Frost & Shadow

Chapter Twenty

I followed Fen through the quiet streets that evening, my boots barely making a sound against the stone. The day still pressed against me—the training, the crack, the weight of everything Aurelis wasn’t saying. Every shadow felt sharper than it should have, every flicker of movement in the corners of my vision pulled at my nerves until I thought I might splinter.

We stopped in front of a small, unassuming building tucked against Kaelora’s narrow alleyways. Fen rested his hand briefly on the doorframe but didn’t move.

“You need to relax. Just for a little while,” he said, his voice low, calm. But there was a pause after the words that twisted my stomach into knots.

“Relax?” I repeated, my throat thick. “I… I can’t. Not yet. There’s too much I don’t understand.”

He didn’t answer. His head tilted slightly, his eyes narrowing toward something I couldn’t see. The city’s hum pressed in around me like a weight, the silence between us stretched taut, and I swore I could feel his thoughts brushing against me, heavy and unreadable.

What is he hiding? Does he know something about the cracks? About me?

My fingers itched for the bow strapped to my back, needing its weight to anchor me. The strange pulse in my chest—the one that had surged out of me near the crack—stirred faintly again, like it recognized his silence as clearly as I did.

“I don’t know if I’m ready for any of this,” I admitted, my voice barely above a whisper. The words tasted like weakness on my tongue. How could I be ready? I can barely spar for five minutes without gasping, and now there’s… whatever this is inside me. Magic I can’t control. Power I don’t understand.

Fen’s gaze flicked to me, sharp and unreadable. “You don’t need to understand it,” he said finally. But the tone—there was something in it. An edge I couldn’t name. A warning, maybe. Or something deeper he couldn’t—or wouldn’t—say.

Not understand it? How am I supposed to use something I can’t even grasp? My chest twisted with frustration and fear. Why me? Why did it answer me?

Fen moved past me into a courtyard, his movements deliberate. The tension in his shoulders was impossible to miss, the way his hands flexed as if holding something back. Answers. Secrets. Something dangerous.

I wanted to demand the truth, but my throat locked up. Fear of what he might say—or worse, what he might not—kept me still. So instead I just watched him, the silence between us thrumming like a string pulled too tight.

“I don’t know how it happened,” I whispered, mostly to myself. My palms still buzzed faintly with that same pins-and-needles I’d felt after pushing the shimmer back. “I don’t think I could ever conjure that on purpose. I just… felt it. Aimed. Because if I didn’t, it felt like it would have swallowed me whole.”

Fen stilled, head tilted, his expression shadowed. He didn’t answer. The silence pressed heavier, deliberate, until my pulse hammered in my ears.

I realized, with a sinking certainty, that I was more alone in this than I thought. Not alone in the physical sense—Fen was here, always just close enough—but alone in understanding what I had become. And that terrified me. Yet beneath the fear, a spark of determination flared. I had to figure it out. Before it was too late.

Fen stopped near a low wooden platform surrounded by shallow bowls filled with sand, each etched with precise runes. “This is where we start,” he said. “An old Kaeloran tradition. The Way of the Stones.”

I frowned, glancing at the bowls. “Stones?”

He didn’t answer directly. Instead, he picked one up—a smooth, dark stone—and pressed it into my hand. “You focus on the stone. Not the cracks. Not the mission. Not your family. Only this. Its weight. Its shape. Its place in the world. Everything else falls away when you learn to center yourself.”

I turned it over in my fingers, its cool, smooth surface almost unnervingly steady against my skin. My chaotic thoughts clashed with its simplicity.

“I don’t know if I can,” I admitted softly. “I can barely keep my focus on anything, let alone this.”

Fen crouched beside me, his eyes catching the fading sunlight. “You don’t have to. Not yet. You just have to try. That’s the first lesson.”

He began arranging the stones across the platform in deliberate patterns, each one landing with a satisfying click. I mirrored him hesitantly, my hands trembling, but the coolness of the stones steadied me. Little by little, I found myself breathing with the rhythm of placing them, letting the weight and balance guide me instead of the chaos in my head.

Minutes passed—or maybe hours. My mind fought at first, dragging me back to the frost creeping over my world, to my family’s faces, to the cracks—but slowly, the noise dulled. My breaths deepened. The tightness in my chest eased.

When I finally hovered over the last stone, I felt something I hadn’t in days: a fragile thread of peace. Small, breakable, but there.

Fen’s gaze swept over my pattern, unreadable as ever. But for the briefest second, I thought I saw something soften in his eyes. “This is only a start,” he said, rising. “Even the smallest shift matters. Remember that.”

I nodded, though frustration tangled with relief. I had no idea if I was truly ready for any of this. But for the first time since arriving in Kaelora, I had something to hold onto. A rhythm. A thread. And for now, that had to be enough.

Still, as I brushed dust from my hands, I felt it again—the faintest tingling, like the stones had responded. A ripple, subtle but real. My breath caught. Had I imagined it?

I glanced at Fen, but he said nothing. His expression gave away nothing.

And yet… my fingers still buzzed as though they weren’t entirely my own.