[Two Years Before Black Spire War]

  News travels faster than soldiers. By the time Odion returned to the capital, the story of the "Exploding Alchemist" had already reached the apothecary.

  The shop was silent. The copper coils were cold. The air smelled of judgment. Aether was waiting.

  On the central table, scrubbed clean of its usual clutter, sat the contents of Odion’s false floorboard: the nitric-silver, the resonance powders, and a second, unfinished Impact Flask. Beside them, Aether had placed Odion's apprentice emblem. A simple copper gear.

  Odion entered, his boots heavy with the mud of the patrol. He stopped in the doorway. He saw the items, and he knew. This was not a lecture. This was a verdict.

  "You made your choice," Aether said. His voice was not the harsh rasp of a mentor. It was flat. Empty.

  Odion’s throat was tight. He walked forward, his gaze fixed on the flask. "It's the only choice that wins, Master. I saved them. Silt-River still stands."

  "No." Aether’s voice was so quiet, Odion had to strain to hear it. "It's the only choice that loses... everything."

  Aether looked up. His eyes were red-rimmed, heavy with a fresh layer of grief.

  "I taught you to survive. To fear. I mistook you for a prodigy... but you are just an Idealist. You haven't learned a thing."

  "I learned that dead heretics don't kill children," Odion countered, his voice rising. "I learned that your 'support' is just a slow way to lose!"

  "I am not looking for a champion, Odion!" Aether slammed his hand on the table. "I was looking for a survivor! But you... you're just looking for a stage."

  "And I was looking for a mentor!" Odion shouted back, the heartbreak finally cracking his voice. "I looked at you as a father!"

  The word hung in the air. Father.

  Aether flinched. He looked at the boy he had raised for five years. He saw the desperate need for approval. And he knew that if he gave that approval—if he hugged the boy now—Odion would take it as permission. He would think the fire was acceptable. He would think the risk was worth the love.

  He would end up like Rennick.

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  Aether hardened his heart. He had to break the boy to save the man. Words were no longer enough.

  "Then you get a father," Aether hissed.

  His hand blurred toward his bandolier, snatching a Red Vial of Adrenal Strength. Before Odion could speak, Aether bit the cork and drained the whole dose swallowing the fire once more.

  The reaction was instantaneous. Aether’s skin flushed a violent red, and the veins in his neck bulged.

  "Master?!" Odion’s face went deathly pale as he saw the war alchemist Aether had been.

  Odion’s body acted on a decade of instinct; he squeezed his eyes shut and braced his jaw, waiting for the heavy, wet sound of a fist hitting flesh—the only "fatherly" touch he had known before Oakhaven.

  CRASH.

  Odion’s eyes are still closed as the blow lands.

  Odion opened his eyes to see Aether’s fist buried six inches deep into the stone masonry of the central hearth, right next to his head. The heavy granite had spider-webbed, chunks of stone falling to the floorboards.

  Aether pulled his hand back. His arm was a ruin—the sleeve of his tunic shredded, the skin split and bleeding from the sheer alchemical pressure that had pushed his muscles beyond the breaking point. He didn't flinch at the injury.

  "This is the power you crave," Aether rasped, the heat of the potion making his breath steam in the cool air. "This is the monster you want to become. It destroys the enemy, but it breaks the vessel first."

  Odion stared at the crater in the stone, his eyes wide. But he wasn't looking at Aether’s wrecked, bleeding arm with pity. He was staring at the destruction with a dark, terrifying hunger. To the boy, the injury was just a footnote; the power was the only thing that mattered. The demonstration was for fear, but Odion got inspired instead.

  Aether saw that look and realized he had already lost.

  With his good hand, he reached out and pushed the small, metal apprentice's emblem across the table. It slid on the polished wood, stopping just before Odion.

  The disownment was quiet. And absolute.

  Odion stared at the emblem. The rejection was total. He had saved the village, and he had lost his home.

  Slowly, with a trembling hand, Odion reached out. He didn't take the emblem. He left it there.

  He took the Impact Flask.

  "Fine," Odion whispered. "I'll do it without you."

  He turned his back on the apothecary. He walked to the door, his heart turning into a cold, hard knot in his chest.

  "Odion."

  He paused, his hand on the latch. Aether was looking at his back, cradling his shattered arm, his voice trembling with a terrifying certainty.

  "Continue that path... and you will die screaming."

  Odion didn't look back. He opened the door and stepped out into the street.

  He was an orphan again. He had lost his parents to the war, and now he had lost his father to his own ambition.

  He looked at the busy street, at the people walking by, oblivious to the war that was coming for them. He made his vow not to his mentor, but to the world that had just abandoned him.

  "I'll suffer so they won't."

  It was not a warcry. It was a sentence.