CHRONOFOUDRE Book 1: The Awakening Chapter 3: Violet Lightning
I wake up screaming.
The nightmare clings like smoke—orcs tearing through our house, Kira burning, Father's neck snapping in skeletal hands. My chest heaves. Sweat soaks the sheets. For a disoriented moment, I don't recognize my own room.
Then reality crashes back. The raid was two days ago. We survived. Barely.
Moonlight slants through the window. Must be past midnight. I swing my legs out of bed, wincing as every bruise and burn protests. My shoulder still aches where I landed wrong jumping from the inn. The burns on my forearms are healing but tender, wrapped in clean linen that Marta changed this morning.
Yesterday morning? Time blurs.
I pad downstairs barefoot, needing water, needing to move, needing anything but lying there with those images. The kitchen is dark except for dying embers in the hearth. I dip a cup into the water bucket, drain it, refill it.
A floorboard creaks behind me.
I spin, heart hammering, cup clattering to the floor—
"Easy." Father raises both hands, backlit by his candle. "Just me."
The adrenaline drains, leaving me shaky. "Sorry. I thought—"
"I know." He sets the candle on the table, lowers himself into a chair with a grunt. His throat is still ringed with purple bruises where the orc grabbed him. "Nightmares?"
I nod, not trusting my voice.
"Me too." He gestures at the other chair. "Sit. Let's be miserable together."
A laugh escapes me, sharp and broken. I collapse into the seat across from him. We sit in silence, listening to the house settle, to distant dogs barking, to the ordinary sounds of a world pretending nothing changed.
"Eighteen funerals tomorrow," Father says eventually. His voice is getting better, less gravel, more human. "The captain asked me to help dig graves."
"I'll come."
"You don't have to—"
"I'll come."
He studies me in the candlelight. Whatever he sees makes him sigh. "You're different now. I can see it in your eyes. Harder."
"People died. Friends died. How am I supposed to be the same?"
"You're not." He reaches across, grips my wrist. "And that's alright. War changes people. Even a small war like this one."
"Is that what this was? War?"
"Close enough." He releases me, leans back. "The raiders weren't random. Too organized. Those three in matching armor, that mage—someone's coordinating them. Someone with resources."
I think about the raider-mage, how it crumbled to ash when the lance pierced it. How its magic felt wrong, corrupted, like infected wounds smells wrong.
"The testers are still here," I say, changing the subject because I can't think about that thing anymore. "I saw them interviewing survivors this afternoon. Asking about what we witnessed."
"Looking for more Awakened."
"Found any?"
"Old Marten's grandson. Ten years old, manifested earth magic during the fighting. Lifted a boulder three times his size, dropped it on a goblin." Father's expression darkens. "They're taking him too. Boy doesn't even understand what's happening."
My stomach twists. A child, conscripted. Torn from his family because he got scared and magic happened.
"How does it work?" I ask. "The power, I mean. I broke those crystals, but I don't feel different. Don't feel... Awakened."
"Most don't, at first. The power needs a trigger—danger, emotion, desperation. You Awakened during the raid. You just don't remember it consciously."
"But I didn't do anything. Didn't throw fire or lightning or—"
"Didn't you?"
I stop. Think back through the chaos. The fighting, the smoke, the terror. Did something happen? Some moment where reality bent and I didn't notice because everything was already impossible?
A flash of memory surfaces. Me, pinned under a fallen beam in the square. Too heavy to lift. But I'm here now, unbroken. How did I—
The memory scatters like startled birds. Gone before I can grasp it.
"The mind protects itself," Father says, watching my face. "Trauma does strange things to memory. Give it time. The power will manifest again."
"What if I don't want it to?"
He doesn't answer that. We both know it doesn't matter what I want.
After a while, Father stands, touches my shoulder briefly. "Try to sleep. Tomorrow will be long."
He heads upstairs, taking the candle. I remain in the dark kitchen, listening to the embers die, thinking about power I can't remember and a future I never asked for.
Eventually, I return to bed. Sleep doesn't come easy, but it comes.
This time, there are no nightmares.
Just a city of crystal, and a crowned figure whose eyes match mine.
Morning arrives gray and cold. Autumn is giving way to winter, the air sharp with coming frost. I dress in my cleanest clothes—dark trousers, a plain shirt, my one good jacket. Funeral clothes.
Kira is already downstairs when I descend. She's made porridge, watery but hot. We eat in silence. She hasn't said much since the raid. Just goes through the motions, helping rebuild, tending wounded, existing.
The light in her eyes has dimmed.
"You don't have to go," I tell her. "To the funerals. You could stay here."
She shakes her head. "I knew them too."
Fair enough.
The village gathers in the square around mid-morning. Someone cleared away the worst of the debris, but scorch marks remain on the cobblestones. Bloodstains that won't wash out. The crowd is smaller than it should be. Eighteen people gone leaves holes you can feel.
The graves are ready—a row of fresh-turned earth at the village cemetery. Captain Erdan speaks first, his words formal and hollow. Then families say their pieces. Some cry. Others stand silent, too empty for tears.
Old Gregor gets a grave despite dying in his sleep two nights ago. Heart gave out, the doctor said. But we all know—he survived the raid just to die of exhaustion and grief afterward. That counts.
Mara the baker's daughter speaks for her father, dead trying to protect her. Her voice cracks halfway through and she can't finish. Someone—her aunt, maybe—leads her away gently.
When it's over, we file past the graves. Some leave flowers. Others leave tools or mementos. I have nothing to leave, so I just bow my head and move on.
Kira lingers at one particular grave. Sara, a girl her age who helped at the inn. They were friends. The raiders caught Sara outside, trying to reach her family.
They didn't make it quick.
I wait while Kira says goodbye. Whatever words she speaks are too quiet to hear. Finally, she turns away, face wet but expression empty.
"Ready?" I ask.
She nods.
We walk home through a village that feels like a corpse. People move through the streets, but there's no energy, no life. Just survivors going through motions because stopping means thinking, and thinking means remembering.
At home, Father is at the forge. Back to work because swords still need making and bills still need paying. The rhythm of hammer on steel echoes through the afternoon, familiar and grounding.
I join him without being asked. Pick up my own hammer, heat metal, strike. The work is meditation. The flames purify. For a few hours, I can pretend everything is normal.
Then the testers arrive.
Two robed figures approach the forge as the sun angles toward evening. The older man—Aldric, I've learned his name is—and the younger woman, Senna. They carry themselves like people accustomed to deference and usually getting it.
Father sets down his hammer. "Can I help you?"
"We need to test your son again," Aldric announces without preamble. "The broken crystals were... irregular. We require more data."
"You tested him already. Twice."
"And both tests were inconclusive. This is not negotiable, smith."
I step forward before Father can argue. "What kind of test?"
Senna answers, her tone more diplomatic than her companion's. "We need to observe your magic directly. See if you can manifest it consciously."
"I don't know how."
"We'll guide you. Come."
They lead us—Father insists on accompanying me—to the village meeting hall. Inside, they've cleared a large space and drawn complex runes on the floor in chalk. Protective wards, I assume, though I don't recognize the symbols.
"Stand in the center," Aldric instructs.
I obey, hyper-aware of Father watching from the side, of Senna preparing some kind of notebook, of Aldric muttering under his breath as he activates the wards. They flare briefly—golden light racing along the chalk lines—then settle into a faint shimmer.
"Now," Senna says, her voice calm and instructive, "I want you to remember the raid. The moment of greatest danger. Don't speak it aloud, just recall it clearly."
I close my eyes. Dive into memory.
The orc with the axe. Father choking. The inn collapsing. Kira trapped. A hundred moments of terror cycle through my thoughts, each vivid enough to taste.
"Focus on how you felt," Senna continues. "The fear, yes, but also the need. The desperation. The moment when you would have done anything—"
Something shifts.
Inside my chest, beneath my ribs, a spark catches. Not pain, not exactly. Awareness. Like discovering a limb you never knew you possessed.
"Good," Senna breathes. "You feel it. Now reach for it. Gently."
I reach.
The spark flares. Heat rushes through my veins, but it's not burning me—it's becoming me. Energy crackles along my arms, raising every hair. My eyes snap open.
The world has changed.
Everything moves too slowly. I can see dust motes hanging suspended in shafts of light. Aldric turning his head takes an eternity. Father's expression shifts from concern to alarm one micro-expression at a time.
And I can see... lines. Invisible threads connecting everything—the floor to the walls, the walls to the ceiling, Aldric to Senna, Father to me. The structure underlying reality itself.
Violet-silver light flickers across my skin.
"Fascinating," Senna murmurs, her voice drawn out and distorted. "True time perception alteration. That's incredibly rare—"
Something snaps.
The energy building inside me demands release. I don't know how to control it, don't know how to stop it, and it's growing, expanding, filling me until I'm going to burst—
"Kael, listen to me!" Aldric's voice cuts through the distortion. "You need to ground it. Push the power into the earth beneath your feet. Now!"
I try. Visualize the energy flowing down, down through my legs, my feet, into the stone below. It resists, wants to explode outward instead. But I force it, muscle the power like I'm hammering stubborn metal into shape.
Violet lightning arcs from my hands, spears downward. The stone floor cracks. The wards flare brilliant gold, containing the discharge. Thunder rolls through the enclosed space, deafening.
Then it's over.
The energy drains away, leaving me gasping. The world returns to normal speed. I collapse to my knees, every muscle trembling.
Father is at my side instantly. "Are you hurt?"
"No. Just... empty." I look at my hands. They're shaking but unmarked. "What was that?"
"Chronofoudre," Aldric says quietly. The color has drained from his face. "Time lightning. I've read about it in old texts, but never witnessed it. Never thought I would."
"What does that mean?" Father demands.
Senna is scribbling furiously in her notebook. "It means your son isn't just Awakened. He's manifested a legendary-tier ability. The kind that appears maybe once every few centuries."
"Is that why the crystals broke?"
"Measuring crystals are designed for standard elemental magic—fire, water, earth, air. They can't quantify temporal manipulation." She looks up at me with something approaching awe. "We have no idea what rank you actually are."
Aldric has recovered his composure. "This changes things. The capital needs to know immediately. The boy leaves tomorrow, not in three days."
"Absolutely not," Father growls. "He needs rest. Training. You can't just—"
"This is not a request. Power of this magnitude requires immediate supervision. If he loses control in this village..." Aldric doesn't finish the sentence. Doesn't need to.
I think about the lightning that cracked stone. Imagine it striking a person instead. Imagine what it would do.
"Tomorrow," I hear myself say. "I'll go tomorrow."
Father looks at me like I've betrayed him.
"I have to," I explain quietly. "He's right. This power—I can't control it. What if next time someone gets hurt? What if next time it's Kira?"
The fight drains out of Father. He ages a decade in seconds. "Tomorrow then."
Aldric nods curtly. "A wagon will collect you at dawn. Bring minimal possessions. Everything you need will be provided at the Academy."
They leave, Senna still scribbling, Aldric already composing what I assume is his urgent report to his superiors. The door closes behind them with terrible finality.
Father and I stand in the damaged hall, staring at the cracked floor where my power manifested.
"Chronofoudre," he says eventually. "Time lightning. Your mother would have loved that. She always said you were born under strange stars."
I'd forgotten that. She used to say it when I was small, usually right before bed. Born under strange stars, destined for strange things.
Turns out she was right.
That evening is surreal. My last evening home, and we all know it, and none of us want to acknowledge it.
Father cooks. Actually cooks, not just stew but a proper meal—roasted chicken from our last hen, turnips with butter, even a small apple tart that he must have bartered for. We eat at the table that's been in our family for generations, and it feels like a last supper.
Kira picks at her food. Finally, she sets down her fork. "I'm coming with you."
"No," Father and I say simultaneously.
"I can help. I can—"
"You're twelve," I interrupt gently. "The Academy won't take you. And even if they would, I wouldn't let you."
Her face crumples. "So you're just leaving? Like Mother left?"
The words hit like a physical blow. Father flinches. I feel something crack inside my chest.
"Kira—" I begin.
"She didn't choose to go," Father says, voice rough. "And neither is Kael. This isn't abandonment. This is the law."
"The law is stupid!"
"Maybe. Probably. But it's still the law." Father reaches across, takes her hand. "Your brother will write. He'll visit when he can. And he'll come home someday."
All lies. We know they're lies. But they're the lies we need right now, so we accept them.
After dinner, I go to my room and pack. It doesn't take long—I don't own much. Clothes, a few personal items, the journal Father gave me. I add the small knife I use for detail work at the forge, though I don't know if they'll let me keep it.
Kira appears in my doorway. Her eyes are red but dry.
"I don't want you to go," she says.
"I know."
"But you have to."
"I know."
She enters, sits on my bed. We're quiet for a while, just existing in the same space, memorizing each other.
"Will you really write?" she asks eventually.
"Every week. I promise."
"And you'll tell me about everything? The capital, the Academy, the other Awakened?"
"Everything I'm allowed to tell."
She reaches into her pocket, pulls out something small. Holds it out to me.
It's a wooden carving, rough but recognizable—a tiny hammer and anvil, no bigger than my thumb.
"I made it," she says shyly. "So you remember where you came from. What you are."
My throat tightens. I take the carving, close my fist around it. "I could never forget."
"Promise me something else," she says, her voice small. "Promise me you'll come back. Not someday. Actually promise."
I want to. Want to promise with everything I am. But I also know better than to make promises I might not keep.
"I promise," I lie. "I'll come back."
She hugs me then, fierce and desperate, and I hug back just as hard. We stay like that until she starts crying, and then I'm crying too, and Father finds us like that and joins in, three people holding each other against the dark.
Eventually, we separate. Wipe our faces. Pretend we're strong.
"Early start tomorrow," Father says. "We should sleep."
None of us sleep much.
I lie in bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking about everything I'm leaving behind. This room. This house. This village. My family. My life.
Tomorrow, I become someone else.
Tomorrow, Kael Ardent the blacksmith's apprentice dies, and Kael Ardent the Awakened is born.
I should be terrified. I am terrified.
But somewhere underneath the fear, something else stirs. Curiosity? Anticipation? The same reckless part of me that read adventure stories and dreamed of being more than a smith?
Maybe this is what I wanted all along. I just never imagined it would hurt this much to get it.
The carved hammer feels solid in my palm. I hold it through the night, anchor to who I was, reminder of who I can't afford to become.
Dawn arrives too quickly.
The wagon is punctual. It arrives just as the sun breaks the horizon, pulled by two horses and driven by an Imperial soldier who looks bored with the whole affair.
My trunk—a small thing, barely filled—is loaded onto the back. Father hands me a pack with food for the journey. Kira gives me the scarf she spent all night knitting, crooked and full of dropped stitches but warm.
"Two weeks to the capital," the driver announces. "We'll stop at garrison towns along the way. Don't cause trouble."
I nod, not trusting my voice.
The goodbye is quick. Has to be. If we draw it out, I'll never leave.
Father grips my shoulders. "Be smart. Be careful. Remember what I taught you."
"I will."
Kira just clings to me. I have to physically pry her arms away. "I'll write," I remind her. "Every week."
"You promised," she chokes out.
"I promised."
I climb onto the wagon. The driver clicks his tongue, and the horses move. We roll forward slowly, picking up speed.
I turn back. Father and Kira stand in front of our house—small figures growing smaller. Father raises one hand in farewell. Kira waves frantically, jumping, trying to keep me in sight longer.
Then we round a corner, and they're gone.
Ash-Borough disappears behind trees and morning mist. The village that was my entire world becomes memory. Somewhere ahead lies the capital, the Academy, a future I never chose and can't escape.
In my pocket, the wooden hammer presses against my leg.
I am Kael Ardent. Son of Torak. Brother of Kira. Blacksmith's apprentice.
And now, apparently, Awakened.
Time to find out what that means.
End of Chapter 3