The storm has passed, or maybe I have passed through it.I can't tell the difference.The air is sharp and empty,a silence heavier than any scream I've ever heard.Every step I take echoes across a world that feels broken,as if the ground itself is holding its breath,waiting for the next disaster to strike.
The horizon is jagged, fractured,light spilling in uneven shards.I blink, trying to make sense of it,but the shapes twist like reflections in a cracked mirror.Buildings lean impossibly, streets curl upward,and the sky bleeds colors that shouldn't exist.I swallow.Somewhere in this chaos, I feel the storm's presence lingering,like a ghost I can't shake.
Flame appears at the edge of my vision,but she's different this time.Less flame, more shadow.Her eyes are steady, but there's something I can't read,a warning, or maybe a question.She doesn't speak,but I know what she means:"The real trial isn't over."
I move forward, each step crunching on shards of ice and stone.The air hums with memory,and I feel hands reaching for me in the wind,faces I've loved and lost, mistakes I've tried to bury.I want to turn back.I want to hide.But I can't.
A voice rises in the distance,low and melodic, almost hypnotic."You came this far, yet you still don't see…"I freeze, heart pounding.The words are both everywhere and nowhere,circling me, brushing against my mind like cold feathers.I strain to hear more,but it fades into the silence.
The ground beneath me cracks.A chasm opens where none existed before.I step back, but instinct drags me forward.Across the abyss stretches a bridge of frozen light,narrow, fragile, yet glowing with a strange warmth.I take a deep breath,and step onto it.
Each movement sends tremors through the bridge,and I feel the storm whispering again,inside my chest, inside my bones:"Do you have what it takes?Will you break, or will you rise?"
I close my eyes for a second,feeling the weight of everything I've faced,everything I've survived,everything I've failed to survive.And then I open them,because I can't run,because I can't hide,because whatever waits on the other side will not wait for me to be ready.
The bridge shimmers and shifts beneath my feet,and I realize I am no longer just walking.I am testing myself.The storm, the shadows, the fragments of memory—they are all part of it.All part of me.And if I falter here, I will fall into a world I may never escape.
But I keep moving.Step by step, shard by shard,until the bridge dissolves behind me,and the horizon opens wider than I've ever seen.The light and shadow twist together,forming shapes I cannot name,and yet something in me knows they are waiting.
Waiting for me.
And I know now, without doubt,that the trials ahead are only beginning.The storm has passed, but the hailestorm within meis far from over.
I take another step.And then another.And I step forward into the shattered horizon,ready for whatever comes next.