The boy crouched behind a crooked ridge of black stone, still as a shadow.
Below him, the river twisted like a silver serpent. Its surface shimmered with strange reflections, too fast to be natural, too sharp to be safe. Beneath it lurked something massive—its movement betraying a body armored in scales and fins that moved like blades.
The boy exhaled.
He had no name for the creature—not one he could remember. But he had fought it before. Hunted it. Survived it. He'd called them Skallfin, mostly to remind himself they were more beast than fish. Their jagged teeth could chew through bark, and their tails could split stone.
The boy lowered his hand, fingers twitching.
Small arcs of lightning danced between his fingertips, soft and contained. He had learned how to shape the storm into a blade, how to temper it into precision. He didn't know when he learned. Or how. The memories were there, buried behind fog. A figure. A voice. Lessons in silence.
> "Not all storms are loud. Some hide until the world forgets them."
The voice echoed in his mind, but no face came with it. No name.
He struck.
A clean bolt leapt from his palm, sizzling the surface of the river in a blinding flash. Water exploded. Steam hissed. And one of the creatures burst upward—thrashing, stunned.
The boy was already moving.
He leapt from the ridge, slid down the slope, and hit the shoreline at a sprint. The stunned Skallfin writhed, its pale underbelly exposed. He pressed his hand to its neck and sent another pulse through its thick hide—measured, exact.
The creature twitched. Then stilled.
---
It took him several minutes to drag the kill back to camp.
The clearing was small—just a ring of old stones around a blackened stump. A lean-to of twisted bark and stretched hide stood against a cracked boulder nearby. Everything smelled faintly of moss, smoke, and salt.
The boy dropped the fish. Its weight dented the earth.
He knelt beside it, pressed his hand against the side, and this time pulsed a more delicate current. The heat surged through the meat, splitting it slightly along the belly. Steam curled upward. He tore off a piece with his fingers and bit into it.
Tough. Burnt on one edge. Still better than last week.
He sat back, chewing slowly, eyes half-lidded as he watched the strange sky above. It was always that same pale violet, cloudless and endless, like the world had forgotten how to rain. The trees around him were bent and knotted, their bark wrapped like sinew, and their leaves whispered when there was no wind.
He'd been here weeks, maybe longer. The sun didn't always rise the same way. Time bent here. Or maybe it was just him.
He remembered... falling. A flash of light. Heat. Then cold.
And waking up in this place. Alone.
He didn't know who he was.
Only what his body remembered. The way his muscles moved. The way lightning felt when it coiled through his blood.
Sometimes, when he closed his eyes, he could almost see the face of the one who trained him—tall, cloaked in shifting light, voice like stone in a storm.
But then it was gone again.
He finished his meal and wiped his hands on his cloak. Red hair—wild and spiked—fell over his brow as he moved. His eyes caught a glint in the water's surface—silver, sharp, too bright to be natural.
The Brand.
It shimmered faintly at the center of his chest, pulsing once before fading beneath his skin again.
He didn't know what it meant.
But whatever it was…
Something was waiting.
And the wind had gone quiet.
---
Three days passed.
The boy moved like he belonged to the wilderness now—quiet, fast, deliberate. He tracked the river's shifts, cataloged the winds, and knew which roots oozed bitter sap and which ones wrapped around his legs like snakes when he slept.
But today… the world felt tilted.
He had woken to silence—not the usual hush of distant water or rustling branches, but the kind of stillness that made the skin crawl. Birds were gone. The wind didn't move. Even the ever-buzzing insects had vanished.
He followed the disturbance through the trees.
It didn't take long to find it.
Down in a hollow of broken rock and half-dead trees, a small group of armored figures trudged forward. Five of them—thick boots, rusted pauldrons, segmented armor that looked more like chitin than metal. Each bore jagged staves or hooked blades that pulsed with dark energy—shadows that dripped like ink from their weapons, warping the air.
Dark Casters.
Even if he didn't know their allegiance, the boy felt it. Their aura was thick and wrong. Like smoke that had never touched fire. Like breath in a room with no air.
They weren't alone.
Chained between them, gagged and stumbling, was a prisoner—slim, barely standing, hair tangled and face bruised. The faintest trace of wind stirred around them, even bound as they were.
One of the Casters shoved the prisoner down with a boot and cackled.
"Thought you could steal from the Duke's relic vault? Should've known better, little gust-rat."
Another leaned in. "Duke says they want a public display. Strip the tongue, break the hands. No need for wind with no fingers."
The others laughed.
The boy's jaw tensed.
He didn't know who the Duke was. He didn't care.
But every instinct in him rebelled at the cruelty.
He moved.
---
The first Caster didn't see him coming.
The boy burst from the ridge with a blast of lightning beneath his boots, launching himself down the slope. He hit the ground in a slide, his hand already arcing with power.
The bolt struck the first enforcer dead-center—blasting him backward into a broken tree.
The others turned, snarling.
One of them dropped to a crouch, slammed his hand into the ground, and sent a wave of crawling shadow skittering forward like centipedes of black smoke. They shrieked as they tore toward the boy.
He leapt over the pulse, flipped midair, and hurled a charged palm downward. The shockwave fried the shadow-things instantly—but the effort left his footing exposed.
Another Dark Caster came from the side, blade curved like a crescent moon, etched with pulsing purple script. It swung—and missed by inches as the boy dropped, rolled, and flung out a hand.
Lightning met darkness.
The clash sparked violet and gold, the two magics grinding against each other in midair before exploding outward in a burst of force.
The boy flew back, slammed into a boulder, and winced—but was up again in a breath.
The final Caster drew a deep breath and exhaled something cold—a mist that turned the leaves it touched brittle and black. The boy narrowed his eyes, pulsed lightning into his skin to resist the chill, and charged forward.
He twisted around the blade of mist, ducked a second strike, and slammed his palm into the Caster's gut. A burst of current lit up the hollow like a thunderclap.
The Caster dropped instantly.
The others hesitated.
He held his stance, lightning still humming at his shoulders, breath steady. "Try again," he growled.
The two surviving Casters glanced at each other—then turned and vanished into the shadows, their dark casting melting them into the tree line.
The boy turned to the prisoner, quickly ripping the gag away and tearing at the chain. A jolt of current snapped the links, and the prisoner slumped forward, coughing hard.
"…Great," the prisoner spat, wheezing. "They're going to bring the Duke's Hand now. You should've finished them."
The boy raised a brow. "You're welcome."
The prisoner pushed up with effort, eyes sharp. "Moron. You don't know what you just did. They'll come back. Stronger. You're lucky they only sent footlings."
The boy didn't respond. He was staring—not at their words, but the faint breeze curling around the prisoner. It danced up dust, fluttered broken leaves.
"You're… a Wind Caster," he said softly.
The prisoner's eyes narrowed. "Yeah. So?"
"I didn't think I'd ever see one."
"…You're joking."
"No."
They tilted their head. "What kind of Caster are you?"
He hesitated. Then raised a palm.
A slow pulse of lightning licked across his skin—thin, golden, controlled.
The prisoner flinched. "That's not—" They blinked. "No. That's not possible."
"I think it is."
"No one's seen a Lightning Caster in over six hundred years," the prisoner whispered, stepping back. "You can't be real."
The boy said nothing. He just held out his hand again.
"I'm real," he said. "And… I think my name is Neil."
---
They walked in silence at first, deeper into the twisted woods, until the mist thinned and the air stopped whispering like it was eavesdropping.
The boy—Neil—led her to his camp: a crude lean-to pressed against the shelter of a large, gnarled stone. His fire pit was just a circle of heat-scored rock, and his only tools were crafted from river stone and scavenged bone. The fish carcass from earlier still lay half-picked beside a scorch mark.
The girl looked around, unimpressed. "You live like this?"
Neil shrugged. "It works."
She lowered herself onto a flat stone with a quiet groan, brushing dust from her arms. "Name's Zephyra," she said, finally. "Of the Galehorn Tribe. Not that there's much left of it anymore."
Neil tilted his head. "Wind Kingdom?"
"Used to be," she muttered. "It's all Shaded territory now."
She didn't wait for him to ask—just stared into the ashes of his campfire and began to speak. "The Sparkling, Tempestuous, and Metallurgic Kingdoms? Gone. Conquered. Nobody calls them that anymore, except old rebels and fools who still believe in flags. The Shaded Kingdom controls the core of the realm now. The rest are just holding their breath."
Neil sat down across from her, silent.
"They don't fight fair," Zephyra went on. "They don't fight loud. They slip into your land, bleed your leaders, corrupt your laws. And by the time you realize it, you're already kneeling."
She pulled something from a cloth pouch at her hip—a carved pendant in the shape of a feather, cracked down the center. She held it like it meant something once.
"They took my clan's relics. Burned our temples. Confiscated everything they couldn't understand. Including my bow."
She looked up, her gaze sharp now.
"It's not just a weapon. It's a heirloom. Wind-threaded wood from the Floating Pines of the Tempestuous Kingdom. Hand-strung by my mother before she died. Balanced to me. They took it, locked it away in the Duke's vault like it was just another trophy."
Neil frowned. "So you tried to steal it back."
She gave him a sharp smile. "Of course I did. Didn't expect the vault to have cursewired locks and shadow-summoning traps, though."
He considered her quietly. Her posture was proud, but there was fatigue beneath her voice. Desperation buried under bravado.
She'd come alone. That much was obvious.
He reached for a scrap of dried fish, tossed it to her. She caught it, sniffed it once, and bit.
Not good—but she didn't spit it out.
"I'll help you," he said.
Zephyra paused. "What?"
"I'll help you get your bow."
She stared. "You don't even know who you're dealing with."
"You said Duke, right? You want it back. I've got nothing better to do."
She raised a brow. "You do realize they're going to come back for you, right? You fried two Dark Casters and let the others go. That doesn't end well."
He shrugged. "Then they'll find me."
For a long moment, they just looked at each other. Her eyes were searching his face—not for lies, but for certainty. And what she saw… unsettled her.
"…You're serious."
"Yeah."
Zephyra leaned back slowly. "You're an idiot."
He smiled faintly. "You said that already."
---
Far away, beyond the forest, past twisting paths and shadowed checkpoints, a stone fortress hunched against the landscape like a beast trying to sleep.
Within it, two enforcers knelt on the cold floor of a hall wrapped in flame-lit iron.
They trembled as they spoke.
"He—he used lightning," one of them stammered.
The other nodded quickly. "It wasn't mimicry or stormglass tech. It came from him. A boy. Red hair. Young."
Their words echoed.
A figure lounged on a throne of duskwood and bone, one leg hooked over the armrest, swirling a cup of dark amber liquid in one hand. His hair was black, streaked with strands of steel-gray, and his smile was sharp enough to cut.
"The Sparkling Kingdom has been dead for six centuries," he murmured.
The enforcers nodded quickly.
"And yet…" He stood, slowly. "You bring me a ghost."
He set down the cup. The hall dimmed around him, as if the shadows leaned closer.
"Very well. Let's pay this ghost a visit."