Hatim tasted ash, not just in his mouth, but deeper, like a residue clinging to his mind. The cold stone beneath him was real, however.
Rough. Unyielding. A thin, cool breeze ghosted across his face, smelling of damp earth and something else—a faint, ancient hum that vibrated in his teeth.
He tried to push up, to find his feet. A firm, almost gentle pressure held his shoulder down. "Lie still, Hatim. You tried to fight a brick wall."
The voice. It was the same one from the alley. Low. Calm. But with an undercurrent of something that didn't brook argument.
Hatim groaned, forcing his eyes open. The chamber was dim, lit by a single, guttering torch set high in a niche. Walls of rough-hewn stone, etched with fading, unrecognizable glyphs, rose around him. No ornate carvings of the Crowns. No crude constructions of the Sinks.
This felt... older. Not just worn, but forgotten, as if dug from the very bones of the mountain. The air here, though, was thick with the familiar, heavy pulse of Akar—a slow, deep thrum, unlike the chaotic rush of the city.
His gaze flickered to the figure standing over him. Cloaked. Hooded. The shadows swallowed their face, leaving only a silhouette against the flickering light.
They weren't physically imposing, but their presence was immense, radiating a quiet authority that had silenced Tiri and Masad.
"Who are you?" Hatim rasped, his throat raw.
"Someone who doesn't like watching children get their teeth kicked in." The voice was devoid of pity, yet not unkind. "And someone who knows what else stirred when they touched you."
A jolt. A familiar spark of heat along his spine. The memory returned, sharp and unbidden. Not the alley. Something else.
------
A stone chamber. Cold, humming with tension. Torchlight flickered on ancient walls veined with dull red Akar. The air pulsed, heavy with more than heat. It wasn't silence he remembered. It was the weight of attention. The kind that listened.
And something else—not touch, not presence, but awareness. Smoke-like. Sentient. Coiling around him.
He had been younger then. Small, thin, stained. His hands coated in something that clung like guilt. Not blood. Not ink. Memory, perhaps, half-formed and raw.
The Akar in the chamber did not rage. It breathed. Trained. Bound. A stillness with teeth.
Then came the voice. Measured. Cold. Compassionate in the way steel can be: shaped, honed, absolute.
"You will either command it, or it will command you."
The torchlight deepened. Gold dissolved to violet, then to a red-black hue, like bruised memory curdling in the corners of his mind. The stone wept with veins of liquid Akar.
It called to him.
He reached. His fingers brushed the flow. And Akar answered. Not gently. It roared through him.Down his spine, through marrow and breath.
Not fire. Something worse: recognition. Like being seen by something older than time.
He remembered the jolt. A tremor. The floor shaking not from weight but from choice.
Another entered. Not a master. A boy. Panting. Tense. Eyes wide with reverence and fear. An initiate like him.
"Fight," the voice said.
"Show me who Akar serves."
The chamber changed. Glyphs bled from the walls—not carved but remembered, summoned by force of will. They glowed with knowledge not yet taught.
Hatim lifted his hand. So did the other.
Akar obeyed them both.It surged from the walls, wrapped around his arm like a second skin—threading into nerves, sinking into thought.
Then—a strike.
The other boy did not move. He willed. A spike of hardened Akar erupted midair, sharp as truth, fast as betrayal.
Hatim twisted. Too slow.
The spear kissed his shoulder. Pain bloomed. Not pain of flesh. Memory pain. Deep, echoing.He gasped. Not in fear. In fury.
His hands rose, unthinking.
A blast of raw Akar erupted from him—shapeless, uncontrolled. A scream of power. The chamber buckled.
The other boy hit the stone.
Silence. Then a cough. And the voice again.
"You shaped it. Poorly. But it obeyed."
Hatim collapsed. Breath burned like ash in his throat. Akar drained from his limbs like smoke leaving a fire.
He woke into the now, the memory fracturing, dissolving. No glyphs. No boy. No master. Just this moment.He was bound. Not by rope, but by attention.
The hooded figure stepped forward, their form blurring at the edges, as if memory refused to fully shape them. Their voice was quiet. But it filled the room like a rising tide.
"You remember it, don't you?"
"You've wondered why it clings to you. Why you burn in your sleep. Why it whispers when you are alone."
Hatim said nothing. His silence was not denial. It was unraveling.
"Akar does not choose lightly," the hooded figure said. "It does not follow command. It follows resonance. And you—"
They knelt.
"You were the first in generations to touch it and survive unshaped. It should have consumed you. But it didn't. It remembered you."
Hatim's voice cracked. "Why?"
The figure offered no softness. "Because it saw itself in you. Not a wielder. A mirror. A vessel."
Hatim turned away. But truth does not loosen when ignored. "It touched you," the voice said. "And in doing so, it did not leave a scar. It left a name."
Hatim trembled. Not with fear. With comprehension."You are not just someone who uses Akar," the figure said.
"You are someone through whom it remembers itself."Hatim's breath caught. The cost of Akar was not death. It was continuity. It would never forget him.
"Every time you use it," the figure whispered, "it watches. Learns. It rebuilds itself around you."
Hatim exhaled. Slowly. Testing whether the breath still belonged to him."The question isn't if you can wield Akar." A pause. Heavy. "It's whether you can remain Hatim while doing so."
He swallowed. "Then why me?"
"Because it saw you," the figure said. "Even when you didn't. Akar knows its own."
Hatim blinked. Once. "I didn't ask for this."
"No one does. But Akar doesn't bind to want. It binds to truth. And you—whatever you are—left a mark. It does not forget."
Hatim looked down. But the truth did not yield.
"Akar burns those who lie to themselves," the voice said, gentler now. "It didn't just touch you. It claimed you."
Hatim did not scream. He listened. Because now, at last, he could hear it: Akar.
Whispering.
Waiting.
Not for a master.
For a mirror.