Chapter 5
The journal, the silent partner
It wasn't much to look at - rough leather, frayed thread, pages stained with ink and the occasional smudge of starbloom tea. But it held you in a way nothing else did. Each entry was a snapshot of who you were becoming, a mirror reflecting not just your ideas but your battles, your victories, and the slow shedding of the habits that had kept you small.
In Vyrndale, where the world felt like it was always watching, waiting for you to fail, that journal was your refuge and your proof. You'd started it after the Starveil Festival, the night your light-orb glowed in the square and silenced Toren's mockery, if only for a moment. That win wasn't just about the orb - it was about you stepping into the light, shaking but standing. That night, you wrote your first entry and those words were a spark, and the journal became the place where you fanned it into a flame.
Vyrndale's days were predictable - dusty streets, the hum of looms, the elders' endless lectures about practicality. But your mind was a wildfire, spitting out ideas faster than you could catch them. The problem was your habits. You were working on building better ones but doubt was your shadow, fed by Toren's taunts and the elders' sighs.
“Arin's got his head in the clouds again”, they'd say, and you'd feel it like a blade.
The journal changed that. It wasn't just for ideas; it was for honesty. You started writing the ugly stuff:
Failures
Fears
The way Toren's laugh made your stomach twist.
Messed up the crop charm today.
Runes were wrong.
Felt like an idiot.
But then you'd add something new, something you forced yourself to find:
Fixed one rune before bed. It's a start.
That shift, that choice to see progress over perfection, was your first step toward breaking the habit of giving up. The journal held you accountable, its pages a mirror showing not just the boy who failed but the one who kept going. One of the toughest habits to crack was your reliance on the scryglass too. That cracked crystal, left by your father, was a portal to places you longed to see - Auralyn's spires, the Skyward Isles, jungles where trees sang. But it was a thief, stealing hours you could've spent building. You'd sit up past midnight, eyes burning, watching visions of heroes and cities, feeling smaller with every one. The journal helped you fight it. You set a rule:
One page of work - sketches, notes, anything - before touching the scryglass.
Some nights, you'd write,
Drew a new gear system. Not great, but done.
Then you'd push the scryglass aside, untouched. Each time, the journal reflected a stronger Arin, one who chose creation over escape.
Judgment was another beast. Vyrndale's people were quick to judge, and you felt it everywhere
Mirra's worried glances when you talked about flying machines
The elders' lectures about real work
Toren's crew snickering when you carried your sketches through town.
The journal became your shield. You wrote their words -
Toren called my wind-chime junk
Then countered them:
It plays three notes now. He's wrong.
Over time, you stopped caring as much. When Elder Marin caught you etching runes in the plains and scoffed,
“Wasting time again?”
You wrote,
Marin doesn't see it. I do. Keep carving.
The journal showed you your worth, even when Vyrndale didn't.
Your perfectionism was a slower fight. You'd always wanted your creations to be flawless, as if a single mistake proved you were a fraud. The journal helped you unravel that. You started setting small goals:
Finish one project a week, no matter how rough.
You built a water-wheel model that spun too fast and broke - then wrote,
It spun. That's something. Fix it tomorrow.
Bit by bit, you learned to value progress, to see flaws as steps, not stops. The journal's mirror showed an Arin who wasn't perfect but was persistent, and that was enough.
Inner peace was the hardest to grasp. Vyrndale's smallness made you restless, and failures left you pacing, mind racing with what-ifs. You found calm in the plains, lying under the auroras, their slow pulse easing your thoughts. You started meditating there, just five minutes at first, breathing and counting to five. You wrote about it:
Sat in the plains tonight. Felt still for once.
Starbloom tea became a ritual, its warmth grounding you after long days of sketching and failing. The journal tracked this too, showing you an Arin who could find quiet amidst the storm.
By seventeen, the journal was thick with entries, a record of a boy becoming something more. One night, you sketched a thought-capture device - an orb to catch fleeting ideas - and wrote:
This could change everything. I'm not ready, but I'll try.
That was the Arin who, two years prior, got Lira's letter and chose Auralyn. The journal came with you, its pages a mirror of your growth: from a kid who hid from judgment to one who faced mana-wraiths, from a dreamer lost in the scryglass to a creator building his future. That journal laid the groundwork for the Arin who built the Sanctuary of Sparks.