Page 37 of Stormvein

The fever makes time slippery, unreliable. We’re deep in the mountains, following roads few travelers use. The convoy moves with increased caution, aware of the tactical disadvantage of these narrow passages.

“Blackvault by nightfall,” someone says.

Relief wars with dread at the words. Relief that this journey might finally be at its end. Dread at what awaits me at its conclusion. The purging chamber. Sereven watching as they strip away what remains of my power … of me.

Fever brings visions, more vivid than the reality surrounding me. The tower’s silver walls dissolving like mist under Ellie’s touch. Her face when she first found me there. Suspicion giving way to determination.

I see her again at Ashenvale, the way she looked back at me before we separated. That moment of understanding passing between us, trust still new and fragile. Then the ambush. The crystal tearing through my shadows, fracturing my power. My familiar circling me, refusing to leave even as Authority soldiers closed in.

“Go,” I’d commanded it with the last of my strength. “Find her.”

Did it reach her? Did my familiar take my ring and find Ellie before the Authority found me?

The questions surface through delirium, then sink again beneath waves of pain.

Even now, separated by distance and fate, she remains the one fixed point in my thoughts. The one who saw me at my most manipulative and still chose to remain. The one who broke chains that had bound me for twenty-seven years.

If anyone can survive what is coming, it will be her.

The wagon slows. Even through fever and the limitation of my one functioning eye, I see sheer cliff walls rising on either side of the narrowing path.

Glassfall Gap.

Named for the crystalline formations embedded in the stone that catch the light like shattered glass.

“Single file through the narrow sections. Keep alert.”

The wagon enters the gap, wheels grinding against stone as the path constricts. My cage rattles with every jolt. The pain is a constant companion.

Through the bars, I watch the cliff walls rise higher and higher, hemming us in. The shadow of the mountain falls across my cage, and with it comes the cold. The temperature drops rapidly in the shade, chill seeping into bones already brittle with fever and exhaustion.

Even these shadows—once my domain, my weapon, my sanctuary—offer no comfort now. They fall across me like strangers, indifferent to my suffering.

My thoughts turn to Blackvault. To the purging chamber that awaits me there. To Sereven and his years of planning this moment. To the smile that will cross his face when he watches what remains of me destroyed. And hatred stirs.

For the Authority. For Sereven. For what they stole. My power. Years of my life. My purpose. The future I imagined for Meridian.

All of it has been twisted into a weapon against us.

Hatred is all that remains. The last fire burning in a body that’s surrendered to pain.

And yet, something else flickers. Faint. Barely there.

Hope.

Not for myself. I’m a dead man breathing. But hope that what I started continues beyond me. That my ring found Ellie. That the Veinwardens see in her what I saw. Power, strength, and will.

Maybe my failure will teach them what my success never could.

Maybe breaking me won’t break what we started.

Maybe the girl from another world finishes what the Vareth’el could not.

If I am to be destroyed, let it not be for nothing.

Let it be the spark that ignites something new.

The blacksmith’s blood is a stain in my mind, a reminder that even in my captivity, my presence demands a price from others. But perhaps that price won’t be paid in vain. Perhaps his death, like mine, will become fuel for something larger.