The rain didn't fall again.
Just that one drop, cold as memory, vanishing into his skin.
Ash turned back toward the village long after Elira had gone. The hum was gone. The air still.
But the silence felt... watched.
He walked.
The forge was waking when he returned, smoke coiling from the chimneys like lazy spirits. Master Brenn, the blacksmith, grunted a greeting and tossed him a hunk of half-burnt bread.
"You look like you saw a ghost," Brenn said, eyeing him.
"Just a stranger," Ash replied.
"Mm. Pretty one?"
Ash didn't answer.
The hammering started soon after. Iron on iron. Sparks. Ash worked the bellows with practiced hands. But his mind drifted. Back to the hum. The light. Elira's words.
If you start hearing whispers in the lightning… don't follow them.
He didn't know what that meant. But part of him already had.
---
That night, the dreams returned.
Not like before—not the scattered images of war and falling skies. This was different. Deeper.
He stood at the center of a shattered temple. The walls bled light. Above him, stars fell like dying birds.
A voice—cold, genderless, echoing like it was inside his bones—spoke.
"You are the flaw."
Ash turned, but there was no one.
"You should not remain."
The stars kept falling. His hands crackled with lightning.
He raised them.
And the world screamed.
---
He woke choking on smoke.
His blanket was smoldering—his hands glowing faint blue.
He clamped them to the dirt until the light faded.
The smell of burnt cloth lingered.
So did the voice.
You are the flaw.
He didn't know what it meant. But he knew it wasn't the first time he'd heard it.
------
Elira rode hard through the night.
The mist had thickened since she left the boy. No—Ash. That's what the villagers called him. Fitting. He smelled like burnt storms.
Her horse, Eron, snorted and side-stepped near a crooked pine. "Easy," she murmured, stroking its mane. "We're almost there."
The trees thinned. The dirt gave way to frost-veined stone.
At the edge of the ridge stood a spire of blackened metal, grown from the earth like a wound. No windows. No doors. Just a single glyph, pulsing faint red—sealed from within.
Elira dismounted, touched the glyph. Her ring flared.
The metal rippled like water, and she stepped through.
Inside, the air was still as death.
Torches flickered to life—blue flames. Cold. Silent.
She was home.
Watcher's Hold, they called it. One of the last outposts of the Order of Silent Veil.
Only a handful knew it existed.
Even fewer survived it.
---
She descended the spiral steps. The walls whispered as she passed—old voices, bound to stone and magic. Most ignored them. Elira didn't. She listened.
Tonight, they said one thing over and over:
"He breathes."
She reached the bottom chamber—round, lined with tomes that had no names, and candles that never melted.
At the center stood a man wrapped in robes so dark they seemed to drink the light. His face was obscured by a carved obsidian mask.
"Report," the masked man said.
"I found him," Elira said quietly. "Or something close."
"Explain."
She hesitated.
"He's just a boy. A smith's hand. No memories, no signs of divine residue. But…"
"But?"
"There was a resonance. A forbidden echo. Brief, but unmistakable."
The masked man was silent.
Then—"And did he recognize it?"
"No," Elira said. "But it recognized him."
More silence. Then—
"Leave."
Elira blinked. "What? I thought—"
"You've done your part," the masked figure said. "This is beyond you now."
Something cold gripped her spine.
"He's dangerous," she said.
"Yes," the voice agreed. "And if he is who we fear… he's not the only one waking."
Elira's mouth went dry. "…The others?"
But the figure didn't answer.
He turned, lifting a hand to the wall.
A map unfolded from shadow—marked with symbols she didn't recognize.
Only one she did.
A jagged bolt, etched deep in the north.
The Storm Sigil.
And it was glowing.
The door to her chamber closed with a soft click.
Elira stood still for a long moment, hands at her sides, eyes on nothing.
Her room was simple. A single candle on a desk. A basin of water. A bed carved from darkwood, hard as stone. The kind of place built to remind you comfort is weakness.
But tonight, she felt it.
She peeled off her cloak, the rough fabric damp with mist and sweat. Set her belt and dagger down beside the desk.
Then she opened the drawer.
Inside—wrapped in old silk—was a small shard of crystal, no larger than her thumb. Cracked. Dull. Useless to most.
But not to her.
She picked it up. Held it to the candlelight.
It didn't glow.
But her reflection warped in it. A flicker of herself—but not herself. Older. Tired. Eyes like the storm.
Elira shut her eyes.
"You said you would return when he did…" she whispered.
No answer.
Not that she expected one.
She placed the shard gently back in the drawer and sat on the edge of the bed.
The candle flickered.
In the quiet, she let her walls drop—just a little.
The girl who stood before the masked elders, the girl who defied protocol to follow a whisper of a myth… she curled into herself beneath thin sheets, just another watcher in a tower of secrets, praying the storm wouldn't come for her first.
And in her dreams that night, she stood in a field of lightning glass—burnt trees frozen mid-bloom—and someone was walking toward her with eyes like thunder.