whipping in the storm, hands bloodied and glowing, the earth alive with veins of light.

The release worked, barely. The pressure in Thorne's chest eased for a heartbeat, the buildup venting harmlessly into the air. But the tethers strained, their phase flickering wildly.

Marian grabbed a small pouch from her satchel, scattering several catalyst crystals around him, each one a focus designed to absorb raw energy.

"Come on, come on…" she whispered, snapping her fingers.

The crystals lit up, drawing in the overflow. For a few blessed seconds, the pulses weakened, their explosions muffled into bursts of color. Each crystal burned bright, then shattered into dust, one after another.

Thorne gasped, blinking up at the barren sky. "I can't... hold... it..."

The furious light around him began to pulse with his breath, syncing to a rhythm. For the first time, the surges aligned with his heartbeat instead of tearing against it.

Marian's eyes widened, hope flickering. "That's it. That's it, hold it!"

Another burst ripped through the ground, stronger than the rest, throwing her backward again. She hit the dirt hard, coughing blood, her vision swimming.

"You're doing it," Marian said, calm over panic, hands already moving. "Listen to me. Your core has a hairline crack, small, but real. No surges. No spikes. We bleed it off in streams."

Elias was there on Thorne's left, ash-streaked and shaking, eyes wide and very awake. "Tell me what to do."

"Stay in his periphery. If he loses rhythm, speak." Marian slid three new crystals from a bandolier, slammed them point-first into the dirt around Thorne's ribs, and traced a tight ring of sigils above his sternum, minute, edge-thin glyphs that hovered a fingertip from skin. "Stabilizers," she murmured. "Not stopping, shielding."

The sigils took, pearly lines webbing into a shallow lattice over his chest. Thorne felt the pressure shift, still savage, but guided, a channel cut through a flood.

"Now," Marian said, locking eyes with him. "Out on the exhale. Don't push, pour. Think thread, not torrent."

Thorne swallowed, jaw clenched. He breathed in, met the swell, and on the breath out let the aether slide along the lattice. A ribbon of light unspooled from his sternum into the nearest crystal. It flared, went from clear to milk-white to blinding, pop, and powdered into glitter that the dead air drank without protest.

"Again," Marian said. "Shorter. Keep it even."

He obeyed. Another ribbon. Another flash. Another shatter. The wasteland's thin aether drank the shock like parched ground takes rain; each burst spread and vanished, leaving only a fading glow in the cracks.

Elias kept his voice steady. "You're good. Right there. Breathe, Thorne, same pace."

Marian's fingers never stopped drawing. She layered a second ring of sigils beneath the first, tighter, tuned to the hairline fracture she could feel in him, tiny counter-harmonics that cushioned each pulse before it reached the crack. "If the lattice flickers, you pause," she said softly. "We reset. No bravado."

"Not... planning... on it," he rasped, then exhaled another measured stream. Crystal. Flare. Dust.

The storm inside him snarled, wanting to leap, to tear free. He refused it the leap. He gave it the path. Breath by breath, thread by thread, he fed the crystals until they burst; Marian replaced them as fast as they died, palms nicked and bleeding to anchor the pattern with her signature.

Minutes or hours passed in that tight rhythm: Marian laying sigils and swapping focuses, Thorne pouring light in disciplined strands, Elias counting, grounding him with the simplest thing in the world, voice and presence.

A deeper tremor rolled through Thorne's chest; the lattice quivered. Marian's hand pressed flat over the sigils, her aura knitting through the pattern. "Easy," she whispered. "Skim the surface. Don't drag from the crack."

Thorne's next exhale thinned to a hair-fine filament. The crystal pulsed gently, then settled to a soft glow before bursting with a polite pfft. The ground drank it greedily.

Elias let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. "Still with us?"

"Annoyingly," Thorne managed.

"Good," Marian said, already setting the next triad. "We keep this cadence until the core stabilizes. Then we sleep. Then we never speak of this to anyone."

Another breath. Another ribbon. Another brief star born and snuffed in the hollow earth.

The pressure inside him eased by degrees, brutal brightness fading from his veins until the glow beneath his skin was only a pulse, not a scream. The hairline crack held. The lattice held. Marian's hands finally stilled.

"Last one," she said.

Thorne exhaled. The crystal flared, white, then clear, then crumbled into harmless dust.

Silence. Not absence, mercy.

Marian sagged back on her heels, eyes closed for a heartbeat. Elias sat down hard, laughing once in pure relief.

Thorne stared up at the blank sky, chest rising steady for the first time since the forest. "It's quiet," he said.

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"For now," Marian answered, voice rough but certain. She brushed a smear of glowing dust from his collarbone and met his eyes. "And 'for now' is enough."

Marian caught his hand before he could push himself up. "Not yet. Drink first."

She fished a small silver flask from her satchel and pressed it to his lips. The water inside wasn't cold, but it tasted clean, real, untainted. Thorne swallowed greedily until his stomach lurched.

The trembling in his limbs eased, but the exhaustion that followed hit like stone. It sank deep, beyond muscle, beyond bone, a weight that made even breathing feel heavy. "Hells," he muttered, slumping back. "I haven't felt this drained in years."

Marian exhaled, a shaky sound that almost passed for a laugh. "That's because you've spent the night trying to unmake creation."

Elias sat cross-legged nearby, still pale, his eyes flicking between them. The fear had faded from his face, replaced by raw disbelief.

Marian turned her attention back to Thorne. "Tell me everything. From the beginning."

He rubbed at his temple, then began. "I went to the Primordial Forest. I wanted to hunt, train, explore..." He paused, the memory flashing in his eyes. "Killed a few beasts, nothing too serious. Then… my trait changed. It felt like everything in the world suddenly woke up and noticed me."

Marian's breath caught. "Changed?"

He nodded. "It evolved. The system called it Aetherveil Ascendant."

Her expression froze, color draining from her face. "You reached level fifty."

"Yes."

The word dropped like a stone.

"Fifty?!" Elias blurted out. He stared, mouth half open. "You're level fifty?! That's... that's insane! I'm barely twenty-nine!"

Thorne turned his head just enough to give him a flat look. "Yeah, thanks for the reminder."

Marian rubbed her forehead, muttering something under her breath. "Your trait evolved again… It's too soon, Thorne. Far too soon." She looked at him, worry carving sharp lines across her face. "Having your trait evolve twice at your age… no body can keep pace with that kind of strain. That's why this happened. Your body isn't strong enough yet to contain the amount of aether your core's pulling."

She reached out, fingertips brushing his sternum, feeling the faint hum beneath his skin. "The crack will mend in time, but if it happens again, if you lose control at that scale, it won't stop at a hairline fracture."

Thorne followed her gaze to his hands. His veins still glowed faintly beneath the skin, threads of pale blue winding toward his fingertips. The light pulsed with his heartbeat.

"Thankfully," Marian continued, voice softening, "this storm was a side-effect of the transformation. Once your aether adapts to your evolved state, it will quiet down."

"Good," he muttered. "Can't wait for the part where I stop being a living lantern."

Marian's mouth twitched, almost smiling. "Until then, you need to be careful. Right now your aether is unstable, like aimless children looking for their mother."

Thorne groaned, half scoff, half disbelief. "I'm the mother in this scenario?"

Her eyes flicked up, sharp and humorless. "Yes. Exactly. Your aura, your pull, it's expanded hundreds of times over. The aether follows you now. It's helpless around you."

Elias blinked, staring at Thorne as if seeing him for the first time. "Helpless?"

Marian nodded grimly. "He's not just part of the flow anymore. He is the flow. And that's what makes him dangerous, to himself most of all."

Thorne closed his eyes, the faint hum of the wasteland wind slipping between them. "Great," he muttered. "Just what I always wanted. To be irresistible to ambient energy."

Marian didn't laugh. She just watched the slow pulse of light under his skin and said quietly, "You'll learn to live with it. Or it will kill you trying."

Marian drew in a long, steady breath and shifted closer, the pearl on her ring dimming to a soft, steady glow. "Listen carefully, Thorne," she said, her tone stripped of its usual calm professor's cadence. "You're not just exhausted. What's happening inside you right now is far worse than fatigue."

Thorne opened one eye halfway. "Oh good. I was worried I was getting off easy."

"Don't talk," she snapped, then softened her voice. "Your core isn't stable. It's adapting to a new scale of existence. That crack," she tapped his sternum gently, and he winced, "isn't just damage. It's your core expanding beyond what your physical vessel can sustain."

She picked up a shard of one of the broken crystals nearby, rolling it between her fingers. "Aether is drawn to power the way light bends toward gravity. When your trait evolved, your resonance changed. The world felt it, every thread of it. The aether recognized you as something more than a wielder, something it should return to."

Thorne frowned, voice faint. "Return… to me?"

Marian nodded. "That's what happens when an Elderborn ascends. The aether doesn't just surround you, it answers. Every mote, every current, every whisper of it wants to flow through you. But your body wasn't ready. You opened a floodgate without the foundation to hold it."

Elias sat a few feet away, quiet for once, eyes darting between them. "So he's… what? Like a beacon?"

"More like a storm front," Marian corrected. "Aether accumulates wherever he is, bending toward his core. That's why the forest went mad, why the beasts swarmed. They didn't come for food or instinct. They came because they felt him."

Thorne's brow creased. "You're saying I attracted them?"

"Yes. And not just beasts." Her voice lowered, sharp as the wind cutting across the wasteland. "Anything that can sense power, divine fragments, constructs, even spirits, will feel that same pull. Until you learn to mask it, you'll be a lighthouse in the dark, shining a signal that everything hungry for power will see."

He groaned, dragging a hand across his face. "That's comforting."

Marian ignored the sarcasm. "The crack in your core makes it worse. Your control leaks through it. The more you push your power, the wider that crack will get, and the more aether will pour in uninvited. Eventually, it'll stop being a flow and turn into collapse."

"Collapse?" Elias asked, the word barely a whisper.

"The Elderborn called it core implosion," she said quietly. "When the vessel can't contain the pull anymore, it folds inward. Everything inside, flesh, bone, soul, even the memory of you feeds the aether again. I've heard it happen before, core implosion. It wasn't pretty... when one of us dies that way… the release can level cities."

Silence followed. Only the hiss of distant wind filled the space between them.

Thorne's eyes opened fully. The faint light beneath his skin pulsed in time with his heartbeat, slow and steady but too bright to be natural. "So I'm a walking detonation risk."

Marian's expression softened. "Not if we're careful. The crack will seal if you give it time, days, maybe a week. You'll need to rest, keep your aether use minimal, and let your body and core realign. Once the resonance stabilizes, your control will return. But until then, you cannot,cannot,draw from ambient aether, or it will respond on instinct."

He turned his hand palm-up, watching the glow between his fingers. "Feels like it's already trying."

"It will," she said. "It's reaching for you the way a tide reaches for the moon. That won't stop. But you can learn to step between the currents rather than stand in them."

Elias frowned. "And if he doesn't?"

Marian looked at Thorne, eyes filled with quiet, tired worry. "Then the next time his trait evolves," she said softly, "there won't be enough of him left to save."

Thorne stared at the cracked sky for a long moment, the words settling deep. Then, with a shaky breath, he muttered, "You really know how to motivate a guy."

Marian's lips curved in the faintest, humorless smile. "Then consider this your first lesson as Aetherveil Ascendant: power isn't freedom, Thorne. It's gravity. And right now, you're learning what it feels like to be the thing the world falls toward."

Marian waited until Thorne could sit up without the ground shaking beneath him before she spoke again. "We have to move," she said quietly, scanning the empty horizon. "We can't stay here much longer."

Thorne blinked at her, his voice still hoarse. "Move? You dragged us to the middle of nowhere."

"Exactly." Her tone was brisk, no room for argument. "But what happened in the forest wasn't contained. The surge, you, were felt across Evermist and Aetherhold both. Every ward in the region trembled."

He stiffened. "You mean they..."

"They felt it," she cut in, her voice grave. "The Council's augurs, the faculty, the Archmages. They all sensed the eruption. Your evolution shattered through the masking wards; even the Empire's relay towers lit up. They don't know what it was, but they're looking."

Elias, still silent until now, finally spoke. "Then they'll come for us."

Marian shook her head. "No. The beasts will make a convenient story, the forest's reaction, the collapsing wards. The Council will blame it on aetheric resonance or rogue summoning. They'll want to believe that. But Thorne..." She fixed him with that sharp, knowing stare. "You must keep your head down. Stay in your quarters as much as possible. Go to classes, act normal, but the moment they end, return straight to your room. No wandering. No experiments."

Thorne nodded slowly, his expression unreadable. "Understood."

But inside, he was already shaking his head. Not possible. He still had things to do, Brennak's smuggling operation wouldn't dismantle itself. Humus was expecting him. Fen still needed watching. He couldn't disappear, not now.

Marian studied him for a long moment, as if she could hear the rebellion in his silence. Then she reached into her satchel and withdrew a pendant. It was elegant, black metal woven with a pale, crystalline core that pulsed faintly in rhythm with her ring.

"This is for you," she said softly. "I made it in case something like this happened. I just didn't think it would be so soon." She held it out, the chain glinting faintly in the muted light. "It will hide your identity… the true you."

Thorne froze. His hand instinctively went to his chest, where his mother's pendant hung, worn, familiar, comforting. The last gift she had ever given him.

Marian saw the hesitation immediately. Her voice gentled, though her eyes remained firm. "Thorne. That one can no longer mask what you are. The aether you radiate now is… too strong. It leaks through the old enchantments like sunlight through a torn curtain."

He stared down at his mother's pendant for a long moment. The faint etching along its edge shimmered once, as if reluctant to let go. He sighed, long, tired, defeated.

"You're right," he whispered.

He unclasped the chain. The moment it left his neck, the change was instantaneous.

Light poured from him, raw and unrestrained. His skin shimmered, translucent in places, veins glowing with white-blue fire. His eyes burned like captured stars. His teeth caught the light, sharp, elegant, predatory.

A creature of myth stood where the young man had been.

Elias stumbled back, the color draining from his face. His mouth opened, but no words came out.

Marian bowed her head slightly, eyes averted. She had seen Thorne like this before, but even she couldn't quite meet that gaze. Not when the air itself bent around him.

Thorne's voice was softer when he spoke. "It's… louder, without it."

Marian nodded once. "And far too revealing."

He took the new pendant from her hand and slipped it over his neck. The change snapped like a breath held too long. The light faded, the air calmed, and Thorne looked once again like the quiet, dark-haired student of Aetherhold.

Elias blinked rapidly, dazed. "Was that… real?"

"Enough of it," Marian said briskly. She flicked her ring, the pearl flaring. "We're done here. Let's go."

She traced a gesture in the air, and a ring of light flared open—a portal swirling with muted silver and blue. The scent of home spilled through it: the faint tang of the academy's aether-forged air.

Thorne turned to glance around the wasteland one last time.

It wasn't barren anymore.

The cracked soil beneath them glowed faintly, veins of soft light threading outward in every direction. Tiny motes of aether floated through the air like dust caught in morning light, dancing when they noticed his gaze. And there at his feet, a single green blade had pushed through the earth.

Marian followed his stare, her brow creasing. "It's already changing," she murmured.

He didn't answer. Something deep inside him, the part that understood aether not as magic but as life, stirred with quiet awe. This was his doing.

"Go," Marian said sharply, snapping him out of it.

Elias hesitated, eyes still darting between them. Then, at her nod, he stepped through the portal, vanishing into the vortex.

Thorne was about to follow when Marian's hand caught his wrist. Her eyes were steady, her tone cold. "He knows too much. He's seen too much. Should I kill him?"

Thorne froze.

She wasn't being cruel, just calculating. Practical. She would do it without hesitation if he said yes.

He considered it. She was right. Elias had seen him fight the Fourth King, seen him ascend. That kind of secret could destroy them both if it reached the wrong ears.

But then he remembered the look on Elias's face during the battle, not fear, not disgust, but awe. And something else.

Trust.

He had the uncanny feeling that Elias wouldn't betray him. He had been burnt before by people he had thought friends... but Elias... he would give him a chance.

"No," Thorne said finally, his voice low. "If he becomes a problem, I'll deal with it."

Marian held his gaze for several long seconds, her expression unreadable. Then she gave a small nod. "Very well."

The portal flared, silver light licking at their silhouettes.

Thorne cast one last look at the wasteland, at the faint shimmer of his aether, the quiet pulse of new life. Then he stepped through, following Marian into the swirling light, back toward the spires of Aetherhold, and whatever waited for him next.