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I am free.

The binding is broken. Not just weakened or altered—gone. The magical chains that suppressed my power have been shattered. Its absence vibrates through me like a void suddenly filled. A pressure that has defined my existence is simply … missing.

I’m ten steps away from the tower when it finds me.

My power?—

It rushes through me like water breaching a long-failed dam.Shadows tear through pathways long closed, flooding spaces inside me that have stood empty for decades. The impact as it returns is almost unbearable, like blood rushing back into a limb gone numb, a storm of pins and needles erupting beneath my skin. I gasp, doubling over as the force of it pulses through me in waves, simultaneously familiar and foreign. The shape of it is familiar. The scale is not.

Twenty-seven years without it has made me a stranger to my own strength.

Shadows call to me from everywhere, even in this blinding sunlight. The hard line where a stone casts shade. The blurred edge of my own silhouette on the sand. The faint pocket of darkness beneath a desert scrub. Each one recognizes me, responds to me,answersme. They reach toward me like long-lost friends, like loyal soldiers awaiting commands, like parts of myself returning home after a long exile.

I spread my hands before me, power gathering in my palms—tentative at first, then with increasing confidence. Tendrils swirl around my fingers like smoke, darkening and solidifying before dispersing again at my silent command. The rush is intoxicating, power flowing freely after being dammed for so long. My hands shake, unused to channeling such forces after years without. The darkness wavers, then steadies as I regain control that once came as naturally as breathing.

For the first time since before the tower, maybe even before the war, I allow myself a genuine smile. Not the carefully controlled expressions I’ve offered Ellie, but something that feels real and terrible in its satisfaction.

I tip my head back, and close my eyes. The desert heat presses against me, and I embrace it.Allof it. The discomfort, the harshness, the brutality of this environment.

All of it is freedom.

“Sacha.” Her voice breaks through my reverie, pulling me back from the precipice of complete surrender to my returning power. I turn to find her standing in the doorway, her expression a mixture of shock and unease as she watches me.

“If we’re going to leave, we need supplies. Water, at least. I nearly died out here before.”

Her practical concern cuts through the exultation rushing through my body. For a moment, I resent this interruption … this intrusion into my first taste of freedom. Then I study her sun-flushed face, the wariness in her stance, and remember the way she stumbled into the tower—barely alive, sunburned, and dehydrated.

She’s right, of course. The desert almost killed her once. It won’t hesitate to do so again. And even I, with all my returning power, cannot conjure water from dry air.

The realization grounds me. Power without purpose is merely indulgence.

“Yes.” The word costs me effort. I’ve waited too long for this moment, and now I must delay it further. “Take what you can find in the tower. There should be a water skin. Fill it up. Bring whatever food will keep.” I look down. “And footwear. My boots are in the chest. Quickly.”

I remain at the threshold, unwilling to step even one foot back into the cool chamber that confined me. The sand burns beneathme, the sun sears the back of my neck, but I make no move to shield myself. I don’t seek out shadow. I don’t command protection. I let the discomfort anchor me, branding each moment into memory. This pain is proof that I’m no longer bound.

She turns and hurries up the spiral staircase, returning minutes later, breath slightly uneven, arms full. The water skin sloshes with each step. Bread wrapped in cloth is cradled against her chest. My boots dangle from her fingers, alongside the small knife I stowed away so long ago it almost feels like it belonged to another life.

I take the boots and sit, fumbling with the laces. The leather feels stiff, unfamiliar, and my fingers are clumsy and unpracticed. The task is simple, but my hands don’t remember how to do it. The laces knot. I have to start over. Irritation flares, then fades. I finish by force of will, not muscle memory.

“It feels different out here,” she says, as I rise. “The air, the light.”

Different. The understatement borders on absurd. She doesn’t know what it means to feel the world again. The power coursing through me now would terrify her if she could sense even a fraction of it.

“Yes.” I adjust my stance and turn to face her, steadying myself against a wave of dizziness. Too much light. Too much space. “After so long inside, everything seems … heightened.”

I resist the urge to summon shadows, though my magic itches for release. Instead, I turn to the tower behind us. Once my prison. Now just a shape against the sky.

As I watch, the doorway Ellie created begins to close, edgessmoothing over until the surface is whole again—flawless, seamless, unmarked.

She gasps, stumbling forward a step as if to try and stop it, eyes wide as she stares at it.

“Would I have been trapped inside, if I’d taken longer?”

“I don’t think so. I believe it would have stayed open until you left.”

Perhaps one day it will find another prisoner. Perhaps it will stand empty forever more. I don’t care.

Extending my senses, I reach for my power. It answers instantly, and the whole world sharpens. Shadows slide into focus, not as objects but as awareness—signals, invitations, memory. Every subtle shift of light becomes a language I once spoke without thought. Now, it floods me all at once, fast and unfiltered. Not my full strength. But enough.