Chapter 33 Looking Into the Storm
Looking Into the Storm
Kailorien’s eyes flicked over the brittle page for the third time, but the words refused to stay still.
None of this fit. Scattered across his war-table were scrolls, tattered manuscripts, leather folios he’d torn from the restricted archives.
Now that they’d returned to Stonewake, he could pull from the fortress’s enormous archive, something he’d built over centuries of traveling Elendria and exploring its depths.
Yet none of the tomes had answers. Nothing he read matched what he’d seen. Auryn’s symptoms mimicked mana depletion—shaking, shallow breath, fading color—but the cause was wrong. When she used her power, she wasn’t just burning through magic. It was as if the magic itself was burning through her.
His thumb smudged a half-translated diagram of leyline convergence. Runes blurred. His gaze drifted toward the partitioned curtain shielding the adjacent chamber. She lay beyond it, still as a prayer.
Every time she cast, her power felt…different.
Older. It wasn’t what the Flaeme had taught him.
Not like the Gliders’ worship of the skies.
Not like shamanic summoning or the rituals the Beastfolk in the Shivering Vales.
All magic had a single unbreakable rule: conduits.
One could not take directly from the Veilweave—the source—without catastrophic consequences.
He’d seen mages try. Talented ones from the floating fortress of Kael’Vethar.
Kailorien sat back, dragging a hand through his hair. His gaze snapped back to the page. A half-buried term caught in the corner margin.
Vey’raveth.
The phrase stirred something in his mind. Not Doctrine. Not Flaeme-born. This was older. He muttered it aloud, testing the shape of it in his mouth. “Vey’raveth…”
Weaving, he thought. Not spellcasting. Not invocation.
Weaving. He and Zarrek had used the term offhandedly a few times, but now it felt real—vital.
The word tugged on memory he'd long buried.
Through a haze, he recalled a conversation once—long ago.
Two elder magisters in Krystopolis arguing over Veilweave theory.
One had called it madness. The other had insisted there were deeper strands beneath the known lattice of mana.
Not spells. Not rituals.
Weaves.
Power that didn’t obey. It sang instead.
Focusing, he tried to remember more about that moment. He closed his eyes. With as many ages as he'd walked Elendria, memory could be an elusive thing. He tapped the rune Perthro, commanding it to life. Foresight in battle, focus, and memory when he needed to recall something of dire importance.
Behind his closed eyelids, an image manifested. Two magisters in the Jade Lattices, speaking with wine-drenched tongues and awe-struck eyes.
“Think of the raw potency,” one had murmured. “If we could tap it—harness the Veil instead of the Flaeme…”
“Unstable,” the other had replied, but he’d leaned in closer anyway, breathless. “Beyond unstable. But the yield—”
They'd tried. Three of the most gifted minds in the Doctrine’s arcane studies.
All dead within their first cast. Not from recoil.
Not backlash. From overload. The Veilweave hadn’t resisted them.
It had welcomed them—devoured them. Like a mother crushing a child to her chest, too hard.
Too hungry. The result was a Council ban on any further attempts of such a thing.
Kailorien’s jaw locked. He opened his eyes and rubbed his temple.
Did Auryn know how dangerous her power was?
He trusted she did. Never had he met anyone more intuitive and perceptive.
Yet at times, it seemed as though the world whispered demands and she, in turn, wove the answers with her breath.
But it was killing her. Every thread she summoned pulled more from her skin, her blood, her soul. And he’d allowed it to happen.
Not anymore.
Not another thread. Not another breath. If he had to chain her to the bed and burn every last glyph in the fortress, she would never use that power again.
Trying to catch a whisp between your hands—the echo shivered through him, too close. Too real.
He scratched at his nape, jaw tightening as though to shake it loose, then took a steadying breath. He had to protect her, but he couldn’t cage her. He’d tried once already, and she’d run from him. He couldn’t take away her freedom.
I’ll speak to her again. Try to explain why she needs to be more careful. Try to help her trust me, to give me a chance to find answers.
A whisper.
A creak of wood.
Someone trying not to be heard.
He stood, shoving the table aside, hands sparking with rune-light. The flutter of dark feathers. Talons clicking on stone and wood. Runes blazed down his arm, and he narrowed his eyes.
Only to stop.
Beyond the partition, standing beside Auryn’s bed, was a tall figure. One hand hovered inches above her hair, not quite touching, but close enough to stir the strands. The tips of her braid caught the faint movement and gleamed in the Polis lantern light.
It was a Glider male. An Apexwing—a sight so rare outside the Nestings that Kailorien’s entire body tensed. The hair on his arms stood on end. His runes lit—the Resh’Agar’s power swelling—ready for the creature to make the slightest wrong motion.
His skin was dark—deep as mountain dusk, smooth as stone and covered in deceptively light cloth armor.
Over various pieces of black and gold plates, he wore a fur and feather lined jacket that reached to his calves, runes and sigils burned and stitched into the wool.
A flight coat. A Glider’s pride. Earned in battle and strengthened with skill and craft.
His bare forearms bore intricate glyphs in glinting violet ink, and his wings—massive, black as obsidian—tucked behind him like a folded storm; colossal feathers tapering into finer ones that trailed down into a tail.
Braids hung around his shoulders, threaded with carved bone and onyx beads.
In one hand, he held a deadly glaive taller than he was.
The blade was serrated and covered in marks of battle.
And his eyes…
Violet, like mana burning hot. Still. Unreadable. Measuring.
Kailorien’s breath left him. He knew that face—those eyes. Distant, infamous memory wrapped in bone and wing and war.
“…Riven.”
The Glider looked up slowly. “Resh’Agar.” Then lower. “Skycleaver.”
Kailorien didn’t lower his arms. His runes bit into his spine, hissing with warning. “You have no business here.”
The Riven blinked at him. His glaive tilted casually over one shoulder, but his posture was that of a creature poised to strike. “The Matriarch is of a different mind.”
“You don’t typically run scouting errands,” Kailorien said, voice cool, steeped in warning. “Hard to believe you would, even if Shiva’sera demanded it.”
The Glider’s eyes darkened at the name. At the implication that the Riven was at her beck and call.
Focus on me—Kailorien thought. Step away from her bed. If you don’t, truce or not—
“The Matriarch does not tame my wings. Nor my curiosity.” The Glider’s gaze lingered on the sleeping girl. “And that is what you have here, no? A curiosity.”
Suddenly, Kailorien remembered what Auryn had once said. War isn’t something one can tame. The words echoed, dread settling in the pit of Kailorien’s stomach. He strode forward and stopped a few paces from the curtain.
“We may have wielded blades side by side once, Riven, but that does not give you leave to enter my fortress unannounced.”
The Glider glanced at him, as though the Resh’Agar was nothing more than a diversion. “Then strengthen your Wards and train your Kelvasari.”
Kailorien took another step.
The Riven didn’t budge. “I bring warning.” His head tilted, birdlike. Watching. Analyzing. “Dissenters move beneath the clouds. Whisper your name. They know you walk the stone. And they say…you carry something with you. A thing to strengthen the Flaeme.”
Kailorien’s hands clenched into fists. Auryn? No. That was impossible. They couldn’t know. Even he barely understood what she was. She’d only been at his side a few months. How could rumor have spread so quickly?
“I carry no such thing,” he insisted.
“Perhaps not as they describe,” the Riven murmured, his voice like wind moving across a forgotten stone.
“But describe they do. The Resh’Agar’s Kelvasari are a roaming city.
Every town, every hamlet, every cottage you pass will carry your story.
Rumors will rise, and the winds will reach our Skywhisperer. ”
The Riven stepped away from the bed and into the room proper. The air between them quaked.
"Merchants tell tales of a creature with silver hair.
Of flowers blooming from the dead. Of rivers held still with nothing but a hand.
" The Riven's tail moved behind him, the feathers shifting.
"The winds do not lie. Our Skywhisperer heard the tale of the silver-haired one closing a rift in the sky.
This is a power that cannot be allowed to roam free. "
A beat passed. The runes on Kailorien’s arms pulsed. He gritted his teeth. “You will not touch her. She is under my protection.”
“Then she will need it. The winds already know her story. If you believe you can hide such feats, then you are more ignorant than I would have believed.”
Kailorien clenched his fists. “You came alone?”
“I do most things alone,” the Glider said. “You know this.”
“Then deliver your warning and get out.”
The Riven lifted his chin then lowered his glaive. As the end of it hit the stone, the floor shuddered with the weight. “You are the Skycleaver. The Gliders know your scent. They remember the mountain split beneath your fury. But not all revere the Resh. Not all believe your purpose brings peace.”
“We’ve traded for decades,” Kailorien reminded him. “Mana springs, relics, even bloodlines. You owe us more than suspicion.”
“We owe no one whilst the Flaeme still breathes,” the Glider warned. “The Sky knows the threat. Something stirs in the deep Vein. Something smelling of divinity and war and claiming.”
His wings flared, casting jagged shadows across the stone floor. “Even you cannot deny it.”
A beat of silence stretched between them, final as judgment.
“The Gliders don’t make idle threats,” Kailorien said. “So why are you really here?”
The Riven’s violet eyes simmered, slitted pupils contracting as they slipped back to Auryn. “To see for myself the reason the Skycleaver grows nervous.”
“If you've seen enough, then leave. Tell your Matriarch,” Kailorien commanded, voice low. “Tell Shiva’sera—that she tests my patience with her interference in my personal affairs. I carry no weapon.”
The Riven’s eyes glinted. “No weapon,” he echoed. “Then why do you guard the silver woman like a throne?”
He took one step back. Then another. His talons scraped on the floor, his tail feathers adjusting for flight.
“Prepare.”
“For what?”
“What you do best, Resh’Agar. War.” He paused, thinking. "War may be your specialty, Skycleaver, but it is our domain. Sending battalions to raid a fortress is worth the loss to the Matriarch if it means preserving the Nestings."
A chill rolled down Kailorien’s spine.
“She is not a threat.”
“No,” the Glider agreed. “But she is waking. And something ancient stirs when she breathes.” His nostrils flared. “She smells of change. Like a foreign wind.”
He stepped out onto the balcony and spread his wings with a powerful gust. It would have knocked a lesser man to the ground, but Kailorien stood unaffected. And then, like smoke on a moonless wind, the Riven vanished.
Kailorien remained, breath sharp, muscles wound like a drawn bow.
Not safe in Maradryn.
Not safe on the Surface.
And now, not even safe from the ones who walked with sky in their bones.
He sank into the chair beside the table, resting his head in his hand. All signs pointed to one thing. Krystopolis was the safest place for her to be. At least there, he could keep watch. Some of the time.
His jaw clenched. His memory betrayed him, conjuring the strange, haunted voice he’d heard just before breaking the seal on the ice that had kept Auryn from his arms.
Please, don’t.
He should have listened. But if he had, he never would have found the lost piece of his soul.
Not for the first time, the thought struck him; she was not made for this world.
But the world had seen her.
And it would never stop wanting her now.