Marcus Thorne was on fire, and for once.
White-hot flames spiraled from his hands as he vaulted through the air, body twisting in a corkscrew that left trails of embers suspended like frozen fireflies. His opponent-a mass of living shadow that moved with infuriating precision-wasn't where Marcus landed. It never was.
"You're getting predictable!" Marcus shouted, pivoting mid-step to launch another volley of fireballs. Each one screamed through the air, superheated air warping reality around them.
The shadow split into three, each fragment absorbing a fireball with a sound like silk tearing. When they reformed, Nathaniel stood in the center of the training arena, arms crossed, one eyebrow raised. His eyes glowed violet-black in the late afternoon sun—the telltale sign of Third Seal shadow magic in active use.
"That's what you think." Nathaniel's voice came from three directions at once, each shadow clone speaking in perfect unison. "You've used the aerial spiral seven times in the last month. Always to your right."
Marcus landed in a crouch, flames flickering around his clenched fists. His own eyes—ember-orange and currently glowing like hot coals—narrowed with mock offense. "You're counting in the middle of a fight? That's so you."
"Someone has to think while you're busy being a flaming comet of terrible decisions."
"Terrible decisions that work." Marcus grinned, and for just a moment, let his flames die down. The training arena of the Equilibrium Sanctum stretched around them.....a massive circular platform of stone, scarred and scorched from centuries of magical duels. Beyond the pillared edges, the rest of the fortress rose in elegant spires of white marble and dark granite. In the distance, just visible through one of the archways, the Covenant Stone pulsed its steady rhythm. Boom. Boom. Boom. The heartbeat of reality itself.
Or at least, that's what it was supposed to be.
Nathaniel's three clones dissolved into shadow, flowing back into the original like water finding its level. He stood still now, genuinely still, without the slight wrongness that had been present during the fight. His dark hair was barely mussed despite fifteen minutes of combat. Marcus's own hair, by contrast, was practically standing on end from residual heat.
"Your form's improved," Nathaniel admitted. "The rotation on that last spiral added an extra velocity to your fire stream."
"High praise from you." Marcus straightened, rolling his shoulders. His training leathers were singed at the edges—third set this month. The quartermaster was going to kill him. "Though I notice you still didn't counter the twelfth angle."
"The twelfth was a feint."
"Was it?" Marcus's grin widened. "Or did I know you'd calculate the first eleven and leave yourself open for something stupid?"
Nathaniel opened his mouth, closed it, then shook his head with something that might have been a smile on a less controlled face. "One of these days, your 'something stupid' is going to get you killed."
"Hasn't yet."
"Statistical inevitability suggests—"
"Nope!" Marcus turned and started walking toward the edge of the arena where they'd left their water flasks. "No statistics. We're done sparring, which means we're done with your probability matrices and calculated predictions. Friendship rules now."
"Friendship rules don't exempt you from consequences." But Nathaniel followed, his shadow stretching long in the afternoon sun. It moved a fraction of a second behind him—a quirk of Third Seal shadow magic. Most people found it unsettling. Marcus found it comforting. That slight delay meant Nathaniel was here, present, real.
They sat on the edge of the platform, legs dangling over a fifteen-foot drop to the gardens below. Marcus grabbed his flask and drank deeply, then used a tiny flame to heat Nathaniel's water—his friend preferred tea temperature, never cold. The small gesture earned him an actual smile, brief but genuine.
"Your control's better," Nathaniel observed, taking his flask. "The precision heating without boiling. You've been practicing."
"Kael's been on my case about it." Marcus created small flame butterflies that danced across his knuckles—a pointless trick, pure artistry, the kind of magic that served no combat purpose whatsoever. Kael Embris, his old instructor, insisted that fire users who couldn't create beauty with their flames would eventually create only destruction. "He says if I can't make fire gentle, I'll never make it controlled."
"Wise man."
"Pain in my ass."
"Both can be true."
The butterflies launched themselves into the air, swirling around both of them. Nathaniel watched them with that analytical focus he brought to everything, but there was softness beneath it. His shadows rose without conscious thought, forming shapes in response—a wolf, a bird, something that might have been a dragon. Where fire met shadow, reality hissed and steamed, but the two magics didn't fight. They danced.
Fire and shadow. Heat and absence. The two forces should have been incompatible.
Five years ago, when the Order first paired them, everyone had assumed it was a mistake. Marcus Thorne, the arrogant prodigy who'd achieved Third Seal at twenty-three—youngest in fifty years—with his showboat fighting style and complete inability to follow orders. Nathaniel Vorne, the analytical genius who'd arrived at the Sanctum late, already self-taught to Second Seal, with a mind that could calculate probability matrices in real-time and a personality that made stone walls seem warm and inviting.
They should have hated each other.
Instead, they'd become the best partnership the Order had seen in a generation.
"Visit day is next week," Marcus said, watching his butterflies dissolve into sparks. The casual mention made his chest tight—good tight, anticipatory tight. "Elara keeps sending me letters about her Second Seal training. She wants fire like mine."
"Your sister has talent. She'll surpass you in five years."
"Ouch." Marcus pressed a hand to his chest in mock pain. "You wound me."
"I merely state probability."
"Elara's got Mom's temperament, not mine. She thinks before she burns things."
"A revolutionary concept you should try."
"Where's the fun in that?" But Marcus was smiling. Elara. His little sister, fourteen years old and fierce as a wildfire. She'd made Second Seal six months ago—faster than he had, not that he'd ever admit it out loud. Their parents, retired Order mages themselves, were probably insufferable about it. His father sending reports about her "superior control and tactical thinking." His mother's gentle letters encouraging him to "perhaps take a leaf from your sister's book regarding impulse management."
He missed them. All of them.
"You're going home?" Nathaniel asked.
"Five days from now, unless Command has other plans." Marcus glanced sideways at his friend. "Lydia still want you to request a desk assignment?"
Nathaniel's shadows stilled—not dramatically, just a slight pause in their natural writhing movement. To anyone else, it would have been invisible. To Marcus, who'd spent five years learning every micro-expression and tell, it was a billboard.
"She does," Nathaniel said quietly. "She says the field work is getting too dangerous. That the visions keep me up at night."
"Do they?"
A longer pause. Nathaniel stared out across the Sanctum grounds, where afternoon sun painted everything gold. "Sometimes. Shadow users see... patterns. Futures that might happen. Lately, they've been darker."
Marcus waited. Nathaniel would elaborate or he wouldn't—pushing never worked.
"Just... darkness," Nathaniel continued. "Like a storm building on the horizon. I try to calculate the source, map the probability tree, but it fragments. Spreads. Every path I follow leads to..." He shook his head. "Lydia says I overthink."
"Lydia's a smart woman."
"She is." The ghost of a smile. Nathaniel's wife was a water affinity healer, Second Seal, working in the civilian medical sector. They'd met during a joint Order-civilian project three years ago. Marcus had been best man at their wedding. He'd given a speech that was fifty percent embarrassing stories and fifty percent genuine emotion, and he'd only cried a little when Nathaniel had smiled at Lydia like she was the sun itself.
"Bad feeling about something specific?" Marcus asked.
"No. Just..." Nathaniel's shadows formed geometric patterns in the air—equations made manifest, probability calculations rendered visible. "Darkness. An ending. Lydia's right, probably. Just stress from the increased spirit activity in the outer territories."
Marcus nodded, but unease prickled at the back of his neck. Nathaniel's instincts were rarely wrong. The man's shadow affinity gave him a precognitive edge most people didn't realize—not seeing the future clearly, but sensing patterns, probabilities, the weight of what might come.
If Nathaniel's shadows were whispering about darkness...
"We'll be careful," Marcus said. It sounded stupid even as he said it, but Nathaniel's shoulders relaxed fractionally. "Both of us. We've got people to come home to."
"Agreed."
They sat in comfortable silence, watching the sun sink lower. The shadows grew longer. The Covenant Stone's pulse echoed across the Sanctum like a distant heartbeat.