[3 Years Before Black Spire War]

  The apothecary was a sanctuary of calculated chaos. Aether, thin and taut as a drawn bowstring, monitored it all with an unforgiving eye. He was not the gentle mentor his future students would one day know. This was Aether in the raw, still stinging from his failure.

  Odion, a boy hardened by persistent ambition, was not mixing. He was chopping. On the cutting board lay a gnarly, pulsating tuber: King’s Root.

  It was a potent, volatile root used for extreme trauma cases. If the slice was too thick, the sap would curdle and turn into a paralytic bile. Odion held the silver knife. His hand trembled, just slightly.

  “The cutting hand is the pouring hand, boy. Precision is not just neatness,” Aether’s voice was a low, gravelly rasp. “It is life. This root is not a tonic. It is a shock.”

  Aether pointed to the tuber. “We use this to restart a heart that has already stopped. A micro-dose to jolt the spirit back into the body. One slice brings them back.”

  Odion sliced. The blade passed through the root. Paper-thin. Perfect. He looked at the slice. He saw the energy pulsating within it.

  “And if the heart hasn't stopped?” Odion asked, his mind racing. “If we give this to a man who is standing? To a soldier?”

  Aether’s expression darkened instantly.

  “Then the heart bursts,” Aether said coldly. “It is not fuel, Odion. It is a kick. You do not kick a man who is already running.”

  “But if we diluted it,” Odion pressed, the ambition bleeding into his voice. “If we stabilized it with saltbloom... it wouldn't burst the heart. It would just make it beat faster. Stronger.”

  Shatter.

  Aether’s hand swept a ceramic cup off the counter. It exploded against the floorboards. Aether spun around. His face was pale, his eyes wide with a sudden, terrifying panic.

  He quickly turned his back on the boy, hiding the self-disgust that briefly washed over his face. He remembered the fatal boast: “I am the route.” He hadn't been a route. He had been a dead end.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “You do not drink the power, Odion!” he roared. “Offensive alchemy requires you to become the vessel. It demands you swallow the fire. And the fire always burns through.”

  Odion stood perfectly still. He didn't cower. He had grown up in a house where a broken cup meant a broken nose. He knew the wind-up. He knew the heavy, wet sound of a fist hitting flesh. He waited for it.

  But Aether just stood there, breathing hard, his hands shaking at his sides.

  In five years, Aether had been a tyrant of discipline. He demanded perfection. He shouted when a flame was too high. He lectured for hours if a cork was loose. He was mentally exhausting, grinding Odion’s mind against the whetstone of his own trauma.

  But Aether had never once raised a hand against him. Odion looked at the broken shards. He realized that Aether treated Odion’s body with more respect than Odion’s own father ever had. Aether protected the vessel.

  “I am strong,” Odion argued, his voice steady. “I can handle the dose. My skin is thick, Master. I've taken worse than a burn.”

  “Rennick was strong!” Aether shouted, stepping into Odion's space. “He was the strongest man I knew. And he popped like a blister because I let him think he could take one more sip.”

  The memory of the purple, exploding skin flashed in Aether's eyes. Aether stalked forward. He placed a hand on Odion’s shoulder. He gripped it like a clamp.

  “I will not teach you how to overdose on glory,” Aether hissed. “You will be a Support Alchemist. You will stay behind the line. You will stay sober.”

  “Survival requires one tool above all others: Fear.”

  Odion flinched. “Fear, Master?”

  “Fear of the bottle,” Aether whispered. “It stops you from pushing past your limits. It is the only emotion you are permitted to keep. Every other feeling—loyalty, rage, pride—is just a temptation to take another dose.”

  Aether’s grip tightened on Odion's shoulder. He looked at the young man he had raised, the boy who looked at him with hero-worship because Aether was the only man who had never hurt him physically. And Aether crushed that worship, because he believed it was the only way to keep the boy alive.

  “I did not take you on as a son, Odion,” Aether lied, his voice cold and absolute. “I took you on as a penance. Do not speak of offensive alchemy in my shop again.”

  He let go and walked away, retreating into his study and slamming the door. Odion stood alone in the silence of the shop. He looked at the broken ceramic on the floor. He looked at the locked cabinet.

  He nodded slowly. His body was hardened by Simon’s fists. His mind was hardened by Aether’s discipline. He swept up the broken pieces without a word.

  He remembered the warning. The fire always burns through. He just chose to ignore the fear.

  Years later, Aether would repeat the warning to Macus, but not the command. He taught Macus the exact measure of the Red Vials. He taught him the lethal threshold. He taught mercy. He knew that forbidding the fire had only driven Odion into the flames. With Macus, Aether would trust that knowledge—not prohibition—was the only way to survive the dose.