Emberhand: The Riftfire Chronicles

Kira Ashvane has spent her whole life as a mystery even to herself — a nameless toddler found wandering the Ash Road, raised by the smith Orrin among the Ashforged and never quite fitting the shape of any single Order. When the long-dormant Founding Gate beneath the town of Thornhollow tears open and Kira discovers she can wield all four disciplines at once — a "Fourfold," a gift the Concord hasn't confirmed in three hundred years, not since the catastrophic Sundering that same power once caused — she's thrust from apprentice obscurity into the suspicious, closely watched center of Council politics. Forging her own ember-bright blade, Fourlight, and building an unlikely found family out of Toren's fire, Mira's steady ground, and Dael Rennick's quiet, steadfast loyalty, Kira has to prove that a power built for destruction three centuries ago can still be chosen for something else entirely.

But Kira isn't the only one who sees what she is. Malachor Vess, a Riftborn-touched exile with a three-year plan and a patient, terrible interest in exactly what she could become, is maneuvering events toward a second, older Gate — and toward Kira herself. As rumor, fear, and a fractured Council close in around her, Kira and her allies race to seal the Founding Gate before Vess can turn her potential into his weapon, culminating in a battle that costs her nearly everything and earns her, at last, formal recognition as the Concord's first confirmed Fourfold in three hundred years. It's a hard-won, quietly hopeful ending — the city rebuilding, old enemies softening into wary respect, a found family finally at peace — right up until a rider arrives with word that a second Gate, half a continent away, has just begun to glow the same arterial red as the first.