My five guardians

Chapter 5:Who I'am?

The clearing fell silent for a moment that no one was in a hurry to fill.

Thaeren waited with that patience of his—the kind of patience someone has learned comes from understanding that important questions need a little breathing room before people can hear the answers. Conall remained leaning against the tree, his side bleeding though he didn’t seem to consider that a priority, his blue eyes shifting between the deer that had just appeared and Indira with an assessment he hadn’t quite finished making.

Indira spoke first.

“What am I?”

She said it quietly. Not as a rhetorical question, but as someone who hadn’t dared to ask it aloud for years and now had nothing left to lose by keeping it to herself. The words hung in the air between them, fragile and dangerous, like glass that might shatter if handled too roughly.

Thaeren looked down at his notebook for a moment, then looked up again.

“Do you know what happens to the energy when a shape shifter transforms?”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the beginning of one.” A brief, almost delicate pause. “When someone transforms, they release energy. Always. Every transformation, every time someone changes form, leaves a residue in the world, like the heat that remains in a stone after the sun goes down. Normally, that residue dissipates, returns to the natural flow, redistributes itself. “He made a vague gesture toward the surrounding forest.” But when there’s too much, when the flow can’t absorb it all, it accumulates. It becomes contaminated. And then it starts doing what you saw right now with that bear.”

Indira looked at the spot among the trees where the beast had disappeared.

“What about me?”

“You,” said Thaeren, in that specific tone of someone who chooses each word before speaking, “are someone who can touch it without breaking.”

The silence that followed was different from the one before. Heavier. It pressed against Indira's chest like a physical weight, making it hard to draw breath.

“That doesn’t make sense.” Indira’s voice sounded strange to her own ears—too flat, too still for what was happening inside her chest. “I have no form. I failed the ritual. I’m the only one in the whole village who couldn’t connect with her inner animal. I’ve failed the ritual every single time it was possible to fail. When I turned 20, it was my last chance, and three years have passed since then. That’s not special; that’s a defect. Everyone knows it. My family knew it.”

The last part slipped out unintentionally. She let it hang in the air without picking it up.

Her mother's face flashed before her eyes—the disappointment she had tried so hard to hide, the way she would turn away when Indira returned from yet another failed ritual, the silence that filled their shack like smoke. Her father had been kinder, or perhaps just more broken. He had stopped speaking about it altogether after the fifth attempt, as if pretending the rituals didn't exist was the only way to survive them. Indira had learned that silence too. She had made it her armor.

Thaeren didn’t respond right away. When he did, his voice had that particular care typical of people who understand that there are things you can’t say directly without causing others to shut down.

“My master’s master began this research so long ago that no one can trace it back with any precision. He left it incomplete when he died, and my master took it up as one takes up something that cannot be abandoned; he devoted his entire life to it, with a borrowed passion, a direct inheritance from his master. Until the very end, an old man with more questions than answers, he, kept writing.” He opened the notebook to a page marked with a strip of ribbon. “ What they both documented says that one day, when the accumulation was sufficient to begin killing the world from within, someone without an animal form would appear. Not someone who failed to find it. Someone who never had it because they didn’t need it. Because their purpose was different.”

“That’s it,” Indira paused. She searched for the right word. “A story. A theory put forward by two men who are already dead.”

“Yes.” Thaeren didn’t dispute that. “But you just sent a blue-light-contaminated bear that came out of your hands running away. So tonight, that theory has quite a bit of evidence in its favor.”

It was Conall who spoke then, from the tree, without having moved.

“What do you want from her?”

His voice was rough, stripped of the careful neutrality he usually wore. The wound on his side was bleeding more freely now, and Indira could see the tension in his jaw—the way his teeth were clenched against the pain. He was not asking out of curiosity. He was asking because he had already decided something, and he needed to know if Thaeren's intentions aligned with that decision.

Thaeren looked at him with the same calmness with which he had ignored him before, but this time he did consider him a conversation partner.

“For now, nothing. Just to understand what I saw.” A pause. “Eventually, if she agrees, to help her understand what she’s capable of and what it means for the world that she can do it.”

“That doesn’t answer the question.” Conall’s blue eyes weren’t exactly hostile, but they left no room for ambiguity either. “What do you want from her?” he said, emphasizing every word.

Thaeren looked at him for a moment with something resembling genuine appreciation.

“Follow her. Learn. Document.” Then, with that calm honesty that seemed to be his default mode. “My teacher taught me that when the world needs something, it produces it. She is what the world produced. I have no intention of wasting that sitting in a library.”

Conall didn't answer. Instead, he glanced briefly at Indira, as if silently passing the decision on to her.

Indira wasn't looking at either of them.

She was looking at her hands, palms facing upward, her left hand still trembling slightly. She thought of the years she had spent hearing that she was the village’s mistake. She thought of her mother, who had never told her directly that she was a disgrace, but who had also never known how to tell her that she wasn’t. She thought of her father, who had been left speechless long before he was left lifeless. She thought of the blue lights that had carried her when she couldn’t walk, that had begged her to cross over, to come back, to end her suffering—those lights that had emerged from her tonight as if they had always been waiting.

She was the only one.

“I’m not telling you to believe it tonight.” “Thaeren’s voice came softly, without pressure. "I’m just asking you not to rule it out just yet."

Indira slowly clasped her hands together.

"I don’t know what I am." She said with a precision that was not modest but pure honesty. "I’ve spent several years doubting it. One night doesn’t change that."

"No." Thaeren nodded. "But it’s a start."

No one spoke for a moment. The forest continued to pulse blue around them, flickering, patient.

It was Conall who broke the silence.

“We can’t stay here.” He stepped away from the tree with the caution of someone managing pain without admitting it. “Aldric has surely noticed my absence by now. If he hasn’t sent men yet, he will soon.”

Something in Indira’s chest tightened at those words. Not for her sake.

“Is he coming after you, too?”

Conall didn’t answer right away, which was answer enough.

She understood then that he had burned something to save her—not just his position in the village, but perhaps his life. Aldric did not forgive betrayal. And Conall, by pulling her from that square, by lying about her death, by following her into the contaminated zone, had committed betrayal in its most unmistakable form. He had chosen a shapeless woman over his chief. There would be no coming back from that.

Thaeren picked up his notebook and closed it with the calmness of someone who had already made a decision before anyone had asked him to.

“I know a path that runs along the edge of the contaminated zone to the east. There’s a spot where I camped before the bear decided we weren’t compatible.” He looked at Indira. “If you want.” He left the sentence hanging, waiting for her to make a decision.

Indira looked at him. Then she looked at Conall. Then she looked at the forest pulsing blue all around them with that slow breath that only she seemed to fully see.

She didn’t say yes. But she started walking in the direction Thaeren had pointed out.

And that was enough for tonight.