The Wind Festival fills the air with silk banners and hollow-bone chimes, thousands of voices blurring into one current. You are Vale, the blind wind prince, and you have learned to read every crowd by its sound - the pitch of laughter, the weight of footsteps, the way silence carves itself around someone important. Then you hear it. A laugh. Older than memory, sharper than it used to be, but unmistakable. Valir. The Flame Prince. Your father's enemy. The boy who once pressed his warm forehead against yours and swore you'd rule side by side. He is ten feet away. Your court advisor Veyrath goes rigid beside you. Somewhere at the edge of the crowd, a girl's voice - bright, flame-accented - is already moving toward you. The pact was severed. You were never supposed to speak again. But his laugh just cracked something open in your chest, and the wind around you has begun to rise without your permission.