Hidden Gifted

Yana hummed softly as she gathered the dishes, her voice barely more than a thread of sound in the warm hush of the stone cottage. The melody wasn’t familiar. Not a song, really, just something instinctive, something to fill the silence as she moved. The wind clawed at the shutters, rattling them in their frames, but the hearth fire blazed steadily, cocooning the small space in heat and comfort.

She didn’t need to think about it. A flick of her fingers conjured water into the basin, the stream catching the soft orange glow of the firelight. Another subtle gesture, and warmth bloomed beneath the surface, steam curling into the air. Fire-magic pulsed gently at her fingertips. Controlled, precise. Routine.

But her thoughts were far from the kitchen.

She couldn’t stop replaying the conversation she’d overheard earlier. Annu’s voice, sharp with frustration. Jet, quieter, more resigned. And in the center of it all, little Bas.

Jet’s youngest brother had turned ten barely a month ago. That age was the threshold. The moment magic stirred and revealed their future.

Bas had dreamed of something simple. Useful. The kind of elemental magic that earned quiet respect here in the Shammai. Air to coax storm clouds across the sky. Fire to stoke the forges. Water to cleanse and nourish, to seed the rain. Earth to sweeten soil, to clear stone from the fields. Tangible, vital, everyday magic.

But Bas hadn’t been gifted with any of those. He’d received strength magic.

Simple, yes. But not the kind the Shammai valued. Not the kind that kept you here.

Strength meant one thing: being claimed into service.

Next week, when the Testers arrive, Bas would be taken. There will be no gentle apprenticeship. No future among friends and family. Just a one-way journey to the Ceraunian Academy in the Core. To be trained not as something super-valued, like a healer or elemental, but as a foot soldier.

Yana’s jaw clenched as she rinsed a plate. A boy like Bas didn’t belong on the front lines.

The Ceraunian army hoarded power in many forms: shields, cloakers, mind readers, soul-binders, time-benders, invisibles. They took what they wanted. Those wielders were protected. Preserved. Weaponized. But the ones with strength magic? They were sent to the front lines. To be the physical shields when magic failed. Mostly used, then broken and forgotten.

She didn’t even realize her air magic had stirred until the dishes on the rack began to dry themselves. A soft current danced over them, lifting droplets away in a silent, practiced rhythm. Reflexive. Thoughtless. Like combing your hair only to notice once it was done.

But her thoughts remained tangled around Bas.

Could she shield his mind when the Testers came? Mask the truth? Could she bend their perception, make them see something else, something harmless? A weak water-wielder, maybe? That trick had worked for her, year after year. And her grandfather too. Could she extend that illusion to a third person?

Her humming cut off as a familiar presence stirred behind her. She felt him before she heard him, the subtle shift in the air, the awareness that came from years of shared space.

“You’re taking longer than usual with those dishes, Yana,” her grandfather said gently, voice roughened by age and years of dust and wind working the orchards with his earth magic. “Need some help?”

She turned toward him, pausing to take him in.

The fine network of lines around his eyes. The steady, weatherworn hands. The limp he carried without complaint; a ghost of an old accident from a time when help had been too far, too late. No gifted healers in the Shammai back then. Just pain and endurance.

Tal Ashvalor gave her a small smile, but his gaze was sharp beneath the kindness. He knew her rhythms better than anyone. And he could see the disquiet in her, the way her silence tonight wasn’t just quiet but heavy. Measured.

He didn’t press. Didn’t fill the space with questions. He simply waited. And sure enough, she gave him a faint smile - her tell. A signal that she wasn’t fine, not really, but that she was letting him in.

“Do you think I’d be able to shield more than just our minds?” she asked quietly, her voice barely louder than the wind outside. “When the Testers come, I mean. And then… bend theirs at the same time? Make them believe different things?”

Tal stilled.

It was a dangerous question. Reckless, even here in the supposed safety of their home. But this cottage was the only place she had to be fully herself. To let the wild reach of her magic unfurl without fear.

He stepped closer, his limp more pronounced in the soft light. When his hand settled on her back, it was both a reassurance and a tether. A reminder that she wasn’t alone in this.

He didn’t speak right away. Didn’t rush his answer. He carefully and quietly weighed the words first. Willing the tremor of fear from his voice.

“I suppose you could,” he said at last, the words slow, deliberate. “Your magic’s growing stronger by the day. But to try something like that… then?” His hand tightened gently on her shoulder. “Yana… it’s too dangerous.”

She gave him a small nod, though the frown stayed, carved like shadow between her dark brows.

“It’s just…” she began, her voice low, tugged tight with feeling. “Jet’s little brother will likely be taken. For strength magic. He’ll be a foot soldier...” She swallowed. “His family is gutted. And honestly, they might need him now more than ever. Especially since Dino’s retired…”

Tal felt it like a warmth blooming in his chest... pride. Heavy, aching, infinite. His granddaughter, all fierce heart and quiet power. Always looking for ways to help. Always choosing kindness first. Always making herself small so that others could remain whole.

And never, not once, had her first thought been to protect herself.

“I know,” he said softly. “I know. And I wish there were a way. I wish you could shield him. Hide him. But, Yana…” He exhaled through his nose, slow, steady. “Everyone in the village knows what magic he has. You’d have to shield all of them. Every mind. Every stray thought. And then bend them too. Convince them all of some new version of the truth. That’s… that’s not just dangerous. It’s impossible.”

He watched the way her jaw tightened, the way her gaze dropped to her hands as if weighing what he said against the ache in her chest. He hated being the one to crush that flicker of hope. But the risk… it was too great.

“What happens if you miss one person?” he asked gently. “One mind left unguarded? Or say they come again next year and ask follow-up questions. Do you remember what you made every single person believe, what the Testers recorded? It never ends there, Yana. It keeps growing.”

He paused, his voice catching as the weight of it hit him all at once.

Today, it was Bas. But what about next year? Another child? Two? A cousin? A friend? The year after that, more? How many minds could she bend before something slipped? And when it did, because the probability of that happening is quite high, what then? They’d be branded as rebels. And the moment they traced the magic back to her, to his Yana…

Tal’s breath hitched, almost imperceptibly. The fear dug in like claws behind his ribs.

He remembered, with a clarity he wished he didn’t have, the moment eight years ago when he first understood what she was. What she could do. The moment the threads of his simple life had unraveled with a child’s laughter and a burst of magic that should never have coexisted.

It should have been impossible, but he witnessed first-hand how she made the spring daisies swirl in circle around her, laughter bursting forth before she started sobbing when the those daisies burst into flames. He saw her slam a fist against a boulder in her confused grief and anger, only for that boulder to splinter into a thousand shards. And when a flying shard hit and maimed an unsuspecting finch, he watched as she cradled and cried and fully healed the bird.

He had raged that day. Not at her. Never at her. But at the gods. At their cruelty. Their carelessness. Their gifts. It was too much. For a child, for anyone. Too impossible. Too dangerous. Too divine.

His son had been dead a year then, and his grief had barely scabbed over. And the gods had placed this child, this impossible, perfect child, into his arms, daring him to raise her. To protect her.

There had been a time he’d considered running. Taking her somewhere far beyond the reach of the Ceraunian overlords. A distant empire. A quiet, forgotten coast. And there had been a darker time still when he’d wondered if ending it, ending her, would be the kinder choice.

But he hadn’t done either.

He couldn’t rip her from the only home she’d ever known. And he certainly couldn’t raise a hand to harm her. Not her.

So, he forged another path.

He buried them both here, in the quiet ordinariness of Doress, in the golden fields and orchards of the Shammai heartland. He gathered what scraps of knowledge he could from the neglected archives of the town hall. He taught her discipline, control, secrecy.

He made sure not a soul, not a soulknew what she could do.

Because if the Testers ever found out that Yana could wield more than one type of magic, there were only one of two futures waiting for her: death… or something worse.