Destiny, some mortals believe, is a path laid out in advance. They think heaven chose their role right from the start. But destiny is a crossroad. Every intersection demands a choice: to remain or to become. Even for a boy who never asked for legend, standing still also becomes a decision.

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  The Veil binds — 11 months before The Convergence

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  "Lakan… Silang…" Grex murmured. His finger moved to the margins. The annotations crowding the edges of the old scholar's own work. Symbols that weren't Wolfpit script or the new world. Older. Flowing.

  Grex traced one symbol without touching the page. "This script—" He paused. "I've seen it before."

  He pressed his palm flat against the nearest branch. "Ced. The booklet."

  A branch descended, bearing something wrapped in bark-cloth. Grex unwrapped it and opened it beside Lakan Silang's book on resonance.

  The booklet was small, worn thin at the cover, its pages once so fragile they had crumbled at the edges when Dielo first dropped it at Grex's feet. Now they held. Ced's quiet work.

  Iakob looked closer. The booklet's main body was ancient script. Unreadable. It was the same flowing symbols crowding the margins of Lakan Silang's book on resonance. But between the lines, someone had written annotations in plain, readable hand in the booklet. Translating forward.

  Lakan Silang's book was the opposite. Plain text in the body. Ancient script in the margins.

  One decoded the old into something readable. The other took something readable and pressed it back into the old tongue.

  Grex's eyes moved between the two open pages slowly.

  Then his gaze went distant. That particular quality of distance Iakob had learned— Grex listening to something no one else could hear.

  Syl.

  Iakob waited.

  Then Grex spoke quietly. "She knew the prayer," he murmured. "But this—" His finger moved slowly above the margins without touching either page. "She recognizes the script… Not all of it."

  Then Grex closed the books gently.

  He looked up at Iakob, eyes thoughtful. “We’ve tried to reproduce their work, but Wolfpit’s libraries only hold fragments. The rest stayed where it began, sealed in Magiting. But this… probably from the first binding. One of the few that survived.”

  Iakob looked at the cover of Lakan Silang's book. Then at the name again.

  "Then why is it here?" he asked. "In Wolfpit?"

  "I don't know," Grex said. "It says he was Supreme Grand Meister. Someone may have kept it as a gift between meisterdoms… My father may have acquired it and never said how." He set it down. "I've never been able to trace it."

  He looked at the book for a moment longer.

  "But I've stopped being surprised by that. Most important things rarely arrive with explanations. They simply appear."

  He set the book aside gently, the timing felt right to mention about the journey. “Perhaps… when we go to Magiting, we’ll find what’s missing. The connection.” His gaze lingered on the cover. “These books. And the others your grandfather mentioned.”

  Iakob straightened. “Others? What do you mean?”

  “If what Hortew told me were true, Magiting may hold more answers than either of us expects."

  Grex met his gaze.

  "There are children in Magiting like you." Grex started, carefully crafting the words in his head.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Iakob's head snapped up. "Like me?"

  Then Grex just smiled, seeing Iakob's childlike reaction.

  "Close enough to understand what it means to carry something you didn't ask for," Grex said. "And complain about it significantly less than most." Grex teased.

  His tone stayed casual, but his eyes were sharp, watching how the boy took this in. "Young conjurers who could stand beside you—if they're found, if they're trained."

  "Two of them. A girl named Larina. They say she can command the tides. Water inheritance. It's a unique and natural gift. Rare even among the gifted," Grex added. "The kind of ability that gets noticed—which is exactly the problem."

  "She bends water?" Iakob asked. He couldn't help it—the image arrived before the words did. A girl standing at a shoreline, the tide pulling toward her like it had somewhere to be.

  Grex smiled at the question. "Bends it. Calls it. Sends it back. Probably" He let that sit for a moment, visualizing what Iakob had imagined. "And a boy named Kahel, who walks between flesh and spirit."

  "Are they in danger?" Iakob asked.

  Grex's expression shifted. "Dayang Marilag came to Hortew privately, after the Council meeting. She's been looking for them— afraid the Voidcallers will find them before we do." He paused. "Marilag didn't ask Wolfpit for anything lightly. Hortew didn't perform oracle in recent years too. The fact that they moved—"

  "Means it's already urgent," Iakob finished.

  "Hortew agreed. And so do I."

  Iakob was quiet… thinking about the tides, the spirit paths, children somewhere in Magiting carrying gifts that were already drawing dangerous eyes. He wanted to go. Part of him already did.

  But another part sat heavy in his chest.

  "What if I'm not enough?" he asked quietly. Not fishing for reassurance. Just saying the true thing. "The girl bends water. The other kid walks between worlds. And I can't even steady an axe." He looked at his hands. "They'll see it immediately. They'll know I don't belong there."

  Grex was quiet for a long moment. He didn't rush to fill the silence. He looked at Iakob… then looked up at Ced's branches.

  "You know, " he said. "The first time I came up here, I didn't think I belonged either."

  Iakob looked up.

  "I was eight. My father was aide to your grandfather then brought me here one afternoon. I walked in and there was a boy reading children stories in a corner. He was wearing the same hair that you do, hair that wouldn't stay flat." A pause.

  Iakob said nothing. Just listened.

  "Your father had already bound something by then. Nothing remarkable—a child's trinket, a small conjuring tool. He was playing with it while reading." Grex looked at his own hands. "And I was standing there with nothing. Still learning the basics. Still trying to understand how my kindling would take shape." He glanced at Iakob. "You know that feeling. Standing beside someone who already has something you don't."

  "What happened?"

  "I trained," Grex said simply. He pressed his palm to Ced's bark briefly. "It took years before I stopped feeling behind. And Ced is a reminder that I finally caught up to Kendal… Well, almost."

  "You mean this tree?" Iakob asked.

  "Your father named it first. Walked in, looked up, and said Fina like the matter was already settled."

  Iakob blinked. "Fina?"

  "Said it sounded like something that belonged in a tree." Grex's expression was fond and dry at once. "I wanted Ced. It's a cedar. Why complicate it."

  "So how did you decide?"

  "We settled it the way fourteen-year-olds settle everything. A duel. But no conjuring. My rule."

  Iakob's eyes narrowed. "Your rule."

  "He had already bound Azurel. I wasn't going to fight a moon god over a tree's name." Grex almost smiled. "I disarmed him. Systematically. He laughed when he realized what I'd done."

  "That's cheating." Grex could still hear Kendal saying it—laughing, weaponless, utterly unconvinced by his own protest.

  "I didn't cheat," he said then. "I simply planned."

  He said it again now, the same words, the same tone. As if Kendal were still in the room to hear it.

  He let the library settle around that for a moment before continuing.

  "But here is the difference between you and the boy I was—I had nothing at eight. No binding, no relic, no kindling strong enough to catch anyone's attention."

  He held Iakob's gaze. "You had Headhunter before you could read."

  Iakob blinked. "I was three."

  "You were three," Grex confirmed. "Hortew performed the ritual. I watched." He paused. "You were three years old and your kindling reached for it like it already knew the way. Hortew and I looked at each other and said nothing for a long moment."

  "I don't remember any of it," Iakob said quietly.

  "You wouldn't. But I did. A boy at three, resonating with a coveted relic— the kind of binding that takes years of training to even attempt. You made Hortew's job that day remarkably easy."

  Iakob smiled despite himself.

  "You're not going to compete with them," Grex said. "You'll stand with them. There's a difference." He stood, pressing his palm once to Ced's bark. A branch descended and carefully wrapped the resonance book, tucking it away. "I'm not going to tell you the path will be easy or safe. But you won't walk it alone."

  He looked at Iakob steadily. "Are you willing?"

  Iakob stared at the branches, at the scrolls, at the book disappearing into Ced's keeping. His heart was hammering both with terror and excitement.

  He stood.

  They descended together, the living stairs folding softly behind each step. Below, the chamber opened back into its familiar warmth— the grass, the ivy, the morning light falling through the windows in long gold panels. Above them, the doorway in the trunk drew slowly closed, bark spiraling inward, until it was just a tree again.

  Grex crossed to the chamber door and paused at the threshold.

  Iakob stopped beside him.

  Grex extended his closed fist.

  Iakob looked at it. Then stretched his own —small, still uncertain, but steady.

  Their knuckles touched. A boy's hand and a warrior's. The gesture small and wordless and binding all the same.

  "When do we leave?" Iakob asked.