Page 64 of Stormvein

“You need to rest,” someone—Varam?—tells her. I recognize the concern in his voice, and note the care he’s showing toward her.

“I’m fine.” Her voice carries that quiet determination I heard the day we met. That stubborn refusal to yield that first infuriated me, and then made me believe she could be my salvation. “I’m staying with him.”

The shadows inside me respond to her presence. My powers have always been mine alone, never influenced by another. Yet since their return, they’ve been working through my body differently. Fighting infection, knitting torn flesh, but moving with a silver-edged purpose that isn’t entirely my own. The journey has made their efforts futile. For every wound they begin to heal, another tears open.

The night deepens around us. Fighters settle into watch rotations, voices fading as exhaustion claims them one by one. Only Ellie remains awake, her breathing soft and quiet beside me, her hand occasionally adjusting the cool cloth on my forehead.

“I don’t know if you can hear me,” she whispers. “But you need to keep fighting.Ineed you to keep fighting. We’re almost there. One more day. Please keep fighting.”

One more day.

The words pierce through the fog. One more day carried like cargo. One more day of wounds reopening. One more day of fever that will not break.

I’m not certain I have one more day left in me.

I don’t know if she senses the direction of my thoughts, but her fingers tighten around mine.

“Don’t you dare give up.” Her voice is fierce. “Not after everything. Not when we’re so close.”

The light flares brighter in response to her emotions. I wonder if she understands the connection. It mixes with myshadows and moves across her face, features drawn tight with exhaustion and worry. She’s been keeping vigil for days, fighting for my survival with a determination I don’t deserve. A loyalty I’ve done nothing to earn.

“Sleep.” I force the word out.

“I’m not tired.” The dark circles beneath her eyes say otherwise.

“Sleep.”

She hesitates, her eyes moving over my face, then nods. “I’ll rest, but I’m staying here.”

She stretches out beside me, arranging herself so that her fingers are curled around my arm, just above my wrist. Within minutes her breathing changes, slows, turns deeper, exhaustion claiming victory before she can even put up a fight.

In the silence that follows, I fall deeper into fever. The pain has receded a little, becoming the background chorus rather than an immediate assault. The shadows continue their work, making use of this stillness. There is too much damage for them to fully repair before sunrise, but they try.

As consciousness fades, my mind returns to the dungeon beneath Ashenvale.

They’d broken my fingers one by one, working from pinky to thumb. I didn’t scream. I didn’t beg. I kept my gaze fixed on Sereven’s face and remained silent. At first, he was satisfied. Then irritated. Then cold with fury.

“You misunderstand our purpose, Sacha,” he’d said, while they reset a bone they’d broken. “We don’t seek your death. We seek your submission.”

I spat the blood filling my mouth at his feet. The only answer I had left. Something solidified in that moment. Not rage, which burns quick and bright, but hatred. Focused, cold, and patient.

And not just for Sereven. For all of them. The Authority. The system that caged me not for what I did, but for what I am. Theirhypocrisy runs deeper than most suspect. Condemning magic publicly, while harvesting it secretly. Preaching righteousness, while practicing evil.

That hatred became my tether. When pain blurred everything else, I held onto it. When death felt like relief, I breathed through it. When surrender would have ended it, I counted the names I would one day return to.

The memory fades …

… And something else begins.

It starts where Ellie’s fingers rest against my arm. A sensation unlike anything I’ve experienced before. A white glow rises there, reaching for the shadows inside me. Where they meet, they don’t simply touch but merge, creating something neither silver nor shadow but both.

The feeling climbs up my arm. Not pain, at least not pain as I’ve known it these past days. This is more intense. Every nerve ending fires at once, bringing awareness so acute it borders on agony, without quite crossing that threshold.

The silver-shadow energy reaches my chest, and that’s when the real transformation begins. Where prophecy becomes flesh and legend becomes reality.

My back arches involuntarily. The restraints across the stretcher constrict, then snap like thread. My body locks in a full spasm. The brand on my chest burns anew, not with infection but something closer to ice than fire.

Energy pours into the wound. It doesn’t numb, it rebuilds. Dead flesh sloughs away, new layers forming beneath, accelerated beyond anything natural. The marks they gave me aren’t just healing, they’re being destroyed. Removed until my skin carries no trace of them.