Though Fenrik would have liked to keep it quiet, the breach at the training field had spread like wildfire among the students. Rumors rippled through every corridor, from the dining halls to the dormitories.
No longer was his title, "Fire Mage Alex - bringer of destruction," chanted in mockery. Now they sometimes whispered it in reverence. Sometimes in fear.
"Did you see his eyes? Glowing like emberstone."
"No incantation, no focus rune—he just exploded."
"I heard the flame didn't burn—it bent time."
"They say he's descended from the Flamebound Kings."
Alex felt the shift in the air as keenly as the magic thrumming beneath his skin. Where before there had been sneers, now there were sidelong glances, quick steps away from him, murmured conversations that died the moment he entered a room.
He didn't know which was worse.
Fenrik had closed two dormitories for investigation and temporarily halted morning sparring routines. He insisted it was to "allow for recalibration of warding protocols," but everyone knew the real reason. Alex Valea had cracked the academy's magical safeguards—wards designed by Highmaster Theon himself—and shattered a reinforced dueling ring without intention or control.
But despite the rising tide of superstition and suspicion, Fenrik kept his word.
Alex now trained under his direct supervision.
---
In one of the lower training chambers—an old stone vault beneath the eastern tower, reinforced by double wards and sigils that shimmered faintly in the torchlight—Alex stood, breathing steadily. Sweat streaked his forehead. His cloak had been tossed aside long ago, sleeves rolled to the elbows, palms already reddened from the heat of his last surge.
Before him stood an enchanted practice dummy, runes circling its chest. It could absorb spells up to Tier Six without flinching. Anything more, and it would retaliate.
Brinn leaned against the far wall, arms crossed, eyes narrowed with concern. Elya knelt nearby, her satchel open—scrolls, salves, and an obsidian charm laid out carefully on a cloth.
"Again," Fenrik said quietly, voice calm but firm. "Let's try without the trigger phrase this time."
Alex flexed his fingers. He could feel it now—the flickering pulse within his chest. A warmth that wasn't heat, a pressure that wasn't physical. It stirred like a creature half-awake, waiting for permission to stretch.
"Focus on the feeling," Elya said. "What you felt before the fire came. Not the fear—go deeper. What drove it out of you?"
Alex nodded slowly. "He called me… 'dragon boy.' I remember anger. Not at the insult—but the certainty. Like he knew something I didn't."
He took a step forward, lifted his hand, and whispered the glyph for ignis.
A small flame sparked at his fingertip—controlled, warm. He exhaled. Then the flame shivered and grew, dancing toward the dummy like a living thing.
Fenrik raised an eyebrow. "Not bad."
Alex held the flame longer this time. It pulsed once—then twice—and surged suddenly. He flinched and tried to pull it back.
Too late.
The fire burst outward in a wild arc. The dummy flared red, absorbing the energy, and retaliated with a sudden kinetic blast. Alex staggered backward, barely catching his footing as the warded walls absorbed the rebound.
"Damn it," he hissed.
Brinn was already beside him. "You alright?"
"Fine," Alex muttered. "Just… didn't hold it."
Fenrik approached, arms clasped behind his back. "You're not losing control. You're hesitating. That's different."
"What do you mean?"
Fenrik studied him for a moment, then glanced toward the glowing runes around the chamber. "Magic that powerful doesn't like indecision. Especially not yours. The more you fear it, the more it responds with instinct instead of direction."
Alex clenched his jaw. "So what am I supposed to do? Want to burn everything?"
"No," Elya said gently. "You have to understand why the flame answers you. Fire isn't destruction. It's transformation."
Brinn grunted. "Try telling that to the training field."
Elya ignored him and stood, retrieving the obsidian charm. She handed it to Alex. "It's a dragon's eye sigil. Worn by the Flameguard during the last war of resonance."
"I've read about them," Fenrik said, voice low. "They were rare. Most of their line was wiped out centuries ago."
Elya gave a faint nod. "This isn't just an ancient relic. It's a reactive focus. It was dormant until you touched it."
Alex stared at the charm. It pulsed faintly in his palm.
"And you think… what? I'm one of them?"
"I don't know yet," she admitted. "But whatever's inside you—it's old. And powerful. And not fully yours yet."
Fenrik turned. "That's why we train. To make it yours."
---
Later that evening, after their third failed attempt at resonance channeling, Alex collapsed onto the stone bench just outside the practice chamber. Brinn passed him a flask of cold water, and Elya sat on the opposite bench, sketching new glyph configurations in her notebook.
"I'm never going to get this right," Alex muttered.
Brinn arched a brow. "You conjured a violet inferno last week. You'll be fine."
"That was an accident."
"Accidents don't fracture academy wards."
Elya didn't look up. "He's right. You're just… aligning. The flame isn't the problem. You're trying to use it like regular magic."
Alex frowned. "Isn't it?"
"No," Fenrik said, emerging from the corridor. He carried a set of ancient scrolls bound in copper wire, and a grim expression. "You're dealing with something older than elemental theory."
He set the scrolls down. "These are excerpts from the Codex of Ashenar. Pre-Academy. Before the Founding. They mention something called draconic essence binding."
Alex's blood chilled. "Essence binding?"
Fenrik nodded. "A link between a human host and ancient elemental consciousness. The resonance isn't just in your blood—it's in your soul."
Brinn let out a low whistle. "You're telling me he's bonded to… what? A dragon ghost?"
"Not exactly," Fenrik said. "It's more like a memory. A force that survived long after its origin died. And now it's looking for a vessel."
Alex looked at his hands. They trembled again—not from fear this time, but from the weight of what he was beginning to understand.
"If I keep going… if I keep training this… what does it make me?"
Elya met his gaze, unflinching. "It makes you dangerous. But it could also make you powerful enough to stand against what's coming."
"What is coming?"
Fenrik's jaw tightened. "There are factions within the council already whispering about containment. They fear what happened on the training field. They fear you. And if we don't prepare for that…"
Brinn finished the sentence: "They'll come after you."
Silence settled again.
Alex slowly curled his fingers around the dragon's eye charm. "Then we train."
---
The next week passed in a blur of fire, sweat, and silent corridors.
By day, Alex trained with Fenrik in the underground vaults—learning to harness the surge, to shape his fire instead of letting it shape him. They studied forgotten scripts, altered glyphs, traced the shape of flame in old resonance patterns.
By night, Elya brought him fragments from the Eastern archives—half-burned tomes, censored diagrams, personal journals of mages who had dabbled too far into forbidden lore. They sat in the shadowed corners of the library's lower halls, decoding symbols and cross-referencing myths of dragons not as beasts, but as forces—primordial ideas made flesh.
Brinn rarely left his side. He joked less, but watched more. He noticed the way Alex's eyes sometimes shimmered with flickers of gold in dim light. He tracked how his magic no longer flared chaotically, but coiled like a waiting serpent.
On the eighth night, Alex finally held the flame without it flaring out.
It hovered between his palms, purple at the edges, warm but not searing. Controlled. Alive.
He looked up. Fenrik's expression—so often unreadable—cracked into something rare and quiet.
Pride.
"Tomorrow," the mentor said, "we try shaping it."