We walked in silence.

The sand crunched under my boots, but I couldn't stop thinking about the black wisp. The impossible black wisp that only I could see. Master Kieran's mental voice still echoed in my head—Don't look at it. Don't point at it.—and the memory of fear in his eyes made my stomach twist.

What did it mean that I could see something he couldn't? What did it—

The world tilted sideways.

Something hit my chest—Kieran's hand—and I crashed into the sand, shoulder first. Heat exploded over my head, so intense I felt my hair singe. When I rolled over, gasping, the spot where I'd been standing was gone. Just blackened sand, fused into jagged glass.

"Stay down," Kieran said. His voice was different. Sharper.

I looked up at the lighthouse.

Kieran felt it first through the air itself.

Heat. Building. Concentrated in the old lighthouse like a coiled spring waiting to snap. He stopped walking, reaching his awareness into the wind currents, tasting the temperature shifts. Someone was up there. Burning something. A lot of something.

Fire.

His apprentice kept walking, oblivious, still lost in thought about the black wisp. Kieran opened his mouth to warn him, then felt the heat suddenly move—pulling inward, condensing, like someone inhaling before a scream.

No time.

He shoved the kid aside just as the lighthouse wall exploded outward.

The fire mage came through the burning wreckage like he was strolling through a door.

He was tall, lean, wearing a jacket that looked like it had been burned and re-sewn a dozen times over. Smoke curled off his shoulders. His right hand glowed with residual heat—he'd touched the lighthouse wall, just tapped it really, and the entire structure behind him was collapsing into flames.

The mage's eyes locked onto Kieran.

"Didn't expect company," the fire mage said. Electricity crackled along his forearms, visible arcs jumping between his fingers. "Lucky me."

Kieran didn't answer. He was already pulling red soul air from the bottle at his belt, feeling the ancient power respond to his will. The air around him began to shimmer, currents of deep crimson light twisting like living things.

Behind him, his apprentice scrambled to his feet, fumbling for something in his jacket.

Idiot kid. Kieran thought. That pink wisp won't do anything here.

The fire mage grinned and raised both hands.

The fire mage's hands erupted.

Not with flame—not yet. Pure electricity arced from his palms, blue-white and screaming. The sound was like tearing metal, and the bolts lanced toward Kieran fast enough that most mages would've been ash before they could blink.

Kieran's eyes closed.

He rose off the sand, boots lifting inches, then feet, his body perfectly still as if suspended by invisible threads. The red soul air swirled around him in spiraling ribbons, and suddenly he wasn't just standing there—he was everywhere. His consciousness spread through the air currents, feeling the electricity's path before it even left the fire mage's hands, tasting the ozone, sensing the heat distortions.

The lightning came.

Kieran moved his hand—barely a gesture, more like a thought given form—and the red air responded. It didn't just block the electricity. It caught it, wrapping around each bolt mid-flight, then twisting them away in elegant spirals that buried themselves in the sand.

"Red soul air," the fire mage said, impressed despite himself. "Haven't seen that in a while."

"You're about to see a lot more of it.“

The red currents surged forward like a living storm. They moved with purpose, with intelligence, splitting into dozens of tendrils that approached from every angle. The fire mage backpedaled, electricity crackling faster along his arms. Kieran could feel the pain radiating from him through the air, the way the electricity burned even as it empowered. The mage winced, gritted his teeth, and released another barrage. Using electricity hurt fire mages. Everyone knew that.

The bolts branched mid-flight, fragmenting into spears of electricity.

Kieran saw it all through the air. Felt each charge building, each path the electricity would take. His mind worked faster than conscious thought, and the red soul air responded instantly—deflecting, redirecting, absorbing. Three bolts. Four. Five. The air around him glowed crimson, alive with ancient power.

But one got through.

It scorched past his shoulder, close enough to sear fabric and skin. Kieran's eyes snapped open for just a second, his concentration flickering.

Get him out. Now.

Kieran pulled deeper into the red soul air, shaping it with pure thought into something far more complex than simple defense. A wormhole. A fold in space itself, pathways through the air that shouldn't exist but did when you commanded them to. He reached back mentally, wrapped the crimson currents around his apprentice like a cocoon, and pulled—

One second I was standing there, watching Kieran float, watching him fight with his eyes closed like he could see better without them.

The next, the world folded inside out.

Red light engulfed me, and I felt myself being pulled—not physically, but like my entire existence was getting yanked through a straw. The beach disappeared. The fire mage disappeared. Everything became red currents and impossible angles and the sensation of moving without moving.

I need to help, I thought desperately. I can't just leave him—

The red air shifted.

I don't know how I did it. I didn't mean to. But the air was in my mind, responding to my thoughts like it had been waiting for permission, and I wanted—needed—to go back. The pull reversed. The red currents spun the other direction, obeying me instead of Kieran.

And suddenly I was falling.

Kieran felt it the instant his apprentice hijacked the teleport.

The red soul air—his red soul air, under his control—suddenly twisted backward, responding to someone else's will. His eyes widened. For a split second, he was too shocked to react, too stunned that this untrained kid had just reached into his spell and reversed it through sheer desperate wanting.

Then he saw where the kid was going to land.

Oh no.

I hit something hard.

Not the ground. Something that crackled and burned and smelled like ozone and scorched metal. The fire mage's back. He was standing on stilts made of pure electricity, elevated three feet off the sand, and I'd just crashed into him from behind like the world's worst surprise attack.

We both started to fall.

Terror spiked through me—I was about to land on a guy made of lightning and fire and bad decisions—and the red soul air still clinging to me from the teleport moved.

It wrapped around me like armor, forming a shield of crimson light just as we hit the sand together. The impact jarred my teeth, rattled my skull, but the shield held. The red air pulsed with protective energy, and when the fire mage tried to roll away, still sparking with residual electricity, the crimson tendrils lashed out on their own and slammed him back down into the sand.

I scrambled backward on my hands, heart hammering so hard I thought it might crack a rib.

The fire mage pushed himself up on one elbow. He looked at me, then at Kieran, who had descended back to the sand, red soul air still swirling around him like a cape made of light and fury.

Then back at me.

"Two of you," he muttered. "And the kid's controlling red soul air. Yeah, I'm out."

He slammed both palms into the sand. Electricity exploded outward in a blinding flash of white-blue light, and when my vision cleared through the spots dancing in my eyes, he was gone—just scorch marks spreading across the beach.

The silence after the fire mage disappeared was somehow louder than the fight had been.

I sat in the sand, still breathing hard, my hands shaking from adrenaline and terror and the lingering sensation of red soul air wrapped around me like a second skin. The scorch marks around us still smoldered, sending up thin trails of smoke.

Kieran landed beside me. Not gently.

"What," he said, his voice deadly calm, "did you just do?"

I looked up at him. "I helped?"

"You helped." He wasn't asking. "You reversed a teleportation spell made with red soul air. You hijacked my magic mid-cast. Do you have any idea how dangerous that was?"

"I—"

"You could have scattered yourself across three different locations. You could have ended up inside a rock. You could have—" He stopped, running a hand through his hair. "You shouldn't even be capable of that. You've been training for three months."

"I didn't mean to," I said quietly. "I just... I wanted to help. I thought if I went back—"

"So you thought your way through a wormhole." Kieran laughed, but it wasn't a happy sound. "Do you understand what you just did? Air magic is controlled by the mind, yes, but red soul air isn't some found current you can just will around. It takes years to learn that kind of control."

I stared at the sand between my feet. "I'm sorry."

"And then you formed a shield. With my magic. While falling onto an electricity mage."

"The red air just... moved. I was scared and it—"

"It responded to you." Kieran crouched down in front of me, forcing me to meet his eyes. "That's the problem. It shouldn't have. Not at your level. Not without training."

The weight of his stare made me want to sink into the sand and disappear.

Then his expression softened, just slightly.

"But it did respond," he said quietly. "And you didn't die. Which is... impressive. Stupid, reckless, and you're lucky the fire mage was too burned out to take advantage of your terrible landing, but impressive."

I blinked. "Is that... a compliment?"

"Don't get used to it." Kieran stood, offering me his hand. "You've got instinct. Raw talent. Maybe even more than I thought." He pulled me to my feet. "But talent without training gets you killed. Or worse, gets the people around you killed."

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.

Kieran clapped me once on the shoulder—not hard, but firm enough that I felt it.

"That fire mage ran because he thought you knew what you were doing," he said. "Next time, you should actually know what you're doing."

"Next time?"

"There's always a next time, kid." He started walking back down the beach, hands in his pockets like we hadn't just fought for our lives. "Come on. We need to talk about that black wisp you saw."

My heart skipped.

"You believe me?"

Kieran didn't turn around, but I heard the weight in his voice when he answered.

"I believe some things happen that I don't understand. And I really don't like not understanding things."