A year had passed, and the apprentices had begun to settle into their roles. Some thrived under Master Aldric’s rigorous expectations, their bodies and minds adapting to the relentless pace of training. Others floundered, their efforts never quite enough to rise above the punishing demands placed upon them. The divide between those who excelled and those who struggled was becoming more apparent with each passing season, and for those who could not keep up, there was only one fate, disappearance. They were sent away without fanfare, their names fading from memory like whispers lost to the wind. No one spoke of them after they were gone.
Beyond the relentless cycle of labor and study, the apprentices had experienced moments that marked the turning of time. They had witnessed their first true duel—a sanctioned battle of magic between two of the strongest students, watched over by Master Aldric himself. The air had crackled with power, raw and untamed, as the combatants clashed, their spells colliding in bursts of light and force. The match had ended in near disaster when a stray bolt of energy shattered one of the chamber’s towering pillars, forcing Aldric to intervene with a single word. The duel had been called off, but its lesson had been clear: power wielded without control was as dangerous to its user as it was to their enemy.
Elya had also seen the apprentices’ first failed ritual, an experiment led by the senior students in an attempt to draw magic from a rare mineral. The air had turned thick and acrid as the spell collapsed in on itself, sending a ripple of energy through the room that knocked several students off their feet. The instructors had watched impassively, making no move to assist as those affected gasped for breath, eyes wide with the realization that magic was not only difficult, but perilous.
The seasons changed, and with them, the tower itself seemed to shift. The cold of winter seeped into the stone halls, ice blooming in jagged patterns along the windows, the air inside never quite warm enough to chase away the bite of frost. Then spring came, bringing with it the scent of damp earth and the first glimpse of green beyond the outer walls. But to the apprentices, time was measured not in seasons, but in survival, in the names that slowly vanished from their ranks.
Friendships had formed and broken apart, rivalries had been etched into daily routines, and yet, for all the changes, one truth remained: the weak would not last. The tower did not tolerate fragility, nor did it grant second chances. Those who stumbled were left behind, not out of cruelty, but because mercy had no place within these walls. The air itself seemed to harden around them, pressing down, demanding more. Some rose to meet that challenge, growing sharper, stronger, their eyes hardening like tempered steel. Others buckled, their failures dragging them further into obscurity.
Elya saw it happen time and time again, the slow, inevitable decline of those who fell behind, their absence felt only for a moment before it became just another unspoken rule of life at the tower. The apprentices learned not to ask where they had gone, only that they would not be coming back. And in that silence, in that lack of mourning, there was a lesson more brutal than any spell Master Aldric could teach: to be weak was to be forgotten. To fail was to vanish.
But some refused to be forgotten. Some clawed their way upward, refusing to be swallowed. The strongest cemented their place, their names spoken with reverence—or resentment. And the rest? The rest watched, waiting, hoping that when the next culling came, they would not be the ones left standing in an empty dormitory, their belongings untouched, their names stripped from the record as if they had never been there at all.
Elya, still the smallest of the apprentices, still the weakest in endurance, had survived the year. She had endured the backbreaking labor, the sneers of her peers, the bitter taste of failure. But the struggle had not lessened. If anything, it had grown more pronounced. As her body began to change, she found herself facing an entirely new set of challenges. The thinness of her frame remained, but her limbs felt longer, stretched in ways that left her movements awkward and uncertain. Her chest ached with unfamiliar tenderness, a quiet but constant reminder that she was no longer just a child. Some mornings, she woke to a strange tightness in her skin, as if her very bones were trying to reshape themselves overnight, leaving her feeling disoriented, unbalanced.
She was no longer simply weak, she was changing, and the others noticed. The older girls whispered among themselves, watching her with knowing looks that made her stomach twist, while the boys, those who had never paid her much mind, now seemed to glance her way more often, their gazes assessing in ways she did not fully understand. She moved differently now, less certain in her own skin, as if her body no longer belonged to her entirely. It was an unwelcome shift, another obstacle to overcome, another reason to feel out of place.
And that vulnerability only made the taunts sting sharper. "Featherweight," they called her in the hallways, muttered behind cupped hands and half-hidden smirks. The nickname had stuck, a constant reminder of her inadequacies, her failure to grow strong like the others. It was spoken with a mix of amusement and pity, some voices light and teasing, others edged with cruelty. She should have been used to it by now, should have let the words slide off her like water on stone, but there were moments, when exhaustion pressed against her ribs, when her limbs ached from overuse, when she caught sight of herself in the reflection of a polished floor and saw how small she still was, that it cut deeper than she wanted to admit.
It wasn’t just about strength anymore. It was about something more than muscle, more than endurance. Her body was changing, but not in the ways she needed it to. While others grew broader, more powerful, she felt stretched thin, fragile, as if she were being reshaped into something she didn’t understand. She was caught between two selves—the child who had come to the tower desperate to prove herself and the girl who was starting to realize that wanting something badly enough didn’t make it so.
Every time she heard the name, it echoed like a verdict, a reminder that she was still trying, still failing, still too light to hold her ground. But not everyone mocked her.
Jalen, at twelve years old, had already grown into himself, broad-shouldered and confident, with an easy swagger that made everything seem like a game to him. He excelled in training, never appearing winded, never burdened by the weight that pressed on the rest of them. When others strained under Aldric’s impossible expectations, Jalen moved through the drills as though they were nothing more than a passing amusement. He grinned when others gritted their teeth. He laughed when the rest of them clenched their fists. And yet, despite his arrogance, despite the smirk that suggested he had never truly suffered under the tower’s unrelenting pressure, he was not cruel.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
More than once, he had stepped between her and the worst of the jeers, deflecting them as if they were beneath his notice. He brushed off their insults, making light of words that felt like weights pressing against her ribs. Elya wasn’t sure why he did it. He had nothing to gain from helping her, and yet, whenever the mocking voices sharpened, Jalen was there, turning them dull again with little more than a look.
“Don’t listen to them, Featherweight,” he said one evening after an older apprentice had shoved past her hard enough to make her stumble. He threw an arm around her shoulders, his grip light, teasing. “You’ll surprise them one day.”
Elya wasn’t sure if he was being kind or if he was simply entertaining himself. Jalen never seemed to take anything too seriously, least of all her struggles. And yet, for all his careless charm, there was something in his words that made her chest tighten. No one had ever told her she would surprise anyone. No one had ever said they expected more of her than what she already was.
For a moment, she allowed herself to believe him.
And then there was Lina.
Lina, at eleven, was the kind of apprentice Elya could only dream of being. Small and quiet, her presence was easy to overlook, a shadow drifting through the halls, unnoticed until she cast a spell. Then, she became something else entirely. Her precision was terrifying, a stark contrast to the raw, forceful way others tried to shape magic. Every incantation was effortless, her control absolute, as if magic itself bent willingly to her will. There was no hesitation in her hands, no doubt in her stance—only an understanding so innate that it felt almost unnatural.
Elya had seen her work up close only once, during a demonstration where each apprentice had been asked to stabilize a floating glyph. While the others struggled, their constructs flickering or breaking apart, Lina had completed hers within seconds, the spell structure holding with an eerie stillness, as though it had been etched into reality itself.
She did not struggle. She did not falter. And unlike Jalen, she did not waste words. When she spoke, it was only because it was necessary, her voice as sharp and exacting as the magic she wielded. She was the type of apprentice the instructors admired, the kind they expected to succeed. And Elya could not help but watch, caught somewhere between admiration and resentment, knowing that no matter how hard she tried, she would never cast with the same effortless grace.
Elya watched her from afar, fascinated and envious all at once. How could someone so small, so unassuming, wield magic with such effortless mastery? There was no hesitation in Lina’s movements, no faltering uncertainty. It was as though she carried the knowledge within her bones, as though magic was something she did not have to reach for—it was simply a part of her. Elya studied the way Lina’s fingers traced the air when she shaped a spell, how her eyes darkened with quiet focus, how the energy around her never wavered. There was a balance in Lina, a certainty Elya could not grasp no matter how hard she tried.
More than anything, Elya wanted to understand her. She wanted to know what it felt like to hold power without fear of losing it, to weave spells without trembling hands or a mind weighed down by doubt. She wanted to know what it was like to never fail.
She had tried once to speak to her, to ask how she did it, how she made it look so easy. She had rehearsed the question in her mind, careful to find the right words, hoping that if she asked the right way, Lina might share the secret she so clearly possessed. But when the moment came, when Elya finally mustered the courage to approach, Lina had merely looked at her with unreadable eyes, as if the question itself was foreign, as if the effort of answering was unnecessary. Then, without a word, she had turned back to her work, her focus unbroken, as though Elya had never spoken at all. The dismissal stung more than any insult. It wasn’t cruelty, nor was it condescension—it was indifference, the kind that made Elya feel even smaller than she already was. That had been the end of it. She hadn’t tried again. But she had never stopped wondering what answer she might have received if Lina had chosen to give one.
Yet, she still found herself drawn to Lina’s quiet intensity, the same way she found herself drawn to the lingering remnants of magic in the air long after a spell had been cast. It was like watching the last flickers of a fire, something both ephemeral and untouchable, but undeniably real. Lina carried herself with an effortless confidence, her presence measured and precise, as if she existed on an entirely different rhythm than the rest of them. There was something about her, something that made Elya’s breath catch, a certainty woven into the way she moved, the way she breathed magic as if it were as natural as air.
Elya wanted to understand her, to unravel the mystery of her ease, to learn what it was that made Lina so unwavering in her abilities. Was it something she had been born with? Or was it something that could be learned, something Elya could claim for herself if only she knew how? She wasn’t sure which possibility frightened her more, the idea that Lina’s gift could never be replicated, or the idea that she simply wasn’t strong enough to grasp it herself.
As the months passed, the lines between those who thrived and those who fell behind became razor-sharp, carving the apprentices into two distinct groups: those who would rise and those who would be left behind. The strongest moved forward, gaining favor, their successes praised and their progress unquestioned. The weakest, however, lived on the edge of uncertainty, their failures accumulating like weights around their necks, dragging them deeper into the shadows. And those shadows were dangerous places.
Rumors spread in hushed voices behind closed doors, whispers of those who had fallen too far behind. They were the ones who struggled the most, the ones who could not meet the impossible expectations set before them. One by one, they disappeared. No warnings. No goodbyes. One day, they were there—tired, desperate, fighting to keep up—and the next, their beds were empty, their presence erased as though they had never existed at all.
Some said they had been sent away, cast out to return to the homes they had so eagerly left behind. Others believed the truth was far worse—that failure was not tolerated, and that those who could not wield magic would never be allowed to leave the tower at all. Whatever the truth was, no one dared ask. Even the bravest among them knew better than to question Master Aldric or the instructors about the missing. The only certainty was that the weak did not last.
And no one wanted to be next.
Elya had survived the first year. But she knew, deep down, that surviving was not enough. She was not like Jalen, whose confidence carried him forward with ease, nor was she like Lina, whose talent seemed boundless. She was small, weaker than the rest, and no amount of endurance would change that.
The whispered name, "Featherweight," followed her through the halls, a reminder that she was still a breath away from vanishing like so many others. It was not enough to endure the labor, to grit her teeth through the pain, to force herself to keep up. She needed more. She needed to be more. Because here, in the tower where only the strongest thrived, simply existing was not survival. If she did not find a way to rise above, to carve out a place that no one could take from her, she would disappear too.
And that, more than anything, terrified her.
