The world went quiet the moment we stepped into the plains. Not silent, quiet. The kind of quiet that hums against your skin and makes the air feel too alive. The storm above me should have been raging, but it wasn't. Lightning stayed frozen mid-sky, veins of light suspended like a held breath. Even thunder hesitated, waiting for permission to exist.
I looked around and realized this was not any battlefield or ruin I had seen before. The ground was glassy, streaked with thin, glowing lines that pulsed like veins under flesh. The colour shifted with every breath, sometimes blue, sometimes gold, once a sickly red that made my skin crawl. Aurelius said this place was older than all maps, older than written memory. He called it the Veil's Heart.
Lyren walked ahead, blade out, her steps almost soundless. She didn't need to say anything; her body said enough. Everything about this place was wrong. The air was heavy with something that wasn't magic but memory. You could almost hear it breathing beneath the soil.
The storm inside me twisted. It had always been mine, loud, alive, answering before I even called. But now it hesitated. I raised a hand, tried to summon a spark. Nothing. Only a faint crackle, like static caught between two worlds.
Aurelius knelt beside a stretch of cracked ground. Symbols glowed faintly beneath the glass. "This is not a battlefield," he said. "It is a wound. And someone tried to seal it long ago."
Lyren frowned. "Seal what?"
He looked up. "The truth."
That was when I felt it, something deep beneath us moving, slow and patient, like a heart beating under the world. It matched my pulse for one second, then pulled away. The storm inside me surged as if chasing it.
"I can feel it calling," I said.
"Then do not answer," Aurelius replied sharply. "Whatever lives here remembers more than you can handle."
He was probably right, but reason has never been my strongest quality. I walked forward, kneeling where the light pulsed brightest. The air vibrated. My storm stretched, tendrils of lightning reaching downward like roots. For the first time, it was not listening to me, it was listening to something else.
A low hum filled the air. The veins of light flared, and suddenly the ground shattered beneath my palm. Beneath the glass lay something ancient, metal that was not metal, humming softly like it remembered being alive.
Lyren stepped back. "Kael, "
The world blinked.
Not faded, not flashed. Blinked.
When sight returned, I was somewhere else, still standing, but surrounded by walls of light. Symbols crawled over them, shifting like living script. I felt every heartbeat of the storm inside me echo in those walls.
A voice, not words, but sound, pressed through me. It did not speak; it resonated.
Pulse detected. Intent unstable. Calibration required.
I staggered, pressing a hand to my chest. Symbols burned beneath my skin, glowing faintly through my veins. My heartbeat was not just a rhythm now, it was a signal.
"What are you?" I asked aloud.
We are the Pulse. The echo beneath creation. The song before the gods were named.
The storm reacted violently, twisting, fighting, like it recognized the presence.
"You should not be here," the voice said again, softer this time. "But you are. That means the seals are breaking."
Then the world collapsed back into reality.
I was on my knees, gasping, hands smoking where I had touched the ground. Aurelius grabbed my shoulder. "What did you do?"
"I touched it."
"Of course you did."
He helped me up, eyes scanning the marks glowing across my arms. "Those are not runes," he said slowly. "They are conduits. You awakened something."
"I felt it talk," I said. "Not in words. In rhythm. It called itself the Pulse."
Aurelius froze. "Impossible."
The air shifted again. The ground around us began to tremble. From beneath the cracked soil rose a figure, tall, almost human, made of molten metal laced with lightning. Its chest glowed with the same pulse that now echoed inside me. It did not move aggressively; it just stared, head tilted, studying me.
Lyren readied her blade. "Permission to kill it?"
"Not yet," I said.
The being stepped closer, every movement accompanied by a faint ringing sound, like glass chimes in wind. Its voice carried through the storm.
Resonant Core identified. Intent fragmented. Correction required.
"I am not your experiment," I said.
Then prove you are not.
It raised a hand, and the storm around me went wild. Lightning turned red, the air thick with static. My feet lifted slightly off the ground as energy poured through me. I tried to fight back, to command the storm, but it did not obey. It followed it.
Pain lanced through every nerve. My thoughts fractured. Images flashed, cities made of clouds, gods carved from thunder, storms worshiped as living deities. In every vision, I saw myself, or someone who looked like me, standing at their center.
The being's voice thundered inside my head.
Power is not proof. Purpose is.
Something clicked then. I stopped fighting the storm. I let it move. Instead of trying to control it, I focused on what I wanted, to protect, to survive, to understand.
The lightning around me changed color, white to silver, then a strange deep blue. The being froze. Its chest pulse flickered, then matched mine.
It lowered its hand.
Calibration complete.
Light flared once more, then it shattered like glass. The being dissolved into a thousand shards of light that streamed into the sky. The storm quieted, still humming faintly in my veins.
Aurelius was the first to speak. "What happened?"
"I think," I said slowly, "I passed the test."
Lyren sheathed her blade. "You nearly burned the sky."
"Small side effect." I tried to smile, but my chest still burned. The marks along my arms had changed, no longer just lines, but intricate patterns pulsing with faint rhythm.
Aurelius examined them. "This is new. These marks channel resonance, not energy. You are connected to the Pulse now."
"What does that mean?"
"It means the storm no longer listens only to you. It listens to the world, through you."
That did not sound comforting.
Before I could reply, the ground beneath us trembled again, but this time it wasn't the Pulse. It was something else, distant yet familiar.
Aurelius looked north. "Varok felt it."
The name carried weight heavier than thunder.
"He will come," Aurelius said. "He always does."
I clenched my fists, feeling the storm pulse in time with the ground beneath us. "Let him."
The storm inside me felt different now. It wasn't raw power anymore, it had rhythm, purpose, almost voice. I could feel faint echoes of others within it, memories that weren't mine, intentions that didn't belong to me. It was alive, and for the first time, I wasn't sure if I was its master or its vessel.
We walked out of the Veil's Heart before the sun fell. Behind us, the plains glowed faintly, the veins of light fading into darkness. I looked back once and saw a faint shimmer in the distance, a heartbeat beneath the earth, steady and patient.
Maybe Aurelius was right. Maybe this place was not a battlefield but a wound. If so, I had just torn it open wider.
The storm inside me pulsed again, soft but clear. It didn't speak, but I understood it.
Something beneath the world had awakened, and it had chosen me to remember.
I didn't know if that was destiny or disaster. Maybe both.
But as the first thunder rolled again, I realized something simple and terrifying,
I had just stopped being a stormbearer.
Now, I was the storm's echo.
And echoes never fade.