Echoes of Power

The air in Master Lorien’s private study was thick with the scent of aged parchment and something else, something sharp and metallic like ozone after a storm. It clung to the heavy velvet curtains, to the worn leather of the armchair where I sat, and most disturbingly, to the very edges of my own awareness. Lorien, a silhouette against the flickering lamplight, paced before a towering bookshelf that seemed to swallow the dim glow whole. His movements were deliberate, each step measured, yet I sensed a coiled tension beneath the placid surface.

“Your affinity is… unusual, Elara,” he murmured, his voice a low rumble that vibrated in my chest. He turned, his eyes, the colour of shadowed twilight, fixed on me. “It does not adhere to the established disciplines. It surges, it recoils, it… responds.”

He gestured towards a small, obsidian orb resting on a velvet cushion on the table between us. “Focus. Try to draw from it. Not with force, but with invitation.”