That night, Tavian walked alone.
Not toward the ridge. Toward the Veil.
The trees ahead grew too still, too symmetrical. The air lost its usual scent of moss and bark. Most people never passed this way. The forest seemed thinner, not in size, but in something older, its memory. The ground no longer whispered. It waited.
Tavian had no reason to be here. No right. No beast. But something in him had shifted. Something broken had tilted toward something awake.
He stepped between the trees.
And the world changed.
The air thickened. Not with fog or heat, but with attention. The leaves stopped rustling. The silence was full and close. It pressed against his skin like a breath he did not own. Mist curled at his ankles. This kind of mist did not move unless it meant something.
Up ahead, the forest opened into a hollow. A shallow basin of black stone, scattered with twisted vines and lichen that pulsed faintly like veins. Tavian stepped over one of the roots, careful, quiet. But the moment his boot touched the stone inside the ring, the mist deepened.
A shape stirred at the far side.
At first it looked like part of the ruin, wings folded tight, feathers dark as oil and emberlight. Then it moved. A neck lifted. Eyes opened.
A Phoenix.
Not a Common one. Not even a Lord.
Highborn.
Her feathers shimmered in pulses, not from heat, but from memory. As if light itself had to recall how to strike her. The glow of stormlight flickered across her wings, and behind her stretched a stillness that did not belong in the waking world.
Tavian froze.
Somehow, without being told, he knew her name.
Raijara.
"You took your time," she said.
Her voice did not echo. It arrived inside him, quiet and unshakable.
"You were waiting for me?" he asked.
"You were waiting for yourself," Raijara said. "I came when the waiting ended."
He took a step closer. His hands trembled, not with fear, but something deeper.
"I don't even have a Pulse. I've never bonded. I'm not like my sister."
"No," she said. "You are not."
She unfolded her wings slowly. They stretched beyond shadow and shape, casting a shimmer across the hollow. Not threatening. Not gentle. True.
"Then why me?"
Raijara tilted her head. "Because your sister speaks. But you are the one who listens."
Tavian hesitated. "That doesn't make me worthy."
"No," she said. "But it makes you ready."
The stones beneath his feet had begun to glow, faintly. As if memory had remembered him back.
"I'm tired of being forgotten," he whispered.
Raijara stepped closer. The mist parted around her. Her feathers hummed with power, but it wasn't the kind that roared. It waited, like a storm holding its breath.
"I am not here to change who you are," she said. "Only to reveal what already burns inside you."
Tavian looked at her and felt, for the first time, not small.
"What happens if I say yes?"
"You won't need to say it," she said. "You already have."
She leaned forward.
He didn't flinch.
"Will it hurt?" he asked.
"Yes," she said. "All truth does."
Raijara spread her wings.
And everything shattered.
Not outward. Inward.
Lightning surged through Tavian's chest. His knees gave, but he remained standing. He saw nothing. Then everything. Storm and memory, the roar of wind without sound, the Veil brushing against the deepest part of him. Cold. Familiar. Alive.
The Pulse came. And it did not enter him. It awoke in him.
Storm. Veil. Not gifted. Remembered.
When the light faded, Tavian stood alone in the mist.
Changed.
Raijara watched him in silence.
"You are bonded," she said. "But this is not the end. This is the gate."
Tavian breathed. The air tasted different now.
"What happens next?" he asked.
Raijara stepped beside him. Her wing brushed his shoulder, and he felt it in every part of his being.
"Now," she said, "they will see you."
Far behind them, the sky cracked open with thunder.
But it was not the kind of storm that destroys.
It was the kind that begins.