"Maverick Silkborn. Step forward."
The Officiant’s voice carried across the school hall without effort. He had been calling names since early morning, and his voice had gone flat.
Maverick, or Mav to the few people who still spoke to him, did not move.
His left foot had gone numb about an hour ago, and he had been too proud to shift his weight in front of the whole school. Now the leg refused to cooperate.
’Great. Wonderful start.’
Someone behind him snickered, and Mav felt his face burn. He gritted his teeth, dragged the dead foot forward, and began the long walk toward the stage, limping.
The whispers started before his third step.
"That’s him."
"The traitor’s son."
"They’re really letting him take the Bestowal?"
A foot slid out into the aisle in front of him. Mav stepped over it without looking down.
’Ignore them. I’ve done it for eight years. I can do it for one more morning.’
Mav kept his eyes on the stage and his face blank. He was good at hiding what he felt. Inside, he was sick with nerves.
Eight years ago, his father had been declared a traitor and put to death. That was the official version. Mav knew it was a lie, but he had no proof and nobody to tell. Since then, people had called him the traitor too, as if a 10-year-old could inherit treason. After a while, he had stopped answering them.
If it had been up to the people in this hall, he wouldn’t have been allowed anywhere near the Bestowal.
It was not only the students. Some teachers had asked for his name to be left off the list, and the school had only kept it because the law gave it no choice. Up in the gallery, the parents of his classmates were watching him the way people watch a rat cross a kitchen.
Luckily, it wasn’t up to them. It wasn’t up to anyone.
500 years ago, something had come to Earth. No one knew what it was or where it came from. People called it the Genesis.
What the Genesis did was simple. Once a year, it looked at everyone who had turned 18. It ignored 9 out of 10 people. But to the tenth, it gave a World.
A real World, somewhere so far beyond the stars that no ship had ever reached one. It began as a small patch of newborn land with a few creatures to rule, and it could grow. The chosen were called the Awakened. They grew stronger as their Worlds did, strong enough to crush stone with their bare hands, and the strongest of them owned everything on Earth worth owning.
The others were called the Worldless. Most of them spent their lives working in the foundries.
That was the Bestowal. Every year, in every school, the 18-year-olds put a hand on a slab of black stone and found out which kind of person they were going to be.
For most of them, it took about four seconds. The stone stayed dark, and the Officiant called the next name.
All morning, he had watched the stone light up for about one student in ten. The rest walked down the far steps with the careful faces of people who had expected nothing and were hurt anyway.
He knew exactly how they felt, and he was afraid that he would feel the same in a minute.
If the stone stayed dark, he would be working next to his uncle on the foundry floor by the end of the week. His uncle wasn’t old, but he already walked like an old man. Mav would stay there for the rest of his life, and the people who had killed his family would never have to think about the Silkborn name again.
And if it lit up...
Then, at midnight, he would be thrown onto an unknown World with nothing but what he could carry on his back. A lot of new Awakened did not survive their first month, and that thought scared him more than he wanted to admit.
’One problem at a time.’
He reached the steps. His foot chose that exact moment to wake up, flooding his leg with pins and needles, and he climbed onto the stage with a grimace that probably looked a lot like fear.
To the left of the stage, the new Awakened sat on a long bench of their own, already apart from everyone else. Some of them were still pale. One girl kept turning her hands over, as if they belonged to someone new.
At the near end, Dorian Ashgrove was watching him come with a wide, delighted smile. It was the smile of someone who had just been handed a gift.
As Mav passed in front of him, Dorian leaned forward and spoke softly, so that nobody else could hear.
"I hope it lights up, Silkborn. Out there, nobody will ask what happened to you."
He was still smiling.
"My father says your little sister cried for her mother until the very end. I’ve always wondered if you would cry too."
Mav’s hands closed into fists. For a moment, he was so angry that he couldn’t see anything but that smile.
Then he opened them again.
Dorian was a noble’s son, and the stone had already chosen him. If Mav struck him here, in front of the whole school, the guards would drag him out before he ever touched the stone. That was exactly what Dorian wanted.
’I can’t touch him today. But one day, he’ll pay for that.’
Mav had a second thought under the first one, colder and quieter.
’How would his father know that?’
He put the question away for later and kept walking.
At the far end sat Cassian Pyrecrest. He was not watching anything at all. He looked bored, like someone who had already decided that nobody here was worth his attention.
Mav looked away.
’He doesn’t even see me. Fine. I’m used to it.’
Up close, the Officiant was a thin man in gray robes, with ink on his cuffs and the eyes of someone counting the names left on his list. Next to him stood the Bestowal stone. It was a slab of black rock as tall as a man, worn smooth by five centuries of nervous hands.
The Officiant glanced at him, then at the list, then at him again. Something changed in his expression.
"Silkborn."
"Yes, sir."
The man’s lips thinned. He lowered his voice and said:
"A word of advice, boy. Whatever happens, walk off quietly. There is no love for your name in this hall."
Mav looked at him for a moment.
’Really? I hadn’t noticed.’
"I understand, sir."
The Officiant nodded and pointed at the stone.
"Right hand. Flat against the surface. Do not remove it until I tell you to."
Mav turned to face the slab. In its dark surface, he could see his own reflection: a lean young man with black hair that needed cutting and a jacket he had outgrown two years ago. Behind the reflection, there were rows and rows of faces. Most of them were waiting for him to fail. A few were hoping he would do it loudly.
He wiped his palm on his trousers.
’One in ten. I’ve never been lucky.’
That wasn’t quite true. Eight years ago, he had been away from home on the night his family was killed. He had never known if that counted as luck.
He tried not to think about that.
Mav’s heart was pounding as he pressed his hand against the stone.
The first thing he noticed was the cold. The stone was perfectly still, like the door of a vault.
One second passed, then another. Somewhere in the hall, someone laughed under their breath.
A third second passed.
’...Of course.’
When the fourth second came, his stomach sank. He knew that number well, because four was when the Officiant always said "next."
The Officiant drew a breath.
And the stone turned warm.
It began under his palm and spread outward. Pale light crawled through the black rock like frost across a window, thread by thread, until the whole slab was glowing. The whispers died. The whole hall forgot to breathe.
Mav forgot too. Joy rose in his chest, so fast that it almost hurt.
1 in 10. He was one of the 10.
Nobody clapped.
For every other student whose stone had lit up, the hall had applauded. For him, there was only silence. It stung more than he had expected.
Then the air above the stone rippled, and an image unfolded over the stage for everyone to see.
He had watched it happen all morning: forests, red deserts, a plain of black glass, and a ring of burning mountains that had made the Officiant drop his pen.
This one was his.
He looked up.
Dark water, from one edge of the image to the other, under a sky full of unfamiliar stars. There was no shore, no island, not even a rock.
Mav stared at it and waited for land to appear. Nothing else came.
--------
Author’s note: This is my first novel. It would mean a lot to me if you added the story to your library and voted with your Power Stones.
If you spot any inconsistencies or errors, please let me know in the comments.
Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy the story as much as I enjoy writing it!