The wind had taken him.
One moment, Klaus Aetherion stood amidst the wreckage—shirtless, blood-soaked, lightning writhing around his torn body. And then… he was gone.
No footsteps. No explosion. Just a deafening silence as a column of storm-light spiraled into the heavens, tearing through clouds and sky, vanishing with a thunderclap that shook the world.
The battlefield stood frozen in the aftermath. Ash drifted through the air like snow. The marble platform—once a sacred stage for noble judgment—lay shattered in a crater of smoldering ruin.
Charred corpses. Melted stone. A crater gouged deep into the land.
And silence.
Then—a scream.
"KLAUS!"
The voice rang out raw, tearing through the silence like a blade. Not just desperate—it was agonizing. A name screamed with the kind of pain that splits the soul.
Heads turned.
Lady Sera's breath caught in her throat. She stood amid the stunned survivors, still cloaked in her blood-smeared silks. But the moment she heard that scream, her world tilted.
Her eyes locked onto the girl crumpled at the crater's edge—face streaked in ash and blood, hair tangled, trembling uncontrollably.
That voice…
It clawed into memory.
Sera moved. Fast. Faster than any of the attendants could react. Her feet glided over debris and shattered stone, driven by something primal.
"Sofie?" Her voice cracked as she knelt beside the girl. "No… no, it can't be."
The girl blinked at her. Eyes dazed, lips trembling. Her body was bruised and bound in torn remnants of prison robes. But those eyes—
Green, flecked with gold.
Her eyes.
Sera's hands flew to the girl's cheeks. "Sofie… gods, please… tell me it's you…"
The girl trembled in her grasp. Confused. "Wh… who are you…?"
Before Sera could answer, the heavy footfalls of a Monarch approached—boots scorched with ash, the crimson cloak of House Ignar trailing behind him like a banner of war.
Varion.
He stopped dead.
His eyes met the girl's.
And the world stopped breathing.
Sera looked up at him, tears already streaming down her face. "Varion… it's her. Our daughter. It's Sofie."
Varion Ignar—Monarch, war-hero, breaker of siege lines, the man who had held back alien legions with flame alone—wavered.
His immortal posture, that iron spine forged in centuries of war, cracked for the first time.
"I searched every continent," he murmured, his voice barely more than breath. "After the alien invasion… they told us she was lost. Taken in the first wave. No signs. No body. We scoured the void. I tore apart half the continent looking for her."
Sera held Sofie tighter. "She's not lost."
Sofie blinked, tears surfacing. "I… I remember fire. Screaming. I remember being dragged through dark halls. The cold. And then… I couldn't move. Couldn't scream. Everything hurt."
Varion stepped forward—slowly, reverently. His hand hovered just above her shoulder, as if touching her would confirm a ghost.
"They said the alien Monarchs had taken some of the gifted children. Turned them into… vessels. Bargaining chips. When we pushed them back, you were just—gone."
"I don't remember escaping," Sofie whispered. "Only that I woke up somewhere. Alone. In chains. Years? Days? I don't know. But then… he found me."
"Klaus?" Sera asked softly.
Sofie nodded. "He didn't even know who I was. Just saw me. Caged. And freed me. Like I mattered."
Sera pressed her forehead to hers, the motherly instinct pouring out of her like a dam bursting. "You did. You do. You are our flame, Sofie. We've waited so long…"
Sofie cried—not the composed tears of a noble, but the sobbing of a girl who had survived hell, who had thought she'd never be seen again.
"I wanted to come home," she said between gasps.
"You did," Varion said, kneeling beside them, voice low and trembling. "You found your way back."
And for a moment—just a moment—the world felt like it might heal.
But then…
Sofie's voice broke the quiet. "…Why was I chained?"
Sera froze. So did Varion.
The warmth in the air curdled.
Sofie's green-gold eyes were wide with hurt. "Why was I shackled? Like a beast? When he found me, I was gagged, bound. Why?"
Sera's lips parted, but no words came.
And Varion…
The fire around him dimmed.
His usually unreadable face—so often like carved obsidian, smooth and regal—fractured. But this time, not from shock or grief. From guilt.
He didn't speak for several breaths. Then, quietly, his voice came.
"…Because I was afraid."
Sofie's brows furrowed. "Afraid?"
"I wasn't sure it was you," he said, eyes distant now, locked on memories darker than any battlefield. "We'd heard whispers that the alien Monarchs had twisted the children. Filled them with mimicry, infestation, corruption. When we found a girl who resembled you— lost in the outskirts—I… I ordered her held. Studied. Contained."
Sofie recoiled slightly.
Varion's voice cracked. "But when I saw you now… saw the fire in your eyes, your voice screaming his name—I knew. I knew I'd caged my own blood."
Sera covered her mouth.
"I didn't want to believe it," he continued, the fire inside him pulsing faintly. "Because if it was true… then I became the very monster I swore to destroy."
Sofie stared at him for a long time, tears welling again. But this time not just from grief.
From the agony of recognition.
"I didn't need a monarch," she whispered. "I needed a father."
Varion bowed his head for the first time in decades. "And you have one again. If you'll allow it."
He knelt there in silence.
Then, slowly, Sofie leaned forward—and collapsed into his arms.
And for the first time since the alien invasion stole the world from them…
The Ignar family was whole.
But far above them—beyond clouds and lightning, in the eye of a rising storm—a warrior of wrath and wind prepared to rise again.
And his reckoning had only just begun.
---
Moments later, the crowd around them began to stir. Among them, one figure pushed through the sea of stunned soldiers and nobles.
Kael Ignar.
Soot-streaked. A fresh scar ran down his jaw, but his eyes… his eyes lit with something primal when he saw her.
"Sofie?"
She turned.
He stopped a few steps away, staring at her like a miracle had stepped into the light.
"It… it really is you," Kael said, voice trembling with disbelief. "Gods above, you're alive."
Sofie's lips quivered. "Kael?"
He took a hesitant step forward—then another—until she broke into a run and crashed into his chest.
She gripped him tightly, sobbing. He clutched her like a man who'd just been handed his soul back.
"You idiot," he choked out, tears welling up. "You couldn't send a sign? A message? Anything?"
"I didn't even know who I was half the time," she whispered against his shoulder. "I didn't think anyone would believe me."
"Well," Kael laughed through the tears, "you're wrong. I would've burned the world looking for you."
Sera smiled, watching them through teary eyes.
Even Varion's lips curled into something like peace.
The Ignar siblings stood together once more.
---
But the silence didn't last.
A voice pierced the air from behind the gathered crowd. One of the Monarchs—tall, robed in sapphire-black with eyes that shimmered like polished opal—stepped forward.
"Varion. The storm has passed, but the threat remains. You saw what that boy became."
Another nodded. "That wasn't just elemental talent. That was primordial. Old. Touched by something beyond our comprehension."
A third Monarch's voice rumbled like a boulder dragging through gravel. "The Empire cannot afford to let this go unanswered. We must convene. A Council. With the Emperor."
Varion's expression shifted—steel reforming in his spine. "I know."
Sera stood beside him now, holding Sofie's hand. Kael to her other side, ever a shield.
"But know this," Varion said coldly. "Klaus Aetherion may have vanished in wind and blood—but what he did here… it changed everything."
The Monarchs exchanged grim glances.
A storm had passed.
But another was already forming.
And this time, it would decide the fate of empires.