Chapter 1: Everward

Everward’s peace ended with the birth of a child.

Two weeks before Demien Tempest was born, one of the greatest storms in Hycadian history tore across the southeastern provinces. Entire towns vanished beneath its winds. Forests were uprooted. Lightning struck so frequently that survivors claimed the sky never became dark.

The hurricane continued until Virelion Sareth, the kingdom’s strongest mage, confronted it.

No one knew exactly what he did. They knew only that the winds stopped—and that the storm’s remaining power disappeared.

At that same moment, the newborn Demien Tempest gained command over wind, rain, lightning, and tornadoes.

Years later, Demien was admitted to Sacred Heart, the most prestigious academy on the continent. Three months into his first year, he vanished.

His mother died within weeks. His father followed soon afterward. The Tempest bloodline ended, and Everward returned to being what it had always been: an isolated village where nothing important ever happened.

Then Lucas Drake was born. 

The people of Everward watched him carefully at first. After all, the last remarkable child born there had arrived with a hurricane. But Lucas brought no storms. By his sixth birthday, the village had decided that he possessed no magical potential whatsoever.

His parents were less certain. They were hopeful, and they said that sometimes, late at night, they could hear strange noises coming from his room.

“Lucas!”

At the sound of his mother’s voice, Lucas hurriedly removed his hands from the water basin.

The ripples spreading across its surface slowly subsided. Soon his reflection looked ordinary again: straight black hair that refused to stay where he put it, sharp features he had not yet grown into, and dark eyes touched with the faintest trace of red.

Nothing unusual.

Lucas ran wet fingers through his hair, attempting to curl it. The hair immediately straightened again.

“Lucas!” his mother called. “We are not making them wait all afternoon.”

“I’m coming!”

He gave his reflection one final, dissatisfied look, pulled on his leather coat, and left the room.

His mother waited beside the doorway with a basket hooked over one arm. Bread, dried meat, flowers, and several small jars filled it almost to overflowing.

“Are we feeding them for the entire winter?” Lucas asked.

“We are welcoming them.”

“You didn’t bring this much when the miller’s family arrived.”

“The miller’s family came from Lion’s Bridge. It’s right outside the mountains. These people came from Velbrin.”

Lucas knew Velbrin was somewhere north of Everward. Beyond that, it might as well have been on another continent. The tallest mountain across the lake was the northernmost point of Hycadia and the continent. 

He followed his mother outside.

Everward rested in a valley between what was less two enormous mountains than an entire range holding it within its grasp. A pale-blue lake glittered along its eastern edge, while fields and pastures spread across most of the remaining land. Only one gravel road wound between the mountains and connected the village to the wider kingdom.

Lucas had seen these things every day of his life. That afternoon, however, he found himself looking at them more carefully. Perhaps the newcomers would find the mountains magnificent rather than confining. Perhaps they would marvel at the lake, the flowered fields, and the little houses beneath the cloudless sky.

Or perhaps they would think Everward was terribly small.

The newcomers had taken the abandoned cabin on the hill. When Lucas and his mother reached it, she knocked softly.

The door opened a moment later. A blond woman stood on the other side. A girl of about Lucas’s age peered around her, sharing her bright sapphire eyes and round face. The woman noticed the basket and said, “You brought all this for us?”

“Only a few things to help you settle in,” Lucas’s mother said.

The woman’s guarded expression softened. She opened the door farther and ushered them inside.

While their mothers spoke, Lucas and the girl sat together in increasingly painful silence. Lucas inspected the cabin to avoid looking at her. It was more sparsely furnished than his own home. Several cupboards stood beneath one window, and a portable cooking arrangement occupied the opposite wall. On top of the cupboards rested a sword.

It was unlike any weapon Lucas had seen in Everward. The blade and hilt were immaculately maintained, and even from across the room he could tell that it had not belonged to an ordinary village guardsman.

He was still staring when the girl spoke.

“So…” She clasped her hands in her lap. “What’s your name?”

Lucas felt absurdly relieved that she had surrendered first.

“Lucas. Lucas Drake.” He glanced toward their mothers, then lowered his voice. “What’s yours?”

“Rebrixi Smith.”

“Where did you come from?”

“Velbrin.”

Lucas nodded as though this confirmed something. “That’s a city to the north.”

“Yes.”

“I knew that.”

For the first time, Rebrixi smiled.

Lucas looked back at the sword. “Does that belong to your mother?”

“My father.”

“Is he still in Velbrin?”

Her smile vanished.

“He died when the city was invaded.”

Lucas had never met anyone whose home had been invaded. Violence belonged in travelers’ stories, safely beyond the mountains. Faced with the reality of it, he could think of nothing intelligent to say.

“Oh,” he managed. “I’m sorry.”

“It happened a while ago.”

The answer sounded practiced. Lucas suspected that “a while” did not make it hurt less, but saying so seemed likely to make everything worse.

“Everward is safe,” he offered instead. “Nothing ever happens here.”

Rebrixi glanced toward the sword.

“My mother said the same thing.”

For reasons Lucas could not explain, her tone made the words feel less reassuring. Their mothers continued talking, and the silence returned. This time, however, it was less uncomfortable.

Rebrixi pointed toward his hands. “Why do you have calluses?”

Lucas instinctively curled his fingers. “Domestic stuff.”

“What sort of domestic stuff?”

“All sorts.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

Lucas hesitated, then leaned closer. “I’ll tell you if you promise not to tell anyone.”

Rebrixi studied him with sudden interest. “All right.”

That was how their friendship began: with a secret.

In the years that followed, Lucas became Rebrixi’s guide to Everward. He showed her the best place to sit beside the lake, the safest route up the lower mountain slopes, and the field where the flowers remained in bloom longest. Rebrixi, in turn, told him about Velbrin—its crowded streets, its towers, and the markets where traders sold objects from distant kingdoms.

She also taught him to read and to hold a sword.

At first, Lucas could barely keep her father’s weapon upright. Rebrixi laughed until she fell against the cabin wall. The next time he visited, she had found two branches of equal length so that they could practice without risking the furniture—or Lucas’s fingers.

They argued. They competed. They kept each other’s secrets.

As childhood passed, their friendship became something neither of them knew how to name. By the time they were old enough to attend an academy, they had confessed what everyone else in Everward had already noticed.

Lucas assumed they would remain in the village.

Then Rebrixi announced that she intended to enroll at Sacred Heart.

“You could come with me,” she said.

They were sitting beside the lake, their reflections wavering upon the water.

Lucas plucked a blade of grass from the bank. “Sacred Heart is for mages.”

“And?”

“And Everward has produced exactly one mage important enough to attend it.”

“Demien Tempest.”

“He disappeared.”

“That was thirty- forty something years ago.”

“That doesn’t make it encouraging.”

Rebrixi nudged his shoulder. “You’re afraid.”

“I’m being reasonable.”

“You can be both.”

Lucas watched another ripple distort his reflection. Even if Sacred Heart accepted him, his parents could never afford the tuition. He told her so, expecting that to end the conversation.

It did not.

Rebrixi’s mother offered to pay. She called it repayment for the kindness Lucas’s family had shown them, though the amount was far too large to be repaid with baskets of bread and afternoons beside the lake.

Lucas resisted until Rebrixi asked him one question.

“Do you truly want to spend your entire life wondering what you might have become?”

He had no answer. 

Several weeks later, a letter bearing Sacred Heart’s seal arrived in Everward. Lucas Drake had been accepted.

On an August morning in his twelfth year, Lucas stood beside the village’s only road with his family, Rebrixi, and a packed traveling case. A carriage was approaching between the mountains.

As it drew closer, a chill passed through him despite the summer heat. Forty two years had passed since Demien Tempest entered Sacred Heart and vanished, and now the academy had summoned another boy from Everward.