Hatim did not remember everything.
But this—this moment—came in flashes.
A stone chamber. Flickering torchlight. The air dense with expectation. Something clung to him—not hands, not cloth, but energy. Smoke-like, sentient, pulsing.
He had been younger then. Smaller. Hands dirtied with something not quite blood, not quite ink.
Akar throbbed in the room. Not wild. Not chaotic. It had been tamed. Shaped. Bound by mastery.
A voice cut through the quiet. Measured. Coldly compassionate.
"You will either command it, or it will command you."
The light deepened—gold turning to violet, then black-veined crimson, like memory rotting at the edges.
He reached.
Fingers brushed the stream.
And Akar roared through him—splitting down his bones, igniting his breath with invisible fire.
He remembered the tremor. The floor jolting. A shift in pressure.
Another presence entered. Not a master. An initiate. Shrouded in half-light, panting, tense.
"Fight," said the voice. "Show me who Akar serves."
The chamber awoke. Glyphs surged to life, not etched by tools, but carved by memory, by force of mastery.
Hatim raised his hand. Hesitant. The other did the same.
Akar obeyed.
It rose from the veins in the stone, winding up his arm like armor, threading into his nerves, too fast, too fierce.
The other boy struck without warning. Not with motion, but with intent. A spear of hardened Akar crystallized mid-air, pure and lethal.
Hatim twisted. Too slow.
The spear kissed his shoulder. Pain bloomed. White. Hot. Real.
He turned, instincts snarling past thought. Fingers clawed at the air.
A surge of raw Akar erupted outward. No form. No control. Just fury.
The blast knocked the other boy down. Dust and silence settled.
Then: a cough. And the voice again.
"You shaped it. Poorly. But it obeyed."
Hatim collapsed, breathing fire and ash, Akar draining from his limbs like retreating flame.
Hatim gasped.
The memory cracked apart. Shards dissolved into now.
No chamber. No glyphs. No boy trembling toward mastery.
Just this moment.
He was bound. Not by rope, but by attention. By presence. Someone stood before him—a shadow with eyes.
The air quivered. Not with past. With promise.
Akar was here. Wild. Coiled. Watching.
The figure stepped into half-light. Form blurred by shifting dark. Familiar. Not known.
"You remember it, don't you?"
The figure's steps were slow, deliberate. Every movement stirred something ancient in the walls, as though the stones themselves strained to listen.
"You've wondered why it clings to you," the figure said, voice quiet, yet heavy. "Why, after all these years, it whispers still. Why you still burn in your sleep."
Hatim stared, not blinking. He wanted to speak—to curse, to deny—but the truth was already unraveling inside him.
"Akar does not choose lightly," the captor continued. "It does not follow commands. It follows resonance. And you—"
He knelt beside him, close enough for Hatim to see the gleam of old memory in their eyes.
"—you were the first in generations to touch it and survive unshaped. You should have been destroyed. But it didn't burn you to ash. It remembered. It kept you."
Hatim's voice cracked. "Why?"
The figure gave no mercy in their tone. "Because it saw itself in you. Not a wielder. A reflection. A vessel."
Hatim turned away. But the presence pressed closer, not with threat—only truth.
"It's not that you touched it," the captor said. "It's that it touched you. And in doing so, it marked you—not with scars. With identity. Akar remembers itself through you."
Hatim's breath came ragged. His thoughts collided. He was not prepared for this. Not the implication. Not the certainty.
"The cost of wielding Akar," the captor whispered, "is that you will never again be whole. Not as you were. It doesn't give power. It makes you part of its memory. Forever."
Hatim trembled—not from fear, but from the slow terror of understanding.
"Every time you use it, it watches. Learns. It rebuilds itself around you. The question isn't if you can wield Akar. It's whether you can remain Hatim while doing so."
He swallowed hard. "Then why me?"
The figure did not blink. "Because it saw you. It felt your identity even when you didn't. Akar remembers you because you are woven into its pattern. It knows its own."
Hatim's eyes flickered. "But I never asked for this."
"No one does," the figure replied. "But Akar doesn't bind to want. It binds to truth. And you—whatever you are—left a mark. It does not forget."
Hatim looked away, as if trying to escape his own reflection. But the truth pressed closer.
"Akar burns those who lie to themselves," the figure said, softer now. "It didn't just touch you. It claimed you."
Hatim's pulse did not calm.
It did not settle, did not release. Even as the captor spoke, even as their words wove through him, Akar remained.
"You are a conduit."
Hatim had heard that word before—but never about himself.
Akar had burned him. Had obeyed him. Had kept him.
The weight of that truth pressed against his lungs, heavy, undeniable.
"It's not that you touched it," the figure murmured. "It's that it touched you. And in doing so, it marked you—not with scars. With identity. Akar remembers itself through you."
Something inside Hatim shuddered—not in fear, but in recognition.
The captor leaned closer.
"Every time you use it, it watches. Learns. It rebuilds itself around you."
Hatim exhaled, slow, deliberate, as though testing whether his breath still belonged to him.
"The question isn't if you can wield Akar."
The figure's eyes gleamed with certainty.
"It's whether you can remain Hatim while doing so."
Silence. Not empty, but expectant. A moment stretching beyond the present, into futures Hatim had yet to see.
Something shifted beneath his skin.
Akar was not just answering. It was responding. It was learning.
Hatim's fingers twitched, his veins humming with something he had not summoned, something that had awakened on its own.
He swallowed hard. That was new.
The captor saw it—not surprise in their expression, but confirmation.
"You see it now, don't you?"
Hatim did not answer.
Did not need to.
Because for the first time, he wasn't just feeling Akar.
He was hearing it.
It was whispering.
And it was waiting.