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The road east was older than the city he’d left.

It wound through low valleys and forgotten shrines, traced with moss and memories. No carts passed here. No caravans. Only wind and whispers.

Elias walked in silence.

Kairo moved ahead like a shadow that never broke stride. Every step was intentional. Every glance, measured.

They hadn’t spoken since the fire.

Not because Elias was afraid—but because he wasn’t sure which part of him had already changed.

The mark on his forearm hadn’t stopped pulsing. In fact, he could now see it glowing no matter which side of his arm he looked at. It was odd, to say the least.

By midday, they reached a weatherworn ridge that overlooked a sweeping field of broken stones and tangled trees. In the far distance, mist coiled between black cliffs, rising like jagged teeth against the sky.

Kairo stopped.

“This is as far as memory follows,” he said.

Elias blinked. “What does that mean?”

Kairo’s gaze didn’t leave the horizon.

“There are places ahead that exist beyond what this world remembers. If you turn back now, the forgetting will take you slowly. You’ll live, but never feel the storm again.”

He turned.

“But if you follow—if you cross through—you will never be the same.”

Elias stepped forward.

His voice was quiet, but sure. “I don’t want to be the same.”

Kairo smiled.

“Good.”

They walked until the light began to change.

Not fade. Not dim. Just… shift.

The shadows bent a little too far. The trees seemed to hold still a little too long. The air thickened—not heavy, but expectant.

Elias could feel it pressing against his skin. Not danger. Not magic. Attention.

Like something ancient was watching.

Eventually, they reached a clearing.

At its center stood a single stone arch—half-buried in ivy, cracked with age, but humming with power.

No door. No inscription. Just a frame of polished black stone veined with silver.

Kairo stopped beside it.

“This is the Gate.”

Elias stepped closer. The mark on his arm flared. The air vibrated.

“What’s on the other side?”

Kairo’s eyes narrowed.

“Not just a where. A when. A truth. A place between storms.”

He placed a hand on Elias’s shoulder.

“You’ll need to step through alone.”

Elias swallowed.

“You’re not coming?”

Kairo shook his head.

“My path lies elsewhere, for now. This is yours.”

A pause.

“And the storm… only answers those who walk forward without knowing what they’ll find. Those who walk forward in faith.”

Elias turned to the Gate as Kairo stepped forward, placing a hand on the arch.

The air inside the arch began to shimmer faintly—like heat above desert stone. The mark on his arm throbbed with every heartbeat.

He took a breath. He couldn’t go back. He wouldn’t.

He stepped through.

Silence.

Not absence of sound—absence of everything.

Then—

Wind.

Bright. Sharp. Pulling.

His feet touched ground again—but the sky had changed.

Clouds swirled above, thick and low, like a thunderhead waiting to split. Pale lightning flickered across the heavens, illuminating a vast forest below.

He stood on the edge of a cliff.

Behind him was a pristine version of the gate he’d walked through. Through it, he could see an expansive sky. Mountains stretched into rolling hills which eventually became heavily forested flatlands. 

The cliff he stood atop must have been thousands of feet tall, and it stretched away to his left and right, eventually dropping out of sight to his left, and curving even higher to his right. Behind him, the peak of the mountain he stood on rose even higher, though Elias thought it wouldn’t take long to reach it. 

Then, something moved.

Not wind. Not shadow.

A shape—deep within the trees far below.

Elias’s pulse jumped. He stepped forward slowly, boots crunching on the rocky terrain. He took in the epic view for a few minutes, half-waiting for a dragon bent on his death to jump out of the trees below. 

Then, when nothing changed, he turned to his left to descend. He wasn’t sure where he was going, but he figured there must be some objective for him to discover. Either that, or he’d left the only home he’d ever known with a madman who just left him trapped in a foreign world only for him to die.

As he descended the ridge, he noticed that the mark on his arm seemed to guide him—faint pulses pulling his attention like a compass made of instinct.

Then he heard it.

A whisper.

Not from around him. From the world itself.

“…Stormheart…”

The word echoed—not as sound, but meaning.

Then silence again.

He kept walking for what felt like hours, until he reached the base of the cliff. The forest there opened into a wide glade—moonlit, though no moon hung above. Strange silver-leafed trees circled the clearing, each one whispering faintly in a language he couldn’t name.

At the center stood something impossible.

A stone.

Or… a seed? It pulsed with light. Faint, rhythmic. Like a heartbeat.

Elias stepped closer.

The mark on his arm seared with heat.

Something drove him to place his hand on the stone. He walked forward, moving solely in the direction of the drive inside him. When his hand touched the stone, everything changed.

The world fell away.

He was floating.

Suspended in silver light. Memories surged past him—his own, then others—too many to count. Too fast to understand.

The storm was speaking.

Not in words, but visions.

He saw skies torn open. Blades of light clashing against shadows that moved like smoke. A great tree burning from the inside out. A girl with eyes like shattered glass. A beast with wings made of wind.

And then—himself.

Older. Stronger. Standing alone before a storm that swallowed the sky.

He gasped and fell back, chest heaving, knees in the grass again.

The stone pulsed once more.

Then stilled.

Elias was shaking.

Not from fear. From certainty.

Whatever this was… It had already begun.

In the distance, thunder rolled powerfully.

And somewhere—just out of sight—a second presence stirred.

Watching.

Waiting.

Smiling.

The glade was empty.

But Elias could feel it—something had changed.

The pulse from the stone had faded, but the air around him vibrated. The grass no longer swayed. The leaves had stopped rustling.

Everything waited.

Then the earth beneath his feet shifted.

Not cracked. Not split.

Rearranged.

He spun around.

The silver trees were gone.

The clearing was gone.

He now stood at the edge of a wide, endless expanse—a field of mist that rippled with every breath he took. There was no sun, no stars. Only a faint glow in the sky, like a memory of light long buried.

In front of him: a narrow path. Barely visible.

A single line of stone steps vanishing into the mist.

No railings. No sides.

Just air.

Elias took one step forward—and nearly lost his balance.

There was no ground on either side. Just void.

Then a voice.

Not Kairo’s. Not the storm’s.

“One step forward. No steps back.”

It echoed in his head—not spoken, but impressed.

He looked again at the path.

It hadn’t grown longer.

But it felt steeper now. Farther. Hungrier.

He tightened his fists. His mark pulsed softly on his forearm.

He stepped forward.