The mist never left Cladrake Valley, and Nathan had stopped noticing it years ago.
It pooled in the hollows each dawn, wrapped the stone towers of the estate in gray, and clung to the cliffs that closed the valley on every side. Beyond those cliffs lay the rest of Eireteria: the beasts, the guild halls, the ranked warriors whose names people whispered like prayers. Nathan had never seen any of it. He had only seen the mist, and the wall of rock that kept it in.
"Four days," he muttered, flicking a pebble off the edge of the training yard.
"Three and a half, if you count from sunrise," said a voice behind him.
Nathan didn't turn. "Mira."
His cousin dropped onto the wall beside him, braid still damp from the washhouse. She was sixteen, awakened a year ago, and wore her rank like a new coat she kept brushing lint from. B-rank. Wind-bound blood. The family had held a feast.
"You're counting again," she said. "You've counted every day since spring. It's embarrassing."
"I'm not nervous."
"Your hands say otherwise."
Nathan looked down. His fingers were pressed so hard against the stone that his knuckles had gone white. He loosened them one by one.
Every child in the valley awakened at fifteen. It was the only law older than the family itself. Some woke with fire in their veins, some with the speed of a hawk, some with senses that could hear a beast's heartbeat from a mile away. The crystal in the great hall measured the power and named it, from F at the bottom to SSS at the top. Aunt Selene had been an A. Nathan's father, Aldric Cladrake, was an S, one of only three in the valley's history to hold that rank long enough to grow gray.
His father never spoke of what Nathan might become. Neither did anyone else. When the subject came near, the adults found sudden errands.
"What if I get nothing?" Nathan said quietly. "What if the crystal stays dark?"
Mira's smirk faded. "Then you'd be the first."
"That's not a no."
"It's not a joke, either." She nudged his shoulder with hers. "You're a Cladrake. The blood doesn't skip."
*The blood doesn't skip.* The elders said it so often that it had lost its meaning, like a prayer repeated until it was only sound.
The bell rang from the east tower, calling the family to the evening meal. Nathan slid off the wall and followed Mira across the yard. Lanterns were being lit along the stone path. Somewhere a child laughed. The smell of roasting bread drifted out through the open kitchen shutters.
It was a good home. Nathan never doubted that.
But he did wonder.
He wondered why the valley had no road, and why the few merchants who left it returned only after months, speaking to no one. He wondered why the old histories in the library stopped abruptly three centuries back, as though the pages had been cut away with a knife. And he wondered why his grandmother, Orla, watched him across the dinner table with an expression he couldn't name. It wasn't pride or worry. It was closer to grief, as though she were mourning something that hadn't happened yet.
Tonight was no different. He felt her eyes on him as he sat, and when he looked up, she held his gaze a moment longer than she should have before turning back to her soup.
"Eat," his mother said softly, touching his hand. "You've barely touched your plate."
"I'm not hungry."
"Your father says you may train extra with the practice blades tomorrow, if you like."
"He said that?"
"He did."
Nathan glanced down the long table. His father sat at its head, broad shoulders squared, listening to a cousin's report on the northern boundary markers. He didn't look up. But his hand, resting beside his cup, was curled into a fist.
Everyone was nervous. Nathan realized it slowly, the way you notice a sound only after it stops. The whole table was brittle with it. Four days until the ceremony, and nobody was acting like a family waiting to celebrate.
After dinner, he wandered the upper corridors instead of going to his room. It was an old habit. When his thoughts grew loud, he walked until they quieted.
His feet carried him, as they often did, to the west wing.
The corridor was colder there, the lanterns fewer. At its end stood the door.
It looked ordinary: dark wood, iron hinges, no lock. Nathan had been forbidden to open it for as long as he could remember. Not threatened, never punished. Just told, calmly and without exception, *not that door, Nathan.* Even Mira, who broke every rule she could find, had never touched it.
He stood before it now, close enough to feel the draft slipping beneath. The air smelled of old stone and something else, something faint and metallic, like the moment before lightning.
Nathan raised his hand.
"Nathan."
He spun around. His grandmother stood at the mouth of the corridor, a lantern in her hand, her face half in shadow.
"I wasn't going to—"
"I know." Orla's voice was gentle. She walked toward him slowly, and he saw how tightly she held the lantern. "Come away from there, child."
"What's behind it?"
She was silent so long he thought she wouldn't answer. Then she took his arm, her grip surprisingly firm, and turned him toward the stairs.
"Your answer," she said, "is four days away. Let us all have those four days."
Nathan let himself be led. But as they reached the stairs, he glanced back once.
For just a moment, the iron hinges of the door trembled, though nothing had touched them. Then they fell still.