ZEPHYR: Reborn With A God System

CHAPTER 4 - POISON IN THE DARK

I woke up to the sound of my name…Nobody said it out loud. It came from inside me, soft, like a thought that did not belong to me, and it pulled me out of my sleep.

Zephyr.

I lay still and stared at the dark roof. The promise had stayed with me all night. Tomorrow you learn what you are, now? Something inside me was awake and waiting, and I did not know yet if it was a gift or a knife.

Then I heard someone walking past my room, slowly. Then the steps stopped, right outside my door.

"Who's that?" I whispered. I hardly gave the words any air, because the whole house was asleep, and a markless boy shouting at night would just give the fort something new to laugh about at breakfast. The steps moved down the corridor went quietly.

I waited a while, before getting up slowly off the bed, dressed in the dark, and went out.

The east wing led to the old practice ground behind the kitchens, a wide open square of packed earth where the servants trained in the mornings and nobody came at night. The moon was going down and the shadows were long. Everything was so quiet I could hear my own heart. I stood in the middle of that empty ground and I spoke to the thing inside me without any sound.

“You said I would learn. Teach me.” I whispered into darkness, the voice answered calmly back to me

"The vessel must learn what it holds. Begin with what already knows you."

I did not understand until I looked at the rain barrel by the kitchen wall. Its lid was off, and the water inside had gone completely still, like a dog that hears its master whistle. I stretched my hand toward it, feeling stupid, and pulled forward watching the water rise

It lifted over the rim in a wide silver ribbon, shaking, hanging in the air between the barrel and my fingers, and it did not fall. My heart slammed against my chest. At dinner, days ago, a goblet had dropped out of a girl's hand because of these eyes, and I had told myself I dreamed the rest. I was not dreaming this. The water hung there, waiting, and when my mind went quiet it drifted toward my hand like it was coming home.

So that was one. Water. The power of Abyssarine, the tide clan, the power of healers and readers of fate, and it was living inside me.

I let it fall back with a splash and stood there shaking, half in wonder and half in fear, because I had been raised on one law of the five clans: one bloodline, one mark, locked for life. What lived in me broke that law. If one single person saw this, nobody would laugh at me or beat me. They would study me, and then they would destroy me, the way the clans destroy everything they cannot explain.

I thought of my mother then. I could not say why. She had died in disgrace, they said, her blood was too weak for a golden lion, and her shame had fallen on me like a coat. Standing there in the moonlight with Abyssarine's power running off my fingers, I wondered, for the first time in my life, if the story they told about her was even true. Then I pushed the thought down with all my other dangerous thoughts, and I faced the water again. It answered calmly, that was the first rule. So I made myself calm, and I made it rise again, and this time it came faster and higher, a thin silver snake standing up in the air, and something in my chest sang with a joy that scared me more than fear would have.

That was when I saw sylene…A small figure at the edge of the ground, pale in a white nightdress, dark hair loose to her waist, standing perfectly still between two shadows. She was not there before. The ground had been empty, I would have sworn it on anything, and now she stood there watching me, and the water fell out of the air and hit the ground like something dead.

Sylene.

Out of every face in Obsidian Fort, it had to be hers. The sweet one. The one with the little black beads on her wrist that clicked when she folded her hands. The one who looked into my eyes at dinner and dropped a full goblet.

"Who's there?" she said into the dark.

I tried to hold my breath. The moon was behind me and the shadows were deep, and if she could not see my face, then she had seen nothing but a shape. I could back away into the dark and by tomorrow she would doubt her own eyes, because she was sweet, everybody said how sweet she was, and nobody doubts the sweet ones.

I turned to go but then I heard her voice again "Stop."

I stood in the shadow with my back to her and my heart beating like a war drum, and behind me I heard the small clicking of beads moving through her fingers.

"You should not be out here," she said, still in that soft voice. "Bad things happen to you when you wander, little brother. You know that."

She didn't even call the guards but I stood there getting ready to run. She had found me at night, alone, holding a power that should not exist, and she had raised no alarm at all.

Somehow that was worse than if she had…The voice inside me pulsed once again, quietly

[ The clans are watching. ]