Alana

The world slipped from her grasp, and she fell. Too fast—it was going too fast! The connection to her body snapped taut, pulling her back with an unnatural force.

Like a star being reeled through the void at five times the speed of light, Jira Seora Atal, Vice Regent of the Empire and Headmistress of the Academy, dragged Alana back to the present.

Alana’s vision cleared just as her body slammed into the marble floor of the Academy training room, bouncing once before skidding to a halt. Pain exploded through her bones as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to them. For several seconds, even breathing seemed impossible.

Through the red haze and dancing stars, she sensed Jira Atal’s infuriating look of equal parts smug satisfaction and poorly withheld fury.

Bright and bare of most furniture, the trial room bathed in stark daylight on the top floor of the southern wing of the A’triyes Academy. It was here they evaluated an aspirant’s skill to prepare them for their ultimate test: The Guardian’s Awakening, most commonly referred to as the Trial of the Orb.

It was all anyone talked about. All they trained for. And the day was fast approaching.

The half-circle of silent, deadpan figures of the Committee watched her pick herself off the floor without emotion. Robes white as bone, eyes unreadable. They were judges, observers, executioners of fate, if one wanted to go that far. Most looked bored, as if Alana had not just completed a sudden ten-foot flight.

Jira Atal stood like she had when the Walk began, palm outwards, lowered only after she removed the arcane rig of leather and gold threading that secured the glowing blue crystal to her hand. Having not earned an Orb herself, this was only a fragment granted to Jira Atal by their goddess and patron the Fatestitcher, and Bringer of Light.

It was still potent enough for her to observe the aspirant’s Walks, intervening if need be. Alana groaned, picking herself up from the floor with stiff movements that brought more shooting pains. So many bruises.

“Leave us.” Jira Atal’s voice was flat.

At once and without comment, the Committee turned on their heels and filed out the door like an efficient military platoon.

Alana brushed out the wrinkles in the rumpled robe the best she could as Jira Atal turned away gazing through the sweeping windows behind her. The majestic Haweyne Mountains rose and fell behind the Academy that stood amongst them like a sentinel.

Through the windows, other towers were visible, and rooms where other aspirants trained with their masters. In one, a figure Alana couldn’t make out, paused mid-training to look their way but most others were mercifully distracted.

Alana inhaled slowly, bracing herself. “Jira Atal—”

“Do you understand the gravity of what you have done?” Her back still toward her, her quiet voice was cold as ice. “You are a disgrace to everything this Academy and this program stand for.”

“I was told to—”

“By whom?” Jira Atal turned with a fury so sharp it felt like a drawn blade.

“By—”

Her hand shot up. “That was not a question. Because it was not by me.”

Alana’s breath became shallow. She could feel the fight or flight coiling in her spine, the trembling of her heart beneath her ribs.

Jira Atal hissed. “I knew you were trouble from the moment I laid eyes on you. You are reckless. Careless. Dangerous to yourself, to the Academy, and the very bones of this Empire.”

Alana felt something snap. It all came crashing down, all the years of abuse and being thwarted at every turn, only to stand at the brink of change after a remarkable Walk, and be met by disdain.

“Then why bring me there?” Alana whirled, pulling her hands through the loose strands of her hair. “To watch us burn the Accords to the ground before the ink had fully dried? So that I can smile for the archivists while you sharpen your knives behind our backs?”

“To show you the failure of your blood.” A high-pitched ringing filled Alana’s ears as Jira Atal began circling her like a hawk over injured prey. “You speak of duty, yet you broke the Codex. Interfered with a sealed convergence. You defied the sacred principles of observance. That is not a misstep, Alana. That is sacrilege.”

It wasn’t the first time Jira Atal had been unfair or blamed her for the most trivial matters, but this, somehow, became the drop that flooded the riverbanks.

Alana took a bold step toward the Jira, her fists clenched at her sides. “So I was supposed to watch people die? Do nothing while our ships hail fire down on thousands of innocents?”

Jira Atal’s eyes narrowed, the lines in her dark face deepening. “Yes. Because that is the price of the path. You were not sent to save the timeline. You were sent to observe it. And in your arrogance, you may have undone the very Weave we are trying to protect.”

“Jira—”

“Silence!” Jira Atal roared. “You willingly and knowingly broke the Holy Codex of Ayursha! We wrote those laws, aspirant. You swore an oath to uphold those laws. Give me one good reason why you are the glorious exception to the rule? Why are you the aspirant allowed to roam like the disgraced Guardian?”

“I—”

“You are not worthy to carry her symbol.” Jira Atal’s voice had dropped, yet her words rang like war-bells.

Alana squared her shoulders, refusing to show any sign of weakness in front of her. Especially her. Staring at the old woman, Alana realized just where this was going. It was so clear she berated herself for having ignored the signs. Even the initiation ceremony had been a power struggle between the Jira and Alana’s absent sponsor. Gods, she’d been so stupid. So caught up in the glory of it all.

The headmistress had never intended for her to advance as far as she had. And somewhere deep inside, something shifted for good.

Alana kept her voice and her gaze steady. “We swear an oath to protect the realms and their people, Jira Atal. Since when does that not include dying children in the slums? Or the peasant whose crop failed because the Portal malfunctioned? Or the orphans of war whose paths remain unknown?”

Seora looked at her, her lips curling with a cruel snarl of contempt. “I am done. One false step, one word, and you will cause the damnation of all. I will not have it.”

“How!?”

“That boy could hold the fate of all Akati in his hands,” Seora said tartly. “Did you ever think of that?”

Alana stared in disbelief. “A dying boy on the outskirts of Japhaia a hundred years ago could affect us? We are Akati, we are strength!”

“You do not know who he is!”

“And you do?” As soon as the question was out, she bit her tongue.

Jira Atal’s lips pursed. “To twist fate without facts brings consequences. Ripples on water become waves. We do not act on emotion. Ije o nia, it does not matter. We do what is right, not what is good.”

“He was a drop in an ocean long gone,” Alana said, her voice low and filled with desperate hope.

“And still you reached for him. Still you chose.”

“To give one boy hope… is that not what we are for? To give a smile to those who see us and should not. He was no one.”

“Such naivete is unworthy of an aspirant.”

“Why is his life less valued than ours?” Alana’s voice shook now, but her words were clear. “Because we are akati? Or because he is illevian?”

The woman’s face went red faster than Alana could ever have expected. “Watch your tongue!”

Swirling, she crossed the room to a desk in the corner with measured, lethal grace and pulled open a drawer. From it, she withdrew a piece of paper etched with gold trimming and began writing.

“What are you doing?”

“Filing a formal petition.” Jira Atal did not look up. “Effective immediately, you are expelled from the Guardian Program. Your name will be struck from the aspirant registry by dusk. You will not witness the Awakening, you will not participate. And this—” she held up the half-finished document. “—is a request for Tribunal judgement. You violated the sacred Codex of Ayursha. A crime punishable by severance from the Weave itself.”

Alana staggered back like she’d been punched in the gut. “You—you cannot.”

“I must. For the sake of the Empire. For what remains of the Orbs. And because someone must still uphold the law even when those born to power make light of it.”

She finally met Alana’s eyes, calm and cold like the void between stars.

“May Ayursha forgive you, child. I no longer can.”

Jira Atal finished her writing, placed everything back where it belonged, and walked towards the door with a look of ill hidden triumph on her face. The door slammed shut behind her with a finality that felt like the closing of a tomb.

Alana stood frozen and utterly numb in the suddenly silent room, one question running through her mind over and over because it did not make sense: “Why was the boy by the river not worth saving?”

None of this made sense. Since day one, they had been taught that the purpose of the Guardians was to protect the people of the realms. But which realm? Fifty years and, she had never considered that question. It had always been so obvious to her, but now she began to doubt she’d known anything at all. Because if one cannot touch, cannot change, cannot interfere, then how can one protect or be of help?

“This makes no sense…” Unless the Guardians were never meant to protect the world at all.

The thought chilled her already cold bones. Alone in the vast room with its floor-to-ceiling windows and hidden truths, Alana felt more abandoned and lost than she had in a lifetime of solitude. It was at once different and far too familiar.

She looked out the glass walls of the tower but this time saw only harsh rock and the pretty charade she’d fallen for too. Once, this place had been full of promise. She remembered standing in the Academy after the Interviews, filled with wonder and pride that she’d made it.

As the years went by the honeymoon period dwindled, but she still loved her lessons, loved the work. But like a green tree on a fresh volcanic field she was horribly out of place. A stranger who had no right to be here, yet longed to remain with every fibre of her being.

Her fingers grazed the karai’i. A symbol of pride. A mark of trust. A sign she belonged. It was almost as if the Orb’s power still lingered where it had been removed, like a faint pulse. She snorted. Wishful thinking.

“Help me.”

The soundless echo rang through her, not a memory, not quite, but a feeling that carried the scent of the river and the smoke. She blinked, and for a moment, the Academy walls dissolved around her. She was there again, on the fractured outskirts of Japhaia, next to a nearly untouched cathedral.

Sunken eyes. Paper-thin skin. A failing body wracked with a fatal addiction, starvation, and injury. Jamie. His name was Jamie. Trembling fingers had reached for her with a whisper as soft and urgent as the wind fanning the flames around them.

“Help me.”

Two words. Not a command, nor a plea. A prayer. Why had she reached for him first? Why had she thought that she could touch him? Heal him? Help him and his brother when her people shattered their sky?

“Perhaps she was right,” Alana thought, tears brimming. “Perhaps such naïveté truly is unfitting for an aspirant.”

For a flicker of a moment she had defied fate itself. Just a little. And it had mattered. There had been a glimmer of hope in his eyes.

Alana blinked hard against the sting in her eyes. It was real. More real than any exercise or trial she passed. And now Jira Atal reduced it all to a mistake. A crime. A threat to the great cosmic plan.

“What fate is so fragile it can be undone by kindness?” she wondered out loud, clenching her jaw. “What design can unravel because I choose hope for a no-one?”

Silence suffocated the room, darkening the daylight as if someone were there with her. No. Shaking her head, she ignored the prickling at the back of her neck. It wasn’t the first time loneliness had played tricks on her mind.

“Who was he?”

Who could give her an answer? The mysterious voice? Alana almost laughed. That boy was just a small overlooked life in the grand scheme of things. His thread had been nothing, surely? Had she remembered that right? When she closed her eyes, she could still see his face. It wasn’t just his voice that echoed through her, but something else. Something deeper.

“Help me,” he had said, and maybe, just maybe, she had been meant to.

Alana closed her eyes. Jira Gham’s closing line ringing in her ears, soft and solemn:

“The gods stitched the realms with care. Mortals pulled at the thread, and now we wear the torn cloth of their ambition. Power always turns inward. And what the wise refuse to temper, the world will swallow in fire.”

Alana let out a scream filled with every single second of frustration and pain she’d experienced at Jira Atal’s and the Academy’s hands. Screaming and laughing hysterically till her throat hurt and her lungs burned.

When she was done, she straightened her robes and walked out the door, tasting metal and salt. The thought of her shattered life leaving a bitter aftertaste she hoped a couple of pints would cure.