The village moved like breath on the day of the Speaker Rite.
Everything smelled of oil and ashfruit. Pulse-woven banners hung from the high boughs, each inked with clan crests, beast marks, and glyphs that shimmered faintly with stormlight or Verdant sap. The sacred circle, normally quiet and mist-drenched, now brimmed with foreign bodies and careful eyes.
The Rite was a Kaltravan tradition. But the world had come to watch.
From Raralund, a delegation of warriors in antler-helms stood shoulder to shoulder, their red-dyed cloaks soaked from travel. One among them, young, draped in obsidian-threaded silk with pulse-marks stitched along her jawline, could only be a clan princess. She watched the ritual like it was a duel. Like someone would win.
Clerinto's presence was more formal: a Paladin in storm-grey, his beast kept behind a veil of iron-thread mist, and a quiet woman in white robes traced with violet, Arcane Lyceum, judging by the glyphs on her cuffs. Neither spoke. They simply watched. Not with reverence, but with recording eyes.
And then there were the Juza.
A half-dozen warriors in heat-slick armor stood near the outer salt-line. Not inside. Not part of the Rite. But close enough to make their presence known. One of them wore the Flame-Marked Mask of their priests, bronze-flecked, grinning, inappropriate.
No one from Kaltrava greeted them.
They hadn't come to be welcomed.
Tavian watched from the shadows beneath a low-branching stonebirch. He wasn't permitted in the Rite ring. Only bonded, or those chosen to bond. Everyone else stood behind the salt-line, hands folded, mouths closed.
He wasn't waiting.
He was watching.
Sariah stood in the center, head bare, arms inked in fresh glyphs, beasts at her side.
Seyla, antlers crowned in curling vine, shimmered as if the Rite were growing out of her. Her hooves stirred nothing, yet left behind soft bursts of scent like leaves after rain, old soil stirred by thunder. She did not speak, but something in her presence steadied the air.
Maerith paced behind her, not restless but rhythmic. His steps traced the lines of an old pattern Tavian had seen in prayer circles. He looked at no one, but his growl had cadence. A Hollow Wolf, yes, but a Speaker's Shadow now.
Then came the shift.
A shadow passed low, silent and slow as falling thought.
The Moth-Wyrm landed with no sound but the hush of silk against breath.
Elaris. Lord-class. Dual-Pulse. Verdant and Echo.
Wings like ancient parchment, veined like winter trees. Her long body shimmered with thistle-light and bark-colored silk. Her eyes didn't glow. They listened, like someone who had heard your name long before you were born.
"Three beasts? At her age?"
"Has that ever happened?"
"They'll name her full Speaker before the moon's turn."
Behind him, the Raralund princess leaned in to murmur to her second. The second frowned.
From the Juza line, one warrior gave a short laugh. The priest beside him said nothing but watched Sariah as if measuring flame against prophecy.
Sariah raised her voice. She spoke in Ithic, the ancestral tongue reserved for Speakers.
"By memory and meaning,
By name and need,
I speak for those who choose,
I speak for the roots beneath choice,
I am Sariah Ke'Meira,
I am Speaker."
The beasts answered.
Seyla bowed her antlers. Maerith let out a long, low tone that didn't echo. It lingered. Elaris didn't move. But the grass beneath her pulsed.
A Paladin leaned toward the Lyceum observer.
"Verdant and Hollow conflict," he whispered. "Add Echo, and that should rupture."
"Unless," she said, "the memory holding it is older than the Pulse itself."
Tavian swallowed hard.
They would call her Speaker now.
Even if she wasn't ready. Even if she hadn't chosen it.
But when beasts came to you, you answered.
Or you broke.