Daro waits in the clearing, his broad silhouette unmistakable against the pale sky. He doesn't smile when I approachâhe never doesâbut his eyes warm slightly, acknowledging my presence. A few days of training with him have taught me that Daro speaks more with silence than words.
"Again," he says, handing me the wooden staff. It's worn smooth from countless hands before mine.
My palms still bear blisters from yesterday. I take the staff anyway, ignoring the sting. The storm within me ripples in response to the pain, a flicker of lightning beneath my skin. I've learned to read these signals nowânot enough to control them fully, but enough to sense when the storm is listening.
"Your stance," Daro reminds me, circling slowly. "Roots in the earth."
I plant my feet as he taught me, feeling the connection between soil and storm. The energy pools in my centre rather than scattering through my limbs. Daro nods, just once.
"Now breathe with it," he instructs. "The storm follows breath."
This is the hardest part. I close my eyes and draw air deep into my lungs, imagining it feeding the storm like oxygen to a flame. The energy responds, coiling tighter instead of lashing out. When I exhale, I release a thin thread of control rather than the whole tempest.
"Hold," Daro says, his voice never rising above a murmur. "Feel the boundary between you and the storm."
That irked me. There is no boundaryâthat's what no one else understands. The storm isn't separate from me, not anymore. It lives in my marrow, pulses with my blood. Fighting it is like fighting my own heartbeat.
"I can't separate from it," I admit, opening my eyes. "It'sâ"
"I didn't say separate," Daro interrupts, the faintest smile touching his lips. "I said, feel the boundary. Know where you end and it begins."
He places a hand on his own chest. "Like knowing the difference between breath and fire. Both are inside me, but they are not the same."
I tilted, not even sure how to process it, but I tried anyway, this time without closing my eyes. The storm churns beneath my skin, eager for release. But instead of pushing it away, I acknowledge its presenceâa second pulse alongside my own.
"Now," Daro says, lifting his staff, "defend yourself."
He moves faster than his size suggests, the staff arcing toward my ribs. I respond instinctively, raising my own to block the blow. The impact jars my arms, and the storm surges in response to the threat.
Lightning crackles along my fingers, dancing down the wooden staff. Before, this would have terrified me. Now I recognise the storm's protective instinct.
"Good," Daro murmurs. "But don't let it choose for you."
He strikes again, aiming lower. This time, I channel the storm's energy deliberately, directing it down through my legs into the ground rather than through the staff. The lightning dissipates, and I pivot smoothly, using my body's momentum rather than the storm's power.
"Better," Daro says. His approval is rare enough that warmth blooms in my chest.
We continue for an hour, the dance of staff against staff growing more complex. Sometimes the storm rises unbidden, crackling across my skin when Daro lands a hit or when frustration builds in my chest. But increasingly, I find myself able to direct itânot perfectly, but with growing intention.
When Daro finally calls a halt, sweat drenches my clothes despite the morning chill. My arms tremble from exertion, and the storm hums contentedly, as if physical exhaustion has temporarily satisfied its hunger for release.
Daro sets his staff aside and retrieves a waterskin. He drinks first, then offers it to me. This is newâa small gesture of trust that means more than he could know.
"You're learning," he says as I drink. "Faster than we expected."
I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. "Not fast enough."
"Fast isn't always better." He takes the water skin back, his calloused fingers brushing mine. "The storm has been part of you longer than you've known it. Patience."
I want to tell him that patience feels like a luxury I can't afford. That every night I dream of Lior's face, of the lightning that took him from me. That the corruption still pulses in my shoulder, a constant reminder that I could become the very thing hunting us.
Instead, I simply nod.
Daro studies me for a long moment, his gaze neither kind nor cruel, simply honest. "The staff isn't just for fighting," he says finally. "It's to remind you that your body is still yours. The storm can flow through it, but it doesn't own you."
He retrieves the staff back into his hand. "When the storm grows too loud," he says, placing it on my hand, "remind your hands what they're for."
I gripped the staff, feeling its solid weight.
Daro watches me trying to process what he means, then turns toward the cabin. "Elyra will want to check your shoulder," he says over his shoulder. "Don't keep her waiting."
As he walks away, I look down at the staff. The storm beneath my skin settles to a quiet hum, as if approving this new approach to control.
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Elyra's hands are cool against my skin as she examines the corruption wound on my shoulder. The veins of black crystal have receded from my collarbone and neck, but the centre remainsâa hard, glassy knot that pulses with its own sickly light.
"Does it hurt?" she asks, her fingers probing gently around the edges.
"Not like before," I answer truthfully. "It's more... pressure now. Like something pushing outward."
Elyra nods, reaching for a small clay pot of salve. The scent fills the roomâsharp herbs and something sweeter beneath.
"Your storm is containing it," she says, applying the salve in careful circles. "I've never seen anything like it."
I watch her work, this quiet woman with herb-stained fingers and knowing eyes. Of all of them, Elyra scares me the least. There's something steadying about her presence, like the roots of an old tree.
"You mean you've never seen a storm fight corruption before?" I ask.
She meets my gaze briefly before returning to her work. "No. Usually, the corruption takes over quickly once it starts. The storm either surrenders orâ" She stops herself.
"Or it tears the bearer apart trying to escape," I finish for her. I've heard enough hints about Nira to understand what happened.
Elyra's hands pause on my shoulder. "Yes," she says softly. "But yours is different. It's not just fighting the corruptionâit's protecting you."
The idea still feels strange. For so long, I've thought of the storm as a curse, a destructive force that took Lior from me. The possibility that it might be trying to save me is harder to accept than the idea that it wants to destroy me.
"Why would it protect me?" I ask, voicing the question that's haunted me since I woke in their cabin.
Elyra considers this as she replaces the bandage over my wound. "Perhaps because you protect it," she suggests. "You haven't tried to use it as a weapon. You've been trying to contain it, even at the cost to yourself."
I think of Lior againâhis smile, his light, his body crumpled on the festival ground. "I failed," I whisper.
"Yes," Elyra agrees, and her honesty is strangely comforting. She doesn't offer empty reassurances. "But you keep trying. That matters to the storm, I think."
When she finishes with the bandage, she hands me a steaming cup of tea. It smells of mint and something earthier.
"For the dreams," she explains, seeing my questioning look. "Thalia says you're not sleeping."
I accept the cup, cradling it between my palms. The warmth seeps into my fingers. "Every time I close my eyes, I see him," I admit. "And the Festival. And the lightning."
Elyra sits beside me on the cot, close but not touching. "The memories won't fade," she says. "But you can learn to carry them differently."
I sip the tea, letting its warmth spread through my chest. "Did you know Nira well?"
Elyra tenses slightly at the name, but she doesn't reprimand me for asking. "Yes," she says after a moment. "I was with her near the end."
My finger traces the rim of the cup. "Was she... like me?"
"No." Elyra's answer comes quickly, definitively. "Her storm was different. Colder. She saw it as a tool, something to be mastered and wielded." She pauses, considering her next words carefully. "You're afraid of your storm. Nira was afraid of being without hers."
Something in her tone makes me look up. "You cared for her."
Elyra's smile is sad. "I care for all those who suffer. But yes, I tried to save her." She absently touches a scar on her forearm, thin and white against her skin. "Some wounds teach us more than others."
I finish the tea, feeling its subtle effect alreadyâa gentle calm spreading through my limbs. "Will the corruption come back?"
"Yes," Elyra says, taking the empty cup. "It's not defeated, only contained. The Hunters will keep trying to reach your storm."
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"And if they succeed?"
Elyra meets my gaze directly. "Then we'll face that together. But for now, rest. Your body needs to recover."
As she rises to leave, I look up at her. "You didn't lie to me," I say quietly. It's not quite a question, not quite a statement.
"Truth is the first medicine," she replies simply. "Sleep now, Kaela."
After she's gone, I lie back on the cot, feeling the tea work through my system. The storm within me is quiet, almost peaceful. As I drift toward sleep, I think of Mira's bracelet on my wrist, of Daro's knife in my pocket, of Elyra's honest eyes. Small anchors in a world that keeps shifting beneath my feet.
When sleep finally comes, it brings no lightning with it.
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Thalia stood at the window, watching the thin line of smoke rise from the training ground where Kaela and Daro had been working since dawn. She didn't turn when the door opened behind her, already recognising the light footsteps of Flynn and the heavier tread of Riven.
"Well?" she asked, still facing the window.
"Six Hunters," Flynn reported, dropping into a chair and propping her muddy boots on the table. "Three glass-forms, two smoke-forms, and something newâbigger, more structured. Almost like it was wearing armour."
Now Thalia did turn, her expression sharp with interest. "Armoured? You're certain?"
Riven moved to the hearth, his face set in familiar lines of tension. "It had plates like black glass over its chest and limbs. Moved differently from the othersâmore purpose, less drift."
"That's new," Thalia murmured. "Where?"
"Northeast ridge, moving in a pattern," Flynn said, pulling a small knife from her boot and beginning to clean her nails with it. Despite her casual posture, Thalia noted the tight line of her jaw. "They're not just wandering anymore. They're searching."
"For Kaela," Thalia concluded. It wasn't a question.
Riven's gaze snapped to hers. "For her storm. We need to move. They're getting closer to finding this place."
Thalia shook her head slowly. "She's not ready. The corruption is still active, and she barely has control over the smallest threads of the storm."
"She's learning fast," Flynn pointed out, tossing her knife and catching it by the blade. "Faster than we expected. Her storm actually listens to her sometimes."
"Sometimes is not enough," Riven countered. "Not against six Hunters, especially not if they're evolving. We've seen what happens when a storm-bearer faces Hunters before they're ready."
The memory of Nira hung in the room, unspoken but present. Thalia felt the weight of it in her chest, saw it in the tightness around Flynn's eyes and the rigid set of Riven's shoulders.
"This time is different," she said firmly.
Riven's laugh was hollow. "You said that last time."
"And I was wrong," Thalia admitted. "But Kaela is not Nira. Her storm behaves differently. It protects her."
"For now," Riven said darkly. "Until the corruption spreads or the Hunters overwhelm her. Then we'll have another storm-Hunter on our hands, and more blood on yours."
Flynn glanced between them, her expression unusually sombre. "The armoured one was tracking something specific," she said. "It kept stopping, testing the air like it could taste her storm."
Thalia moved away from the window, pacing the small room. "How far?"
"Two days walk," Riven answered. "But they're moving slowly, methodically. I'd say we have a week, maybe two, before they find the valley."
Thalia nodded, decision crystallising. "Then we have time to prepare her properly. Flynn, you'll work with her on speed and evasion tomorrow. Rivenâ"
"I won't train her," he interrupted. "I'll fight with you if it comes to that, but I won't give her weapons; she might turn against us."
"Not weapons," Thalia corrected gently. "Control. She needs to learn how to direct the storm when threatened, or the first time a Hunter strikes her, it could break free completely."
"And who will stop her if she loses control during training?" Riven demanded.
The question hung between them. Thalia met his gaze steadily. "You will," she said. "Because, despite everything, you're still the best at recognising the signs. You saw it happening with Nira before any of us."
Riven's expression hardened. "And what good did that do? Sixteen people died before I could stop her."
"Which is why we won't make the same mistake twice," Thalia insisted. "Work with her, Riven. Not because you trust her, but because you don't."
Flynn looked between them, then stood with a deliberate casualness that fooled neither of them. "While you two decide how many ways we might die, I'm going to check the perimeter. Maybe set some new traps." She paused at the door. "For what it's worth, I think the girl's different. Her storm feels... older, somehow. Like it remembers something Nira didn't."
After she left, silence settled between Thalia and Riven. He stared into the low fire, shadows playing across his face.
"If she turns," he said finally, "I won't hesitate this time."
Thalia nodded once. "I wouldn't ask you to." She moved toward the door, then paused. "But give her a chance to prove she won't. That's all I ask."
"A week," Riven conceded. "Then we need to consider moving, ready or not."
Thalia left him by the fire, stepping outside to where Daro was showing Kaela how to carve woodâsimple, repetitive motions to steady her hands and focus her mind. The girl's storm was quiet within her, a gentle glow rather than the violent surge it had been when they found her.
A week might be enough, Thalia thought. It had to be.
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Daro sat alone at the edge of the clearing, watching the sun sink behind the distant peaks. The day's training had ended hours ago, but still he remained, tending the small fire he'd built not for warmth, but for company. Fire had always been his silent companion, long before he'd met any storm-bearers or learned of Hunters and the ancient powers that shaped their world.
His gaze drifted to the cabin where Kaela now slept, exhausted from the day's exercises. She had improved remarkably in the weeks since they'd found her half-dead beneath the storm-scorched tree. Where once there had been wild, chaotic bursts of energy, there were now controlled, if unsteady, manifestations. Her storm responded to her differently than Nira's hadâless like a weapon and more like a companion.
That was what troubled him most.
Daro absently ran his thumb over the burn scar that covered his left palm. The ridged tissue felt familiar beneath his calloused fingers, a permanent reminder of the life he'd left behind. The life that had been taken from him.
Earlier that day, he had noticed the leather bracelet on Kaela's wrist as she worked to understand her storm with the wooden staff. It was worn and frayed, clearly made by hand, and made with love. She often touched it when the storm stirred within her, as if drawing strength from the memory it carried.
He knew about anchors. Thalia had taught him their importance when she found him, half-mad with grief and rage, in the burned shell of what had once been Ironhaven.
"A smith without his forge is still a smith," she had told him, pressing his own hammer back into his hands. "This is your anchor. Not to what you lost, but to who you are."
He had carried that hammer for three years before he could bear to use it again. Now it hung at his workbench in the small shed behind the cabin, well-used and well-loved once more.
But Kaela's bracelet spoke of a different kind of anchor. Not a tool or a trade, but people. Connections. The kind he had lost when the Hunters came in the night, their eyes glowing with cold light, their veins pulsing with the unnatural glow of corrupted storm energy.
Daro fed another small branch to the fire, watching the flames curl around it, consuming but not destroying, transforming it into light and heat. Fire had been his gift since childhood. Not magic, his father had insistedâjust a blacksmith's blood. He could feel heat, direct it, coax it to life with barely a touch. It had made him a gifted smith.
It hadn't made him fast enough to save his family.
When he found them, the fire within him had... changed. Became something else. He had hunted those Hunters for three months. Burned them wherever he found them. Not with a blacksmith's precision, but with a grieving man's rage.
"You're becoming what you hunt," Thalia had said when she finally tracked him down. Not with judgment, but with quiet understanding. "The fire inside you is consuming more than your enemies."
She had been right. In his rage, he had nearly lost himselfâhad nearly become as cold and merciless as the Hunters themselves. It was Thalia who had shown him another path. Thalia, Elyra, and even the ever-sceptical Riven. They had given him purpose when revenge was no longer enough to sustain him.
Now here was Kaela, with her storm-grey eyes and her own tenuous control over a power that could so easily destroy her. He recognised the struggle in herâthe battle between what she had been and what she was becoming. Between the girl who had worn that bracelet in a time of peace and the storm-bearer who now clung to it like a lifeline.
Unlike Nira, whose storm had been cold and calculated from the beginning, Kaela's storm moved with her emotions, protective even in its wildness. Her grief for whoever had given her that bracelet was palpable. Her fear of harming others was genuine. It gave him hope. A fragile hope, but hope nonetheless.
Daro extinguished the small fire with a gesture, leaving only warm embers. The night air immediately felt colder against his skin. He remained seated, gazing at the stars now visible overhead.
"The fire inside me isn't like her storm," he murmured to the empty clearing. "But I understand what it means to carry something dangerous. To fear what you might become if you lose control."
Tomorrow, they would work on channelling storm energy through objects, creating conduits rather than explosions. He would show her how to ground herself, how to use the elements around her as extensions of her will rather than targets of her power. But tonight, watching the embers of his small fire fade to darkness, Daro allowed himself to remember what it had cost him to learn those same lessons.
The cabin door creaked open behind him, and he heard Flynn's distinctive light footsteps approaching. He would not be alone with his thoughts much longer. With a sigh, he rose to his feet, his gaze drawn one last time to the window of the room where Kaela slept.
"Your storm is part of you," he whispered, too softly for anyone but the night to hear. "Not separate. Not an invader. Like my fire, it responds to your heart."
As if in answer, a faint light flickered briefly behind Kaela's windowânot the harsh glare of lightning, but a gentler glow, like a candle catching the breeze. Daro nodded to himself and turned away. The girl was learning. Slowly, painfully, but she was learning.
And in a world where Hunters stalked the shadows and storm-bearers were hunted to near extinction, that was as precious as any element he had ever forged.
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Riven sat on the cabin roof, sharpening his knife against a whetstone in smooth, practised strokes. The familiar rhythm steadied him, a counterpoint to the chaotic thoughts circling his mind. From here, he could see the entire valleyâthe training ground where Kaela now worked with Flynn, the stream where Elyra gathered herbs, the dense forest where Hunters prowled.
A week, perhaps two. It might be enough time if they were lucky.
The sound of Flynn's laughter drifted up from below, followed by a flash of lightâKaela's storm responding to something. Riven's grip tightened on the knife, muscle memory preparing for a threat. But the light faded quickly, controlled.
He forced his fingers to relax, resuming the steady rhythm of blade against stone.
Sixteen deaths lay on his conscience. Sixteen lives ended. He'd hesitated with Nira because he'd wanted to believe she could master the corrupted storm within her. By the time he'd acted, it was too lateâNira was gone, replaced by something that wore her face but carried Hunter's eyes, glassy and full of hunger.
The knife gleamed in the fading light, its edge now sharp enough to split a falling hair. Still, he continued the familiar motion, finding comfort in its precision.
Movement caught his eyeâThalia, walking the perimeter of their small sanctuary. She paused, sensing his gaze, and looked up to where he sat. She didn't call out or gesture, simply acknowledged his presence with a slight nod before continuing her rounds.
They'd been fighting this war too long, Riven thought. Long enough that hope had become a liability rather than a strength. Thalia still clung to it, seeing in Kaela a chance for redemption. Flynn, too, was beginning to believe. Even Daro and Elyra seemed cautiously optimistic.
Only Riven remembered clearly the price of misplaced faith.
He tested the knife's edge against his thumb, feeling the clean, painless cut it made. A perfect bladeâone that would do what was necessary when the time came.
Below, Kaela had managed to channel a small thread of lightning between her palms, holding it steady as Flynn circled her. The girl's face showed intense concentration, but not fear. The storm responded to her will, contained and purposeful.
Something shifted uncomfortably in Riven's chest. This control was beyond anything Nira had achieved in twice the time. Nira's storm had been chaotic, resistant, a thing she battled rather than guided. Kaela's moved with her, through her, as if listening.
He slid the knife into its sheath and tucked the whetstone into his pocket. The sun was setting, painting the valley in red and gold. Soon it would be dark, and the Hunters moved more freely in the darkness.
A week wasn't much time to prepare someone for what was coming. But watching Kaela below, her storm-light dancing between careful hands, Riven allowed himself to consider, just briefly, that Thalia might be right.