They faced each other on the training slabs, sunlight laying bright squares across the stone.
Lysandra sat on the grass like a small, eager bird, the rest of the Academy was a polite, distant hum.
Kael's posture was calm as always, economical in the way of someone who trusted practice, and when he moved his hands, the air around him turned sharp.
Aurelia held her dark bladr and fed a thin ribbon of Aether into the steel, the same way a smith might breathe life back into cooled iron.
The edge took on a soft, silver sheen, not a light that shouted but a quiet one that tracked with every micro-shiver of her fingers.
The Aether along the hilt thrummed, a patient heartbeat meant to steady, not to wound.
Kael wove the Aether in the air beside his palm, coaxing shapes from nothing, a curl of water that gleamed like quicksilver, a hand's breadth of vapor that would have cut like a blade if he let it.
At first, the exchange was ordinary training: feints and counters, a test of placement rather than force.
Then Aurelia felt it, not a flood, but a string of tiny, precise impressions, each as quiet and merciless as a pin-prick.
A smell: damp stone, the scent clinging to Kael's sleeve from yesterday's drills. It arrived like a memory of breath in her nose, instantaneous and intimate.
A sound: the little click Kael made with his tongue before a hard cast, an old nervousness turned into a habit so small most people never noticed it.
A sight: the faint tightening at the corner of his mouth when he prepared a particular arc of water, so slight it might have been a tick of muscle, but Aurelia's eyes caught it like a keyhole catching light.
A feel: the vibration in the air when he flexed his wrist, a resonance she felt through the soles of her boots as if the stone remembered his weight.
A taste: a metallic tang in the back of her throat, as if she had tasted him reaching for the Aether himself.
They were not whole memories, not theaters of the past, but threads of habit, the afterimages of motion.
Her Aspect did not hand her a scene, it gave her notes. The scab on a finger that showed where a spell had once slipped, the worn patch of leather where a thumb always rested, the cadence of breath after a long run.
Each fragment was a tiny echo of what Kael had done enough times to let it settle into him.
And from those fragments came a pattern.
When Kael's shoulders shifted and the rain-scent evened out, Aurelia knew which arc he favored.
When his tongue clicked and the corner of his mouth dimmed, she knew the burst would curve low and fast.
Her blade hummed in her hand as she let the Aether-edge meet the remembered motion, not to cut him down, but to place herself where the arc would be empty.
She moved before the water flared, not by prophecy but by accumulation, a step that felt like answering a familiar song.
The arc struck the stone where she'd been a heartbeat before and shattered into steam.
Kael's eyes flicked up, quick as a blade. I should have hit her—not surprised so much as annoyed at himself for misreading the rhythm.
He didn't pause to scold the error, his hands already braiding Aether into new shapes.
Fingers ghosted along the weave of Aether, threads answering in quick, brittle chords.
He wove again, faster, trying to stamp rhythm into the air, but Aurelia moved like she'd read the sheet music before the conductor even breathed.
Aurelia slid on the slab the way rain slides off glass, body answering in time to the small things her Aspect had handed her, the phantom click in his throat, the faint tightening at the corner of his eye.
Sight, smell, sound, they came like beads on a string, and she threaded them into motion.
She stepped, rolled, and angled the blade-sheen of Aether so the next arc would find empty air.
Tiny things. They add to a map. Be steady and patient.
Kael felt the pattern in his bones and then, like a mirror catching the sun, remembered her words from yesterday, "My Aspect apparently is about the past, and sensing the echoes of it."
She reads patterns. She's listening to the echoes of my muscle memory.
The realization unfurled cold and useful. She wasn't predicting intention so much as replaying history, the same feints, the same set‑ups he had drilled into himself. Habit had become a map she could read.
Without ceremony, he began to unlearn in motion. He dragged his tongue away from the habitual click, broke the cadence he always favored, and let a different metronome take over, less a practiced pattern, more a scatter of improvised notes.
He shifted his weight so the weight on his boot settled elsewhere, tightened a shoulder he usually left loose.
The water he called this time did not swell in a familiar arc, it folded inward, compressing into a thin spear, then uncoiled sideways in a low, vicious ribbon.
Aurelia felt the change like a stone dropped into a pond of her expectations, small at first, then spreading out in a wobble.
The fragments that had guided her faltered, the scent of riverweed didn't match the angle of the new motion, and the corner of his mouth betrayed no secret.
She adjusted, step and counterstep, hunting for the pattern beneath the alteration.
The Aether in her blade sang a higher note as she tried to translate the new rhythm into place.
He pressed the advantage. Kael braided the spear into a sharper, hotter line, Aether-thin and fast, aimed to nick the unguarded seam between her feet and the blade's arc.
Aurelia saw the ghost of his training, felt the residue of repetition, and lunged to intercept, but the movement had taken on a brutality she hadn't expected.
The spear struck the edge of her blade with a sound like a struck bell, and the impact ran up her arm in a clean, biting flare.
The force shoved through her hands, pushed through her boots, and slammed her back across the slab.
Her breath came out in a sharp rasp, the world tilted with the aftershock.
For a moment, she saw only the blur of Kael's form advancing and the tight, concentrated expression on his face, a look that had nothing to do with satisfaction and everything to do with necessity.
Aurelia reached for the ground with her left foot, digging for balance as the Aether in the blade thinned to a whisper.
Pain ticked along her forearm where the impact had climbed. She drew in a ragged breath and tasted both failure and an odd, fierce clarity.
Across the slab, Kael's breathing had steadied into the same even measure she knew him by.
Aurelia let out a smile. "So you've figured out my secret," she said, wiping a sheen of sweat from her temple with the heel of her hand.
Kael's mouth twitched. "Only because you told us," he said, voice even. "You gave me the map. Without that—" He trailed off, not unkindly. "—I'd have been in much more trouble."
No more leaning on echoes, now that he's figured out my secret.
Her Aspect had shown her a way, now she would sharpen the rest of herself. "Then I'll rely on instinct and my wits," she said aloud, and the sentence steadied her more than the blade at her hand.
Inside, she catalogued feelings, not the past of Kael's motions but the present language of the fight, the way his breath shortened before a feint, the tiny tightening in his wrist that meant speed, the hollow someone gets just before they commit.
The Aether in her blade brightened in response, not to predict but to answer, a short, honest flash of force she could set down with a thought.
Kael braided water again, but this time, Aurelia did not look back.
She watched him as a whole person, not an archive, the play of light across his brow, the way his left foot leaned for reach, the tiny tilt of his chin that had nothing to do with drills.
She moved on impulse and calculation, both, a line carved from two halves.
Kael altered his pattern again, trying to be less readable, and Aurelia answered with improvisation, a feint, a half-turn that carried no rehearsed cadence, a sudden low step that used the slab's unevenness to throw off his aim.
The blade's Aether met his water in short, decisive clashes, sparks of ozone and wet steam flared and dispersed.
Each collision translated into new data, where his force thinned under pressure, where his balance shifted when he overextended.
She took those scraps of information and braided them into choices, not certainties.
When he finally found an opening and drove a thin spear toward her seam, she did not wait for a remembered pattern to rescue her.
She stepped into the strike with a grin that was sharper than fear, letting the edge catch the spear at an angle that sent its recoil past her shoulder.
The impact knocked the wind from her, but she used the momentum, turned, rolled, and came up with the blade at an angle that nicked Kael's sleeve.
The cloth split with a soft, telling sound. He blinked, genuinely surprised by the mark.
For a breath, they stood like that, breathing, measured, the courtyard around them normal and obscene all at once.
Aurelia tasted copper on her tongue and the thin joy of having trusted herself. Instinct and wit.
The lesson from the fight was not that memory would always save her, but that memory plus choice could.
Kael's gaze held something like respect now, and Lysandra's small, astonished cheer came up from the grass as if the world had decided to reward them both for the honesty of the duel.
——
The blade at Kael's throat was light as a promise and as dangerous as a question.
He breathed slowly, measuredly, and for an absurd second, the world narrowed to the tiny gap of air between steel and skin.
Then Aurelia let the point ease, and the moment loosened into laughter.
"It's a win," she said, voice low, part triumph and part honest confession. She set the tip of the sword against his collarbone and stepped back. "But yes, my Aspect gave me the edge."
Lysandra burst up from the grass, cheeks flushed with excitement. "Not fair!" she cried, hands fisted at her sides. "You're the only one who's awakened! It's not—it's not fair, Aurelia. You get all the moonlight."
She poked Aurelia's shoulder in mock indignation, then ducked her head and grinned. "Also, it was breathtaking."
Aurelia's smile was small and honest until a shadow slid under the brightness.
The memory she had been carrying like a smoldering coal surfaced unbidden: the day the Aspect first broke free.
The classroom had been ordinary then, with benches, the smell of chalk, and the low rustle of students rearranging their scrolls.
She remembered the sound of the moon arriving, not like a bell but like a hundred whispers falling at once.
Moonlight had poured all out through the classroom.
Papers hovered, students panicked, a desk overturned, someone screamed, irrelevant details now raw with shame, and then she had gone out of control.
Fragments of memories had ripped loose and scattered across faces, people had heard things that weren't theirs.
Chaos. Corin's hand on her arm, Edda's voice steadying, the runes in Professor Marlec's study flaring with a disciplined panic.
They had been lucky, no one had been badly hurt. But luck felt thin when measured against what might have been.
"I—" Aurelia began, the words catching. "If I could choose, I would never have anything like that happen again. I'm not sure if I wanted this."
The confession was softer than she expected. I would rather keep the bottle closed than have it spill over onto other people's heads. The memory glowed unpleasantly at the edges of her mind.
Lysandra's expression shifted, the mock-annoyance folding into something warmer.
She stepped close and laid a hand on Aurelia's shoulder, thumb rubbing in a restless circle. "It was terrifying," she admitted, voice down to match Aurelia's, "but it was beautiful, too. Moonlight like that—" Her eyes shone. "It felt like we were in a story."
Aurelia felt the warmth of the touch, the human, steady thing that helped the fear be less alone.
Kael came up beside them, wiping the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand.
"You did well," he said simply. "You could have gone farther, easier, maybe, but you held enough to stop. That takes work." He gave her a look that was both assessment and reassurance. "Your potential's being revealed. Be proud of that, even if you wish you'd never had to prove it."
The praise was awkward and honest, it lodged in her chest like a small, warm stone.
For a moment, she let herself believe it, let the glow of their support push back the shadow of the classroom and its messy moonlight.
Before the atmosphere could grow too sentimental, Lysandra hooked an elbow into Kael's arm and leaned up with a conspiratorial grin. "I still want to unlock mine," she declared, loud and bright. "And it will definitely be before yours, Kael." She gave him a pointed smirk.
Kael let out a breath that turned into a smile. It was the smile of a man surprised by the very idea of competition in an area he'd never considered. "We'll see," he said, amusement and something gentler in his tone.
The question there was half curiosity, half wonder. What will it be?
Aurelia's laugh this time was softer, close to peace. If only by accident, recalling the moonlit chaos where the Aspect had first shown itself, and then she pushed that memory back to the margin.
For now, she let their warmth hold her. The victory squinted in the bright afternoon, the courtyard smelled of wet stone and grass, and the faint tang of ozone where Aether had been chased through the air.
"Fine," she said at last, letting the humor back into her voice. "But if Lysandra unlocks anything before Kael, I'll demand a demonstration." She nodded at Kael with mock menace.
He raised an eyebrow, amused. "Then I'll lend her a lesson in humility," he said. "Careful, Lysandra. I'm not sure you want to stare into the moon for too long."
Lysandra stuck out her tongue and leapt toward them, the three of them a cluster of rough affection against the academy's indifferent stone.
They crossed the academy's stone courtyard in a loose cluster, the sunlight sliding off wet flags where Kael's discarded arcs had steamed the air.
Students drifted around them like birds avoiding a sudden storm, some threw curious glances at Aurelia, others pretended not to see.
Lysandra, true to form, shouldered ahead and announced, bright as a bell, "I want a drink."
Aurelia started, a small, rueful laugh escaping her. "You didn't even fight," she said.
"Doesn't matter," Lysandra said decisively, looping an arm through Aurelia's, "You moved like a, like a tide. And I'm thirsty." She gave Aurelia a nudge. "Come on. Hot cider. Or something stronger and more ridiculous."
From farther down the hall, Marlec leaned against a wall, one boot hooked over the other, observing the small parade.
He called over his shoulder in a dry voice, "Edda, did you see that? Do you think she'll be able to control it?"
Edda, who walked beside Marlec with a satchel of medicinals, glanced at Aurelia as if judging both the girl and the day. "After that spar?" she said. "Yes. She's got the discipline. It will take time, but she'll learn."
Corin's shadow detached from the doorway where he'd been lingering and crossed the path to stand between Marlec and Edda like an inconvenient fact.
He folded his hands and looked at Marlec steadily. "Even if she can control it," he said, voice low enough that only the three of them heard, "does control make her any less of a threat? A power that can touch and read other people's histories—"
Marlec's boot kicked off the wall with a sharp sound as if the idea grated under his sole.
He straightened and fixed Corin with a glare that made the other man's careful face look suddenly young. "Don't," Marlec snapped. "Do not look at her as a problem. She is a student of this school. She is not a weapon in waiting."
Corin raised his hands, not in surrender but in a restrained argument. "I am insisting only on procedures—"
"As a professor," Marlec interrupted, tone narrowing to a pointed certainty, "I am telling you I will not watch one of my students become a cautionary tale because we were too careless with a rule. I know her. She will not end up like that."