The storm had always spoken in roars and flashes. But that night, it whispered.
Not through sound , through pulse. Through the space between one heartbeat and the next.
We camped beside the ridge of the Pale Expanse, where lightning crawled under the skin of the world like restless veins. The ground there was glass , fused by some ancient heat, rippling with trapped light. Every time the wind passed, the glass sang.
Aurelius sat apart, tracing sigils into the dirt. Lyren leaned against a shard of fallen crystal, her eyes closed, pretending to rest. She wasn't sleeping. She never did when she said she was.
Me? I stared into the horizon and tried not to feel the weight pressing against my ribs. The storm wanted out again. It had been days since I'd let it breathe , since the Valley of Broken Names , and now it clawed to be heard.
Something had changed that day.
The storm no longer felt like an element. It felt like something aware. Watching. Waiting for me to understand a language I hadn't yet learned.
"Kael," Aurelius said finally, not looking up from his patterns. "You're hearing it again, aren't you?"
He always knew. "It doesn't stop."
"It's not supposed to. Power like that doesn't sleep , it adapts."
I almost laughed. "Adapts? It's not a tool, Aurelius. It feels alive."
He glanced up, eyes catching the faint shimmer that danced across my hands , lightning crawling lazily over my knuckles before fading. "Then maybe you should start treating it like one."
Lyren opened one eye. "Or maybe stop before it eats him alive."
I ignored her.
Because the storm wasn't just power , it was memory. The fragments that had haunted my dreams since the Valley weren't just visions. They were recollections.
I'd seen through another's eyes. A warrior standing on the edge of creation, wielding the same light that burned in me. The echo of a hand raised to command the heavens.
And a name whispered through the void , Eryndor.
Not Kael.
When the whisper returned that night, it didn't feel distant. It came from within.
You are waking too slowly, it said.
I froze.
The others hadn't heard it.
"Kael?" Aurelius was watching me again, the careful concern of a man who calculated every variable. "You're pale."
"I'm fine," I lied. But the air thickened, the pressure around us shifting like gravity remembering where to lean.
Lyren's daggers were out in a blink. "No, you're not. Something's wrong."
The storm above the ridge flickered , once, twice , then bloomed into silence. The thunder didn't follow. Instead, the lightning froze mid-strike, suspended in the sky like glass spears.
Then it shattered.
Not downward , inward.
The world twisted.
For an instant, everything blurred: Lyren's face fractured into a thousand reflections, Aurelius's runes bled light, the horizon folded like fabric , and then I was somewhere else.
A void of gray. Endless, soundless, except for the slow beat of thunder like a distant heart.
And before me stood a figure , human-shaped, but hollow, its body a constellation of storms.
I should have been afraid. Instead, it felt like recognition.
"You," I said. "You're the one in my dreams."
The figure tilted its head. Dreams are the wrong word. You walk within your own memory.
"I don't understand."
You were the first bearer of the storm. The name you have forgotten , Eryndor , was never a legend. It was you.
The words hit like impact. "That's impossible. I'm, "
A reincarnation. A fragment. The storm remembers what you were, even if flesh does not. But you are incomplete.
My fists clenched, lightning crawling across my forearms. "Then tell me how to complete it."
The figure extended a hand. Within its palm, the lightning folded into form , not wild energy, but structure. Patterns within patterns, spiraling sigils and geometric flows that pulsed with rhythm.
A storm is chaos only until it remembers its shape.
"What is this?"
The Forge of Echoes.
The storm around us shifted , arcs of lightning became streams of data, sound, and symbol, dancing through the void. You have called lightning. You have endured it. Now you must learn to forge it.
Before I could ask how, the figure stepped forward , and dissolved into me.
It didn't feel like possession. It felt like alignment.
My vision snapped back to the ridge. The world returned in a rush of air and noise.
Aurelius had a hand on my shoulder, shouting my name, Lyren standing guard. The ground was scorched where I had stood, lines of light etched into the glass like veins.
"What in the nine hells did you just do?" Lyren demanded.
I looked down at my hands. The lightning was gone , replaced by faint glowing lines that pulsed with my heartbeat. They weren't random. They were constructs. Circuits of stormlight.
Aurelius leaned closer, eyes wide. "That… that's new."
"It's not raw lightning anymore," I said slowly. "It's something else."
"What do you mean?"
I exhaled, feeling the hum travel through my bones. "Before, it just answered. Now it… listens. It shapes itself."
Lyren frowned. "You sound like you're talking about a living thing."
"Maybe I am."
Because in that moment, I could feel it , the storm's architecture stretching outward, forming invisible threads through the air. I saw echoes of movement, like afterimages, marking where every gust and spark might go before it happened.
I reached out, and lightning coiled into form , not a strike, not a bolt. A construct. A blade made of thunder and light, solid yet fluid, humming with life.
Lyren took a step back. "You just made a sword out of a storm."
"It's not a sword," I murmured. "It's… thought made visible."
Aurelius adjusted his gloves, watching the construct with fascination and something like fear. "Kael, do you realize what this means? You've moved beyond elemental command. You're shaping reality through resonance , imposing pattern on chaos."
He was right.
The Forge of Echoes wasn't just a power , it was a language. The storm didn't exist to destroy; it existed to record. Every strike of lightning was memory etched into the bones of the world. I was beginning to read it.
But the revelation carried weight. A distant echo , not in words, but in sensation , shuddered through me.
Varok had felt it.
Somewhere far beyond the horizon, the Iron Prince turned his gaze toward me.
I saw his city through the lightning's reflection , iron towers lit by imprisoned storms, gears turning like hearts. His eyes, cold and luminous, lifted to the north.
He spoke, though I wasn't sure if it was memory or message. "You've begun to forge. Good. When the storm takes shape, the war truly begins."
Then the vision broke.
I staggered, catching myself on one knee. The lightning construct dissolved, leaving behind nothing but heat.
Lyren crouched beside me. "You're bleeding."
I wiped at my nose. Blood, yes , and static. It fizzed against my skin. "I'm fine."
"No, you're not."
Aurelius looked between us, his expression unreadable. "Whatever he just touched, it's awakened something old. And if Varok felt that, "
"He did," I said. "He's coming."
The silence that followed felt heavier than thunder.
Lyren finally sheathed her blades. "Then we move before he gets here."
But as she turned, I caught one last flicker in the air , faint lines of light etching themselves across the glass, forming a sigil I didn't recognize.
A circle. A spiral. A heartbeat.
It pulsed once, then vanished.
Aurelius noticed. "What was that?"
"Not sure," I said. But deep down, I knew. The storm had left me a mark , a door, waiting to open.
When I closed my eyes, I saw the figure again, its voice threading through the thunder like an old friend.
The Forge is awake. But to shape thunder, you must first learn what breaks it.
I opened my eyes to the storm and whispered, "Then teach me."
Above us, the lightning flickered , not in chaos, but in rhythm.
And for the first time, the storm answered not with fury , but with purpose.