I stare at it. Flip it upside down, checking the hinges—more wood—even the base.
It’s empty.
There’s no iron.
My back tenses muscle by muscle. Rising up my spine, panic comes like a tide until my hands quake so badly I drop the empty box and it clatters against the others.
Thio grabs my forearm. “Okay, Sebastian, what is going on?”
“The iron,” I hear myself say. “The iron’s gone.”
“I don’t give a shit about the iron.Look at me.”
I can’t.
Unclench your fists. Stay grounded. Come back into your body.
I look up and see Thio.
And then my eyes shut, and I see that scar on Orok’s shoulder.
Is that all you’ve got?
Orok’s screaming. He’s screaming and there’s blood everywhere—
But it isn’t Orok this time. It’s Thio. And it’s my father’s voice echoing through the room, telling me there’s only one way out,thisway out.
I’m panting, nostrils flared and fingers clawing into the grass, dirt and rocks biting under my nailbeds. My eyes open again but everything’s gone red.
Fuck this challenge.
Fuck playing by the rules.
They want us to defeat that damn cube? I’ll defeat it. I’ll obliterate the ever-loving shit out of it, and it won’t matter that there’s no iron, it won’t matter what they ask me to do;Ichoose howIuse my own power.
I snatch the box of sulfur Thio got. It’s all I need for several fire-based attack spells.
“Sebastian!” Thio grabs my arm and I try to jerk away but he holds on tight; I’d wanted him to bruise me earlier, he is now.
“Stop,” he tells me, face halfway between furious and concentrating, like he wants to spring to action right alongside me but he’s staying present because—
Because I’mnot.
“Stop,” he repeats, and seizes the back of my neck. “You don’t want to tell me what’s wrong? Fine. You want to be angry? That’s fine, too. But use that anger, Sebastian. I might’ve thought you were an immature nuisance once upon a time, but you’renot,and I know you’re smart enough not to do something dumb right now.”
No. I’m not.
I’m the kid who did stupid shit because I couldn’t handle anything that happened.
I’m the guy who doesn’t think and makes a mess of everything and no one takes me seriously,no one ever took me seriously; so I embodied that, I embodied it so much I forgot how to be anything else.
But… I’m not just that. Not anymore. I haven’t been that guy in weeks. Months, maybe.
My grip releases.
The sulfur falls between me and Thio.
I’m still panting, shoulders heaving, but my anger is parting like curtains over a window and there, there’s that dawn again, the one that’s been rising, the one I can’t always see. But I feel it now, and it’s warm and clear and safe.
