Garlan landed once more atop the Wind Promontory, just days after his last visit. The sky above the sanctuary seemed calmer than usual, yet the currents below betrayed a hidden unrest. Arcs of mist coiled around the floating stone platforms like serpents of slumbering air.

  Kazuhan was waiting, seated on a throne carved from hovering rock, arms crossed.

  “I’m starting to think you’ve mistaken me for some kind of substitute grandfather,” he growled, a smile in his voice.

  “Or maybe you’re just the only old sage still standing who can put up with me,” Garlan shot back.

  “Wrong answer. What do you want?”

  “I want to know where my mother is. And how to find her.”

  Kazuhan closed his eyes briefly. The wind rose, spiraling gently around him.

  “You come seeking answers, but you’ve not earned them yet. The Breath only guides those who know how to follow it.”

  He rose and pointed to the suspended arena behind him: a vast spiral of unstable currents, scattered with floating wind rings. Some tiny, others wide but shifting, all spinning, wavering, linked by bridges of air in constant motion.

  “A draconic trial of agility. A race. Fly through the twenty rings while holding your form and your flow—without crashing.”

  “And if I miss?”

  “You fall. Very, very far.”

  Garlan shrugged, shifted form, wings spread, wind armor surging. He leapt.

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  The first turn was gentle. The second, brutal. The third nearly vertical. He missed a ring, had to loop back, recalibrate his wingbeats. A circle spun violently ahead. He aimed, but a lateral gust slammed him broadside. His left wing faltered, sending him veering, tumbling—free fall. The sky twisted around him. And suddenly—Marenna. Her belly, her aura, her calm gaze. He roared, hurled a gale beneath him, and pulled up at the last instant. The wind once again feared him.

  Gusts assailed him mid-hairpin. For a heartbeat, he nearly lost control. But he steadied, roared, and cut through the air with precision.

  Sweat beaded his brow, arms trembling with each new passage—but he endured. Ten rings. Fifteen. Nineteen…

  The twentieth closed just as he burst through, shattering into pure wind.

  He landed, gasping. Kazuhan watched him silently, then smiled.

  “You can fly. Not bad. But can you reach her without falling?”

  Garlan lifted his head.

  “She’s alive?”

  “As far as I know, yes. She took human form. And she lives—or hides—in a remote village to the northeast. No dragon has seen her in years. But you… you just might.”

  “You think she’s waiting for me?”

  Kazuhan snorted.

  “She left you once. She could do it again. But go. You’ve earned the right to try.”

  And in the sanctuary’s hushed currents, the wind parted, as if opening a path.

  Without hesitation, Garlan launched from the sanctuary, skimming low over forests and plains split by rocky ridges. The sky was clear, but the air carried that subtle tension he had learned to recognize: the presence of evil, faint but real.

  More than once, he was intercepted along the way. Shadows—fast but clumsy, minor demons with no true coordination. Watchers, perhaps, or scavengers drawn to his power.

  He granted them nothing more than a glance, a fraction of his Breath, a flare of fire entwined with wind. They dissolved into smoke, and the road cleared.

  After hours of relentless flight, he finally felt it—he was close. An old path wound between slender, pale trees, almost white. There, behind a veil of mist, he glimpsed the outline of a small village.

  Before reaching it, he slowed. Instinctively, he shifted back into human form. Less threatening. More vulnerable. More… like her.

  His heart thundered, yet the world around him lay in silence.