THE BREATH OF THE BROKEN SKYThe world felt like it was holding its breath.Not the gentle stillness before dawn. Not the subtle hush before snowfall. This was a heavier silenceone carved from dread, stretched thin over a world preparing to shatter. Even the wind seemed to hesitate, circling the Sanctuary grounds with a hollow hiss, uncertain whether it belonged to the living or the dead.Aiden stood in the center of the training courtyard, though he wasn’t training. He didn’t even move. Rain soaked him, plastering his hair to his forehead, dripping into his eyes, sliding across the faint bluish glow pulsing under his skin. His hands hung limp at his sides, fingers twitching with residual power he could no longer contain or control.He looked like someone half here and half somewhere else caught in a place between the world he knew and the storm that now clawed at his soul.Elena watched him from beneath the shelter of the old stone archway. Her heart pounded with a rhythm she barely

WHEN THE DOOR TREMBLESThe realm shuddered under the weight of what had just arrived.White light still fractured the air like ripples across broken glass, fading slowly as Elena stepped fully into the Red Path, her chest rising and falling with frantic breaths. The glowing blade alive with a purity that seemed to reject the corrupted world around her hummed in her grip, responding to her heartbeat as though it had chosen her just as the storm had chosen Aiden.Rowan and Aria scanned the desolate expanse, weapons raised, instincts sharp. Kai’s fingers flickered with golden sigils as he studied the monstrous Door that pulsed at the far end of the ash field.Aiden’s father watched them all with unnerving calm.“So,” he said quietly. “They follow you even here.”Aiden stepped in front of Elena, shielding her with his body before he even realized he’d done it. His father’s lips twitched not in mockery, but in something colder.Recognition.Elena touched Aiden’s shoulder, grounding him as

The Storm That Would Not Break The storm began long before the clouds gathered. It started inside Arin’s chest, a quiet trembling that made her bones feel hollow. She sat on the cold stone edge of the council terrace, staring out at the field where earlier that morning the warriors had trained. Their footprints still marked the earth scars in the dust that reminded her too much of the ones life had carved into her heart. The wind carried the metallic scent of dusk, a faint whisper of rain that had not yet fallen, and the air felt thick, like the world was holding its breath before a scream. Bren approached quietly, but she sensed him anyway. She always did. His presence was a gravity that her soul tilted toward even when she wasn’t looking. He didn’t speak, not yet. He simply stood beside her, letting their silence stretch into something that felt fragile and sacred at once. “You should rest,” he finally said. She let out a slow, humorless breath. “If I close my eyes, everything I

THE UNMAKINGDarkness held him deep, heavy, suffocating, as if the world had collapsed inward and swallowed itself whole. There was no ground beneath him, no sky above him, no breath in his lungs. Aiden floated in a weightless void where time didn’t move. His heartbeat was the only sound he could still claim as his own slow, uneven, confused.He didn’t know how long he drifted there. Seconds. Hours. Years. Nothing meant anything in this place, not even himself.But the vision did.The echo of the masked man’s words tore at him even here: You forgot the one person who fought for you when the world refused to remember you. Brother. Aiden had never had siblings. He had spent his whole life alone every childhood memory confirmed that. Every story. Every scar. But as the darkness pulsed around him with slow thundering waves, he couldn’t deny what he had seen fragments of another life breaking through the cage of his mind like shards of glass.A hand reaching for his. A promise made. A sha

THE EVE OF A BROKEN SKY The tremor that rattled the stone floors of the fortress did not fade quickly. It rolled through the walls like a wave pushed forward by something ancient, something awakening far beneath the surface of the world. Dust drifted down from the ceiling as the torches flickered wildly, their flames bending toward the eastern windows as though drawn by an invisible pull. Lyra, Kael, and Aric stood in the center of the war chamber, silent, listening to the faint grinding of the earth settling back into itself. But none of them mistook it for something harmless. The tremor was a message. A warning. A beginning. Aric was the first to move. He walked toward the long table covered in maps and reports, his expression carved from stone. Even his breath seemed heavier now, as though carrying invisible weight. Lyra’s eyes followed him with a mix of worry and wonder he had returned physically, but something about him was undeniably changed. The northern veil had left a mark