The mountains rose like sleeping giants against the horizon — pale stone ribs jutting into the clouds, their peaks buried beneath a shroud of snow and mist.Kaelen had seen mountains before, but never these. These were older than time, older than the songs the elders whispered beside firelight. The air here felt alive, electric, as though it remembered something the rest of the world had forgotten.The wind bit through his cloak, carrying with it the metallic scent of frost and distance. Behind him, Arin trudged heavily through the snow, muttering curses with each step.“Remind me again,” Arin said, breath misting in the cold, “why your mysterious dream led us up the mountain instead of somewhere warm?”Kaelen didn’t answer. His eyes were fixed on the distant spire — a dark shape half-buried in the snow ahead. It rose out of the mountainside like a shard of black glass. The dream had shown him that shape a dozen times: the same peak, the same echoing call, the same burning mark that p

The smoke had long faded from the skies, yet Kaelen still smelled it on his skin. Every gust of wind seemed to whisper the cries of the people who had fled when the storm came—his storm. The forest around him was quiet, too quiet. No birds sang. No water ran. It was as though the world itself feared him.He sat beside a dying campfire, its embers painting his hands in orange glow. His fingers trembled, not from cold, but from what he had seen—the faces, the fear, the way power had answered his call without mercy. The firelight flickered in his eyes, reflecting the storm’s chaos that still raged within.“You wanted strength,” he muttered under his breath. “Now it’s yours.”But strength had come with a price.Since the destruction at Rhyden Pass, Kaelen had been hunted—by soldiers, whispers, and the shadow of his own guilt. He had saved lives, yes, but in doing so, he had taken others. His gift, once a spark of purpose, now felt like a curse carved into his very bones.The sound of foot

The Citadel smelled of dust and memory.Kaelen had forgotten how quiet its halls could be. Not the silence of peace, but the kind that gathered after a scream — the silence of things buried but not forgotten. His boots struck the stone floor in slow, measured rhythm, echoing up the high vaulted corridors like the ticking of a distant clock.Guards flanked him, though they kept their distance. No one dared walk too close. The faint blue light pulsing beneath his skin was warning enough.Every flicker drew whispers. Servants bowed low, eyes averted. Even the torches along the wall dimmed when he passed, as though the fire itself feared to compete with the glow that lived in his veins.At the end of the hall, the great doors to the Council chamber stood open. Beyond them, the air shimmered with candlelight and the weight of expectation. Kaelen paused on the threshold, staring into the room that had once been his world.The Council of Astren sat in a perfect circle, twelve figures draped

Chapter 27: The quiet rebellionThe palace was too quiet.Elara stood in the Hall of Radiance, where the golden banners of the Council fluttered from towering columns, their embroidered suns glinting under the high skylights. The air was heavy with incense, sweet and suffocating, masking the faint scent of stone and fear that lingered in every corridor these days.Beyond the glass arches, dawn bled across the capital. The sky blazed crimson — a storm rising from the east, though no wind yet stirred the flags. She knew that color. It had haunted her dreams for weeks, painting every shadow with its warning.Her reflection gazed back at her from the marble floor — pale skin, amber eyes shadowed by exhaustion, the faint tremor in her fingers as she clasped them before her. No one would see it. They never did. That was her gift — and her curse.In this palace, survival was not measured by strength or honesty. It was measured by silence.“Your Highness,” came a voice behind her — smooth, co

Chapter 29: Beneath the Golden VeilThe palace had grown quieter in the weeks since the storms began. Not peaceful — never that — but quiet in the way of a beast that listens before it strikes. The great marble corridors that once echoed with the steps of courtiers now held only whispers and the distant hum of the Citadel’s ever-burning lamps.Princess Elara walked those halls as a ghost among the living.Her attendants bowed, her guards trailed at a measured distance, and the nobles smiled with the politeness of serpents — but she felt their fear clinging to the air. The Council of Ascendants had declared that the resurgence of the stormlight was nothing more than a natural phenomenon, a test of faith. Yet the tremor in their voices betrayed them. They were afraid.And she, though still bound in silks and duty, had begun to use that fear.Beneath the golden veil of her chambers, she built a network of her own — quiet servants, dismissed scholars, healers, even a few soldiers loyal to