Touch of Shadows

The Storm That Remembers

Dawn in the borderlands was never gentle.

The sun bled upward through a haze the color of rust, turning the ravine below into a wound that refused to close. The light that should have been gold was instead a pale, sickly hue, filtered through drifting ash. Birds still did not sing. Even the wind moved strangely, as if unwilling to cross certain lines in the earth—lines only the old magics remembered.

Aeryn shifted the girl in her arms, feeling the slight but steady weight against her chest. Lyra’s skin was clammy, her breathing shallow, the faint heat of the runes branded into her wrists cooling now. Their angry glow dimmed to faint ember-lines, like coals abandoned after a long night. They would scar. Some marks always did.

Theron walked ahead, eyes moving constantly—ridge to path, shadow to stone—with the slow precision of someone who had learned the hard way that ambushes came more often in silence than in the thunder of battle. His knife was still out, its edge dark from the night before. He didn’t bother to clean it. Not yet.

“She’s light,” Aeryn murmured. “Too light. They’ve been starving her.”

Theron didn’t glance back. “That wasn’t just hunger. They were draining her.”

Aeryn’s jaw tightened, storm-glow flickering faintly in her eyes. “Stormblood can’t be taken. Not like that.”

“Can’t be taken,” he agreed, “but it can be spent. Forced out. Kept from returning.”

The girl stirred faintly at their voices, her eyelids fluttering, lashes trembling. She made a small sound—a broken word or maybe just breath—but it slipped away before Aeryn could catch it. Then she drifted back into a half-sleep that looked far too much like surrender.

The ridge trail narrowed, hemmed in by jagged blackrock. By the time they reached a scatter of boulders halfway up the slope, Theron raised a hand.

“We stop here,” he said, scanning the distant ridges. “Rest. She won’t make it to the border without it.”

Aeryn set the girl gently against a flat stone, lowering herself to one knee. “We don’t have time to rest. If they sent word ahead—”

“They already have.” Theron crouched beside her, his voice low but certain. “And running now just means we hit their trap sooner.”

The logic was solid. That didn’t make it easier to accept.

Aeryn brushed Lyra’s tangled hair from her face, then hovered her palm just above the child’s forehead. A faint current stirred—cool, searching—lifting strands of hair like an unseen breath. The storm inside her shifted, whispering not of enemies but of what was missing.

She found it.

Beneath the fragile thread of the girl’s pulse was a hollow place, a void in the current where life’s natural flow should have been. It had been stopped—cut off by magic that was old, invasive, and deliberate. The runes were more than chains. They were channels. Siphons. They had drawn her lightning away until she was empty, not killing her outright but bleeding her into stillness.

“They were bleeding her into something,” Aeryn murmured.

Theron’s gaze sharpened. “What kind of something?”

“I don’t know.” Her voice dropped, becoming almost a confession. “But Kaela once told me about a forge built for storms—an old war-thing from before the Accord. It could shape weather like steel, if you fed it enough lightning. Enough blood.”

He stared at her. “You think they found it?”

“I think…” She glanced at Lyra’s face, seeing in the hollows of her cheeks an echo of the stories Kaela had told. “I think they’re rebuilding it.”

The air around them shifted. A sound carried up from the ravine—distant at first, then clearer. Hooves. Not one rider. Many. The ground began to tremble with slow, heavy intervals, each thud bleeding into the next.

Theron stood, his head turning toward the sound. “Border patrol?”

Aeryn shook her head. “Too fast. Too many.”

Lyra’s eyes snapped open suddenly, pupils blown wide in a way that made her look older than her years. “They’re coming,” she whispered, voice raw. “Not for me. For you.”

Aeryn felt the storm inside her flare without command, silver-blue light coiling in her gaze. “Then they’re about to regret it.”

Theron’s hand closed around her arm, his grip unshakable. “No. Not here. Not yet. You want her safe, we move north and vanish. Fight them where the ground bends to us.”

Lightning prickled beneath Aeryn’s skin, restless and eager. She hated that he was right.

She bent, lifting Lyra once more. “What’s your name?”

The girl’s voice was barely audible. “Lyra.”

Aeryn nodded once. “Then hold on, Lyra. We’re not done yet.”

Theron was already moving, leading them to a narrow deer path that threaded through twisted trees and outcroppings of stone. The trail curved away from the approaching riders, but the sound of pursuit grew clearer—orders shouted in clipped tones, the jangle of tack and chain, the cruel bark of dogs finding a scent.

The scent of stormblood.

Somewhere behind them, a horn gave a single low call, the kind used not for warning but for marking prey.

They would follow. They would not stop.

And somewhere ahead, if Kaela’s old warning was true, the forge waited—hungry and half-built.

The storm inside Aeryn was no longer quiet.

It was listening. Counting the steps until it could answer.

And this time, it would not stop at ash.

The path narrowed further, winding between leaning spires of rock that looked carved by claws instead of wind. Every few strides, Aeryn’s boots slipped in loose shale, sending small avalanches whispering down into the canyon below.

“Theron,” she hissed. “How much farther to the hollow?”

“Half a mile,” he said. “Maybe less if the slope holds.”

She didn’t believe him, but there was no point arguing. The sky had already begun to shift—clouds knotting together overhead, the color of steel about to break. The storm inside her recognized itself in that gathering weight, an answering pull that made her pulse quicken.

Lyra stirred again, pressing her face weakly against Aeryn’s shoulder. “They’re not human,” she murmured. “Not all of them.”

Aeryn blinked. “What?”

The girl’s voice quavered, her breath hitching between words. “I heard them talking. The ones in the camp. They said they were borrowed things. Worn by the hunters. Hollow inside.”

Theron slowed slightly, turning his head enough to meet Aeryn’s eyes. “Borrowed things?”

Aeryn swallowed hard. “Bound spirits, maybe. Old ones. The kind that take skin to remember shape.”

Lyra shivered. “One of them had eyes that looked like glass. When he touched me… he didn’t feel alive.”

The wind picked up sharply, carrying the first faint notes of iron and rain.

“Then we’re out of time,” Theron said.

When they reached the hollow, it was little more than a gash in the hillside, hidden beneath the twisted roots of an ancient tree. The earth there smelled of damp moss and copper. Aeryn ducked inside first, lowering Lyra to a dry patch near the back. The girl immediately curled inward, exhaustion claiming what little strength she had left.

Theron stood watch at the entrance, his blade angled low. “Five minutes,” he muttered. “After that, we move or die.”

Aeryn crouched, her hands trembling faintly as she reached for her pack. She pulled free a narrow vial of clear liquid—stormwater, taken from her own rites months ago. It hummed faintly when she uncorked it.

“This will burn,” she warned.

Lyra didn’t answer.

Aeryn dipped her fingers into the liquid, tracing it over the girl’s runes. The reaction was immediate—the marks flared white-hot, searing light filling the hollow. Lyra screamed once, a raw sound that made Aeryn’s own pulse lurch, but she didn’t stop. The runes began to unravel, their edges turning to smoke, the siphon lines breaking apart under the storm’s return.

Then silence.

Lyra slumped back, her breathing deep and even for the first time since dawn. A faint crackle ran over her skin—barely visible sparks dancing along her wrists before vanishing.

“It worked,” Aeryn whispered.

Theron gave her a look. “It bought us time. That’s all.”

Aeryn met his eyes. “Time’s all I need.”

A horn sounded again, much closer now. The ground shook as the riders approached. Shadows flickered against the horizon—black shapes cresting the far ridge.

Theron stepped back from the opening. “They’ve split formation. Two flanks. They’ll box us in within minutes.”

Aeryn rose, the storm in her veins answering the thunder overhead. The scent of rain was thicker now, almost sweet. “Then we don’t let them.”

Theron frowned. “Aeryn—”

But she was already stepping into the open air.

The wind screamed as if greeting her, drawing her cloak out in wild arcs. Lightning crawled through the clouds, tracing her outline like recognition. She lifted one hand, fingers curling slowly as the charge built. The riders appeared then—armored, faces masked, eyes gleaming with that faint glass sheen Lyra had spoken of. The first of them raised a spear, its tip humming with stolen magic.

“Stormborn!” one of them shouted. “By order of the Council, stand down!”

Aeryn smiled faintly, the expression colder than the wind. “You first.”

She slammed her palm into the earth.

The world answered.

Lightning split the ridge in two, tearing stone and shadow apart. Horses screamed, men were thrown, and the smell of ozone turned the air to metal. A wave of pressure rolled outward, shattering trees, hurling debris down the slope. When the light faded, half the patrol was gone—ashes and broken armor scattered across the ravine.

Theron stepped out behind her, jaw set. “That’s going to draw the rest.”

“I know,” Aeryn said, her voice rough with power. “Then they’ll come to the right place.”

From somewhere far beyond the storm, a deeper sound answered—a low hum that wasn’t thunder at all. It rose through the earth like the heartbeat of something buried.

Theron’s eyes widened. “Tell me that’s not what I think it is.”

“The forge,” Aeryn whispered. “It’s awake.”

Lyra’s voice came from behind them, weak but clear. “They fed it too much.”

The hum grew louder, shifting into a pulse, rhythmic and unnatural. The clouds overhead turned the color of molten steel, glowing from within.

Aeryn felt the storm inside her tremble, as if it wanted to join that pulse—to be drawn into the same consuming rhythm. She clenched her fists, forcing herself to breathe.

“Theron, take her north,” she said. “Now.”

“I’m not leaving you.”

“You don’t have a choice.” Her eyes flashed, the glow bright enough to burn through the ashlight. “If it pulls me in, someone has to make sure it doesn’t finish what it started.”

Theron’s jaw worked, torn between duty and instinct. Then, slowly, he nodded. “If you’re not back by dawn—”

“Then don’t look for me.”

He turned to Lyra, lifting her gently. The girl’s gaze met Aeryn’s for a moment, wide and filled with something older than fear. “You’ll come back,” she said. “You have to.”

Aeryn didn’t answer.

As Theron disappeared into the trees, the first bolts of unnatural lightning began to fall—not from sky to ground, but from ground to sky, drawn upward toward the glow on the horizon.

The forge was calling.

And the storm was ready to answer.