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I was slamming up against a mammoth obstacle, and I couldn’t figure out how to conquer it.

Did I even go around it, or try to smash right through it?

“Doubt,” I heard Nyx tell the others in warning. “It’s reigniting.”

“It hasn’t been dealt with properly then,” Vorzyr rightly deduced.

I opened my eyes to find Kai still sitting cross-legged in front of me, completely drenched just like Vorzyr and Nyx looking on as they stood tensely a few feet back.

I looked to see my power still streaming up toward the sky.

Although the stream was more controlled than it had been earlier when it had erupted out of me.

The final thing to do was to employ my will without stifling myself in the way I’d been used to doing. No more hating it or condemning it for its might and destructiveness. Because it didn’t have to be destructive when it unleashed. That was just the fear that everybody else had put on me. There’d been very little focus on the positives that could come from it, on what I could do with it.

But my panic that I couldn’t easily figure out how to put the final anchor in place had that doubt I was trying to get rid of flaring up.

And then my own silver lightning was attacking the natural lighting through the dark clouds above.

It raged out of control and the natural lightning and my magically-generated lightning struck the trees around us, one after another, ripping into them, branches breaking, a couple even tearing from their roots, falling just feet from Vorzyr and Nyx.

Nyx conjured a shimmering blue dome to guard against any others that could actually hit them within range.

Fire erupted, taking the trees and it spread like literal wildfire, flames taking the entire forest within moments.

And then more burst out of me, tearing through the grass, flames erupting into being and forming a circle of fire all around us.

But it didn’t stop there.

It started to fill the circle itself, rushing toward the center near the three of them, the grass blazing.

I saw Kai hesitate.

He wanted to react to stop the flames, but he also didn’t want to leave me while he was trying to help me complete the anchors. If we stopped now, we’d have to start all over again. And it could be too late with the damage my power was already doing as it was.

The fact he was even sitting so close to me while I was unstable and in this state hit me like it hadn’t before because I’d been focused on the implosion of it all.

Him doing that, it was a major act of faith.

He was showing me how much he believed in me.

His trust was absolute in me.

And despite the danger all around, he didn’t move. He didn’t even attempt to shield himself.

But with the insanity happening right now, the urge to just shove it all down and not continue to fight to get a real handle on it took me.

They were all in danger. And, in spite of Kai’s trust, and Vorzyr and Nyx urging me on to do this, all of them believing in me… the danger to them threatened to numb all of that and take over everything.

“This is aboutyourwill!” Nyx called over through the madness. “Not theirs. Yours. This doubt isn’t your own! It’stheirs!”

Before I could even process that, a blast of gold magic tinged with sparks of blue swept through the area.

I watched, stunned, as it doused the fires erupting all around, drawing it from the trees, and even the circle of flames raging near us.

And then, with a burst of gold smoke, my mom appeared just to my left, a few feet from Kai and me.

“Mom, what are you…” I grimaced as my magic surged all the more at the unsettling sight of her presence.