Pride came before the fall.
Yuna had heard the saying her whole life. Never understood it until she was plummeting fifty feet toward stone.
It started with confidence. Third Mark stable, wings responding to thought, flight lasting minutes instead of seconds. She'd spent three days pushing her limits, and every limit had broken.
Higher. Faster. Further.
The team watched from below as she practiced aerial maneuvers. Dives and rolls and spirals that would have been impossible a week ago.
"Show-off," Lyric called up, but their voice held admiration.
"Just testing limits," Yuna called back.
She wasn't testing limits. She was reveling. Finally good at something. Finally enough.
The thought should have been a warning.
The maneuver was ambitious.
A vertical climb followed by a backward roll into a controlled dive, pulling up at the last moment to skim the training ground.
She'd seen it in her mind. Felt how the wings should move. Knew she could do it.
She started the climb.
Fifty feet. Sixty. Seventy. The Academy shrank below her, the team becoming specks of color against gray stone.
At the apex, she twisted. The backward roll began perfectly. Wind rushing past, sky spinning, wings adjusting.
Then she thought about her mother.
Not intentionally. The memory just surfaced—Mom watching her fail the academy exams, Mom saying "you are enough" when fifteen institutions said otherwise, Mom believing in her when no one else did.
Mom who never got to see her fly.
Grief crashed through her like a wave breaking stone.
And the wings flickered.
"No no no..."
Yuna felt the power stutter. The CHORD connection wavering as emotion disrupted concentration.
She tried to stabilize. Reached for the threads linking her to the team. Marcus's strength. Aria's focus. Silence's awareness.
The grief was too loud.
The wings vanished.
For a moment, she hung suspended. Weightless. The sky above her impossibly blue-violet, the ground below impossibly far.
Then gravity remembered she existed.
The fall lasted three seconds.
Three seconds of wind screaming past her ears. Three seconds of desperate reaching for power that wouldn't come. Three seconds of absolute certainty that she was about to die.
She hit the training ground at an angle—shoulder first, then hip, then her leg folded in a direction legs weren't meant to fold.
The crack came before the pain. A wet, wrong sound that echoed across the stone.
Then the agony arrived.
White-hot fire exploding up her leg, through her spine, into her skull. She screamed. Couldn't stop screaming. The world dissolved into nothing but hurt.
Voices. Shouting. Hands touching her.
"Don't move her!"
"Get Thess!"
"Yuna! Yuna, can you hear me?"
She could hear them. Couldn't respond. The pain had stolen everything else.
Someone was crying. Maybe her. Maybe everyone.
The infirmary ceiling had cracks in it.
Yuna stared at them while magic worked on her leg. Gold light pouring from Thess's hands, mending bone and tissue and muscle.
The pain had faded to a dull roar. Whatever Thess had done to numb her was working. Mostly.
"Compound fracture," Thess said. Her voice was tight. Controlled. "The bone broke through the skin. If we didn't have magical healing, you'd be looking at months of recovery. Possible permanent damage."
"But you do have magical healing."
"Yes. You'll walk in two days. Fully healed in three." Thess's hands paused. "That's not the point."
"What's the point?"
Thess looked at her. Those ancient-young eyes held something Yuna hadn't seen before.
Fear.
"You almost died. Fifty feet onto stone. If you'd landed differently, hit your head instead of your leg, we'd be having a very different conversation right now. Or no conversation at all."
Yuna's throat tightened. "I know."
"Do you? Because from where I was standing, it looked like you forgot what mortality means."
The team crowded the infirmary doorway.
Thess let them in one at a time. Marcus first, his massive form barely fitting through the narrow entrance.
He didn't say anything. Just sat beside her bed and took her hand in his. Gentle. Controlled. The hand that had learned to hold eggs without breaking them.
Her leg throbbed. The numbness was already wearing thin.
"I was arrogant," Yuna said quietly.
"Yes."
"I thought because I'd reached Third Mark, I was untouchable. Invincible."
"Yes."
"That was stupid."
Marcus almost smiled. "Yes."
Yuna laughed weakly. It hurt. "You're not supposed to agree with everything."
"I'm agreeing because you're right." His grip tightened slightly. "Pride almost killed you today. If it happens again, it might succeed."
"It won't happen again."
"Good." His voice softened. "Because we need you alive. Not as a symbol or a leader or whatever you think you're supposed to be. Just as Yuna. Our Yuna."
The words hit harder than the ground had.
Aria came next.
She wheeled to the bedside, tablet already active, data scrolling across the screen.
"I've analyzed the fall trajectory," she said. "Based on your speed, angle, and impact point, you had a seventy-three percent chance of serious injury."
"And death?"
"Twelve percent." Aria set down the tablet. Her clinical mask cracked. "Forty-one percent. That's how much our survival odds drop without you."
"Because of my abilities?"
"Because of you." Her cold fingers found Yuna's hand. "The CHORD doesn't just connect us in combat. It's the emotional core of this team. Without it, we're six broken people in proximity. With it, we're something that might actually survive."
Silver light flickered at Yuna's shoulders—instinctive, protective—then faded. Her body wasn't ready.
"Don't do that again," Aria said. "Please."
The please cracked something in Yuna's chest.
"I won't. I promise."
Silence phased through the wall.
She didn't bother with the door. Just appeared beside the bed, form flickering with distress, silver eyes wet with tears that wouldn't fall.
Her notebook was already open:
I SAW IT HAPPEN.
"You saw the fall?"
BEFORE. THREE SECONDS BEFORE. NOT ENOUGH TIME TO WARN YOU.
"That's not your fault."
I SHOULD HAVE SEEN IT SOONER.
"Silence. Asha." Yuna used the real name deliberately. "You can't watch every future. That would destroy you."
Silence's lips trembled. Her form solidified, became more present than usual.
She leaned forward and hugged Yuna.
The contact was ice-cold. Shocking. Wonderful.
When she pulled back, her notebook had new words:
DONT LEAVE US.
"I'm not going anywhere. I promise."
Lyric arrived with flowers.
Not real flowers. Illusions. A bouquet of colors that didn't exist in nature, shifting and dancing in their hands.
"These don't die," they said, setting the not-real flowers on the bedside table. "Unlike some people I could mention."
"I'm not dead."
"Not for lack of trying." Lyric's theatrical mask slipped. The fear underneath was raw. "I've lost enough people, Yuna. Cities full of people who rejected me, but at least they're still alive somewhere. You don't get to add yourself to that list."
The flowers shifted color. Warmer. Softer.
Her leg throbbed again, sharper now. She welcomed the reminder.
"I won't. I'm sorry I scared you."
"You should be." Lyric sniffed. "Now rest. I'll paint something to remind you that you're not invincible."
"That sounds perfect."
Chen Wei appeared in the doorway. Didn't enter.
"Foolish. Arrogant." Her eyes swept over Yuna's splinted leg. "Training tomorrow. Don't disappoint me."
She left.
It was the closest thing to concern Yuna had ever heard from her.
David came last.
The youngest of them, seventeen and terrified, clutching his ever-present book to his chest.
"I thought you were dead," he said quietly. "When you hit the ground. I thought..."
"I'm not dead."
"But you could have been." His voice cracked. "You're the only people who've ever made me feel like I might actually matter."
Yuna opened her arms.
David crossed the room and let her hold him while he cried.
"I won't be that careless again," she whispered into his hair. "I promise."
"Okay." His voice was muffled. "Okay."
Alone, finally, Yuna stared at the ceiling.
The cracks were still there. Thin lines spreading across ancient stone.
She pulled the rejection letter from her pocket. Somehow it had survived the fall, crumpled but intact.
Insufficient.
The word had driven her for weeks. Made her push harder, train longer, climb higher. Desperate to prove it wrong.
And in proving it wrong, she'd almost proved it right.
"It doesn't mean invincible," she said to the empty room. "It doesn't mean perfect. It just means... present. Here. Trying."
The letter felt different in her hands now. Not a curse. Not a challenge.
A reminder.
She was enough because she kept showing up. Not because she never failed, but because she got up when she did.
Tomorrow she'd be back in training. Two days after that, she'd be healed. Three days after that, she'd fly again.
But she'd fly differently.
Not to prove anything. Not to chase impossible heights. Just to be part of a team that needed her alive more than they needed her impressive.
One hundred eleven days remained.
And Yuna was finally learning what it meant to be mortal.
That night, she dreamed of falling.
Not terrifying. Soft. Slow.
Falling into arms that caught her. All of them. Again and again.
She woke with tears on her face and an ache that felt like growth.
Beyond the Academy walls, past the training grounds and the wards that kept the darkness at bay, something stirred in the Ashfall Reach.
It had felt her fall. Felt the CHORD flare and stutter and nearly break.
The Herald opened eyes that had been closed for weeks.
Interesting.
The insufficient one was learning. Growing. Becoming.
He would have to accelerate his timeline.
One hundred eleven days was too long to wait.
[END CHAPTER 18]