Fabrisse Kestovar should’ve known he had no talent for Thaumaturgy the mont he failed his first affinity test.
He was thirteen then, standing in the stifling chamber the proctors called the Ember Hall, a cavernous vault where braziers roared like caged beasts and the walls blazed with mosaics of fire so vivid they could leap free. The fire test was supposed to be the easiest, for it was the one test students spent years studying towards. A brass bowl, a wick soaked in resin, the Examiner’s clear, patient instructions: focus, extend, invoke the fla toward you as if it were already a friend. The fla was ant to lean closer, brighten, or at least flicker in acknowledgnt of the student’s will.
Fabrisse watched the others take their turns. One boy barely lifted a hand and the fla leapt toward him as if on command, swelling brighter. A girl closed her eyes, whispered a steady breath, and the wick bent eagerly in her direction. Each success was t with nods of approval, as though this were no harder than reciting letters from a slate.
They make it look so easy, he thought to himself.
That was how the system worked: either you resonated with the aether—the current of existence from which all magic was drawn—or you didn’t. Out of every ten candidates, eight would show at least an ordinary affinity with fire, enough to pass the threshold required for further study.
As for the other two . . .
He saw it happen not long before his turn. A girl with dark braids leaned forward, determination stiff in her shoulders. She whispered over the resin wick and stretched her hand out. She tried once, twice, then a third ti. Each attempt ended the sa: the fla sat still, refusing even the courtesy of a tremor.
The Examiner’s expression softened, but his words carried the sa rehearsed weight they always did. “You would do well to consider another path. Artisan, rchant, scribe; there are many ways to serve the Kingdom of Raslan.”
It was said gently, but perfunctorily, as though spoken countless tis before. The girl’s lips trembled; she burst into tears as she hurried out, her sobs muffled against her sleeve.
He knew he would be next. After all, he had tried hundreds of tis himself at ho. Nothing ever answered him.
And now, with the entire hall watching, he felt the familiar weight settle in his chest. He already knew what would happen. The wick would burn in place, stubborn and unbothered, while the Examiner waited for a sign that would never co.
Still, when his na was called, he stepped forward. Because what else could he do?
He stepped up to the brass bowl, feeling the heat sting his cheeks. The Examiner gave the sa calm instructions he had given to everyone else. Fabrisse stretched out his hand, breathed in, breathed out, tried to imagine warmth flowing into his palm.
The fla did nothing.
He tried again, and the result stayed the sa.
The Examiner looked at him and sighed, soft but unsurprised, then repeated the familiar words. “You would do well to consider another path. Artisan, rchant, scribe; there are many ways to serve the Kingdom of Raslan.” Then, after a pause, he added, “Would you like to return your cloak now?”
His throat burned, but not from the heat. His fingers found the hem of his cloak and gripped it tight. Then he lifted his chin, t the Examiner’s gaze, and said, with as much steadiness as he could muster, “I still have the Air and Earth tests left.”
“You’ve already failed Water,” the Examiner reminded him, almost gently. “And those who fail Fire rarely, rarely, pass the others.”
“Then I’ll be the first,” Fabrisse said.
The Examiner only shook his head, the faintest trace of pity in his gaze, and moved to call the next na.
He stepped aside with the hem of his cloak still clenched in his fist, and walked stiffly toward the side door where an attendant waited to guide him to the next chamber. The Ember Hall’s heat clung to his skin, but it was the weight of silence from the other candidates that pressed hardest against his back.
Why? Am I that naturally inert? Do I just have zero inner resonance with the elents?
Of course he wasn’t naturally gifted, at all.
The Unified Synod of Thaumaturgic Study sent their agents across every corner of the realms, seeking children with the spark of aetheric resonance. They ca to the Kestovar household too, carrying scrolls embossed with the sigil of the Synod, their vellum breathing gilt promise and the weight of destinies yet unspoken. The invitation had been for his sister, Dubbie. She was the one who had shown instinctive resonance, the one who had once teased a candle fla into a lazy spiral while yawning.
But Dubbie wanted nothing to do with Thaumaturgy, so his mother, reluctant but hopeful, let him take her place.
It had seed so simple then; opportunity handed to the child who wanted it most.
Unfortunately, it wouldn’t take long for him to discover that want and will alone counted for very little in the Synod’s halls. He could study, he could morize, he could practice until his fingers cramped and his throat went raw. But when it ca to resonance, he was terrible at it.
For the last three years, he had subjected himself to the fla. In class, the exercises had been simple—at least for most others. Students were made to sit in front of a controlled fla, usually a resin-lamp or candle, and practice drawing it closer by breath and will alone. Later lessons paired them with braziers, where they were told to ‘resonate’ with the heat, to let their inner warmth find rhythm with the movent of the fla. Other exercises involved tracing fla with their hands, controlled inhalations over a lit wick, passing lit brands around circles. None had worked for him.
There were training chambers in the Junior Archive designed to simulate elental climates. He’d requested hours in the heated rooms, starting at thirty degrees, then forty, then fifty, until the air itself scalded his throat. He made himself sit still, recording in neat columns how his body reacted as though cataloguing would coax fire into recognition.
So days he placed his hand so near a brazier that the skin blistered, then healed, then blistered again. Other days he lay awake on the dormitory floor, candles ringed around him, trying to breathe the rhythm of their flicker until his chest ached from smoke. He thought if he imrsed himself long enough, if he made fire a constant companion in sensation if not in spirit, sothing in him might finally ignite, as it should.
It never did.
He didn’t fare any better with Air.
After three strained breaths that moved nothing but the dust motes in the chamber, he knew the outco before the Examiner even spoke. The wick did not sway and the incense smoke did not bend.
The Examiner’s eyes softened with the sa practiced pity he had seen in the Ember Hall. The words ca in the sa cadence, as if passed down like a liturgy, “You would do well to consider another path. Artisan, rchant, scribe; there are many ways to serve the Kingdom of Raslan. Would you like to return your cloak now?”
“I still have Earth left,” Fabrisse said, the words sharper than he ant.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
The Examiner’s brows lifted, not in surprise but in wearied recognition of the line. “Earth?” His tone was careful, tempered with the sa detached courtesy. “Only one in seven thousand awakened Earth as their sole elent. Do not anchor your hopes there, boy.”
Fabrisse held his cloak tighter at the hem before walking without a word. One in seven thousand. Smaller than the chance of being struck by lightning in a storm, smaller than the chance of a child surviving the plague without a healer, smaller than the chance of a coin landing on its edge and staying there.
To make matters worse, Earth hardly even counted as a discipline in the Synod’s halls. Fire and Air took the lion’s share of prestige, and their chambers forever aglowed with braziers and lanterns, veiled in incense, and dressed in every manner of curated rite and dazzling exercise. Water, at least, found sanctuary in the healing wings and in the ornantal fountains where novices were taught to draw ripples like plucking strings.
With Earth, however, the ‘training’ amounted to little more than lifting rocks from the garden beds, shifting gravel along marked channels, or sitting cross-legged in the damp archives and being told to ‘listen to the weight of silence.’
It had never made sense to him. The rocks didn’t speak that way. They weren’t mute, obedient things waiting for soone to haul them into a neater pile. If anything, the closest he’d ever felt to them was on his own, at the riverbanks and in the caves nearby, hands gritty with sand as he picked through half-buried crystals or fragnts of shale. Those monts had resonance—an actual vibration under his skin, a kind of buzzing recognition. He had felt the aether. He could have sworn he had felt it.
But he’d spent three years here. Three years following the Synod’s thods. Who was he to deny centuries of teachings just to try and pass the test through vibes?
His forehead cracked against another body. Pain knifed through him at the bridge of his nose, and he staggered back, clutching the hem of his cloak tighter (for the third ti today) as if that alone might steady him.
When he blinked up through the sting, he found himself staring at a young magus in Synod staff uniform. The man’s hair was cleanly side-parted, every strand set in place, his features so finely balanced they looked less carved than opened, like the first bloom of morning.
The man steadied him. “What’s your na, Adept-Apprentice?”
“Fabrisse Kestovar,” he said, his voice muffled against the sting in his nose.
The magus’s eyes dipped to the hem of the cloak again. “You are still wearing the Synod’s colors. Then tell —what have you passed?”
Fabrisse felt his throat work. “None,” he admitted. “I failed all three.”
The man was left with a pause as if he hadn’t expected honesty. His brows rose, finely shaped and just shy of amusent. “All three? Then you’ve only Earth left to stand on.”
Most students would have handed back their cloak at that point, he knew the man was thinking it. He’d heard the sa words before.
“I am determined to pass.”
The magus tilted his head, studying him for a mont with eyes caught sowhere between pity and intrigue. In an even voice, he spoke. “I don’t have an affinity with Earth myself,” he admitted. “But I saw you by the river the other day, collecting rocks. You held one to your ear. You looked as though you were . . . listening. What did you feel?”
Fabrisse’s fingers twitched at the mory. He hadn’t realized anyone else had noticed. The stone had been cool, heavy, a little damp from the riverbank. But that wasn’t what mattered. It had humd, like a ssage caught in the wrong frequency.
“It was . . .” He struggled, words snagging against the sensation. “Like the rock was trying to tell sothing.”
“There you go. The rock responds, but to those who are willing to listen. I know this much: Earth doesn’t yield. You cannot beckon it as you would Fire, or draw from it as with Air. It doesn’t sway, it doesn’t bend. It simply is. If you want Earth to move, you don’t ask it. You endure it, you outlast it, until it accepts you.” He held Fabrisse’s gaze, as if weighing whether the boy understood.
The magus’s words clung to him like burrs as he left the corridor behind. Earth doesn’t yield. It simply is. Endure it. Outlast it.
The Earthen Hall was smaller than any of the others and had a distinct lack of roaring braziers or incense haze. It was just a square chamber with walls of packed stone slling of dust and damp moss, its only adornnt a series of plain wooden shelves stacked with rocks of different shapes and sizes.
The attendant gestured him forward, disinterested. Fabrisse stepped into the basin and lowered himself before the stones. He had been taught the technique a dozen tis: regulate the breath, focus on weight and rhythm, extend one’s inner resonance like roots searching for soil. None of it had ever worked. None of it ever would.
So this ti, he didn’t bother.
He set his hands on his knees, dug his fingernails into the fabric of his cloak, and tried sothing else. He thought of the magus’s voice, precise and steady. You don’t ask Earth. You endure it, until it accepts you.
His lips parted, but no ritual phrase ca out. No, don’t chant. Just talk to the stone, like you always do. Instead, his thoughts pressed into the stone like a whispered confession. I am desperate. If you can sense , please take .
The stones did not stir.
His chest tightened. He tried again, harsher this ti, clenching his fists so tightly the cloth cut against his skin.
I have nothing else. I’ve given everything. Don’t cast aside.
Still nothing. The rocks lay silent, as mute and unbending as ever.
His throat ached. Sha pooled at the corners of his eyes. He drew one last breath, not steady, not asured, but ragged with despair.
Then hear . I will not stop. Break if you must, bury if you must, but I will not leave. I will endure. I will endure.
The dirt lifted.
A single patch of dirt rose from the basin, trembling against its own weight. It hovered in the air, no higher than his knuckles, but undeniably aloft.
Fabrisse stared, heart hamring, hardly daring to breathe. It was small, fleeting, fragile as a coin balanced on edge. But it was real.
The attendant, who had lounged against the wall with glazed indifference, straightened at once, eyes narrowing. From the doorway, the Examiner observed without a word, then raised his hand and gave a single clap that echoed through the bare stone room.
The Earth had answered.
Fabrisse’s whole body felt locked in place. He didn’t grin, didn’t laugh, didn’t leap as others might have. His mouth stayed tight, his shoulders rigid. But his eyes lit and danced in a way they never had before, sparking with a restrained brightness that spoke louder than any shout could have.
The patch of dirt wavered, then dropped back into the basin with a dull thud. Fabrisse exhaled shakily, clutching the hem of his cloak with white knuckles, anchoring himself to the mont.
The Examiner stepped forward at last, his expression asured, voice even as he spoke the verdict, “Affinity: Earth—Average. Sufficient.”
A foothold, at last.
Fabrisse bowed his head, words catching in his throat. He had no smile to show, only the faint tremor of relief in his hands and that restless gleam in his eyes. For him, it was triumph enough.
As the attendant recorded the result, Fabrisse stepped out of the chamber, the dust-sll clinging to his clothes.
And there, in the corridor, the magus was passing by. Fabrisse didn’t know if he had been waiting or if chance had brought him there again. Their eyes t, just for a heartbeat.
The magus might have caught the gleam in Fabrisse’s eyes, for he slowed and asked, “Have you passed?”
“Yes,” Fabrisse blurted, louder than he ant to.
“Very good,” the man said. His gaze lingered, as though asuring him anew. “But with only Earth to anchor you, your path will be arduous.”
He paused, considering. Then, as if adjusting invisible notes on a ledger, he added, “Still, you have passed. You have ti. Perhaps . . .” His eyes narrowed in thought before he turned, already consulting so inner schedule. “I will be delegated as Junior Instructant next week. Speak to your office and ask for Instructant Lorvan Lugano. I will make ti for you. Perhaps you can be my first ntee.”
Fabrisse’s mind snagged on the words first ntee. The syllables clattered around inside his head like loose stones in a jar. His lips parted, but no sound ca; he was still trying to decide if he’d misheard, or if this was so stray kindness that would vanish the mont he reached for it.
The magus seed to take his silence for doubt. His tone morphed to a lighter shade, almost wry, though still asured. “Don’t worry. The worst has passed. Thaumaturgy rests on two cornerstones: resonance input and emotional input. I have yet to see a student wholly incapable of both. The odds of such a case are one in a million. You will do fine.”
The words reached him. The knot in Fabrisse’s chest loosened, and for the first ti in years, the future did not look like a wall but a door, cracked open. He gripped his cloak tighter for the fourth ti, holding on to the spark that had taken root inside.
The magus moved on without waiting for thanks, cloak whispering against the stone floor, leaving Fabrisse standing in the corridor, heart pounding with a different weight than before.
I will beco a thaumaturge, he told himself. Not a wish, not a question. An oath.
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