Shattered Gifted

Prologue

When the realm split and the sky burned, the Arkhaios gathered what remained of their light.

From their veins they poured their mercy in the form of light into a single vessel, the Cradle of Essence, so that mortals might endure.

“Let there be balance,” they decreed.

And from the Cradle, one drop was given to each child born beneath the sky.

One gift. One god. One thread binding mortal to divine.

So the realm would never break again.

Chapter 1

The cold bit differently this far north. It felt sharper, cleaner, like the air itself hadn’t learned to betray yet. Yana rode the thermal currents above the coastline in falcon form, her wings cutting through wind that tasted of salt and the three hours she’d stolen from fate. Below, the sea reflected a sky that was wrong somehow. The light falling at an angle that didn’t quite match the sun’s position, shadows pooling in places they shouldn’t.

Time didn’t sit right in her body. She could feel it pulling at her bones, trying to drag her back to where she belonged. Back to that chamber. Back to Diz’s hands closing around her the dagger. Back to watching him cut Nem’s throat while she screamed inside a body that wouldn’t move.

Except she’d made it move. Hadn’t she?

The memory felt slippery, like trying to hold water in cupped palms. One moment she’d been trapped in a shock, watching the blade bite into Nem’s throat, his blood turning his collar dark. The next, she’d been standing in the corridor three hours earlier, Diz by her side with that false concern in his eyes, acting completely unaware of what he was about to deliver her to.

Yana had bent time. Actually fucking bent it.

She still didn’t know how. The power had come from somewhere deep and primal, somehow amplified by that rift of chaos that had opened up beneath the citadel. It had burst forth from that place inside her where all her gifts tangled together like roots beneath soil. She’d felt reality grow thin as parchment, felt the moment when she could either tear through it or be consumed by it, and she’d yanked at time’s current.

And now she was here. Alive. Free. She hadn’t rewound the world, only herself, stealing three hours of motion from its flow. Now she was three hours behind Nem’s death that must be delayed now that she ‘didn’t show up’ to the meeting.

The rage that had sustained her through the escape was settling into something colder now, something that lived in her marrow and whispered that the Council had taken everything from her. Her trust, her purpose, her grandfather, and nearly Nem too. They’d turned her into a weapon and then acted surprised when she’d cut the hand that wielded her.

Fuck them. Fuck all of them.

Below, the peninsula unfolded in shadows and secrets. Pine forests crowded the slopes, their darkness pooling between the hills. Somewhere in that maze of green and stone lay the rebel camp she’d spied on weeks ago, back when she’d escaped the Academy’s confines to explore the world around her. Back when she’d lived in terror of the next blood trial and what that may mean to people of Doress she had been tethered to with the soul bond.

No more.

That girl was dead now. The Council had made sure of that when they’d tried to cage her. And when they sliced into Nem, they gave her the tools to break the bond. To bend time. To make things right again.

A soft rain started coming down just as Yana folded her wings and dropped, letting gravity take her. The wind screamed past as the ground rushed up. Trees resolving into branches, branches into needles, the camp materializing like something conjured from smoke. She could see the fire now, figures moving around it, the careful chaos of people who lived on the knife’s edge of survival.

Ten feet from the ground, she shifted.

The transformation rippled through her. Falcon dissolving into woman, feathers melting into skin and leather and the practical cotton she’d conjured from some distant clothesline that afternoon. The magic came easier now, instinctive as breathing, though it still felt like being turned inside out for just a heartbeat.

She landed human beside their fire, boots hitting earth with barely a whisper.

The camp exploded.

Half a dozen rebels moved at once, hands reaching for weapons, gifts flaring to life in a riot of desperate power. Fire bloomed in one man’s palm. A woman’s eyes went silver as she tried to lock Yana’s mind in psychic chains. Another rebel’s hands crackled with kinetic energy that could shatter bone.

Yana stood perfectly still, feeling the world pull against her stolen hours. The sensation was disorienting. Not quite pain, more like vertigo, like standing on a ship’s deck while the water moved in the wrong direction.

“If I meant harm,” she said quietly, her voice cutting through the rising panic, “you’d have been dead already.”

It was true. She could have done a thousand things to them without them having realized she was even there. Could have crushed their minds from the inside. Could have called wind to scatter their bodies across the rocks. Could have opened up a canyon below the camp and closed it again within a heartbeat, burying them alive. So many options…

One man, abroad-shouldered giant with scars that spoke of too many close calls, didn’t care about logic. He lunged, knife appearing in his hand.

Yana didn’t move.

She just pulled.

Telekinesis wrapped around his legs and yanked them out from under him. He hit the ground hard, knife spinning into shadows. Before anyone else could react, she was already inside the silver-eyed woman’s head, the one who thought she could trap a mind like Yana’s.

That was never going to happen.

Yana twisted the woman’s perception, nothing vicious, just enough to fracture her sight into duplicates. Suddenly there were six Yanas standing around the fire, all watching with the same dark blue, furious eyes. The woman staggered, her gift collapsing as her brain tried to reconcile impossible input.

Then Yana released them both, pulling her power back like reeling in fishing line. The man climbed to his feet, gasping. The woman blinked hard, horror and fascination warring across her face.

Yana looked up at the heavens, at the falling rain, and with a flick of her hand deflected the droplets away from the entire campsite. The rain acted as if there was a glass dome over the tents and fire and the people.

“Controlled power,” Yana said softly. “Not slaughter. Remember that.”

The fear around the fire shifted into something else. Not respect, exactly, but the wary acknowledgment that she could have killed them and chose not to. That had to count for something.

Movement at the edge of firelight made Yana’s attention snap sideways. A woman stepped forward, and Yana’s recognised her immediately.

Mila.

No. Not Mila. But close enough that the resemblance was a knife between her ribs. Same dark eyes that could strip away lies, same sharp jaw, same way of carrying herself like she owned every inch of space around her. But where Mila had held warmth beneath her brown skin, Keri was all burnt edges and cold calculation. The softness had been carved away, leaving only the blade.

“That’s enough,” the woman said, and the camp settled immediately. Command lived in her voice, earned through keeping people alive when the world wanted them dead.

She studied Yana with unsettling focus, taking in the simple clothes, the too-precise control, the way Yana held herself like violence waiting to happen. Her gaze lingered on Yana’s hands, scarred from hours of combat training with Diz, from experiments, from the thousand of hours before the Academy days helping out in the orchards of Doress.

“You’re a long way from the villages,” Keri said finally, her tone neutral as unmarked snow. “What are you?”

Not who. What.

Fair question.

“Someone the Council wants dead,” Yana replied.

Keri’s expression didn’t change, but something flickered behind her eyes. “That doesn’t narrow it down.” She crossed her arms, firelight catching on the leather reinforcement in her jacket. “You shouldn’t be here. Council eyes sweep this coast daily. Not to mention our own”

“I know.” Yana kept her voice level. “I flew past three of their patrols on the way in. And four of yours.”

That earned a slight tilt of Keri’s head. Calculation, maybe intrigue. “So you’re a shapeshifter?” One of the other rebels cursed softly. “Not surprising then. It should have been a piece of cake for someone with your magic.”

“Maybe,” Yana allowed. Then, because she needed trust and fast, because time was literally working against her: “You have a sister. Mila.”

The camp went silent.

Keri’s face turned to stone, every muscle locked down. When she spoke, her voice could have cut glass. “How do you know that name?”

“I trained beside her.” The words felt strange, weighted with memory and loss and the rage that hadn’t stopped burning. “I saved her more than once. She saved me too.”

It was true. Without knowing it, Mila had pulled her back from the edge more times than Yana could count. Had been the one person in that sterile compound who’d treated her like a person instead of a weapon. And Yana had been her protector too. Her healer. Her avenger.

Keri’s eyes went dark with something that might have been grief or rage. With women like her, the two were often the same. She studied Yana for a long moment, weighing risk against opportunity.

“Then you’re the friend she wrote about,” Keri said finally, each word chosen with surgical precision. “The one who shouldn’t exist.”