Page 66 of Stormvein

Ellie doesn’t stir, the silver beneath her skin dimming now that we’re not touching. I look down at her for a moment, studying the face of the woman who has remade me, who saved me. The woman who brought me back from death.

In sleep, the worry lines between her brows have smoothed out, but the exhaustion remains evident in the shadows beneath her eyes. There’s a vulnerability there that stirs something protective in me. I want to wake her. I want her to be the first to see the miracle she’s performed. But she needs to rest, and so I step over her sleeping body, and silently move toward the stream that runs alongside our camp.

Each step is a revelation of perfect function where before there was only agony. The ground feels different beneath my bare feet. The air against my skin carries scents I couldn’t detect through fever—dust, pine, water, the smell of life instead of death.

Crouching at the stream’s edge, I splash water onto my face, the cold shocking newly healed skin as I wash away blood and grime. I watch rivulets carry away the remnants of torture—dried blood, sweat, dirt—revealing unmarked skin beneath. My reflection ripples in the current, showing me a face free from wounds, but changed nonetheless. Something harder looks back at me, something forged rather than broken by what I’ve endured. My eyes hold a different darkness now. They no longerhold only the shadows and void that are my birthright, but purpose solidified through suffering.

I straighten and turn as one of the guards stands to stretch. He sees me, and one hand drops to his weapon, not fully registering who I am, then his jaw drops. I can see his throat moving as he swallows, clearly uncertain whether I’m a miracle or a threat. He nudges his companion with his foot, and takes a step toward the sleeping fighters.

“Wake them.” My voice crosses the space between us, strong and clear where yesterday it was a pain-ravaged whisper.

At the sound of my voice, the camp stirs to panicked alertness. Varam rises first, decades of discipline bringing him to full alert instantly. When he sees me standing whole before him, he takes a staggering step backward.

“Sacha?” Disbelief strips away any pretense of subordinate to commander, leaving only naked shock behind. Then his bearing crumbles entirely. His knees hit the ground with a thud as he bends forward, forehead nearly touching the earth, in an old Veinwarden honorific. Tears track silently down his face, and I’m struck by the realization thatVaram—stoic, controlled Varam—is weeping openly.

The others rise more slowly, weapons drawn until recognition dawns. Eyes widen, jaws slacken, weapons lower by degrees. One fighter drops his sword entirely, the clatter jarring in the morning stillness. Another whispers a prayer. A third backs away, her expression somewhere between awe and terror.

One by one, they lower themselves as Varam has, until a circle of kneeling figures surround me. Fists are pressed to hearts. Others place their blades on the ground at my feet—an offering of loyalty, a pledge renewed.

“The Vareth’el has returned,” someone whispers, voice thick with emotion.

Ellie is among the last to wake, reluctantly pulled from sleep by the commotion around her. When her eyes find me—standing tall where I should be broken, whole where I should be dying—she scrambles backward, tripping over the stretcher, landing hard, legs sprawled out in front of her and one hand covering her mouth. Her eyes grow impossibly wide.

“Sacha?” My name on her lips sounds like a question, a prayer, and an accusation all at once. She rises slowly, her entire body vibrating with tension. “How?”

I walk to the center of our small camp, letting them all witness what has happened to me, but keep my gaze on Ellie. In her eyes, I see the woman who defied a tower’s magic, who answered my summons, who refused to accept my death. I owe her more than I can ever repay.

She moves toward me with halting steps, disbelief in every line of her body. Her tongue slicks over her lips, and she takes in a deep breath.

“You were dying,” she whispers. “I watched you …”

“Your storm met my shadow,” I tell her, lifting a hand and extending it toward her in invitation. A recognition of equals.

Silence greets my words, thick with awe and terror in equal measure. Then Varam lurches to his feet, pulling off his outer tunic with hands that shake.

“My Vareth’el.” His voice breaks, and he offers the garment with ceremonial solemnity.

I accept it with a nod, pulling it over my head. Another fighter silently approaches with pants, eyes downcast as though looking directly at me might blind him. The reverence unsettles me. I am no god.

“The prophecy speaks true,” someone whispers. “Where shadow leads, storm will follow.”

“Awakening that which lies dormant in the void,” another completes, eyes darting between Ellie and me.

“We need to leave here. Gather your things.”

At my words, the camp erupts into activity. Supplies gathered, weapons checked, preparations made with new purpose. This is no longer a retreat driven by necessity, but a mobilization shaped by belief. No longer a dying man carried through the dark. This is the beginning of something whispered for years.

Ellie approaches hesitantly, her face showing that she’s struggling to process what happened. The light has dimmed, but it still pulses in rhythm with the shadows flowing beneath my own. I frown down at my arm, and will them to fade. They recede slowly, almost stubbornly.

“I don’t understand,” she whispers. One hand reaches out to touch me, then drops midway as doubt overtakes courage. Her eyes travel over my face, down to my chest where the Authority brand once marred my skin. “What happened?”

Her bewilderment is genuine, her shock at my appearance unbalancing her understanding of how life works. This isn’t about prophecies or wars for her. It’s about the laws of reality being rewritten.

“You did what was needed.”

“But I didn’tdoanything.” She shakes her head. “I was asleep. I didn’t … I couldn’t have.” She lifts her hands, examining them as if they belong to a stranger, turning them over, flexing fingers that look ordinary but have performed something extraordinary.

Around us, the fighters continue their preparations, stealing glances at us when they think I won’t notice. Their whispers overlap like rustling leaves—“prophecy,” “Stormvein,” “Vareth’el reborn.” Ellie seems oblivious to them, locked in her private struggle with what she’s seeing.