Ashes and Iron
The wind on the Ember Mountains carried the taste of iron and frost, and Kael had long since stopped minding the bite of it. He stood barefoot on the stone ledge, breath rising in pale ribbons, watching the sun claw its way over jagged peaks the color of dried blood. Ten years he had trained on this cliffside. Ten years of dawns just like this one, cold enough to crack bone, silent enough to hear his own heartbeat stutter against his ribs.
Elder Thorne emerged from the mist behind him, moving with the unhurried grace of a man who had outlived three kings and buried more students than he cared to count. His robe, the color of ash, fluttered against legs thin as reeds, though nothing about the man suggested frailty. His eyes, sharp as chipped flint, fixed on Kael with an intensity that made the younger man's spine straighten instinctively.
"You know what today is," Thorne said. It was not a question.
"The final trial." Kael turned, unsheathing the blade at his hip—a plain thing, unadorned, its edge honed to a whisper. Thorne had given it to him on his eighteenth birthday, calling it a mirror: what you see in it is what you have become.
"Ten years ago, you came to me a boy…
