Chapter 6: Ashes and Echoes
In the aftermath of his outburst, Finn had withdrawn from the world around him. In the quiet that followed, he sat in deep contemplation, replaying every moment—every surge of magic, every flicker of control lost. The aftermath hung over him like smoke that refused to clear, and the weight of it had driven him to solitude.
Finn sat alone in the highest room of Hearthstone Orphanage, a circular stone tower sealed in silence. He wasn't meant to be there, but no one had challenged him.
His journal lay unopened across his lap. The pen hovered briefly in his hand, then fell. He didn't flinch. The quiet felt thick, as though even the air feared disturbance. Occasionally, the lanterns above trembled, reacting to something unspoken.
He pressed his palm to his chest—not in pain, but under the pressure of memory. Power had consumed him, vast and terrible, and he hadn’t resisted. Worse: part of him had welcomed it.
He thought of Cosmo, Talia, Wren, Nyx. Their names alone stung.
I don’t deserve them.
The lanterns flickered.
His vision blurred. The room felt off-kilter, like reality had misaligned. A glyph appeared in his peripheral vision—no words, just a symbol. It pulsed softly.
Once. Twice.
His breath fell into rhythm with it. No commands. No judgment. Just presence.
The room steadied. The glow faded. Finn looked down at the journal.
He didn’t open it. He didn’t do anything.
Instead, he simply sat there in silence, trying to calm the mess in his head. One question surfaced again and again, no matter how hard he tried to silence it:
What happens to someone like me, after something like that?
Later that evening, after the sun had long dipped below the rooftops and Hearthstone had settled into its familiar rhythm of creaking floors and muffled conversations, Alistair found Finn in the tower. He didn’t scold him. Didn’t speak at all. Just stood there in the doorway, watching until Finn finally met his eyes. Alistair offered a small, inviting tilt of his head and stepped back from the doorway, leaving space for Finn to follow.
They walked in silence, down winding stairs and stone corridors, past locked rooms and forgotten classrooms, until the air turned cooler and the light faded to shadow.
The cellar beneath Hearthstone was cold, illuminated by a single blue-glass lantern that swung gently from a ceiling hook, casting slow-moving shadows across the stone walls. Dust lingered in the air like a remnant of memory, and each step echoed softly underfoot. Alistair moved with a practiced ease, clearly familiar with the space, and Finn trailed silently behind him, making no effort to ask where they were going.
They stopped in front of a wall lined with shelves—not books, but relics. Trinkets. Old weapons. A cracked adventurer's badge. A single faded sash. A child’s sketch of what looked like a dragon, colored in wild reds and greens.
“These belonged to the ones who came before you,” Alistair said, voice low. “Kids who made it out. Some who didn’t.”
Finn didn't speak.
Alistair gestured to a dull metal charm, shaped like a spiral fractured through the center. “That one belonged to a boy who once held power he couldn’t control. Like you. He survived it—but instead of growing from it, he wrapped his entire identity around it.”
Finn gave Alistair a sideways glance, his voice quiet but steady. "What happened to him?" he asked.
“He disappeared,” Alistair said. “Left behind everything and everyone. Thought he could become more than human—something greater. But power without direction just drifts. Last I heard, he was chasing echoes of himself.”
Alistair turned slightly, his voice quieter now, more weighted. “You need to ask yourself, Finn—do you want to understand your power, or do you want others to tremble at it?”
And with that, he left.
Finn stayed in the dark for a while. He didn’t look at the relics.
He looked at the charm.
Unbeknownst to Finn, while he had been tucked away in his tower wrestling with guilt and silence, a group of elite adventurers had already begun making their way toward Hearthstone Orphanage—drawn by something every instructor and older student had been quietly preparing for: the Iron Draft was about to begin.
Held every two years, the Iron Draft was a chance for promising students—those who had reached or were close to reaching Iron rank—to be evaluated by professionals from the Adventurer's Guild. For Finn, the term 'Iron rank' had only ever appeared as a fleeting label in his UI—just a word, buried among many. He had seen his own designation marked 'Normal,' and while he'd overheard mention of ranks before, it had never truly been explained.
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From what he could gather, ranking appeared to be a way of measuring magical ability or stability, though the specifics remained elusive. No one had ever sat him down to explain it properly—to the point of conspicuousness. Even in Alistair’s lectures, where he spoke at length about the branching types of magic and their underlying structures, rank itself was skirted around, mentioned in passing and quickly moved past. It was always spoken of in the context of the older students, as if younger ones simply weren’t ready to grasp it—or perhaps weren’t meant to.
Finn had picked up on that. Rank was treated like a topic just out of reach, and maybe for most children, it was. But he wasn’t like most children, and he knew it. Despite having lived only a few short years in this world, he often found himself understanding more than felt natural.
He'd considered why that might be. Maybe it was the long lifespan and keen senses that came with being half-elf. Maybe it was the way magic itself seemed to resonate with him, sharpening his thoughts like a whetstone. Or maybe it was the imprint of a life that came before this one—memories just out of reach, but heavy enough to shift the way he thought.
In truth, he realized it was probably all of those things. And while that gave him a lens others didn’t have, it also made the silence around rank more noticeable. It wasn’t that the answers weren’t there. It was that no one seemed to be offering them.
Normal rank, as far as Finn understood, meant magic was present but unrefined—messy, inconsistent, unreliable. It was the baseline, a stage where nothing worked quite the way it should. Iron, on the other hand, represented stability. It meant a mage’s power had begun to respond with some consistency, taking shape under their will, even if imperfectly.
There seemed to be a reason people didn’t speak much about it to the younger students. Whether it was to protect them, or because understanding rank required reaching it, Finn wasn’t sure. None of the others knew either. The Draft simply arrived every few years like clockwork, and those eligible were quietly expected to understand what it meant.
By midday, the courtyard had filled—buzzing with chatter, excitement, and the kinetic energy of children who had waited years for this moment. Some fidgeted with nervous hands, others grinned with restless anticipation. Laughter mixed with speculation, as whispers rippled from one small cluster to another. This was more than ceremony; it was a chance—an opening out of the orphanage and into the world of adventurers.
For many, it was their chance to be noticed. Everyone here was an orphan—either they knew their parents were never coming back, or they lived with the weight of not knowing. Both were heavy in their own ways. But this? This was an opportunity to step out of the shadows. Legitimate training, field experience, even sponsorships and scholarships could follow. Those who shined would be given donated gear, a mentor, and maybe—finally—a path forward.
Finn stood among the crowd but shrank into the background. The noise, for once, was comforting. Eyes weren’t on him the way he feared they would be. Perhaps not everyone was as concerned with his magical outburst as he had convinced himself. Maybe they’d moved on.
Still, uncertainty clung to him. It only happened every two years, and he didn’t even have a grasp on his powers yet. Would Cosmo, Wren, and Talia leave him behind? They were older, more experienced, with a much firmer command of their magic. Finn wasn’t even sure if he would be allowed to participate. He was likely too young.
His gaze remained low, caught between the relief of being ignored and the unease of not knowing where he stood.
For some kids, it was the day they stopped dreaming and started becoming something.
For others, it was a quiet punch to the ribs, a reminder that they weren’t quite there yet.
Alistair stood before the group, posture rigid and calm, surrounded by a growing hush of anticipation. Some of the older children sat on benches, backs straight, while others crowded around, eyes wide with expectation.
“In two weeks,” he began, his voice carrying with ease, “the Adventurer’s Guild will be holding the Iron Draft. Only those who have reached or are nearing Iron rank—those whose magic has begun to stabilize—will be eligible. You will be observed, evaluated, and if you meet the mark, you will be chosen as apprentices by guild-backed adventurers and specialists. This is your path forward. A chance to be more than potential.”
“Oh good, I can finally show off my skills,” Wren said with a smirk.
“You really have come into your powers Wren!” Cosmo said, supportively, annoying Wren for supporting him so eagerly.
Nyx raised an eyebrow at the pair, remaining silent.
“I think we’ll all shine through!” Talia said sheepishly.
Finn remained withdrawn, saying nothing.
Alistair continued, more measured now. “Not everyone will be chosen. Not all of you are ready. And some of you must still decide what you want your magic to mean.”
He didn’t name anyone. But Finn felt the weight of the words settle directly on him.
The crowd started to shift, small conversations blooming, when the heavy creak of the front gates silenced everything. Heads turned.
The courtyard fell quiet as the heavy creak of the front gate echoed across the stone.
Alistair’s gaze shifted, eyes narrowing slightly. “Seems our guest has arrived,” he said, with a note of restrained formality. “Children, this is Kael.”
A few heads turned. Whispers spread at the edges of the group.
Through the gate stepped a man wrapped in uneven leathers, his long coat stitched with old patches and half-charmed trinkets that clicked with each step. His hair was dark and unkempt, pulled back loosely, as if he'd only just remembered to tie it. One boot dragged slightly as he walked, the laces left undone.
He looked like he belonged somewhere else—and liked it that way.
Alistair didn’t elaborate. He didn’t smile.
Kael didn’t bow or greet anyone. He simply took a few steps into the courtyard, giving the children a once-over like someone inspecting a half-finished painting.
"Right," Kael said at last, his voice calm and conversational. “Most of you don’t know me. That’s fine. I’m not here to teach you spells, hold your hand, or hand out gold stars.”
He stopped, his gaze settling briefly—pointedly—on Finn.
Kael’s eyes swept the courtyard, lingering on no one for long—until they found Finn.
“Let me be plain in my intentions,” he said, voice even but laced with something deeper, something that crackled beneath the surface. “I’m here for the boy who wields chaos magic. I have no interest in the rest of you.”
Murmurs stirred, but Kael didn’t wait for reactions. He reached into the air with two fingers, twisting it slightly like fabric. A jagged ripple tore open before him—an unstable rift of shadowed light and flickering symbols, pulsing in and out of reality like a glitch in the world itself. The energy within was fractured, asymmetrical, and full of motion—like arcane static attempting to mimic a doorway.
Without another word, Kael stepped into it.
The portal snapped shut behind him with a sound that wasn’t quite a crack, nor a hiss, but something that felt wrong to the ears. Like something breaking that was never supposed to move.
Alistair pressed his lips tightly together, staring at the spot Kael had just been.
No one said a word. Not even the boldest children.
This chapter marks a shift in pace. Finn has finally discovered his affinity—chaos—but with it comes fear, hesitation, and a sense of isolation. He’s withdrawn, unsure of what he’s becoming, or if he belongs among the others at all.
Did the slow build work for you? Or are there things you wish had happened sooner? I’d love to hear your perspective.
(Please, please, please, comment your thoughts, comments, concerns about the story, I will address them, and be happy to discuss, change, improve as needed)
How do you feel about Finn’s reaction to discovering his magic?
