The night sky looked fractured above the valley, as though some vast hand had pressed down upon it and left cracks of starlight behind. Kael watched the broken constellations shift. His storm was quiet for once, but not still, like a beast breathing in its sleep.
They had made camp in the hollow of an ancient ridge, half a league from where the valley had torn itself open. The air still smelled of burnt glass and forgotten things. Even the wind avoided this place, curling back on itself in uneasy spirals.
Lyren sat near the fire, her knees drawn close, the faint glow of embers painting her eyes in copper. She had spoken little since the valley closed. Not even Aurelius had tried to draw her out. Silence, Kael had learned, could heal what words could only bruise.
He looked down at his hands. Tiny arcs of light danced beneath the skin, flickering through his veins in pale blue flashes. The storm within him had grown restless since the rift. It wanted something. It was beginning to remember.
Aurelius paced on the edge of the firelight, his cloak trailing faint sparks of temporal energy with every step. His body looked aged tonight, his movements slower, though his eyes remained sharp. "You tore the rift wider than I expected," he said finally. "The echoes you awakened were not bound to this age. They reached back before the Seals."
Kael looked up, meeting his gaze. "I did not mean to."
"Intent does not soften the consequence," Aurelius replied. He stopped pacing, studying the storm-mark on Kael's arm. "You have felt it, have you not? That name calling through the thunder."
Kael nodded once. "It speaks from the other side of memory."
"Memory," Aurelius murmured. "Or lineage."
Lyren turned then, her voice low but steady. "Enough riddles, old man. You knew this could happen when you brought him here."
Aurelius's lips tightened. "I knew the risk, yes. But not the pattern. The storm remembers him, not me. That alone changes everything."
Kael rose. "Then tell me who I am."
The fire hissed. The wind shifted.
Aurelius hesitated, a pause Kael had never seen from him before. "If I speak the name, it may awaken more than the truth."
"Then it is time something woke," Kael said.
The storm stirred. The ridge trembled beneath their feet. The sky rippled, and from somewhere deep within the earth came a sound like a bell tolling beneath water.
Aurelius closed his eyes. "The first Stormbearer," he began slowly, "was not chosen. He was the storm, a vessel born of thunder when the gods fell. He carried their last voice, sealed within him so men might remember their fire without being consumed by it."
Lyren's head lifted. "You are saying Kael, "
"I am saying," Aurelius interrupted, "that his soul carries the imprint of that being. The storm does not serve him. It recognizes him."
Kael's pulse thundered in his ears. "Then why am I here, living again? What purpose would this storm have with a man who cannot even control it?"
Aurelius's eyes softened. "Perhaps to learn what the gods could not, restraint."
For a moment, Kael almost laughed. Restraint. The word felt absurd in his mouth. The storm wanted to destroy, to burn through lies and falsehood until only truth remained. Yet beneath it all was something else, sorrow. Ancient, aching sorrow.
He felt it now, rising like a tide.
Later that night, Lyren found him standing apart, staring into the horizon where the rift still bled faint light into the clouds. The wind tangled her dark hair across her face, but she did not move it away. "He should have told you sooner," she said quietly.
Kael did not look at her. "He tells me what he must, when he believes I am ready."
"And when are you ready?" she asked.
He glanced at her then. There was no challenge in her tone, only exhaustion. "When the storm stops asking questions."
Lyren stepped closer. "You think this is fate's design, Kael? That you were meant to carry this burden because the world decided it needed another broken soul to save it?"
"Do you believe otherwise?"
She was silent for a long time. "I believe fate is a story told by those too afraid to write their own."
The words lingered between them. Kael felt something in him stir, not anger, not defiance, but a strange sense of recognition. "Then what story would you write?"
"One where the storm learns to trust the sky," she said, almost smiling. "And where the people beneath it stop running from the rain."
He looked at her, and for a heartbeat the storm inside him quieted, as if listening.
By dawn, the valley had changed again. The fissure had widened overnight, and faint tendrils of light seeped through the cracks. Aurelius was already there, his hand pressed to the ground. Time shimmered faintly around his fingers.
"It grows," he said as Kael approached. "The rift responds to your presence."
Kael knelt beside him. "Can you seal it?"
Aurelius's expression darkened. "Seal it, yes. But it would take more power than I can spare. And if I misjudge the sequence, the collapse could swallow us all."
"Then teach me," Kael said.
The old scholar studied him. "You do not even know which current of time your storm draws from."
"I know it answers when I call."
Aurelius gave a small nod, half admiration, half regret. "Then call it. But remember, power is not obedience. The storm remembers its first bearer, but it also remembers the end of gods."
Kael raised his hand. Lightning laced through the clouds, spiralling down in thin veins of light. The ground trembled. The rift pulsed once, twice, then began to hum.
Lyren's voice echoed from behind them. "Kael! Something is moving beneath!"
The light thickened. From within the fissure rose the silhouette of a figure, carved from flame and memory. Not flesh, not ghost, something remembered by the world itself.
The figure spoke in a voice that made the air shiver. "Who calls the storm by its old name?"
Kael's breath caught. The name was already forming on his tongue, though he did not know how he knew it.
"Thalen," he said.
The moment the word left him, the valley screamed.
The figure flickered, splitting into countless forms, soldiers, kings, the dead and the divine, all echoing the same truth. Thalen, the first Stormbearer, the one who had bound the gods. His face was Kael's, older and filled with unbearable light.
"You return wearing mortal skin," the echo said. "Do you seek forgiveness or remembrance?"
Kael tried to answer, but the words fell apart in his throat. The storm inside him surged, voices overlapping, memories that were not his clawing for breath.
Lyren moved to reach him, but Aurelius caught her arm. "Do not interfere. If he breaks the bond now, the storm will devour him."
"Then you stop it!" she shouted.
"I cannot. The storm belongs to itself."
The air burst open. Time staggered, folding in on itself like shattering glass. Kael saw visions, not of the future or past, but of what could have been: gods kneeling before men, men burning under their own creation, a storm that never ended.
The echo raised its hand. "Remember who you were, and who you defied."
"I am not you," Kael said, his voice trembling but clear. "And I will not be your ghost."
He slammed his hand into the ground. Lightning poured from his body, white and endless. The echo fractured into dust and vanished into the rift.
When the light faded, Kael was on his knees, the storm within him faint, but steady. Aurelius knelt beside him, his voice softer than Kael had ever heard. "You did not destroy it. You anchored it."
Kael looked up. "What does that mean?"
"It means," Aurelius said, glancing toward the distant horizon, "the world has remembered your name, and so has Varok."
Far away, across iron plains and storm-forged spires, the Iron Prince looked up from his throne. His eyes glowed faintly, the reflection of a storm he had once sought to command.
"So," Varok murmured, a faint smile touching his lips. "The bearer awakens."
He rose, his armour whispering against itself like the sound of grinding steel. Around him, the legions began to move, endless ranks of blackened soldiers under a sky that had forgotten sunlight.
"Send word to the north," he said. "Let the storm find me ready."