Page 49 of Stormvein

The hypocrisy is almost beautiful in its completeness. The Authority’s entire foundation, their moral standing, and their stance against magic. It’s all built on alie. They didn’t destroy Veinblood power, theystoleit. They didn’t protect the world from magic. They monopolized it.

I see Sereven as he was then, younger, rising through Authority ranks after he betrayed me. He visits the tower. Always at night, always alone, but he never tries to enter. Instead, he paces around the outside. Blue light spills from between his hands as he holds the crystal against the wall, his movements echoing the ritualistic gestures of those hooded figures. My shadows flow from the walls into it.

My power. My essence. Mybirthright.

His expression as he watches is rapt, lustful. He’s not looking at taboo magic with the disgust he performs for his followers, but with naked, consuming desire. Each time he comes, he stays longer. Takes more.

I see clearly now what I couldn’t before. The man who hunted Veinbloods across Meridian was secretly coveting the very power he condemned. Sanctified theft disguised as a righteous purge. His rise to High Commander of the Authority itself was built upon the systematic destruction of people like me, my power feeding his ascension.

The vision shifts with disorienting suddenness. I’m standing on a mountain path, looking down at Ashenvale far below. The city appears as it was before my capture. Her towers gleaming in sunlight, the Veinwarden banners still flying above Lirien Spire. Beside me stands a woman, dark hair streaked with silver, her posture regal but weary. Something about her feels intimately familiar, but I can’t place her face in my memories.

“They’re still looking.” Her voice carries a note of warning. “Still searching.”

The wind carries the scent of mountain flowers, silvermist and thornbloom, plants that grew in the royal gardens. My throat tightens with unexpected, visceral longing for a home long destroyed, of life violently severed.

“For what?” My voice sounds younger than it should.

Her face turns toward me. Features both strange and familiar, eyes that hold knowledge beyond their years.

“It was built on blood. That’s what they never told you.” She reaches out, as though to touch my face, a gesture of such profound intimacy that I find myself leaning toward it, then lets her hand fall away. “What all the elders hid from you before they fell.” She turns away, looking instead over the distant horizon where mountains meet sky. “The burden you carry was never meant to be yours alone.”

“Who are you?”

She doesn’t answer, fading like mist beneath the morning sun, leaving only the lingering scent of silvermist blooms. In her place, I find myself staring at reflections in water so still it appears solid.

First, I see my own face, unmarked by time or torture, unaware of coming betrayal. Then the water ripples and I see Ellie. Yet it isn’t the woman who found me in the tower. This version has energy moving under her skin, not flashes but veins of light that shift and pulse from within. Her eyes catch the light like stars reflecting the moon.

Something shifts in my chest. An ache that has nothing to do with my physical wounds. In this vision of her transformed by power, I glimpse both what she might become, and what we might achieve together. The thought sends a different kind of heat through me, one that has nothing to do with the fever.

“Elowen,” the voice whispers.

The name means nothing to me, yet it resonates like a chord struck on an instrument. Recognition without memory.

“Stormvein.”

ThatI know. The name from prophecy, the title the Veinwardens believe belongs to her. But seeing her like this, radiant with purpose, I understand that it’s not merely a designation bestowed by desperate people looking for hope. It’san identity she was always destined to claim, a nature waiting to awaken.

The water trembles, ripples breaking the image. When it stills again, Ellie’s image has changed. The silver is more pronounced, no longer simply flowing beneath her skin, but taking shape around her.

She looks at her hands, confusion stamped across her face as she watches the light dance between her fingers.

“What’s happening to me?” Her voice is distorted by distance and the barrier of water between us.

I try to answer her, but cannot. In this dream state, I’m merely an observer. She can’t see me, can’t hear me. The water separates us completely.

The light beats in time with her heart, growing stronger with each thud. Small arcs of energy leap between her fingers, branching out in the air. The water mirrors the display, doubles it, and makes it more complex and beautiful. What would terrify others, this manifestation of raw power, fascinates me.

Darkness swirls around her reflection, tendrils reaching toward her, caressing her face, her arms, her hands. The silver responds, brightening in answer.

The water ripples again, more violently this time. When it stills, the reflection has changed once more. Now it shows my familiar, the shadow raven. It circles above the water, wings spread, its shadow covering the entire surface.

Then it’s diving, plunging toward the water, toward Ellie’s reflection. Toward the silver light that now expands across the surface. I want to call out, to stop it. But before I can, they touch.

The explosion of power doesn’t merely disturb the water, it obliterates it. The surface shatters completely, sending prismatic shards of memory cascading outward. They aren’t my memories, yet they become mine in this moment of connection, in this bridge between separate consciousnesses.

I witness—no, Iexperience—Ellie standing on the hill, my familiar circling above her. The moment when they touched. Power transferring,transforming, becoming something neither shadow nor silver, but both.

The boundary between her consciousness and mine blurs, allowing me to experience what she felt when my familiar reached her.