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He exhaled a held breath, his smile relieved—though his eyes were a bit pained, as though he ached to think about how we’d come to such a desperate place.

After a bit of quiet deliberation, he stood, decisively, and offered me a hand up. “You should first learn how to access the chamber of the swords, then. Someone aside from me should know how to do this, anyway, just in case something happens to me.”

He said those last few words like an afterthought as he turned and started into the palace, but I couldn’t shake the foreboding feeling that settled over me as I hurried to catch up with him.

We made our way to the chamber doors. Two guards stood outside of it, their bodies so still they might have been statues. I wondered what was going through their minds every time they heard anyone approaching their station—how often they had thought of the murders that had taken place right where they stood, mere days ago.

The walls, floors, and the doors themselves were all spotless once more. Yet, everywhere I looked, I thought I saw blood at first—at least until I blinked, making it disappear every time. The scent of it lingered, however, no matter how I tried to make it go away. Whether memory or reality, I couldn’t say for sure.

The guards bowed to my brother and me, stepping aside without a word. As they took up a new position a short ways up the hall, I wandered closer to the doors. The bracelet my father had given me began to shake, just as it had the last time we’d visited this chamber. I’d been too distracted to pay much attention to it before, but now, its buzzing seemed to echo in the quiet air—loud enough that Bastian tilted his head toward the sound. I held it up for him to see.

“It’s reacting to the doors?” He stepped closer, fixing a curious gaze on the jewelry.

“It did this before, too.”

“…Reacting to the magic that seals this chamber shut, I suspect—as it’s pure Vaeloran magic. In fact, you can likely follow its promptings and figure out how to break the sealing spell yourself. Go ahead; try it and see.”

Tentatively, I reached my hand toward the doors. The bracelet rattled more violently as I did so, but, other than this, nothing happened right away.

I closed my eyes, blocking out all sensation except the movement of my bracelet. I soon felt an odd pressure in my chest, like someone taking hold of my heart and squeezing it. A sudden, rapt awareness of my body followed—like I could feel every individual drop of blood in my veins, every whisper of breath in my lungs. I was hyper-aware of every bump of gooseflesh on my skin, too…and what felt like ghostly fingertips lightly brushing my arm.

Those fingertips trailed down the length of my arm, collecting into a greater pressure at my hand. Then it was like someone else taking that hand and guiding it—showing it which symbols to trace on the doors. Which ones to avoid. Where to press, and how hard or soft to make my touch.

My eyes opened to see nothing more than a hint of darkness swirling beneath the surface of my skin, so faint I wondered if I was imagining it. Yet, the pressure in my hand continued to build, the ghostly guidance heavy and insistent.

I did my best to let this apparent new facet of my powers lead me, but I almost panicked at the bizarre sensation more than once.

Bastian steadied my hand every time it started to drop, guiding it along with my magic. Within moments, the etchings in the steel were glowing—as they had the last time we’d been here—and the doors swung open.

My bracelet continued to shiver as we stepped inside. I clenched my hand around it, breathing hard. I’d been trying to channel some sort of power through this bracelet foryears.

But now that I’d done it, all I felt was…strange.

The hyper-vigilant state it had induced persisted, making me entirely too aware of my every labored breath and twitching nerve, to the point that it made me feel almost paranoid.

My brother seemed to pick up on my discomfort. “Your ties to Vaeloran magic are what will allow you to wield your sword properly as well,” he said, encouragingly. “You’ll get used to the sensation; the bracelet should keep it from becoming too overwhelming, in the meantime.”

I tried to take slower, calmer breaths. “I’ve been clueless about what this piece does for years now; it’s only reacted to a few things since I’ve had it, and I could never pinpointwhatit was reacting to, or what sort of magic it was encouraging me to do.” I absently spun the beads of it around, thinking. “It seemed to wake in Erebos, too, when it got close to the vivaris flames.”

My brother didn’t seem surprised by this. “Those flames were originally created by a Vaelora,” he said. “Not Calista, but one of the Shadow Vaelora who came before her. There have been sacrifices from Aetherkin and the like to keep them going over the years, but those blue fires were originally born of a higher, purer magic.”

I turned this over in my head a few times before settling on a theory. “…So, whenever it reacts, there’s likely powerful, pure Vaeloran magic at work nearby?”

He nodded, gingerly taking my hand and lifting it so he could better examine the bracelet. “That would be my guess.”

“…What do you think would happen if I took it off?” I don’t know what made me choose that moment to ask him such a thing—except that it was a question that had always lingered inthe back of my mind, but it had been getting louder and louder over the last few days.

Bastian’s expression was equal parts curious and troubled as he considered his reply. It was a long moment before he said, “You are part of a long line of Vaelora, and, in a way, all of the past manifestations of them are a part of you. As your powers have awakened with age, so too have your connections to them and all the magic they laid upon this world. Without anything subduing it all, I imagine your journey through Noctaris would have been even more dangerously overwhelming. But there will come a time for taking the constraints off, I suspect.”

I shoved down the pessimistic, intrusive response I had to this—what if that time never comes?

What if I fail before we reach that point?

My brother turned the beads around a few times, situating them so all the symbols were facing him. “The letters on it are an ancient script; in our modern tongue it would be pronouncedavelian.It’s an old Noctarisan word that means something likekindred spirits, orsouls that are bound to one another.”

While he turned his attention to the floating swords, I clenched and unclenched my fist, trying to think of the magic that had guided my hand as something kin to me—reminding myself that I was not a stranger in this strange land any longer, even if I still felt like one.

A thrum of power radiated from the center of the room, drawing my eyes to the swords.