Touch of Shadows

The Horn That Hunts

The rain began without warning.

It didn’t fall so much as collapse—sheets of cold water slamming into the earth with enough force to rattle bone. Each drop hissed where it struck, steam rising in ghostly curls. The borderlands were never kind to the living, but tonight they felt intent on erasing them.

Aeryn pushed forward through the storm, lightning threading her veins in restless whispers. The ground quaked beneath her boots, the pulse she’d felt moments ago now deepening into something primal, something alive. The sound wasn’t just thunder anymore—it had rhythm, a pattern like breath.

The forge was awake.

Her cloak clung to her skin, soaked and heavy. Sparks leapt across her fingertips every time she brushed the wet rock. She didn’t bother to suppress them. The storm had its own will now, and it wanted out.

When the first shapes appeared through the curtain of rain, she thought they were men—until they turned.

Their armor looked like bone gilded with iron, etched with runes that glowed faintly from within. Hollow-eyed, moving in unnatural sync, the riders she’d scattered earlier were reforming—stitched back together by something unseen. The air hummed with the same sick resonance that echoed from the forge below.

Aeryn slowed her steps. Her pulse aligned with that hum, an echo for an echo.

“You should not have come,” one of them said. Its voice came from behind the visor, too smooth, too even. Not human.

“I was invited,” she said. Lightning flickered behind her teeth when she spoke. “The forge remembers my blood.”

Another rider stepped forward. Its skin was stretched too tight over its face, the features half-collapsed like melted wax. A sigil pulsed where its heart should have been.

“Stormblood,” it said. “You are not the first they have sent. But you might be the last.”

Aeryn tilted her head. “We’ll see.”

She moved before they did.

The first strike was silent—just a flicker of light and then a crack that split the ground wide. The air exploded outward, flinging two of the constructs into the canyon. Their armor burned white before collapsing into slag. The others didn’t retreat. They never did.

They surged forward, weapons raised. Runes ignited along their blades, drawing power from the forge’s pulse.

Aeryn twisted, ducking beneath a swing that would have gutted her, then drove her hand into the ground. Lightning erupted upward, catching the attacker in the chest and ripping him apart in a shower of molten metal and bone dust. Another came from behind—she felt the movement, the distortion of air—and turned just in time to catch the blow on her forearm. Pain flared bright and distant.

She caught the attacker’s wrist, crushed it, and flung him backward with a burst that lit the rain in arcs of silver.

They fell, but more were coming—shapes rising from the ravine, pulled from the mud by invisible hands. The forge was feeding them.

Her breathing slowed. The world seemed to narrow to the pulse, the hum, the scent of ozone.

I could end it here, she thought. If I give it everything.

The storm inside her answered—hungry, willing.

But Kaela’s voice came unbidden from memory, soft as wind across wet stone: Power given to fire is never returned. The forge does not build—it consumes.

Aeryn staggered, grounding herself with a trembling breath. She could feel its pull now—deep under the earth, like a heart calling to its missing piece. It wanted her storm, her will, her self.

She forced her eyes open. Ahead, through the shroud of rain, the slope fell away into a basin of molten light.

The forge.

It rose from the earth like something grown, not built. Great ribs of black metal curved upward, bound together by chains thicker than tree trunks. Between them, energy churned in a maelstrom of lightning and fire, feeding on itself in endless hunger. It was half-alive, half-machine, breathing in the storm.

And in its center—something waited.

A figure stood amid the chaos, motionless, cloaked in the forge’s glow. The silhouette was human, but the air around it fractured like heat-haze. Every pulse of the forge matched the faint rise and fall of its chest.

Aeryn stepped forward, her boots sinking into the scorched earth.

The figure lifted its head.

“Kaela,” Aeryn whispered.

Her mentor’s face emerged from the glare—older, lined with sleepless years, but unmistakable. The same eyes that had once guided her through the rites of the storm now burned with a light that was not their own.

“Aeryn,” Kaela said. “I told them you’d come.”

Aeryn’s throat tightened. “What have you done?”

Kaela smiled faintly, the expression fragile as frost. “What I had to. The Accord failed us. The world forgets storms until it drowns in them again. I’m just… reminding it.”

“You’re feeding it blood and souls.” Aeryn’s voice cracked like thunder. “You’re binding the dead to serve the living!”

Kaela’s expression didn’t change. “No. I’m giving them purpose.”

The forge pulsed, and Aeryn saw—just for a heartbeat—the truth beneath the glow. The souls trapped inside the metal screamed without sound, their faces flickering through the currents of lightning. Some were soldiers. Some were children. All were gone.

“You always feared what we could become,” Kaela said softly. “But this… this is evolution. Stormblood unchained. No gods. No councils. No decay.”

“Just ash.”

“Just renewal.”

The hum deepened, and Aeryn realized Kaela was no longer speaking only with her own voice. The forge was speaking through her—its cadence wrapped around every word.

“You can still join me,” Kaela said. “The forge remembers you. It calls for you because you are part of it. You could end the border wars. End hunger. End weakness.”

Aeryn took a step forward. Lightning raced across her skin, wild and violent. “You mean end choice. End life as it is.”

Kaela’s eyes softened—not with pity, but with faith. “Life as it is doesn’t deserve to endure.”

The forge roared. Chains groaned. Sparks cascaded upward like a reversed waterfall.

Aeryn felt the pull again—so strong now it nearly took her to her knees. Her blood sang with the same rhythm as the forge’s heart. She could feel every storm for miles listening through her veins.

If she let go, she could become it. Merge. End everything in light and silence.

She closed her eyes and remembered Lyra’s face—too thin, too pale, branded by the same hunger now trying to consume her.

“No,” she whispered.

Then louder: “No!”

The storm broke loose.

Lightning erupted from her in a spiraling torrent, slamming into the forge’s core. The impact cracked the air itself, a scream of light and pressure. Kaela stumbled backward, her body wreathed in energy.

“You can’t destroy it!” she cried. “It’s what you are!”

Aeryn’s hair whipped around her, eyes blazing white-blue. “Then it can die with me.”

She thrust both hands forward.

The ground split. The chains anchoring the forge to the world shattered, one by one. Lightning tore through the basin, turning stone to glass. The souls trapped within the forge screamed as their bindings broke—each cry a streak of brilliance vanishing into the clouds.

Kaela fell to her knees, her voice barely audible over the storm. “You don’t understand… it will unmake you!”

Aeryn smiled faintly through the glare. “Then let it try.”

The last chain broke.

The forge imploded inward, swallowing its own light. For a moment, the world was nothing but silence and radiance—pure, unbound energy folding in on itself. Then came the release.

A wall of wind and fire tore across the land, flattening trees, ripping stones from their roots. The shockwave carried for miles. When it faded, the basin was gone.

Only rain remained.

Aeryn lay on her back at the crater’s edge, smoke rising from her skin. Her heartbeat was ragged, but still there.

She turned her head slowly. Where the forge had stood, a single shard of black metal jutted from the earth, still humming faintly. Inside it, faintly visible through the molten surface, a silhouette flickered. Kaela.

Aeryn reached toward it, but her hand trembled too much to touch.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

The shard pulsed once, as if in reply, then went still.

The storm eased above her, its rage spent. She felt hollow, emptied—yet free.

Somewhere far to the north, she thought she heard a horn sound again—the kind meant for survival, not pursuit. Maybe Theron had made it. Maybe Lyra was safe.

Aeryn closed her eyes. The rain washed the ash from her face.

The borderlands breathed again, cautious and slow, as if unsure whether it had survived her or simply forgotten to die.

And beneath the cooling earth, where the forge had fallen silent, something small and patient began to stir.