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But beneath the fury, beneath the storm that could tear the world apart, there is grief.

Overwhelming. Inescapable.

Sacha is gone. And part of me was buried with him.

The part that was just beginning to trust. To hope. To believe that there might be something beyond survival.

The part that dared to reach. That dared to believe. That dared to … love.

My gaze moves over the hill, and stops on Mira. She and Mishak are kneeling to my left. Their faces are transformed. Not just by fear, but by awe.

Their hands are pressed to their hearts.

Reverence. Recognition. Protection.

“From the ashes of shadow …” Mira’s voice trembles, words spilling from her lips like a prayer. “The storm shall rise.”

Mishak, kneeling beside her, completes the phrase. “When shadows lengthen and dawn falters, the Vein shall flow once more.”

In my mind, another voice answers—one that’s not mine, but lives within me now.

Where shadow leads, storm will follow.

I feel him in the storm. In the darkness that’s merged with my light. In the fury still rising with every breath I take. As if part of him survived, woven into the current of power now burning through me.

And around me, the storm rages. It answers my chaos. It answers my loss. It answers the void left behind by Sacha’s destruction.

Lightning splits the sky, and strikes the clearing where Sereven stands again. Once. Twice. A third time. Each one forcing him to retreat as the elements bend to my will.

Mira lifts her head, her lips forming a word. A whisper.

But it carries through the howling wind like a sentence passed.

“Stormvein.”

It settles into me.

Becomes part of me.

I am no longer Ellie Bennett from Chicago. No longer just a woman pulled unwillingly into another world.

It’s not just a name.

It’s a prophecy.

A promise.

Athreat.

I lift my hands, and the storm answers. Lightning bridging the gap between heaven and earth. Between what I was and what I’ve become.

Between the woman who entered the tower, and the fury that now stands on the hill.

Between the life I’ve lost.

And the vengeance I will claim.

Until I arrived in this world, I didn’t know magic existed.

Now it flows through me. Shadow and storm, memory and wrath. A living testament to the man they tried to erase from existence.

The Authority took Sacha from me.

And for that, they will pay with everything they have.

The End