* * *

  Rei found them at sunset.

  The older apprentice sat down beside them without a word, his eyes fixed on the distant peak where the lightning still flickered. His jaw was tight. His hands were still.

  "That could be any of us," he said finally. "Any day. Any trial."

  Shiryu nodded. "Then we don't lose control."

  Rei let the silence sit. Then he turned to look at both of them. Shiryu with his torn robes and fading bruises, Tarek with his still-shaking hands.

  "Let's be careful during the trials," he said. "We don't want to end up like that."

  It wasn't a joke. It wasn't bravado. It was a promise.

  They sat together until the stars came out, three apprentices on the edge of the void, watching the storm.

  * * *

  Tarek found them again a few days later.

  The younger apprentice had grown since Shiryu started the wind trial. Not in height. Though maybe that too. But in confidence. His shoulders were straighter. His eyes were brighter. And around him, faint wisps of mist clung to his skin like morning dew.

  The first visible sign of his bond with the water.

  "You're still alive," Tarek said, collapsing onto the platform beside them. "I wasn't sure."

  "Thanks for the vote of confidence."

  "I've been watching from below." Tarek gestured vaguely at the lower platforms, the training grounds where apprentices like him worked on their foundations. "You fall a lot."

  "Everyone falls," Rei said.

  "Not like him." Tarek shook his head, something between admiration and horror in his expression. "He falls like he's *trying* to hit the rocks."

  Shiryu snorted. "At least I fall forward. You should have seen yourself at the pool. You apologized to the water. Out loud."

  Tarek went red. "It felt rude just grabbing it."

  "That's the worst part." Rei closed his eyes. "Three years. Three years I've trained disciples. And 'it felt rude' is the worst thing I've ever heard."

  Shiryu looked at him. "Says the man whose biggest achievement in those three years is making his robes float."

  Rei's eyes opened. "My robes are a sign of elemental mastery."

  "They're a sign you spend too long in front of the mirror."

  Tarek choked. The sound turned into a laugh he tried to swallow and failed.

  "I liked both of you better when you couldn't talk," Rei said.

  Tarek looked between them.

  Shiryu with his torn robes and fading bruises, Rei with his ribbons of mist and rippling clothes. The contrast was stark. One struggled; one soared. And yet they sat together like equals.

  "Can I ask something?" Tarek said.

  "You just did."

  "Why do you keep getting up? After every fall. Every crash. Every time the healers have to put your ribs back together. Why don't you just... stop?"

  Shiryu considered the question. It was a fair one. He'd asked himself the same thing, those first days on the platform when every jump ended in agony.

  "Because stopping means failing," he said. "And I've already failed too many people. I can't afford to fail myself too."

  Tarek was quiet for a long moment.

  "I think I understand," he said finally. "When you taught me at the pool. When you showed me how to ask instead of demand. Something changed. Not just in my training. In here." He touched his chest. "I stopped being afraid of failing. Started being afraid of not trying."

  Rei looked at Shiryu with new interest. "You taught him?"

  "Just the basics."

  "He did more than that." Tarek's voice was earnest. "He showed me that the elements aren't tools. They're partners. That changed everything."

  "Ask like she could refuse," Rei murmured. "Right?"

  Shiryu met his eyes. Nodded once.

  "Wait. How do you know that?" Tarek looked between them.

  "Something I learned a long time ago. From Soren." Rei's expression softened for a moment. Something almost like gratitude. "It's the only way any of this works. I shared it with Shiryu during his first days among us. That's how he nearly drowned you in mist during that evaluation."

  The memory surfaced unbidden. The fog closing around Tarek, the terrified screams, the moment Shiryu had forgotten his opponent was real.

  * * *

  The fifth week brought a breakthrough.

  Shiryu watched the currents from the platform's lip. Not with his eyes. With something deeper. Something that had been growing inside him since the first day of the trial.

  He could see them now. The paths the wind took. The places where it accelerated, slowed, curved, and split. It wasn't random chaos anymore. It was a map. Complex and ever-changing, but readable if you knew how to look.

  He jumped.

  The high wind grabbed him first. Cold and fast, carrying him upward in a spiraling rush. He didn't just let it take him. He *asked* it to take him. Felt its intention, matched his own to it, and then...

  *More.*

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  He reached for a second current. The warm one from the valleys. It answered his call, joining the first, creating a fusion of forces that spun him exactly where he wanted to go.

  But the angle was still wrong.

  *Again.*

  A third wind. The cutting crossbreeze that sliced between the peaks. He called it, felt it respond, wove it into the pattern he was creating. Three currents at once. Three elements working in concert.

  He landed on his feet.

  For the first time since the trial began, he landed on his feet.

  * * *

  "Did you see that?"

  Rei was grinning when Shiryu looked up. Genuine joy, unguarded and bright.

  "I saw."

  "You called three currents. Simultaneously. Do you know how long it took me to do that?"

  Shiryu shook his head.

  "Months. It took me months." Rei crossed the gap between platforms in a single leap, landing beside him with the casual grace of someone who'd long since made the wind his home. "Whatever you did just now. Whatever clicked in your head. Hold onto it. That's the key."

  "I just... stopped waiting for permission." Shiryu looked down at his hands. They were trembling slightly. "Started asking them to come to me. All of them. At once."

  "That's the difference between a disciple and a master," Rei said. "Disciples wait for the elements to decide. Masters invite them. Call them. Love them so completely that the elements want to follow."

  He paused. Something shifted in his expression.

  "You know what you just did? You just compressed months of Ryushi training into weeks." Rei shook his head, half-laughing, half-disbelieving. "Full wind mastery on top of your mist bond. The Karo are going to lose their minds when they hear about this."

  Below them, on the training platforms, a cluster of senior disciples had stopped their exercises.

  They were staring up.

  Counting something Shiryu couldn't see.

  * * *

  The sixth week brought mastery.

  Not gradually this time. Suddenly. Completely. Like a door opening that had always been locked.

  Shiryu closed his eyes at the platform's edge and felt the wind around him. All of it, every current, every gust, every whisper of movement in the endless sky. He reached out with something that wasn't his hand and *called*.

  The high wind.

  The low wind.

  The cutting crossbreeze.

  The warm updraft from the valleys below.

  The cold downdraft from the peaks above.

  All of them. At once. Bending to his will not because he forced them, but because he'd earned them. Because he'd asked, as if they could refuse. And they'd chosen not to.

  His robes began to float.

  Not ripple. *Float*. The fabric lifted away from his body, suspended in a permanent current of his own making. His hair rose, moving against the wind, against gravity, against everything.

  The signs of mastery.

  The marks of a true disciple of the wind.

  He stepped off the platform.

  And he flew.

  * * *

  Not fell. Not glided. *Flew*.

  He willed the winds to carry him, and they obeyed. Not as slaves, but as partners, as friends, as extensions of his own body. He soared between the platforms, around the peaks, through the churning clouds, and out the other side into empty sky.

  He wasn't just following currents anymore. He was creating them.

  Below him, the mountain fell away into mist and distance. Above him, the storm clouds crackled with lightning. And all around him, the wind sang.

  He understood now. What Rei had been trying to tell him. What Soren had shown him. What the water had taught him weeks ago at the pool.

  The elements weren't forces to be controlled. They were presences to be known. And once you knew them. Once you truly understood them. They would do anything for you.

  Because they loved you.

  As you loved them.

  * * *

  He landed on the highest platform he'd ever reached. A narrow ledge near the cloud line, where the air was thin and the cold bit deep. Rei was already there, waiting.

  "Took you long enough."

  Shiryu laughed. Actually laughed. A sound that surprised him. He couldn't remember the last time he'd laughed.

  "I got distracted."

  "I noticed." Rei looked him up and down, taking in the floating robes, the moving hair, the shimmer of mist that still clung to his skin from his water mastery. "You know what this means."

  "I passed."

  "You did more than pass. You mastered it." Rei's smile was genuine and warm. "Welcome to the sky, brother."

  Brother.

  The word hit harder than expected. Shiryu thought of his squad. Of Kento, Jaxon, and Mira, lost to the Titan, lost to the Wheel. He thought of the brotherhood he'd had with them. The trust. The loyalty. The love.

  He thought he'd never have that again.

  Maybe he was wrong.

  Something flickered at the edge of his vision.

  Text. Sharp. Geometric. Crimson letters against the grey sky.

  * * *

  [TITLE EARNED]

  RYUSHI - WIND RIDER

  The sky is yours.

  * * *

  The words faded. The wind carried them away like dust.

  But his robes kept floating. His hair kept moving. And the sky, vast, endless, and terrifying, felt like home.

  * * *

  Below them, on a platform near the training grounds, Tarek watched.

  His mist had grown stronger over the weeks. Thicker, more visible, a sign that his bond with the water was deepening. He wasn't ready for the wind trial yet. Might not be for months. But he was making progress.

  Steady progress. Normal progress. The kind of growth that most Wajinto experienced. Gradual and methodical, without the violent breakthroughs that marked Shiryu's path.

  And above him, two figures soared through the sky like they'd been born to it.

  Shiryu, who'd arrived broken, bleeding, and barely alive. Rei, who'd seemed untouchable, unreachable, a standard too high to ever meet.

  They moved together now. Flying in formation, racing through the clouds, playing with the wind like children in a garden.

  Tarek watched them until the clouds swallowed them both.

  Then he turned back to the water pool and began to practice.

  * * *

  That night, the three of them sat together on a high ledge, looking out at the storm.

  The lightning was beautiful tonight. Green and blue and yellow, dancing across the clouds in intricate patterns. Far above, in the highest reaches of the storm, something red flickered occasionally. A tease. A promise.

  Rei tapped the green crystal at his collar. It pulsed once. He read whatever message it carried, then let his hand drop.

  "Lightning trials start next week," he said quietly. "For those who've earned the wind."

  Tarek looked between them. "Both of you?"

  Rei nodded. Shiryu said nothing. His eyes had found the red flicker above, and he couldn't look away.

  The Shard against his chest pulsed once. Faint. Warm. As if answering something only it could hear.

  * * *

  She was watching him.

  He felt it before he saw it. That strange awareness that prickled at the back of his neck whenever she was near. The woman in white. The Silent One.

  She stood on her ledge above the training grounds, motionless as always. The wind that tore at everyone else seemed to bend around her, leaving her robes floating in their own patterns, her hair moving in slow waves. A faint shimmer of mist clung to her form. Something that could have been light, could have been aura, could have been something else entirely.

  Around her, snow was falling.

  Not from the clouds. The sky above her was clear. The snow came from her. From the air around her. Tiny crystals of ice that drifted down like tears, melting before they reached the platforms below.

  Shiryu watched her watch him.

  Their eyes met.

  For just a moment. Just a fraction of a heartbeat. He saw something in her expression. Not the cold indifference she usually showed. Not the stern disapproval of a mentor. Something else.

  Something that looked almost like pride.

  Then her expression hardened. Her fingers curled around the notebook she always carried, gripping so hard the leather creaked. And she turned away, disappearing into the wind, leaving only the fading snow behind.

  * * *

  "She does that," Rei said quietly.

  Shiryu hadn't realized he was staring. "Does what?"

  "Watches you. More than the others." Rei's voice was carefully neutral. "Some of the apprentices have noticed. They talk."

  "What do they say?"

  "Stupid things. That she's keeping an eye on the dangerous one. That she's waiting for you to fail." Rei paused. "That she looks at you like you're something that shouldn't exist."

  Something twisted in Shiryu's chest. He didn't know what to say.

  "For what it's worth," Rei continued, "I don't think she's waiting for you to fail. I think she's waiting for you to prove her wrong about something."

  * * *

  Far above them, on a ledge that overlooked the entire mountain, the Silent One stood alone.

  Snow fell around her. Soft. Gentle. A weather that didn't belong to the season.

  She watched the three figures below. The one who'd arrived broken, the one who'd been here for years, and the young one who was just beginning. She watched them sit together, talk together, laugh together.

  She watched the broken one most of all.

  His robes were floating now. His hair moved against the wind. The signs of his mastery were visible even from this distance.

  He'd done it. In six weeks, he'd achieved what took most apprentices months. What took some years. What some never achieved at all.

  She should have been proud. She was proud. But pride wasn't the only thing she felt.

  Her fingers tightened on her notebook until the binding cracked under the pressure.

  The snow fell harder.

  And deep inside, in a place she'd sealed away long ago, something cracked.

  * * *