Hatim tasted ash—not just on his tongue but in the back of his thoughts, like soot clinging to memory. His breath came shallow. Cold stone pressed into his spine, ribs aching from the impact.
A whisper of air brushed his face—cool, damp, tinged with moss and rust. Beneath it, a hum pulsed low, more vibration than sound. It rippled through the stone and into his bones, like the earth itself was breathing.
He tried to sit up.
A firm hand pressed him down.
"Lie still boy. You tried to fight a wall and lost."
Same voice as in the alley. Calm. Flat. Measured.
Hatim opened his eyes. The chamber around him flickered in torchlight. A single flame guttered in a high recess, struggling against the darkness. Shadows leaned in like watchers, whispering illusions with each flicker. Glyphs etched into the stone walls shimmered faintly, old and unreadable—like scars on the skin of the world.
Older than the Sinks. Older than the Crowns. The kind of old that made time feel irrelevant. The Akar here didn't roar—it thrummed. Deep. Steady. Patient. A rhythm that didn't belong to life, but to memory carved into rock.
The figure beside him wore layered robes. Hooded. Face hidden. Not imposing—but still in control, like someone accustomed to silence answering his will.
"Who are you?" Hatim asked, voice dry.
"Someone who doesn't enjoy watching kids get folded into cobblestones," he said. "And someone who knows what stirred when Akar touched you."
Hatim's chest tightened. That feeling again—something ancient, cold, coiling around his heart.
Vision slipped free.
—
Same room. But different.
The light had a red hue, as if the torches burned blood instead of oil. The air thickened, clung like velvet soaked in smoke. Veins of molten gold Akar pulsed across the ceiling and ground, forming shifting sigils that crawled with sentience. Smoke drifted from crevices where there was no fire. The space felt... aware. Not just a chamber. A presence.
Hatim was younger. Knees scraped. Nails dirty. Breathing fast, like he'd run to this place and only just stopped. The silence pressed in, thick with waiting.
The Akar waited.
A voice echoed, not from above, but inside the walls, inside his ribs:
"You command it. Or it commands you."
The light dimmed. Akar bled down like liquid thought, curling along the edges of his fingers, tugging on his breath.
Hatim reached out.
It surged to meet him.
Not fire. Not pain. Something closer to recognition. Like an echo finding its voice.
Across the circle, another boy stepped into view. Barefoot. Hands loose. Molten gold Akar shimmered around his ankles like coiled chains. His eyes burned—not with anger, but with hunger.
Hatim lifted his hands. They moved with instinct, as if pulled by threads only he could feel. Lines etched through the air—thin, deliberate, humming. The glyphs hovered, shaped not by language, but rhythm. Breath. Thought.
Veshan. The name of the glyph brushed his mind. A kinetic absorber.
The other boy grinned, feral and amused.
"I don't draw," he said. "I bleed."
And then he moved. Dark glyphs spilled from his arms—crude, erratic. They squirmed, birthed mid-motion, formed from pain and instinct, not discipline. Akar swarmed to meet them, wild and roaring.
Then he screamed.
A burst of gold Akar detonated from his chest. The stone underfoot cracked. Air bent. Columns beyond the ring splintered like brittle trees.
Hatim raised his palm. His glyph flared—sharp, angular, clean. The wave struck. The shield shimmered, then cracked like ice under weight.
Dirt exploded. Stone shrieked. Hatim slid back, boots gouging deep scars into the floor.
"You're leaking," he said through clenched teeth. "Your glyphs collapse as you form them."
"I am the circuit," the boy snarled.
A crooked glyph snapped open behind him—angular, wrong. The air twisted. He lunged, sheathed in chaos.
Hatim stepped aside. Smooth. Controlled. A dance, not a scramble.
His fingers traced Sennari—a glyph that steals force. As he moved, the Akar responded, flowing around his limbs, coiling into the arc of his palm.
The boy's speed faltered. His footfall landed too early. Slowed.
Enough.
Hatim ducked low, spun, and slammed his palm to the floor. Lines spidered out beneath his touch.
Tharnel. Containment.
Golden bars snapped up around the boy. Geometry locked into place. The Akar condensed, hardened, pulsed like a heart just before stillness.
The boy screamed again. Glyphs flared across his body like open wounds. The cage cracked.
Hatim didn't flinch. He stepped back, breathing in rhythm with the chamber itself, and drew two shapes at once: a spiral in his right hand, a slashed triangle in the left. They shimmered—separate, but meant to join.
He dropped low, dragged the arc into the dirt with his knuckles.
The Akar surged.
It didn't flow. It leapt.
Molten gold shaped to his will.
A spear formed in his grasp—long, humming, etched with dancing glyphs that burned without flame. A weapon not of metal, but intent.
The cage shattered.
Too slow.
Hatim threw the spear.
It struck center mass. The glyphs across the boy's chest unraveled like threads cut from a loom. Light flared—then vanished.
The boy collapsed. His glyphs dimmed. The hum of the room softened.
Hatim stood, chest heaving. Sweat carved rivers down his jaw.
From the darkness, a voice—low, approving:
"Crude. But precise. It listened."
The vision faded.
Back in the chamber.
The hooded figure waited.
"You remember," he said.
Hatim didn't reply.
"You wonder why it lingers. Why it calls to you even in your sleep."
Stillness.
"Akar doesn't serve. It echoes. And you—"
He stepped closer.
"You reached to it. And it acknowledged you."
Hatim looked down.
His fingers glowed faintly. Glyphs shimmered—not etched, not painted, but remembered. Lines that existed only because he remembered them.
"It didn't scar you," the figure said. "It forged you."
Hatim's hands curled into fists.
"You don't just use Akar. You must reflect its will. You're part of it now."
The torch above them danced, casting shadows like hungry glyphs.
"The question isn't whether you can wield it. It's whether you can stay you while doing so."
Hatim closed his eyes.
"Why me?" he asked. No fear. No pleading. Just the question.
"Because you didn't chase it. You reached. And true Akar can only be properly channeled by those who align with the will of Order and Creation."
Hatim inhaled, slow and steady. The breath filled his lungs—and yet something deeper stirred.
"It doesn't bond to want," the voice said. "It bonds to truth. And on you—it left a mark."
He opened his eyes. The glyphs on the wall shimmered brighter now. Not glowing—watching.
"Akar burns those who deceive themselves," the figure said. "But it didn't burn you."
Hatim didn't speak.
He didn't cry.
He listened.
And beneath skin, beneath bone, beneath breath—he felt it.
The mark of Akar.
Pulsing.
Waiting.
For a wielder.