When the Wind Comes Hunting
Author: Santiago
last update2025-12-11 03:32:23

“One week,” she said. “Meet me here again. Be stronger.”

And just like that, she turned and walked away, leaving me alone in the fading light tired, sore, but more dangerous than yesterday.

She left me standing alone in the quarry, the stones heavy in my pocket, my skin buzzing with this new power she’d forced into me. I had a teacher now dangerous, strict, but a teacher. I had tools. I had a path forward.

But the moment I stepped back into the shadowy streets of the city, I felt it again. Eyes. Not Elara’s calm, cold stare something thinner, hungrier. Eyes that moved on the toxic wind.

The Astors.

They were hunting. And this time, hiding wouldn’t save me. It was a race now their Gale Fist versus whatever foundation I could build out of stone and will.

And I had exactly one week to make myself unbreakable.

That week became a loop of pain, training, and tiny victories.

During the day, I practiced Skin-Weaving until my brain felt like mush. I started small a patch on my palm. Then two p
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  • Aegis in the Toxic Night

    They definitely weren’t expecting me to sit here in the middle of their patron clan’s poison plant, waiting for them.I didn’t wait long.Moonrise showed as a faint sickly green glow through the toxic haze outside when I finally felt them arrive. Not a sound just a shift in the room. The chaotic Aura around me didn’t settle. It started copying. Parts of the purple-black fog lightened, turning into muddy grey patches that looked way too much like my own energy.It was like staring at a dozen warped versions of myself in a broken funhouse mirror.>>>Good. The System was actually helping.Core resonance. Deep Stone Song. Right.I closed my eyes and ignored the visual tricks. I dropped my awareness inward, into the slow, steady hum in my bones the patient rhythm I’d

  • The Price of a Principle

    His eyes red and tired in the dim light narrowed.“Words?” he scoffed. “I need a real method. A pill. A crystal. Something that works.”“Methods built on bad understanding will only break you faster,” I said, repeating a line from my mother’s journal. “I’m offering the understanding. What you build from it? That’s up to you.”Something flickered in his expression interest wrapped in desperation.“What’s the price?”“Three high‑grade Aura crystals,” I said. “Or the same value in food and clean water.”He barked a dry laugh and started to walk away.“For words? You’re insane.”“Your liver is refining out of sync with your kidneys,” I said softly.He froze mid‑step.I kept going. “You’re forcing wood‑element Aura for growth while trying to sharpen yourself with metal‑element Aura. They’re fighting inside you. You’re not cultivating you’re hosting a civil war in your organs. Keep this up and you won’t last a month.”He turned back slowly. The arrogance was gone. In its place was fear.“…H

  • Presence Opens the Door

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  • The Song Beneath the Stone

    Her gaze softened just a hint.“And Kai… trust the stone. But question every hand that tries to shape it.” A faint smile. “Even mine.”And just like that, she was gone leaving the old journal sitting on the sticky table like it weighed a thousand pounds.I stayed there for a while, heart hammering. In five minutes, I’d been warned, tested, manipulated, and handed something more valuable than any Aura Stone. Liana was dangerous. Smart. A chameleon. I couldn’t trust her.But I also couldn’t pretend this journal wasn’t calling to me.I slipped it into my jacket and headed out. The walk back felt like a nightmare. Every alley felt too dark. Every footstep sounded like it belonged to someone following me. I kept imagining Tammany eyes watching, Astor blades waiting.When I finally reached my shelter, I locked everything, sat under the weak Aura-lamp, and opened the journal.The handwriting froze me. Firm. Graceful.My mother’s.I read the first line out loud, barely breathing.“The first p

  • Aegis in the Shadows

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  • Shape the Stone, Break the Wind

    He crouched lower, hands circling, and the wind around his chest spun faster, roaring. He was building something big his finishing move.I only had one shot left. The dead zone. The Aura here was scrambled, weak. His attacks needed flowing Aura. Maybe I could turn that to my advantage.I didn’t have air blasts. But I had earth. And the faint hum of the Marrow-Temper’s Hammer still thrummed in my bones.As he drew in that massive breath, I dropped to one knee and slammed my fist into the ground everything I had, marrow and all.Not to break it. To resonate.I sent the Hammer’s vibration, not into me, but into the earth itself. A single, raw pulse of stone-aligned Aura ripped through the dead ground.The effect was instant.The scrambled Aura of the dead zone flinched. It didn’t explode it stuttered. The air itself wavered, twitching like a glitched screen.The Gale Fist’s perfect vortex wavered. The wind he was pulling in went chaotic. He gasped, his deep, amplified inhale cut short. T

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