Page 24 of Stormvein (The Veinbound Trilogy #2)

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.”

That I 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’s an 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 , I experience —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.

Her grief for me, sharp enough to steal breath.

Her rage at the Authority, hot enough to burn.

Her determination, anchored so deeply that it does not move.

Her scream as unfamiliar energy courses through her for the first time. The storm that forms in response to her grief, her rage.

And underlying all of that, something else. A feeling she keeps guarded, even from herself. Something that rose when she believed I was lost.

I feel the echo of the transfer, the resonance of powers never meant to combine, yet finding harmony. The silver light isn’t only hers anymore, threads of shadow weave through it, binding it, shaping it into something new.

Like the strange crystal in that ancient chamber, her power draws from the world even as it reshapes it, absorbing energy while projecting her will upon it.

The storm that forms is both natural and unnatural, both elemental and constructed. Lightning that strikes with purpose, rain that falls with intent.

Agony flares. Real, physical pain from my body breaking through the dream barrier. The vision wavers, then begins to dissolve. I fight to hold onto it, to maintain this connection.

The crystal chamber reappears, its ancient stone stained with blood both old and new. The hooded figures gather around the crystal again, but now I can see their faces beneath the crimson hoods. Every one of them bears Sereven’s features, repeated in endless variation.

“We preserve what we claim to destroy,” they chant in unison. “We use what we condemn as evil.”

They turn as one to face me, their eyes full of the crystal’s cold blue light. “The Shadowvein Lord sees too much,” they say together. “Knows too much.”

“You failed.” I face this legion of betrayers. “I escaped the tower. I survived your torture. Your secrets will not remain buried. Others will learn of your deceit.”

“Escape?” They laugh, the sound echoing around the chamber. “You followed the path laid before you. You did exactly what we expected you to do.”

The scene shifts to where I fell, when Sereven’s crystal tore through my shadows as I attempted to flee. I see it now from outside of myself. My body collapsing, the blue light not only disrupting my power but harvesting it.

The crystal doesn’t destroy. It collects, absorbs, stores, and uses .

The memory is strangely disconnected. I feel no echo of the pain that tore through me at that moment, no resonance of the desperation that drove me. I simply witness as my power is stripped away, as my shadows dissolve into the crystal’s hungry light.

“You took me to take more. To finish what the tower began.”

“Shadow and storm,” they reply. “Both are necessary. Both valuable. Both dangerous.”

The vision fractures, splintering into disordered shards of memory and dream.

Through them, I glimpse the twisted towers of Blackvault.

Its spires are crowned with stained glass depicting the purging of magical corruption.

Beneath it lies the truth. The chambers where they store what they claim to destroy.

Vaults where forbidden knowledge is preserved and studied rather than eliminated.

The purging chamber itself, where they planned to finalize my destruction, is not what it appears. The energy extracted from condemned Veinbloods doesn’t dissipate, but flows through hidden channels, collected and concentrated for purposes I cannot discern.

The fever in my physical body surges abruptly, breaking through the visions, burning through my blood, making thought itself painful. Reality reasserts itself. Each heartbeat sends fresh waves of agony radiating out from wounds that show no signs of healing.

The brands on my chest and cheek throb with infection’s heat.

Broken ribs grind with each involuntary movement, the sensation of bone against bone nauseating even through the haze of fever.

The sword wound in my side throbs with its own separate rhythm of torment, hot and wet as infection burrows deeper into vital organs.

I catalog each injury. A habit formed during years of imprisonment when control of my mind was the only autonomy I possessed.

The metal restraints still encircle my wrists, their weight both physical and magical, continuing to suppress what remains of my powers, preventing even the weakest connection to my shadows, to the Void.

The manacles edges have worn trenches into my skin.

My body has become a battlefield I’m losing inch by inch.

The infection advances through realms of muscle and bone, claiming ground with each passing hour, dividing function from will, planting infection’s flag in conquered regions.

My remaining strength retreats before the onslaught, abandoning outlying provinces, concentrating dwindling forces around core functions necessary for bare survival.

I attempt to retreat into deeper unconsciousness, to escape the torment that keeps growing stronger and more pervasive with each passing moment.

But the fever holds me close, keeping me suspended in a torturous middle state.

Too damaged for coherent awareness, too agitated for the merciful release of complete oblivion.

My body burns from twin sources. The external heat of inflamed wounds and the internal furnace of infection.

The poison spreads through my bloodstream, creating tributaries of fire that flow to every extremity.

The brand centered on my chest, the Authority’s three-ringed symbol of dominance, feels as fresh as the moment it was applied, nerve endings still screaming in protest.

The visions disintegrate into incoherent, disjointed images without narrative or meaning.

Disconnected images flash behind my closed eyes.

The tower’s silver walls, Ellie’s face, the crystal, and the blood-stained chamber.

None connect. None of them make sense. They’re fever dreams without substance or significance.

Through this delirium, voices occasionally penetrate—distant, then close, before receding again. Worried tones discussing my condition with increasing urgency.

“The fever isn’t breaking …” Varam—my friend, my ally. His voice is strained with uncharacteristic fear.

“... need to draw the infection out …” Mira. Practical, even when facing death.

“... if we don’t stop the blood poisoning …” An unfamiliar voice. Female, worried.

Most frequently, most consistently, most desperately, it is Ellie’s voice. Hers remains closest, her presence unmistakable even through fever’s distorted lens.

“Sacha, please …” Her voice breaks on my name.

“... you can’t die now …” Exhaustion thins her words.

“... we just got you back …” Determination battling with fear.

Something cool touches my forehead, a cloth perhaps, held in gentle hands.

It offers brief respite from the burning heat, but cannot reach the fever raging within.

I fight to respond, to show some sign of awareness, but my body refuses to obey even the most basic commands.

I remain trapped between life and death, between consciousness and oblivion, between surrender and resistance.

My awareness fades in and out. Sometimes I’m cognizant only of the pain, the fever, the struggle for each breath. Other times, I float above it all, detached from any physical suffering, watching my broken body from a distance.

In those moments of strange detachment, I see Ellie most clearly.

Her face is drawn with exhaustion and worry, new lines etched around her eyes and mouth from days without proper rest. The silver light still pulses beneath her skin, more pronounced than before, visible even through my fever-clouded vision.

She remains at my side at all times, her hands shaking but gentle as she tends to wounds that will never heal properly.

“Don’t you dare die on me, Sacha,” she whispers when she thinks I can’t hear. “Not after everything we’ve been through.”

Her fingers brush against mine. A small gesture of connection that leaves a trail of warmth through the numbing cold that claims more of me with each passing moment. I want to respond, to turn my hand to capture hers, but the pathways between intention and action have severed.

And then the visions fade completely, leaving only darkness and the distant echo of whispered names.

Elowen.

Stormvein .

Echoes without a source. Yet they persist, repeating in the void like heartbeats, like breath, like something integral to my very existence. Like the promise of what might be if I can survive this crucible of fever and pain.

I sink deeper into the abyss, letting it claim me completely.

The pain recedes into blessed numbness. Consciousness slips away, but Ellie’s presence remains.

An anchor, a tether to life I am not yet prepared to abandon.

Her eyes are the last thing I perceive before the void reaches out to envelop me in its waiting embrace.