“A preservation,” she corrected. “The Veythar agreed not to cross into our realm beyond the terms of the pact. They would cross only to claim the unbound or conduct ward assessments. They are bound by the same laws we are.”
I hesitated, the image of those piercing blue eyes flickering in my mind. “Except for Talon.”
Sora’s expression shifted, her gaze momentarily distant. “Yes. He stands outside that restriction. He is the master of stabilization—the equivalent of Lord Evander for the Umbral realm. He ensures the pact holds and that neither side manipulates the terms. He is… necessary.”
Necessary.
No other Veythar moved freely among mortals, and no other crossed the threshold without a formal summons. Yet he did. He moved through Isvale like he owned the air we breathed.
I pressed my palm flat against the table. “So, the Sayel is the alignment of souls rather than the compatibility?”
“Correct,” Sora said. “There is no such thing as severance with this bond. It just is.”
A pulse surged through me, so sudden and sharp that I had to grip the edge of the table. Every word she spoke was a mirror to the ache I had carried for years. I had always hated the Lunthra,not because I was stubborn, but because it felt like a cage. I had spent my life wondering why I could not just be content with ‘compatibility.’
Perhaps I was simply born in the wrong age. I did not want a ‘measure of success.’ I wanted this—this impossible, undeniable alignment.
“What would it feel like?” I swallowed, my voice barely a whisper.
Sora’s eyes drifted to a faded symbol inked in the margin—a circle containing a small flame.
“The earliest texts describe it as convergence,” she murmured. “The moment two currents realize they were always meant to meet. They say the world falls silent. Everything uncertain finds its axis. You no longer question who you are, because you see yourself reflected back—whole and unafraid. Not I. Not you. But we.”
Her finger tapped lightly against the flame. “You would not question it, you would simply know.”
The market square flashed behind my eyes. I remembered the sensation of Talon’s gaze moving across the crowd until it reached me. It had not been leering or devouring. It had been seeing. He had looked at me as if cataloging something rare.
I had burned beneath that look. Every instinct I possessed should have told me to lower my eyes, to disappear into the noise of the market. But I could not. It had felt as though looking away would mean missing something essential to my very existence.
I forced my shoulders to loosen, shoving the memory back into its cage.
Coincidence,I told myself.Power recognizes defiance. That is all.
But a whisper of doubt threaded through the logic. He had not left me alone since. He appeared where he had no reason to be and spoke my name as though it belonged in his mouth. Hewatched me not like a task to be completed, but like a riddle he intended to solve.
If the Sayel was about recognition… was it possible he saw something in me that I was too afraid to see in myself?
“Could it exist across species? Could a mortal resonance find its axis in… something else?”
“In theory?” she asked, finally looking up. “Yes. The Aether does not recognize the borders of kingdoms.”
My eyes wanted to widen, but my body felt stiff and frozen.
“But such a connection would be a catastrophe,” Sora added, her gaze sharpening until she looked less like a scholar and more like a judge. “A bond that answers to no king and obeys no law is a fire that cannot be governed. If it were to ever resurface, it would be executed.”
“Executed?” I managed.
“We have found the balance that works for our realm, Kaelia, and that is the Lunthra. Anything that exists outside the pact is a threat to our preservation.”
She closed the heavy volume with a definitive thud, her academic mask slipping back into place. “Fortunately, we do not need to worry about such tragedies. The Sayel is a relic of a broken age.”
“Why are you so certain?”
“Because its last recorded connection was over two hundred years ago. It is extinct.”
Centuries extinct.
A breath of relief almost escaped me, but my body refused to relax. I was being paranoid. I was looking for impossible explanations for the way Talon’s presence reached inside me—searching for reasons why I had not been able to look away from a creature of the Void in a crowded market.