Chapter 36: Sovereign Resonance

(I painted this in Procreate using the Water Pen, which was fun for the sketchy part, but the Oil Paint brush is much more fun. - Chaiga T. Cheska)
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Oren saw Nix lying unconscious through the tear in the air and reached for him instinctively, but Tavik’s voice halted him.

“Oren. Look at Bran.”

Bran stood at the portal’s edge with both arms outstretched, dust motes drifting around him in the slanted afternoon light. The air seemed to thicken where he stood, as if the world were holding its breath. A tremor ran through him, not the simple shake of tired limbs but something deeper, something that came from the very root of him. His outline had begun to soften. The edges of his body thinned and wavered, as though the room were slowly losing its memory of him and letting him slip away.

Tavik stepped out from behind Bran and reached for his brother’s shoulder, intending to steady him, but his hand passed straight through. There was no resistance, no warmth, nothing at all. His fingers met only the thin, trembling air, and a cold terror rose in him like water flooding a hollow.

“Close it, Bran.” His voice came out flat, scraped clean of everything but urgency. “Close the portal. Now.”

Bran did not react. His eyes were fixed on Nix’s still form beyond the threshold, held there as if some unseen current had caught him. The world around him felt distant, softened at the edges. A dreamlike haze wrapped itself around his thoughts. He could feel himself thinning, slipping, as though the magic he was holding open had reached into the core of him and hooked itself to his life force. Some quiet part of him recognised that this was a very poor idea, but he could not pull free. He was caught in the working, unable to disentangle himself from the slow unravelling that had begun.

Tavik shot Oren a pained look over their fading younger brother, and Oren felt the anguish rise between them as if they shared a single breath. He stood caught between the sight of Nix lying motionless beyond the tear and Bran dissolving at its edge. His breath deepened, slow and deliberate, until the air around him seemed to thicken. The passage of time softened, then stilled altogether. When he looked again, his brothers and cousin were frozen in the moment, held in a suspended hush, and only Oren remained moving.

He drew another breath, this one reaching down through the soles of his feet into the soil beneath him. The earth answered. He felt it as a quiet stirring at first, then a gathering force that travelled deeper, down into the hidden places of the world, until it reached the planet’s core. A surge rose from below and climbed through him, filling every bone with something vast and old that had no name he could reach for.

The sound that tore from his throat was not one he recognised. It felt older than he was, older than memory, a roar shaped by something vast that had woken inside him. He felt himself changing, both witness and vessel, as iridescent light spilled from his hands like the trails of falling stars. The crown of light at his temples thrummed with the same fierce brilliance.

The force of his magic blazed outward in widening circles that rippled across MirMarnia, travelling for hundreds of miles in every direction. A rending sound followed, sharp and resonant, a noise he felt in his bones and teeth as much as he heard it.

The dust motes hung in the air, suspended as though caught in amber, while Oren felt himself moving at a slow, deliberate pace that did not belong to ordinary time. Light continued to pour from him, steady and warm, reminiscent of starlight on a winter night. It tingled across his skin and sharpened the world around him, bringing every colour and contour into vivid clarity.

He looked first at Bran. His brother’s life threads were loosening, unspooling in thin, pale strands that drifted towards the portal’s hungry magic. Oren understood what Bran was giving up to keep the tear open, and the knowledge moved cold through him. Bran himself did not seem to know, caught in the trance of the working, but Oren saw it plainly.

He reached out with his right hand and let the starlight flow into Bran’s dissolving form. The instinct to mend what was breaking rose in him like a tide. In the strange stillness where time had folded in on itself, he watched the light shift and lengthen into fine filaments. They drifted towards the torn ends of Bran’s life threads, touched them, and began to fuse them back together. The pattern rewove itself, stronger than before, as if the magic had found a truer shape.

Slowly, Bran’s form thickened and steadied. The blurring at his edges eased. Oren felt his own breath loosen in his chest, realising only then that he had been holding it.

Feeling steadier, Oren remained in that strange, suspended place where time held itself still. His right hand continued its quiet work, light threading through Bran’s form as it repaired what had begun to unravel. With his left hand, he reached towards the portal and looked through to where Nix lay.

The light from his palm wrapped itself around his cousin, soft and sure, and Oren felt an instinctive pull to lift him. The glow gathered around Nix’s limp body and raised him gently from the floor of that darkened room. His head lolled back, his body limp, hanging weightless in Oren’s light.

Something felt wrong. A faint discord, a missing note. Oren narrowed his eyes, studying Nix through the drifting filaments of starlight that streamed from his hand. He recognised the signature of his cousin’s magic, but it was thin, incomplete, as though a vital part of him had been stripped away. The memory of Lisera rose unbidden, the way her essence had felt when she was held captive by Ulfgar, trapped in a form that was not her own, a perception Oren hadn’t realised he’d noticed until this moment.

Understanding broke through him, cold and sudden. Oren gasped and nearly lost his focus. Nix was in human form. His vibrant indigo skin had faded to a weak, washed-out blue, and the runes that usually flickered beneath his skin were gone, leaving him pale and diminished.

With his starlight still wrapped around Nix, Oren pushed his mind into the light streaming from his palm and examined his cousin’s limp form, searching for the source of the wrongness. The answer revealed itself slowly. He saw faint echoes in Nix’s life threads, pale shadows where the pattern of constellations used to lie, and something in him went very still.

A roar tore out of him as he surfaced from the realisation. Light magic vibrated from his eyes, bright enough to cut through the darkened room beyond the portal. His sight sharpened until walls no longer mattered. He could see through stone and timber, through distance itself, as if the world had become transparent.

There, far from where Nix was suspended in his light, Oren sensed a dazzling cluster of constellations. They were locked away in a chest, their brilliance muted but unmistakably Nix’s. The knowledge settled in him with certainty. His cousin had been stripped of something essential.

He did not stop to consider what it meant. He wanted only to restore what had been taken. He focused his mind on the constellations, delighting in the strange ease with which he could reach for them. In the stillness of that suspended moment, the constellations began to rise. They drifted up through the locked chest as though the wood and metal were no more substantial than mist, responding to the pull of Oren’s magic and its quiet defiance of all physical boundaries.

Oren reached out with his mind, guiding the constellations as though plucking them from the air. They drifted towards him, weightless and trusting, and he positioned them above his cousin, who still hung suspended in the cradle of his light. The moment they hovered over Nix, the stars seemed to recognise their origin. They fell into him like a shower of meteors returning to the night sky.

Nix gasped. Colour rushed back into his skin, the deep indigo blooming across his arms and throat, and the green flicker of his runes stirred beneath the surface once more. Oren drew him through the portal, the effort tugging at the edges of his strength, and released him. Nix dropped straight onto Tavik, who remained frozen in time and collapsed under the sudden weight.

For a heartbeat, Oren simply stared. It fascinated him that Tavik and Bran were still caught in the suspended moment, held fast by whatever strange magic he had summoned, yet Nix was not bound at all. His cousin was already struggling to free himself from Tavik’s limbs, watching Oren with something open and careful in his face.

Oren felt the last of his magic beginning to ebb, thinning like a tide drawing back from the shore. He reached out one final time to Bran, who still stood frozen at the portal’s edge, arms lifted, holding the tear open with the remnants of his strength. For a moment, Oren wondered if it was only his imagination, or if Bran truly looked smaller, as though the portal had been feeding on him, drawing on his life force with every passing heartbeat.

He raised both hands towards his youngest brother and gathered what remained of his light. The starlight answered, soft but steady, and he focused it on Bran’s fraying form. His mind narrowed to a single intention: to mend whatever harm the portal had carved into his brother, to restore what had been taken before it slipped beyond reach.

Nix, struggling upright at last, caught sight of what Oren was doing for Bran and understood, with a jolt of fear, how much danger Bran was still in. He reached out with a desperate burst of his own magic. His fingers swept through the shafts of light in the air, gathering dust motes and afternoon brightness as if they were threads. He twisted them together, weaving a lattice of shimmering strands, and flung the lightweave across the width of the stuttering portal.

The moment it settled, Nix pulled back with every scrap of strength he had left. A sharp crack split the air as the portal snapped shut. The room shuddered, the air righted itself, and time lurched forward again.

Oren released his magic and stepped back, breath unsteady. He looked from Bran to Nix to Tavik, then down at his own hands, still glowing faintly, still tingling with the remnants of something ancient and vast, and found he had no words yet for what had passed through them.

Bran gasped as the world lurched back into motion and sank to the floor beside Nix. Tavik sat up at the same moment, the headache that had plagued him earlier lifting as though someone had opened a window in his mind. He blinked, looked around in confusion, then up at Oren, who was still staring at his hands as if they belonged to someone else.

Tavik’s gaze moved between them all, taking stock of what had just happened. He reached out and hauled both Bran and Nix into a rough, breathless hug before shoving them away again. He thumped Nix lightly on the shoulder.

“I told you going off on your own was a bad idea.” His glower was full of affection, the sort that came from fear only just easing its grip.

Nix rubbed his shoulder, raised an eyebrow at Tavik, then turned to Oren, watching him with something open and careful in his face.

Tavik reached over and squeezed his younger brother’s shoulder. “You alright, Bran?”

Bran looked at Tavik, then exchanged a puzzled glance with Nix beside him before turning to Oren. His older brother was watching him closely, as though waiting for the outcome of something only he understood. Bran drew a slow breath, frowned up at him, and said, “I anchored my magic to my life force, and I think you saved me.”

Oren lowered himself to the kitchen floor beside them. He reached for Bran’s shoulder and held it, his mouth parting as if to speak, yet Bran felt something shift within him before any words emerged. It rose through his mind like a bubble breaking the surface of a still pool, a quiet knowing that seemed to bloom from the moment Oren’s hand settled on him.

“Your magic, Oren,” Bran said, his voice low. “I think it is called Sovereign Resonance.” He watched the surprise deepen across Oren’s face. “And I think it is an ancient and powerful magic.”

Oren opened and closed his mouth, still faintly stunned. Bran frowned, rubbed his forehead as though trying to shake loose a stubborn thought, then gave a small shrug. “I wonder where that came from. Have I suddenly grown clever?”

Tavik snorted. Bran shot him a dirty look. Tavik only smirked back and leaned in, studying his younger brother with a scrutiny that bordered on amusement.

“I think, Bran,” he said, narrowing his eyes, “that you have actually grown smaller. Perhaps your magic, drawing on your life force, has altered something in you.”

Bran glowered at him, sat up straighter, folded his arms, and looked thoroughly affronted. He turned to Oren with a pointed expression that all but demanded a defence.

Oren only frowned. He looked at Tavik, then at Bran. “I think Tavik is right. You have shrunk somehow, or I have grown, but something feels off.”

Nix glanced at Oren, then pushed himself unsteadily to his feet. The others rose with him, each of them studying the others as though expecting some visible sign of change. Nix looked up at Oren with a rare brightness in his hazel eyes, the runes along his arms and neck flickering in a nervous, restless pattern.

“Thank you, Oren,” he said quietly. “For returning my constellations to me.”

Tavik and Bran looked between Oren and Nix as Oren reached out and set his hand on Nix’s shoulder. Something unspoken moved between them, a quiet acknowledgement shaped by the memory of Lisera and the long years she had been held captive by Ulfgar. The moment lingered, held in a stillness that felt almost reverent, then Oren let his hand fall as curiosity stirred through him like a tide pulling at the shore.

“I understand what it means, Nix. I am sorry I did not realise the significance sooner. When your mother’s constellations were returned to her after Ulfgar’s death, that was what caused your magical eruption, was it not?”

Nix found he could not meet Oren’s gaze and looked away, feeling the silence deepen as he wrestled with the disturbing memories of what he had witnessed months earlier. He drew a steadying breath and addressed the floor. “I did not know my mother was anything other than human, with blue skin and unable to speak. She became a monster when her constellations were returned to her, and I was frightened by what she became and by what I might be as well. I do not know why I did not transform when you returned my constellations.”

It was the most Nix had spoken since they had known him, and they responded as the family he had always longed for, reaching out without hesitation, setting their hands on his shoulders, and simply staying with him. Bran peered sideways up at him and whispered, “You are not a monster, Nix.”

Nix kept his eyes fixed on the floor, drew in another deep breath, then looked at each of them in turn. A shaky smile touched his mouth, the only answer he could manage, the rest of his thoughts too tangled to voice.

Tavik felt the gratitude and the churn of emotion radiating through the tether from Nix, and he turned his attention to his older brother, who stood towering beside them. “About time you used your magic, big brother. I wondered if you had forgotten you are an elf.” Tavik laughed and darted out of reach as Oren took a swipe at him.

Bran turned to Oren as well, delighted to join in his favourite pastime of making his brother uncomfortable. “That’s right. Oren finally used his magic. How long has it been?” He grinned and stepped neatly aside as Oren aimed a half-hearted thump at his shoulder.

Relieved to have the attention shift away from him, Nix watched his cousins antagonise one another, a sight that was fast becoming one of his quiet pleasures.

“Leave off, both of you,” Oren retorted, straightening his tunic and smiling despite himself.

“You are taller as well,” Bran exclaimed, looking genuinely pained. “How is this fair?” He glowered up at Oren. “I open a portal and end up shorter, while you grow taller. I’m destined to be smaller than Burrowback doorknobs.”

Oren raised an eyebrow at him, then straightened fully and realised he was indeed taller than before. He had to duck slightly or risk striking his head on the ceiling. As he adjusted to the odd sensation of height, something else caught his attention. While half-listening to his brothers’ tease him, he noticed the dust motes drifting through the light, their movement strangely slow, as though suspended in a world that had not quite returned to itself.

A thought stirred. Perhaps time had not settled back into its proper rhythm.

Curious, Oren reached out and touched the swirling motes. At once, there was a sharp, echoing bang, and the dust snapped back into its natural drift, no longer slowed or distorted.

Tavik and Bran had clamped their hands over their ears and were looking about wildly when the door slammed open, hard enough to strike the wall and rebound. Harthos and the Burrowback chieftain, Timatticus, filled the doorway, both of them agitated, their spines bristling with alarm.

All four boys stared back in surprise as Harthos strode straight to Oren and met him eye to eye, a detail that told Oren just how much he had grown. The flicker in the Burrowback’s gaze showed he had noticed the change as well.

“That was your magic, was it not. The force that sent vibrations across all of MirMarnia.”

Oren held his gaze. “Yes, it was. What’s wrong, Harthos?” Tavik, Bran and Nix gathered close around him, each of them feeling the air in the guest house thrum with a tension that seemed to settle into the very walls.