Page 115 of Stormvein

Outside, I feel the weight in the air—moisture, waiting to be called. I could bring it together and make it rain if I wanted to. I could draw down lightning from the charged particles drifting above us. I could raise winds strong enough to tear the trees out of the ground.

“Now pull back. Observe, but don’t influence.”

That’s harder.

It’s one thing to reach for power. It’s another to feel it, and hold back. To resist the urge to shape it. To simply witness what it is, without leaving a trace.

“The most powerful tool you have isn’t the storm itself. It’s knowing whennotto use it.”

His words resonate in my head. Not because they’re profound, but because they feel true. The air between us is different now. Softer. Less guarded. His guidance sinks in more easily, as though something inside me has relaxed,opened. The resistance I didn’t even know I’d been holding onto begins to fall away.

“You’re learning faster now,” he says after I complete another exercise without faltering.

“It feels more natural now. Like I’m not constantly fighting it.”

He nods. “That’s because you’ve stopped treating it as something separate. The power is part of you. You’re not bending it to your will, you’re moving with it.”

As the afternoon wears on, his instruction becomes quieter. He starts to share things beyond training. Moments and memories. Pieces of himself I doubt few have ever heard. They come between exercises, between breaths. Like he’s not planning to say them, but they slip free anyway.

“I didn’t understand it at first.” His eyes are focused on the shadow he’s weaving between his fingers. “The darkness would move with my emotions. My anger. My grief. My fear. The harder I tried to bury those things, the more chaotic and unpredictable the shadows became.”

I don’t interrupt. I don’t ask the questions burning my tongue. I stay quiet and let him speak.

"I was terrified. Constantly.” His voice drops lower, becoming almost confessional. “One slip, one moment of realfeeling, and I thought everything around me would be torn apart."

His admission steals my breath. The feared Shadowvein Lord, admitting to terror.

“Is that why you always seem so in control? Even when—” The memory of him bloodied and unmoving in that cage tightens my throat.

He meets my gaze, understanding what I don’t finish. “Yes. Control was about survival at first. Then habit. Eventually, it became instinct.” His fingers close, extinguishing the shadow. “When they tortured me the first time, before the tower … control was the only power I had left. If I surrendered that …”

He shakes his head, abandoning the thought, and lifts a hand to demonstrate a technique for steadying emotional surges. A small thread of shadow uncoils from his palm, silent and smooth, responding only to the rhythm of his breath. It doesn’t lash or waver. It holds there under his control for a second before fading away to nothing.

The display is brief. Subtle. But I can’t stop watching him.

There’s a beauty in the way he moves, in the way the shadows follow his will without hesitation. They obey his every direction. I watch the way his fingers shift, the way the darkness coils and stills, the way he shapes it without tension or force.

He hasn’t just trained for this. He’s lived inside it, been shaped by it. This is more than discipline or mastery. It’s identity.

By late afternoon, the room has grown quiet.

The storm inside me has stilled, and Sacha hasn’t spoken in several minutes. He sits across from me, one knee drawn up, forearm resting across it, gaze distant. He’s not absent, just elsewhere.

I’ve never seen him like this. Still … almost peaceful. As if the silence isn’t something that needs to be filled.

Neither of us moves to break it. Whatever passed between us today feels too fragile to disturb, like it’s still settling into place. And that’s how Varam finds us. The knock is brief, and the door opens before Sacha can move, and he steps inside.

His gaze sweeps the room, pausing briefly on me before settling on Sacha.

“Final preparations are complete.” His tone gives nothing away about the scene he’s walked in on. “Supplies packed. Route secured. Scouts are already in position.”

Sacha stands, his stillness dissolving in an instant. “It’s time to prepare Lisandra then.”

Varam nods. “I’ll see to it.”

He turns to the wall where the hidden doorway is, then pauses. “There’s something else. Rumors have started. Nothing specific. Word that you’re recovering. Some are saying it’s a blessing from the old gods.”

Sacha doesn’t react. “Let them wonder. The more contradictions, the harder it is for Sereven to know what’s true.”