Chapter Fifteen: Emotion

The next morning, silence weighed heavier than armor. Even the air in Phineas’s hut seemed different—thicker, colder, as if the Oracle’s vision had soaked into the walls and refused to leave. Phineas sat at the head of the table, stirring his tea in slow, methodical circles. Snow ate in silence, her spoon clinking faintly against the bowl. I just stared at the grain of the wood, tracing the cracks that ran through it like veins, trying not to think about what the Oracle had said.

A red sky. Fire. Death.

The words wouldn’t stop echoing. And though she hadn’t said his name, I knew who the vision had been about. Carter.

My best friend. My brother in everything but blood. The one who’d always stood beside me. Now, the one destined to burn the world down.

I swallowed hard, forcing the lump in my throat away. “So… what now? Do we just sit here and wait for him to destroy everything?”

Phineas finally looked up, his eyes steady and ancient. “No, Charlie. We prepare.”

“For what? To fight him?” I asked, though I already knew the answer.

“Yes.” His voice was firm, leaving no room for argument. “If Beatrice’s vision is true, then the time is coming when you will have to stand against Carter. And if you hesitate—if you falter—the world will pay the price.”

Snow’s spoon clattered against her bowl. “He’s not ready for that. He’s barely learned to control his own power, Grandfather.”

Phineas’s gaze didn’t waver. “That is why we prepare him now.”

Something in me twisted. “He’s my friend, Phineas. I can’t just… fight him.”

“You will not fight him,” the wizard said quietly, “you will fight the darkness that has claimed him. Carter is not your enemy, Charlie—but what lives inside him will be.”

I looked away, heat rising in my chest, my hands trembling in my lap. “And if I can’t stop it?”

Phineas’s expression softened, though his words struck like steel. “Then no one will.”

A long silence followed. Then, slowly, I nodded. “Then teach me. Whatever it takes.”

Phineas’s eyes gleamed faintly in the morning light. “Then from this day forward, your training will not be for control—it will be for war.”

Snow’s voice came quiet but certain. “And I’ll help him. He won’t have to face this alone.”

The Wizard gave a slow nod, his tone heavy with something almost like pride. “Then both of you will prepare.

Because when the day comes—and it will—you must be ready to fight for more than your lives. You must be ready to fight for his.”

Outside, thunder rumbled low across the valley. But the sky was perfectly clear.

The storm wasn’t in the sky. It was in us. And it was only beginning to rise.

“When will it happen?” I asked quietly, not lifting my eyes from the half-cold food on my plate.

Phineas paused mid-chew. “What, child?”

“The Prophecy,” I said, my fingers tightening around my fork. “The one the Oracle told you about.”

Silence. Heavy, deliberate, the kind that confirmed exactly what I already feared.

“Tell me,” I snapped, lifting my gaze to spear him with a glare. “Tell me, old man. Or so help me, I will take Prince and find out for myself.”

Phineas exhaled—not annoyed, not angry… terrified. He set his pipe aside with shaking hands. “Beatrice said the Prophecy will come alive in three days’ time.”

Three days. My entire body went cold.

“And we’re just sitting here,” I said, my voice tightening as anger surged up my throat, “eating lamb and rice like we’ve got all the damn time in the world—”

“Charlie—” Snow began softly.

“—when I should be out there training for whatever hell is coming for us!” I continued, slamming my hands onto the table. “For Carter—my best friend—who is dying from the inside out, turning into the thing he’s been terrified of becoming since the minute we stepped foot in this place!”

The chair screeched loudly as I shoved myself to my feet. My pulse was a roar in my ears.

“You might be fine sitting around and waiting for doom to knock on your door,” I said, fire blistering every word, “but I’m not. I’m not going to sit here while Carter becomes something he can’t come back from. You might not give two shits, but I do.”

And before either of them could speak, I spun on my heel and stormed toward the door.

“Charlie—!” Snow called after me.

But the only answer she got was the slam of the hut door rattling in its frame.

I dragged a shaking hand through my hair, trying—failing—to steady myself. The only thing pulsing through my bones was anger.

Anger at Phineas for acting like every catastrophe was just another Tuesday.

Anger at Snow for trying to patch every broken piece like she could fix fate with enough optimism.

And anger—blistering, unbearable—at myself.

For letting Carter open that damn door. For going to that stupid party. For getting drunk, for being careless, for doing every single thing that led us—led him—into this nightmare.

My heartbeat thundered like a war drum, each pulse flooding heat into my palms. I looked down—just in time to see blinding white light swell and crackle, building toward detonation.

Panic shot through me.

I jerked my hands toward the trees.

A blast ripped from my palms, slamming into the forest. Fire erupted in a violent roar, devouring the treeline in an instant. A shrill, piercing sound rang in my ears—and only when the pressure in my head finally broke did I realize it was me, screaming.

When it ended, my chest was heaving so violently it hurt. Half the treeline was swallowed in flame and smoke.

And beside me stood Phineas.

Still as a statue. Watching. Pipe in hand.

Snow hovered at his side, eyes wide, mouth hanging open in horrified disbelief.

“Grandfather, the forest—” she choked out.

Phineas lifted a single hand. Calm. Unshaken. “Be still, child.”

My vision spun. I couldn’t breathe. “There are animals—people—what if someone’s in there? I didn’t mean— I didn’t—”

But Phineas said nothing. Not a word. He simply watched the fire burn.

So I turned too—unable to look away.

And then… the flames began to sink. To fold in on themselves. To vanish.

When the fire finally flickered out, the forest stood untouched. Not a scorch mark. Not a single burnt leaf.

“How—?” I breathed.

Phineas exhaled a thin ribbon of smoke. “When your fire is born of fear and not intention, it destroys nothing.”

He turned, completely unfazed, and walked back inside the hut—leaving Snow and me staring at the impossibility before us, stunned into silence.

Snow finally tore her eyes away from the untouched treeline, her voice barely a whisper. “Charlie… that wasn’t normal. Even for magic.”

“No kidding,” I muttered, rubbing my shaking hands on my pants. They still felt hot—alive—like the fire hadn’t fully left me. “I didn’t even mean to set anything on fire. It just—happened.”

Snow stepped closer, lowering her voice. “That’s the problem. Your power is tied to your emotions. The stronger they get, the stronger it gets. And Charlie…” She swallowed. “You aren’t stable right now.”

I glared at her, heat prickling under my skin again. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“That’s not what I meant.” She touched my arm gently, her expression softening. “I mean your power is waking up faster than you’re ready for. If you lose control again—”

“I won’t,” I snapped. Too fast. Too defensive.

Her expression made it clear she didn’t believe me—because I didn’t believe myself.

Before I could say anything else, the door to the hut creaked open. Phineas stood framed in the doorway, pipe smoke curling around him like ghostly fingers.

“Charlie,” he said, his voice even but weighted with something heavier. “Come inside. There is something you must see.”

Snow exchanged a wary look with me. I followed the Wizard back into the hut, my heart still pounding. Inside, the air was thick with incense and the faint hum of magic. Phineas gestured to the round table in the center of the room, where a single object lay waiting: A jagged shard of obsidian, glowing faintly at its core like a dying ember.

“What is that?” I asked, stepping closer.

“Your future,” Phineas replied darkly. “And Carter’s.”

My throat tightened. “Explain.”

Phineas touched the stone with the tip of his finger, and red light bled across its surface, swirling into shifting images—firestorms, shadows with eyes, two figures battling beneath a sky split open by light and darkness.

One figure radiated blinding gold. The other bled red and black like a living wound.

My pulse stuttered. “That’s—”

“—you,” Phineas finished quietly. “And the boy you are trying to save.”

Snow drew in a sharp breath behind me, but I couldn’t look at her. I couldn’t look away from the vision. The golden figure—me—was reaching out. The shadowed figure—Carter—was recoiling, teeth bared, eyes burning with something feral and unfamiliar.

Phineas’s voice sank low. “The Oracle’s vision has already begun to unfold. The Prophecy does not wait for your readiness, Charlie. You must learn control… or the forest will not be the only thing that burns.”

The images flickered and died. The obsidian shard went dark.

I stood frozen.

Because for the first time…

I finally understood what I was truly up against.

Not a monster. Not a villain. Not a curse.

Carter.

My best friend. My brother.

And I was going to have to fight him. Whether I was ready or not.

Phineas snapped his fingers, and the obsidian shard vanished in a curl of smoke.

“Outside,” he said simply.

Snow stiffened. “Grandfather, he just lost control. He needs to rest—”

“No.” His voice cracked through the room like a whip. “If he rests now, he will lose more than control. He will lose Carter.”

The words slammed into me harder than any blade Snow had knocked me down with. Phineas stepped out into the yard, and with every tap of his cane on the earth, the ground trembled—softly at first, then like something was waking beneath the soil. I swallowed hard and followed. The air outside was colder than before, crisp and sharp like the world itself was holding its breath. The sky had darkened—not with storm clouds, but with a strange silver twilight that shimmered across the treetops.

“Stand in the center,” Phineas instructed, pointing to a circular stone platform I had never noticed before.

“I thought this was just your herb garden,” I muttered.

“Why does everyone keep insulting my garden?” he sighed under his breath.

But I didn't argue. I stepped onto the circle.

At once, golden symbols flared beneath my feet—brilliant, ancient, humming with a rhythm that made my bones vibrate.

“What is this?” I whispered.

“Your power,” Phineas said. “Unchained.”

Snow lingered at the edge of the clearing, worry etched across every feature.

Phineas raised his staff. “Charlie Greene, Child of the Sun—your training begins now.”

Light exploded upward around me, forming pillars that crackled like molten electricity. My breath hitched. My pulse hammering.

“Feel it,” Phineas commanded. “Do not force it. Do not fight it. Let it rise.”

The light responded instantly, surging through my veins like a tidal wave. My knees buckled. My chest clenched. My vision blurred with streaks of gold.

“I—I can’t control it!”

“You can,” Phineas said calmly, stepping closer, his old eyes burning like twin lanterns. “You must. The power inside you answers only to you—unless your fear commands it first.”

Fear. Fear of losing Carter. Fear of becoming something unstoppable and unstable. Fear of the Prophecy—and what it meant for both of us. The air around me pulsed like a heartbeat—my heartbeat—and each pulse made the light sharpen, rise, swell—

“Snow,” Phineas said without turning his head. “Speak to him.”

She blinked in surprise, then took a step into the circle—hesitant at first, then stronger. “Charlie.”

Just my name, but my chest loosened instantly.

“You’re not alone,” she said, her voice steadying mine. “And this power isn’t here to destroy you. It’s here to help you fight for the person you care about most.”

The light wavered. My breath slowed. And for the first time, the power didn’t feel like it was swallowing me—it felt like a part of me, as natural as taking a breath.

Phineas nodded once. “Good. Now—focus it.”

“How?”

“Think,” he said. “Shape the light, do not let it shape you. Give it form. Purpose.”

I closed my eyes. Drew in a breath.

Carter’s face flashed in my mind—before the curse, before the fear, before everything.

And the light obeyed. It coiled around my fingers, swirled up my arms like ribbons of molten gold, then burst outward—

But instead of fire or destruction…

It formed a shape.

A wolf—bright as the sun at noon, mane of pure flame, eyes glowing like twin embers—stood beside me. Alive.

Breathing. Watching me.

Snow gasped.

Phineas smiled—not kindly, not reassuringly—but with something like pride edged in warning.

“Well done, Charlie,” he said. “You are stronger than I feared.”

The wolf lifted its head and howled, the sound echoing off the mountains like a war cry. Phineas lowered his staff.

“But now,” he said grimly, “we begin the real training.”