Beneath Distant Stars
[4 years later]
[POV: Zareth El'leather]
The night was cold.
Not freezing, not unbearable—just the kind of cold that settled into the air after a long summer day.
A lingering chill that brushed against Zareth's skin as he stood alone in the training field.
Zareth rolled his shoulders, adjusting his stance.
His muscles ached—not in the way they used to when he was younger, when training left him breathless and exhausted—but a deeper kind of strain, like something inside him was still adjusting.
His bloodline had changed.
He could feel it.
The first thing he had learned?
It wasn't about power.
The strength of the Starforged Ascendancy didn't come from overwhelming force—it came from control.
The ability to manipulate movement, to shift weight and momentum, to bend gravity in ways that turned speed into something unnatural.
And the second thing?
It wasn't perfect.